The One Thing Female Athletes Are Tired Of Hearing

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When will people stop comparing our sport of choice to anything sexual they can come up with. As a rugby player I find this to be a huge problem. Luckily with my own personal experience within the athletic community itself its almost never a problem. Its always the people who haven’t heard a lot about the sport that are the biggest culprits. Between the questions of our hookers, to people wanting to know if anything dirty goes on in the scrums, I am always a short fuse for those kinds of people.

This goes for all sports, I have been to a cross country meet with one of my friends and we were talking to this guy, he noticed that my friend was competing and all he had to say was, “So you run cross country eh? You must have quite the endurance for other things besides running” *wink wink* I mean really?!? That’s all you have to say? Not “goodluck on your race” or an intelligent question about long distance running. Of course she forced a laugh and we moved onto better conversations, but is that what we should have to deal with?

I get that we’re attractive, for the most part we are in great physical shape and outgoing. However that does not warrant you the right to say every dirty thing you’ve ever heard of about the sport. If I had a dime for every single time a guy would tell me that I spend a lot of my time with people’s crotches near my face, I would be rich. Its not like I don’t already know that rugby is a contact sport.

One thing I don’t understand is why people think that this is a way to pick up girls. This strategy is just as successful as catcalling, all its going to accomplish is making the girl angry or uncomfortable. So the next time you’re at any kind of sporting event and you’re talking to an athlete please ask questions about the sport that aren’t going to make her want to punch you in the throat.

Its not that we are heartless people without a sense of humor. It’s just that we have heard it all before and when it’s the first thing to come out of your mouth, we are not amused. Sports teams are tight knit groups, so saying anything that degrades their hard work that they have put into the sport is not something you should do. Ever.