Back when my bones and muscles didn’t ache as much as they do now and when I could chug a beer in less than 10 seconds, I played rugby for my university girl’s team.
I won’t lie to you now about our achievements during my three years on the team. We did not win one game. In fact, we were lucky to get any points on the board at all and most scores were in the 80-0 range.
Needless to say, we weren’t really playing for the glory of a win.
Instead, rugby for us was all about initiation parties, sing-a-longs, drinking beer, having fun and getting a little exercise.
And I hate to admit it but what better way to meet boys than to join a girl’s rugby team?
One practice with the boys stands out vividly in my memory when the girls lined up against the boys for some ‘touch’ rugby.
I was busy chit chatting to other players, and generally watching the grass grow when the ball was put in play. So, when the 220-pound flanker on the boy’s team came barrelling towards me, I was totally unprepared.
As I stood there staring at him, like a deer caught in headlights, it never occurred to me that he would actually hit me.
The poor unthinking boy didn’t just hit me. He smoked me. And as I lay flat on my back with the wind knocked out of me, stunned and stupefied that I had just been tackled to the ground by a boy, I could hear the general protest unfolding on the field around me.
"How could you do that?"
"She’s a girl."
"You could have seriously hurt her."
If I hadn’t figured it out before, it was never more apparent to me at that time that the girls and the boys were not on an equal playing field.
Since moving to Whistler I’ve discovered that there seems to be a more level playing field when it comes to boys and girls and the sports that we do.
Don’t get me wrong. I have absolutely no misconceptions that I could last more than two seconds against a flanker or a winger from the Whistler Hoary Marmots. The general laws of nature must prevail to some extent no matter how far the women’s movement has come. We are smaller, on the whole. We aren’t as strong, on the whole. And most of us aren’t particularly interested in pitting ourselves against boys on a rugby field.
But I’ve found in Whistler that girls are expected to perform on par with the boys. It’s a refreshing change.
We are expected to ride or ski just as hard and as fast as our male counterparts.
We are expected to hop on our mountain bikes and take cliffs and jumps just like the guys.
We are expected to run just as fast in the marathons and races around town.
In short, the excuse ‘I’m a girl’ doesn’t really stick anymore.
Now fair enough, Whistler’s major sports of skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking and running don’t physically pit the girls against the boys in a battle of strength. They’re generally individual sports where girls can excel in their own right.
But just look at Julia Murray last weekend at the Bob Parsons Memorial super G on Blackcomb Mountain. The first day she not only beat the girls. Her time was also faster than the fastest boy’s time in the same course.
And then there’s Hayley Wickenheiser, breaking all kinds of gender barriers.
The Canadian hockey champ became a household name and a hero to aspiring young female hockey players last year when she led the Canadian women’s hockey team to an Olympic gold in Salt Lake City.
She made the history books again this year when she became the first female hockey player, who is not a goaltender, to duke it out in a men’s professional league.
The 24-year-old began a stint with Kirkkonummen Salamat, a team in the Finnish Hockey Federation’s second division.
It is a feat that at one time would have been totally unthinkable.
While Whistler’s women may not be playing on the top male division hockey teams in town, just look at the girls competing in the Cheakamus Challenge, the Test of Metal and the Ironman. There are girls out there blazing new trails and setting the standard for the guys.
Meanwhile I think I took the women’s movement back a notch or two a couple of weeks ago when I was playing ball hockey and performed the ultimate girlie move.
Our weekly ball hockey nights are mostly made up of guys but there are the handful of girls who show up every week who are keeping up. We might not be checking as hard, we may not have the ball handling skill of some of our male counterparts. But we’ve got just as much heart.
About two weeks ago however I happened to stick my stick in between a guy’s legs, sending him sprawling to the gym floor. It was an accident (although to be honest, I have tried to trip guys in the past when they’re showing off thinking they’re God’s gift to the hard orange ball).
This time I swear it was an accident.
It wasn’t the tripping part of the story however that I was ashamed of. It was my reaction to it.
I actually stopped in the middle of the play while my teammates ran around me to get the ball, which was still in play, and put my hand over my mouth in shock. And then I profusely apologized. Meanwhile the guy I tripped jumped up and got back into the play without a second glance.
I have yet to see one of the guys standing in the middle of the gym floor with his hand clamped over his mouth after elbowing, pushing or tripping another player.
I’m well aware that it was a girlie move and I had just undone weeks of work, trying to keep up with the guys.
Wickenheiser, I’m sure, would have been ashamed.
