“I like ‘House Wife,’” Ruman says. “The lyrics are a little edgy,” Calixte adds, “but that’s a song everyone knows.”

“You sing about how you don’t want to be a housewife, you don’t want to scrub his floors, you don’t want to give him babies,” Ruman says, summarizing the song’s content.

“And then because that’s kind of heteronormative, we also have a song ‘I Don’t Wanna Be a Straight Girl.’”

Uber acknowledges the stereotype that a lot of female rugby players are lesbians. “Our team kind of makes a joke of it,” she says. “You have to accept that if you play rugby you play because you love the sport.”

Nicole K. Poteat ’11, who is the team’s alumnae relations officer and Uber’s roommate, says she wasn’t even aware of the stereotype when she joined the team. “It’s completely not an advertising point or a selling point for us,” Poteat said.

“The nice thing about it is that it does mean we have a very, very open community,” she says, contrasting her experience with other teams where locker room chatter revolved around guys. “Conversations are gender-neutral,” she says. Poteat points out that the majority of Radcliffe’s current team is straight, adding, “No matter what the make up of the team is sexuality-wise, it still maintains that very open community.”

A TEAM’S TRAGEDY

The team drew even closer last May after the sudden death of Kathlene S.G. Joo ’11.

After falling silent for a minute, Middleton explains, “The rugby team to a lot of us is a family and when you lose someone in your family you rally around them.”

Uber, who was one of Joo’s roommates, says the team was together shortly before Joo died. Uber had to tell the rest of the team the next day.

“Within a matter of days we managed to rent vans and get hotels and drive to Pittsburgh for her funeral,” she says.

“Instead of addressing it directly, it’s more that we’ve come together a lot,” says Poteat, who was also one of Joo’s roommates. Ruman and Calixte say it was a difficult period to be captains, but time and a summer away has helped a lot.

“I’m sure some people think of the fall season as being for Kathlene,” Ruman says.Uber says she agrees, “A lot of people do when they put on a Radcliffe jersey have her in mind.”

Though it is still too soon to drop her name into conversation, Uber says the team has found ways to commemorate Joo.

“We just celebrated her 21st birthday,” Uber said, “We wore her favorite type of clothing and drank her favorite type of beer.”