New to campus, freshman Molly Steelhammer had no idea what to expect from her college experience. One day she wandered over to the University of Oregon Club Sports Fair to see if anything caught her eye. Immediately, the women’s rugby team, the Dirty Ducks, looked like a nice fit. @@name checked@@
“They were the most welcoming club sport, so I was like, ‘Cool, I’ll try that one,’” Steelhammer said.
A former high school basketball player, Steelhammer knew she had the athleticism to play rugby at the collegiate level. However, her initial experience with the game was one of confusion.
“It was really intimidating the first day,” Steelhammer said. “I had no idea what I was doing.”
This same perplexity about being new to rugby is something Steelhammer’s captain, Erika Farias, experienced when she first started. Even though Farias wasn’t  new to the sport when she first arrived at Oregon, she learned to play differently. @@name checked@@
“My story’s a little different because I got to go to high school overseas for a little bit,” Farias said. “I lived in Singapore and got to play touch rugby, a variation. That’s where I learned the fundamentals of rugby.”
With that experience in her pocket, Farias had an advantage on the other newcomers. However, the added element of tackling was an obstacle she had to overcome.
“My muscle memory was to just touch the person,” Farias said. “I had to reteach my body how to track someone and put my body weight into them in order to bring them down.”
While the challenging nature of learning a new sport could have deterred Steelhammer from pursuing rugby, it was women like Farias that helped her along the way. Like a group of sisters, the Dirty Ducks have become one big family throughout the year.
“My team is my family,” Farias said. “In college, everyone has their thing. Rugby is all year long so I’m with these girls all the time. I see them all the time. It’s nice having a support system. There’s something about rugby that is so empowering that you stop caring about the outside world.”
The Dirty Ducks, a representative of the Division I Pacific Mountain Conference, are now moving to a season filled with uncertainty — the postseason. While playing well enough to earn a playoff spot, the Dirty Ducks know that their past performances are just stepping stones to a greater goal of theirs.
“Every game is a step to where we want to go,” Steelhammer said. “We all want to go to playoffs and Sweet 16s.”
In order to get to the final round of 16 in the Rugby College National Championships, Oregon has to overcome a string of teams that it has never seen before. Freshman Helen Woodbury’s mindset on the postseason is one shared among the rest of her teammates.
“I try not to go into a game ever thinking ‘We’re going to beat them,’” Woodbury said. “I can’t think like that. Every game is a new game, a possibility of losing. We have to go our hardest.”
Follow Joseph Hoyt on Twitter @jhoyt42