NPR Article ….I had found my way to the women’s rugby club on my college campus and fell in love at my first practice.

I was a 19-year-old asthmatic theater kid standing on a rugby pitch, bruised and tearful, when a coach told me something that changed my life.

Weeks earlier, I had found my way to the women’s rugby club on my college campus and fell in love at my first practice. The adrenaline from taking a hit to the face plus the ambrosia of dirt, grass and sweat flipped a switch in my brain, and I was hooked on rugby. I was also … not an athlete. At all.

I had dropped the ball so many times. I was confused about the rules (You can only pass backward? What?! How was I offsides?), and I couldn’t keep up. I had sprained my ankle. All of that culminated in a crisis of confidence and that fateful conversation with my coach. I approached her, trembling, and asked: “Am I too terrible at this? Should I keep at it? I don’t want to bring down the whole team.”

Read entire article here npr.org/…/olympics-womens-rugby-sevens-appreciation