No yellow pee!

 

I forget how commentaries work but since I have been in Wales I have noticed a few ‘gender and sport’ issues. First off, I thought when coming here I would fit right in because I used to play rugby and it is the national sport of Wales. Whenever we have conversations about sports and what sports we like or what sports we play I always bring up the fact that I used to play rugby and every single time, no matter who I talk to, they give me funny looks. Apparently Rugby is not a “girls sport” and some boldly follow that up with “don’t you have to be fat (or big) to play rugby?” (for the record some of the best players on my high school rugby team were the small mighty girls ) I always ask “what are girls’ sports?” confused because so many of my girl friends growing up played rugby like me. The responses differ but usually it is football (soccer) or netball; for the tough girls, field hockey. I don’t believe that everyone in Wales has this same opinion, just those that I have talked to thus far.

 Our Optometry society plays 3 sports; an all-girls Netball team, an all-boys football team and a co-ed badminton team. I have recently started playing  Netball which I am still not fully sure of the rules but from what I understand it’s kind of like basketball but you don’t dribble, only 2 of your teammates are allowed to shoot at the net, and there is no backboard to bounce off of. It’s been really fun to learn how to play and as our team gets better, our plays are faster and we start to create strategies. I have also learned that since it is a “girls sport” many of the players wear a skort (for those who didn't have one of these lovely pieces of clothing in their grade 2 closet it is a half skirt half shorts). Last week we had our first game and I was off the first half because I had never played netball so another teammate was teaching me the rules and we started talking about one of her friends’ netball teams. She had mentioned that there was a boy on this team and he was forced to wear a skort because his coach wanted everyone to be uniform. I am not sure how this player felt about wearing the skort (I asked but the girl didn’t know) but it seemed kind of extreme to me.

I have since taken it upon myself to break gender stereotypes in small ways, for example I made all my flatmates watch the x-women in the CIS championship. If anyone can show that rugby can be played well by females it’s those lovely ladies.

Now that you have read my rant, you have probably realized that it has nothing to do with yellow pee. That was my rugby teams cheer. You have to be hydrated out there on the field.