Hitting Like Women


The only woman on her team, Jessica Kruger was drawn by the competition and stayed for the camaraderie.
Photo of Jessica Kruger by Erin Wild Photography

Riki Entz found herself glued to the broadcast of last summer’s Parapan Am Games in Toronto as she watched the Canadian quad rugby team fight its way to a gold medal. Entz, 25, lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the birthplace of the sport, and had fallen in love with its fast-paced, hard-hitting action since she started playing during the past year. Watching the Internet streaming of games, she was thrilled to see her countrymen play so well and shine a spotlight on the sport she had adopted when recurring head injuries forced her to start using a wheelchair. Yet she was frustrated when everywhere she turned she saw people referring to the sport as “men’s quad rugby.” When the broadcasters noted that it was important to mention that quad rugby was a coed sport, Entz found herself torn.

On the one hand she was hopeful this would help educate people about the sport, but an implicit message lay beneath the surface. “My friend and I, both rugby players, were just looking at each other like, ‘Well yeah, it is very important because there are women watching this right now who might be interested in rugby, and they’re making it sound like women couldn’t play,’” she says. “And that’s not at all the case.”

Love at First Sight

For Samantha de Leve, it was love at first sight when she got her first taste of wheelchair rugby. Three years ago Ehlers-Danlos syndrome was forcing her to spend more time in a chair. The Southern California native attended a wheelchair sports day in search of a way to get more involved in the wheelchair-using community. “I fully intended to go learn tennis, and then I saw wheelchair rugby, and I was like ‘tennis is never going to happen for me,’” she recalls. “And I got on the court and immediately had an absolutely fantastic time with the sport.”

De Leve, 26, has grown to love the tactics and strategy involved in the game, but said a big part of its appeal lay in its simplicity — “Grab the ball, don’t get smashed by other people.” That description, along with the macho personalities glorified in the hit 2005 documentary, Murderball, helped grow the sport and are probably partially responsible for its male-dominated rosters.

“If you were a female with a spinal cord injury watching that movie, you’re either really inspired to go play, or you’re scared out of your mind that these really aggressive guys are gonna come hit you,” says Hannah Richard, a graduate student at the University of Houston. Richard, who doesn’t have a spinal cord injury, has been interviewing female quad rugby players for her master’s thesis and estimates that roughly 5 percent of registered players are women. It’s worth noting that approximately 80 percent of spinal cord injuries reported to the National Spinal Cord Injury Database happen to men.

De Leve is the only woman on her team and the only woman playing in the area, and Entz was the only female on her team when she started playing — a common reality for female players.

Aimee Bruder, 41, has been playing with her local Alabama team for nine years and has only had one female teammate during that time. During one of her first practices, her teammates got into an argument. “I heard one of them say, ‘You can’t hit a girl!’” she says. “And I was like, ‘Come on, just hit me!’ One hit and then we were fine.”

Kerri Morgan, a C6 incomplete quad from Birmingham, Alabama, has been playing wheelchair rugby on and off for 13 years and tried out for the U.S national team in 2008. She wants to raise awareness that the sport isn’t just for men. “We were all excited when the movie Murderball came out,” she says. “But if you watch that movie, they never show a woman playing. When you watch that film, you get a sense of testosterone and that this is a men’s sport, and very male.”
Kerri Morgan, a C6 incomplete quad from Birmingham, Alabama, has been playing wheelchair rugby on and off for 13 years and tried out for the U.S national team in 2008. She wants to raise awareness that the sport isn’t just for men. “We were all excited when the movie Murderball came out,” she says. “But if you watch that movie, they never show a woman playing. When you watch that film, you get a sense of testosterone and that this is a men’s sport, and very male.”

Jessica Kruger, a C5-7 quad from Vancouver, British Columbia, says her male cohorts have been relatively well behaved. “On the court you obviously get trash talking in general. And because I happen to be the only female, I think it is a little sex-specific, like ‘Oh, I wasn’t even trying anyways. I’m just being nice.’ But it’s definitely not a significant part of the sport, I would say.”

Richard says only one of the 25 women she has talked with had an “extremely negative” experience, and the vast majority claimed to be having fun. “Some of them would tell me that it’s really stressful or that it’s annoying having to listen to their teammates’ sexist comments. Or they told me that “Oh, I took two seasons off because I just couldn’t handle dealing with the team.” So I guess they pick their battles, and sometimes whether they love rugby or not, just the atmosphere removes them from the sport.”

Richard has focused her studies on how the women articulate their identity in the sometimes overwhelmingly masculine culture. “There are some that just embrace the culture and just kind of become ‘one of the boys,’” she says. “They are just OK with hearing the guys talk about sex, cathing, Viagra — whatever. But there are others who are disgusted by it and either will distance themselves from their team, or they set boundaries between their team and they tell them, ‘Hey, this isn’t OK. Don’t speak about that around me.’”

Bruder, who has CP, tried to ease her teammates concerns about her violating the space they had created around rugby. “When you’re a quad, rugby just isn’t about the sport. You talk about anything and everything. Out in the open. At first, they were kind of like trying to shield me and be quiet about it. I’m like, ‘Guys, I had a brother. It’s OK.’”

