With fair skin and a likeness for wearing dresses when the weather permits, McKenzie Kimball is getting accustomed to showing a couple bruises as a rookie on the Women’s Rugby team at Colorado State University. After years of adoration for the sport of rugby, the Natural Resource Recreation and Tourism senior has traded her fandom for a team jersey.
Growing up, Kimball spent her childhood in Silverthorne, Colo. and her adolescence in Fruita, Colo. With a small town upbringing on either side of the state, her interests were shaped by her surroundings. In Fruita, like many other regions of the United States, rugby is a lesser known sport alongside football and soccer. Her first exposure to rugby took place in Silverthorne, but it wasn’t until her collegiate career that Kimball would don a pair of rugby cleats all her own.
During her first year at CSU, Kimball walked out of the rugby interest meeting in a fit of intimidation. Two years would pass before she deeply considered joining the team.
“It’s the sport that tough girls play, and one that people have respect for but its always on the outskirts,” Kimball says of rugby. Though she was content with her involvement on campus, and with her academics, Kimball says she entered her third year at CSU “ready for something that really scares me and pushes me out of my comfort zone.”
Seated in an office chair, the rugby newcomer can’t help but to look approachable as she hugs her right knee to her chest and swings her left leg rhythmically. It seems like a misplacement to imagine Kimball with her pixie-cut, blonde hair out on a field, where physicality has few limitations. She admits that she had her reservations, as well.
Up until her first game, a scrimmage against the University of Wyoming on the CSU intramural fields, Kimball can’t recall having any “physical responses to stress”.
“I fell silent about an hour before the game,” Kimball says. “Typically, I’m reserved before games and the like, but I was thinking ‘shit what did I get into?’”
After about 60 ‘scrums’—where teams vie for possession of the ball by pushing against their opponents in a head-to-head huddle—her mentality began to change.
Like a mass of humming bees from flower to flower, the two opposing teams are in constant motion whether the ball is or not. As a forward on the team, Kimball is continuously at the center of the swarm with a few specialized roles. If she’s not following allowing with the referee’s cadence of, “crouch, bind, set” to dig her cleats into the ground towards the ball in a scrum, Kimball is helping lift the jumper in the air in a lineout to catch the ball.
“I was surprised that I could actually lift and tackle girls,” Kimball says between giggling. But the surprises didn’t stop there.
Aside from her ability and budding love for the sport, Kimball was equally surprised by the amount of camaraderie within the women’s rugby team.
“There aren’t very many of us, which is part of this sport,” says Kimball. “It’s a family. They want to know about you and support you like a family does”.
Nov. 3, signified the end of the fall rugby season for the CSU club team, with a loss to the University of New Mexico. With a record of one win and two losses, the team looks forward to a spring season that will begin again in the New Year. As the snow makes its last flurries for the winter, the women on CSU’s rugby team will play one last game against Air Force Academy, and begin preparing for regionals and nationals according to their season performance.
“I don’t really have much opportunity to rest, or to think about stuff which is kind of good because it forces me into a rhythm,” Kimball says with an intonation that suggests she’s realizing more about herself as she finishes her sentence.
“Leaving my first game, I was exhausted. It was really fun, it was terrifying, it was brutal, and it definitely made me fall in love with the sport”.
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