They’ve Got Game

The way college sports started is the way it still is for hundreds of students who pay to play. They call their own shots, and there’s nothing casual about the competition.

Published in Carolina Alumni Review, January/February 2007. (Digital version available to GAA members here.)

Virginia Ariail is pleased to say she hasn’t broken any bones yet in her own body, but last fall, at a match with Appalachian State, she did manage to break the nose of an opposing player who was 6-foot-2, 220 pounds. That’s about twice Ariail’s body mass. “It didn’t hurt me at all,” said the sophomore from Rockingham of her rhinoplastic tackle, “but my knee went right into her face. It was pretty bad.”

In 2005, five of Ariail’s teammates on the Carolina women’s rugby team suffered torn ACLs, although as of last fall, the club had tallied only one such tear in ‘06. Her sister, Dorothy ‘04, had a promising career, too – until she broke her collarbone as a freshman and hung up her cleats.

Perhaps all of this bone-crushing should come as no surprise; as Ariail understatedly points out, this is no girly-girl sport. What is remarkable, however, is that she and her 30 teammates actually pay money, in the form of annual dues, to put their bodies through such regular torment. Like all of the athletes who make up UNC’s 53 sport clubs, rugby players earn no scholarships, attract few if any fans to their contests and approach their sporting endeavors with one novel concept in mind: the joy of play.