Football withouth the pads and helmets

Taylor grew up in a "sports" family as I would call it. Every single one of his brothers and sister have played sports throughout elementary, middle, and high school as well as in college. Taylor chose water polo since his parents told him "you'll never be big enough for football" and he played all 4 years as an undergrad at GW. His brother Arty is a swimmer and competed for the University of Pennsylvania. His brother Mack plays lacrosse and played for Hofstra University. And finally, his little sister is now attending the University of West Virginia. She played soccer in high school but wasn't quite good enough for the WVU team since they compete in a very competitive Division one bracket. So given all the other choices in sports she could take up, she decided to try rugby. This decision was met with some skepticism and has been the subject of much debate in the Woodbury family. Mostly because of her injuries. In her 2 years playing, she has so far gotten a black eye in her first game, broken her collar bone in her first semester, and finally torn her ACL in her second year. We've never actually seen her play because every time we schedule a trip to come watch her, she gets injured the week before (her parents have also never seen her for the same reason). As luck would have it, her team was playing in a tournament just outside DC a few weekends ago and she was finally recoved from her ACL injury so she came down and stayed with us and we got to watch her play.

Barb is the one on the far right in the middle.
This is how Ethan watched the game (he wasn't very impressed with the wind, rain, or sun in his eyes).

We had never seen a rugby game before and still don't understand most of it but lets just say it's a little violent. Girls literally hurl themselves at each other (without any padding at all). And unlike football where play stops when the ball is down, play continues until (actually I don't know when it ever stops) but they keep jumping on the pile of ladies until somehow the ball escapes out of the bottom and then they toss it to someone and then try to run and then get clobbered and the pileups and running and clobbering continues. The really fun part of this tournament is that it had rained in DC for literally a full week so the fields were full of mud pits and these girls didn't seem to care.

We had a great time watching and are glad Barbara has found a sport and team she loves. Unfortunately, at the end of her second game on Saturday, she ended up at the bottom of a pileup and got really hurt. She had a seizure and got rushed to the hospital where they decided she had a concussion and therefore couldn't play for the rest of the season. So much for just recovering from her ACL tear! Poor Barb! But we're glad we finally got to see her play and that we were there to go with her to the hospital.

I hope Ethan and Isaac choose swimming or maybe chess even!