Completing just their third season, the Traverse Bay Blues Alliance girls rugby team took second in the state.
This with 22 out of 28 team members new to the sport and an injured second-year player.
At the state final game held May 31 in Midland, the team succumbed to Lakeview High School out of St. Claire Shores but completed the season with heads held high.
And dishing advice to next year's competitors: watch out!
"Coming in second was a tough game, I think we were pretty evenly matched teams but in the end they won," said Brittany Lally, captain of the Alliance. "We all wanted it but we weren't disappointed: with only six veteran players and we were second in the state."
Lally, a 2008 Traverse City Central High School graduate, added a prediction about the 2009 team: "Even though we didn't get first I know that they're going to."
Head coach Stephanie Kehrer knows something about success: the rugby club she played on in the Detroit area twice won national championships. She brought a coaching style to the Alliance that emphasized fun and fundamentals, which proved to be a winning formula.
"My main focus is that they have fun," she said. "You don't have to do anything fancy."
For the past three seasons Kehrer has taken baby steps to teach Alliance team members the basics of a relatively obscure sport in the United States. Praising her high school girls as "sponges," they quickly picked up rules, tactics and moves.
"We say, 'We're going to teach you everything you need to know, pay attention and you're going to learn it before the first game' -- and they always do," said Kehrer.
Psychology comes into play in rugby, as in any sport. Even when other team would get rattled during the game's grueling two thirty-minute periods, Alliance members kept an even keel.
"Our girls just keep it positive and ended up using the other team's anger against them," said Kehrer, crediting Lally's leadership.
Kehrer started the high school girls team after moving to the Traverse City area and finding the Traverse Bay Blues rugby club had only a men's team, which her husband joined, and a homeschool boys team.
She considered starting a women's rugby team but had a new baby. Instead, she launched the Alliance girls team for the spring 2006 season. This summer, Kehrer will finally start a women's team, tapping some of her Alliance players now over 18.
Knowing that few people had ever heard of the sport much less played it, Kehrer relied on her Alliance team members to do most of the recruiting.
"Pretty much anyone who wants to come to practice can play," said Kehrer of the team, which draws players from schools around the region..
Lally successfully brought her classmate Jennifer Parrish to a practice for the 2007 season, snaring another player.
"I hadn't done sports since elementary school and she kind of dragged me to it," said Parrish, also a 2008 Central grad and Alliance player for two years. "I went to the first practice and I was hooked. It's really fun, involved everything -- you have to think quickly and not be afraid in order to take a tackle or hit someone."
Just like with the men's teams, socializing is a key component of rugby. The Alliance girls and their competitors played hard but when the game was over, both teams gathered for some fun.
"The difference with rugby is you're on the field and just beating the snot out of each other and afterwards the home team throws a social," said Kehrer. "You're having a good time with these people who you were going hard core with."
For more information on the upcoming women's rugby team forming later this summer, contact Stephanie Kehrer at steppytc@yahoo.com. Traverse Bay Blues information is at www.tcrugby.com.
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