The adjustment period took a little time for de Leve, who had never played team sports before, but supportive teammates made it easier than she had expected.

“There is a super masculine culture to it,” says de Leve. “And that can be off-putting to some women. But I think it ultimately depends on the culture of the local team. If you have a really supportive team around you, and those are the people you’re seeing week to week, then you’re going to have a good experience. If your team is very hyper-masculine, overly macho, maybe prone to making distasteful jokes, it’s gonna be a little harder to feel like a real member of the team.”

More Than a Workout

Being a part of the team has become one of the sport’s biggest draws for Kruger. In addition to being the only female, when she started playing eight years ago she was only 15, by far the youngest participant in her region. She was drawn by the competition, but stayed for the camaraderie.

“It’s so much about the community of people,” she says. “Especially after I had my accident, having those people that just sort of get it … I mean now these are all my friends. They’re not just my teammates. I have that place where people understand, and I have that friendship with them. That’s a pretty huge part of it for me.”

Kathryn Mahoney
Kathryn Mahoney

Like Kruger, Kathryn Mahoney, a C6 quad from the Chicago suburbs, has been surprised by how valuable the social side of the sport has been. “It’s a great way to meet people, especially people who have been injured for several years.  I’ve learned a lot from being around them and traveling with them. A lot of these guys are quads who do everything themselves and are completely independent. For someone who’s newly coming off of an injury, that’s really important to see.”

Still, many women commented on the added difficulty of being the sole female on their respective teams. “Sometimes it’s a little lonely, because when I go to practice, I’d like to talk to some girls,” says Bruder. “So it’s a little lonely in that respect. But it’s not like I dread it.”

Bruder and others say they look forward to catching up with other female players at tournaments. Entz has split hotel rooms with opposing women on the road to save money and says the experiences have been positive.

Entz is no longer the only woman on her team and says having a female teammate has changed her perspective. Her teammate commented on how it was not that difficult being a woman in a male-dominated sport, leading Entz to point out that she had never been to a practice where she was the only woman. When Entz missed a practice a couple of months later, she got a text message from her friend saying, “You are never allowed to miss a practice again!”

“We love the guys,” she says, “but sometimes that male-focused atmosphere can be a lot to take.”

Growing the Sisterhood

Many of the women say they have no long term goals as far as quad rugby, other than to keep improving and having fun, but Kruger, 23, has set her sights on making the Canadian National Team. In what is possibly a sign of how quad rugby is changing, she even has a role model for her pursuit — current national team member Miranda Biletski. “We’re actually good friends,” says Kruger. “To see where she started and how far she’s come is a huge inspiration to me. Just the fact that I know some of the politics around being a woman on the national team that she’s faced, and the fact that she’s been able to navigate around them and still sort of be in that position is reassuring to me.”

All of the women in this story said they would encourage a woman with a new spinal cord injury or disorder to at least explore quad rugby. “Go into it with a fighting spirit, that you’re gonna do the very best you can. If it intrigues you, don’t let your gender stop you,” says Bruder. “Because this league is male and female and that’s just what it is. So if you want to do it, do it.”

De Leve had perhaps the simplest rationale: “It’s no different playing as a woman in rugby than it is playing as a guy. Once you’re on the court, nothing else matters.”

Riki Entz
Riki Entz

Kruger credits the sport with being nothing short of life changing. “I honestly think that rugby was a huge part of the reason that I am where I am today after having my accident, which is being in a place where I wouldn’t necessarily take back what happened to me,” she says. “I definitely went through a period where I was struggling with coming to terms with what had happened, but rugby just gave me that outlet that reminded me that I wasn’t really giving up the things I had in my previous life, but finding a new way to embrace them in this new life.”

With all the potential benefits — physical, emotional and social — and the fact that so many women came to love the sport unexpectedly after simply giving it a try, the question for many is how to expose more women to the game.

In Canada, Entz and others are working to organize a casual all-women’s team, not so much for tournaments, but more for bonding and camaraderie. She found the glowing coverage of quad rugby in last year’s Parapan Am games mostly encouraging and is optimistic that the trend of increased coverage and media attention will continue with this year’s Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

When Richard asked interviewees how they would reach out to more female players, respondents repeatedly suggested a women’s-only clinic “where it’s a really safe environment for the women.” At the time Richard started her interviews such a clinic was only a dream, but months later it is a reality. Adaptive Athletics at the University of Houston has scheduled a women-only wheelchair rugby camp for July 7-10 at the University of Houston Recreation and Wellness Center. “We’re really excited that it is actually happening, and we’re just working to rally more people to attend,” says Richard.

If you are a coach or a female wheelchair rugby player and would like to attend, contact lramirez22@uh.edu.


Support New Mobility

Wait! Before you wander off to other parts of the internet, please consider supporting New Mobility. For more than three decades, New Mobility has published groundbreaking content for active wheelchair users. We share practical advice from wheelchair users across the country, review life-changing technology and demand equity in healthcare, travel and all facets of life. But none of this is cheap, easy or profitable. Your support helps us give wheelchair users the resources to build a fulfilling life.

donate today

Comments are closed.