Christopher E. Nelson

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Lauren Buslinger showed up for her job interview at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences with a black eye. Not exactly a best-foot-forward move, but it’s all part of the game for the 26-year-old zoologist and member of the Raleigh Venom women’s rugby team. Since then, her newly earned black-and-blue has become a routine part of Monday morning chitchat with colleagues.

Twice-weekly practices and Saturday afternoon matches with the Venom, one of four teams fielded by the Raleigh Rugby Football Club, offer Lauren and her teammates the opportunity to engage in one of the only full-contact sports readily available to women. “I think for a lot of players, it’s an outlet for excess energy or aggression or whatever,” she says, noting that American football has not taken off among women in this area. “But for athletes who like to push their bodies to the limit, rugby does that very well.”

In rugby, players advance the ball toward the goal by running it or kicking it. To avoid being tackled, a player can also pass the ball to a player who is behind them. Play includes the “scrum,” in which players from both teams lock arms in competition to kick the ball to a player who can pick it up and advance it, and the “maul,” in which players from both teams grab the ball carrier and attempt to move her toward their goal before she can pass the ball.

As a wing or fullback on the back line, Lauren is one of the last to get the ball on offense and is counted on to stop the opponent when on defense. The positions require speed and toughness, and getting banged up is how you make things happen.

“It’s an exciting and dynamic sport, and it develops all sides of athleticism,” Lauren says. “Of course, my family thinks I’m nuts but they’re also the loudest (cheering) when they can make the games.”

Lauren was a runner in high school and college, but says it had become more chore than pleasure by the time she saw a classmate writing “rugby practice” in her planner one day. Lauren inquired and followed up on her classmate’s invitation to visit a practice. She’s since played rugby for three years at N.C. State University and for four with the Raleigh Venom, which was formed in 2002. The Venom is part of the Virginia Rugby Union and won its division’s national championship in 2005 and 2006. Lauren also serves as the team’s match secretary, coordinating playing times and use of the practice fields.

The nonprofit Raleigh Rugby Football Club, founded in 1981, also fields the Raleigh Vipers, a men’s team that won its division’s national championship in 2007; the Rattlesnakes, for players younger than 19; and the Sidewinders, a team of quadriplegics who play in wheelchairs. The club has a playing membership of more than 80 men and women, and owns 15.5 acres on Poole Road with two playing fields, called “pitches,” which players maintain themselves.

The presiding organization, USA Rugby, is a member of the United States Olympic Committee and the International Rugby Board, and oversees approximately 75,000 members in girls, boys, high school, collegiate and club athletic programs, as well as teams that represent the U.S. in international competitions.

Lauren’s teammates are former swimmers, cheerleaders, runners and basketball players who are now teachers, principals, grad students, lawyers and physical therapists when not on the playing pitch. The team is like a family, she says, especially for players who are living here away from home, including international players. She counts seven or eight baby showers for now-former players, and says, “I think a lot of people feel like the Raleigh Rugby team community is almost more of a home than they’ve found in their original families.”

She says she was happy to hear that her younger sister, a student at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, had made the Academy’s women’s rugby team, and now has that family around her so far from home.

Women who’d like to get involved with the Raleigh team should come out for a practice, which are on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7 p.m., talk to the players and coaches and, if not an experienced player, be “ready to learn the game slowly,” she says. Home matches are played on Saturdays about 1 p.m.

The Raleigh Rugby Football Club’s Web site is at raleighrugby.org.