Isabelle Chiu
Sports Editor
Mira Costa’s rugby team has plenty of new faces this season, and all of them are girls.
This year Mira Costa High School is introducing an all-girls rugby team. The girls team will be part of the Southern California Youth Rugby Green Division.
Click here to read about girls ruby’s final game of the season
“Rugby is a really good sport and it is very unique at this school,” sophomore rugby player Alexis Fonua said. “It’s great to be a part of the first girls team at Mira Costa.”
The girls rugby team, unlike Costa’s boys team, plays sevens rugby, as opposed to fifteens rugby. Sevens rugby has 7-minute halves and starts seven players. Currently, Costa’s girls team consists of mostly sophomores and a couple juniors.
“Playing rugby with girls or boys isn’t different because both have all the same rules,” Fonua said. “It is not practiced differently because they take a similar form of rugby.”
In 2016 the Summer Olympics countries like New Zealand and the United States competed in sevens women’s rugby for the first time. This was influential to the coaches and players in starting the girls team at Costa said Fonua.
Watching the Olympics made me want to play rugby,” Fonua said. “I’d say we were definitely inspired to start the team here because of it.”
The coaches asked sophomores Alexis Fonua and Taiana Fonua, who had experience playing rugby at age 12 for a club team in Carson, if they wanted to find other girls and start a girls team. Tainan Fonua said that it was important to broadcast this message because not many people in the area play. The team encourages anyone interested to join.
“We thought it was a good idea to start a girls team, and we wanted to spread knowledge of the sport out because not many people know about it,” Alexis Fonua said. “You can learn a lot from rugby and we wanted to spread that to other girls as well.”
The girls are coached by the current boys rugby coach Allison Taylor. The boys and girls practice together, as they both play the sevens rugby. They also both compete in the winter season; however, the girls will not be competing in the California Interscholastic Federation tournament.
“Last year the boys were California state champions, and we want the same for our girls,” coach Taylor said. “However, we need more girls to come and play if we are going to compete at that level.”
During the fall offseason, both boys and girls teams practice on Tuesday’s, Wednesday’s, and Friday’s from 2-4 p.m. The girls and boys will continue to practice together during season and will extend their practice to more days a week when the winter season starts.
“[Being part of the rugby team] is a really good bonding experience,” sophomore Angie Recinos said. “You get to meet a lot of new people, Grow as a family and learn new things.”
The competitive season for the girls spans from Jan. 6 to Feb. 10, with a championship tournament on Feb. 10. Costa’s games will be every Friday, and the Mustangs will compete against other teams in Los Angeles such as Saint Anthony and View Park Prep.
Read: One of Costa’s first girls rugby games this season
“We still want people to join the rugby team,” Recinos said. “Our goal is to become state champions and we need more girls to fulfill that goal.”
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