=	I am in the process of forming a women's rugby team at the 
=collegiate level. Since I am new to this, I would appreciate any advice 
=someone out there might have: 

=what works and what doesn't

i'll take a stab at a couple. highly subjective. i think you need to 
get one and ideally 2 coaches for your team. actually if you get 25+
folks on your team a third coach would be good. keep every busy doing
stuff and participating or you will lose them. 

hopefully your coaches will be at all your games and practices, if so, 
let them pick teams and put together practices. involving players in
that opens a can of worms. although most clubs have to because coaches
are part time volunteers and arent gonna do all that. an unfortunate occurence. 

dont teach the game patchwork. you or someone may see things team could
be doing in backline but dont get ahead of selves. introduce it
structurally. dont panic if you lose a match. work on a weakness or
two at a time dont overreact. very common. if you're cool your team will
be cool.  


=practice tips 

if you dont have many (10+) experienced players i would try to get in
5 weeks or so (10-15 practices) in before the first games. start really
basic. you could do that in fall but up north might be tough to pull
off for spring season unlessz you have indoor facilities. 

after you do some instruction and work type stuff at some point (we did
it about mid practice) play some touch or something fun. do some drills
right before that that might help them in touch. 

work every practice on mauling and eventually mauling and rucking. every
practice. we warmed up then would plsit into 2 groups. one group worked
on backline basic moves while other worked on mauling presentation
binding etc. then after everyone went thru mauling the groups switched.
if you can maul and ruck you can be competitive. a lot of teams  work
so much on scrums and lineouts. my personal opinion is mauling and
rucking is more important and takes more time to develop. i didnt
introduce the complete scrum until 3-4 practices before our first game.
i had a select side coach coemin and explain it to everyone. actually
thats another thing. until it becomes impractical teach everyone
everything whether a back or forward. they will have more confidence
and less likely to get frustrated if they know most of whats going on
out there whether they involved directly or not. 

theres other stuff but these are a few. 

=suggestions 

i wouldnt pinpoint a particular group in recruiting. be it sorority,
gay/lesbian student union or anything else. you want to give the 
impression you want everyone. you have automatically cut your potential
player pool when you market your team to narrow groups. keep recruting
booths at registration areas for classes, student center. general
student body type areas everyone goes. our group assigned folks to each
dorm to put up fliers and we would have an interest meeting in one or 2
womens dorms.  

one thing that helped us i felt was we were able to secure a practice
field close to dorms and aquatic center area. made us very visable and
easy to get to. once you get folks playing you got em hooked. if you
practice
at some out of way place especially at first its easy for folks to blow
it off. 

be organized. if folks come out to practice and it seems like you dont
have your stuff together not only on practice format but administrative
stuff they wont respect it and you'll lose good dependable people. they
just dont want to get into a mess. 

=Effective workouts and drills 

i'll email you some. 

=suggestions related to stirring up interest in the sport 

i have done an community access tv show for several years now.  and i
put the team on tv some. always cool seein yourself on the tube. 

play double header or two with mens team. its good party and it hypes
the group up with folks on sidelines cheerin em on. our group plays
harder i think when guys are over there cheerin for them. rugby
generally doesnt have spectators. 

get a few folks together and play some touch for fun of it somewhere
in public. like folks get together and play basketball. 


=If you had one piece of advice, one golden rule of
=rugby, what would it be?

play 15 person open rugby. best thing to do to keep everyone interested
and out ofr team. if play another style that really only involves
10 people or so you will join the majority of teams that have to always
scramble to get enough folks to play every game. one of things i was
most proud of was in the first 15 games of our existence we had
15 different players score tries. keeps everybody happy and having
a good time. 


my email: rose@cs.utk.edu

phone: 865-588-8867

feel free to call. 

dpv1@columbia.edu