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By RACHEL LENZI, Staff Writer Sunday, May 13, 2007

For a fee to be determined by the top bidder, the Portland Women's Rugby Football Club was ready to offer its muscle.

In a fundraiser for the program earlier this season, the women's rugby players auctioned off their labor services to help finance the club. "Rent-A-Rugger," as the fundraiser is called.

Some cleaned out garages. Others baby-sat or washed a fleet of family cars. One group, however, was told they would be doing yard work, and prepared to spend a leisurely afternoon mowing a front lawn or watering plants.

Instead, five players pulled out an acre's worth of weeds, then returned to the rugby field a few days later.

"You'd find 'Rent-A-Rugger' with quite a few teams. It's a common fundraiser," said Jaime Madore, a Presque Isle native who plays for the women's team and coaches the high school team.

"Rugby players are stereotyped as big and strong and able to do labor. But it says something that the girls are willing to give up three hours of a Saturday and do all that for the team."

The fundraiser brought in $1,500 but the Portland Women's Rugby Football Club -- a collection of high schoolers, former college players and local professionals --İfound a way to promote their program and their sport.

In its second full season, the PRFC women's program has come from small beginnings to a viable competitive alternative for female athletes in the area.

It started with five players who played college rugby.

They began working out with the men's team, then recruited players and eventually got sponsors to build the women's program.

"There have been some girls who have come and gone, who just didn't get the rugby bug," said Beth Fawcett of Portland. "But there's a certain something that someone has to have to enjoy the sport. The thing about rugby is you can be short and fast, or large and slow, or strong, and there's a position for you.

"It depends how far you want to go with the sport."

The women's team plays at the Division II level and is made up of students, lawyers, teachers, nurses and doctors, anywhere from ages 17 to 45.

"It's really supportive," said Hanna Gregor, a South Portland senior who plays for the high school team in the spring and the women's team in the summer.

"It gives you reassurance, that if these ladies are out here, they have jobs and kids and they have never played before and are putting the work into it, why can't I do that, too? You learn a lot from them, from their different experiences and backgrounds."

The National Federation of State High School Associations doesn't keep track of the number of girls who participate in high school rugby because there are so few school-sponsored teams. But USA Rugby, the sport's national governing body, oversees more than 100 club-based programs and teams for high school-aged players.

According to USA Rugby, while 347 colleges field club teams, only four field NCAA varsity women's teams -- West Chester, Eastern Illinois, Southern Vermont and Bowdoin in Brunswick. For women's rugby to become an NCAA sport, at least 40 schools must sponsor it as a varsity sport.

Madore and several members of the women's team played club rugby at the University of Maine; in Maine, six colleges field varsity or club rugby teams.

"We keep hoping to get an influx of those college players," said Madore, a civil and environmental engineer in Portland. "We were hard to find out about. Word of mouth only goes so far. But it kind of took off when we came out this spring and we had the numbers to go forward with it."

On a Tuesday afternoon at Dougherty Field on Douglass Street in Portland, a group of high school-aged players took instructions from their coaches while a group of college-aged and professional-aged players ran through warmups during a 5 p.m. practice.

Guided by head coach Burton Hathaway, practices go nonstop for nearly 90 minutes, going between sprinting, tackling, ball-handling and game strategy.

Hathaway grew up in England and was raised on rugby, whose popularity in his native country rivals that of football or baseball in the United States.

"Rugby in this country is sort of an unknown entity," Hathaway said.

"The people who come to watch it, though, are enthusiastic and we're looking to grow the sport."

But in England, women's rugby was nonexistent, and Hathaway's involvement in the women's game didn't come until he arrived in the U.S.

But he takes the same approach to coaching women that he took to coaching men.

"I don't coach them any differently," Hathaway said.

"There shouldn't be a difference. The sport is exactly the same."

The object of rugby is simple -- score more points than the other team and you win. But to score those points, it involves a mastery of kicking, passing and carrying the ball, an oblong orb that looks like a football but is about the size of a small watermelon.

Each of the 15 players on a rugby field -- known as the pitch -- is assigned a certain responsibility, and a team is divided into eight forwards, who win the ball and create offense, and seven backs, who have defensive responsibilities but help create their team's offense.

Sarah Harris, a marketing assistant and a personal trainer who grew up in Naples, began playing rugby during her freshman year at the University of Maine.

But it took her four seasons of playing before she understood the intricacies of the sport and exactly what she needed to do on the field.

"Playing rugby is so deep of a sport," Harris said. "You've got to know where you are, where your teammates are and what each person's job is on the field."

A former rugby player at North Adams State in Massachusetts, rugby brought Fawcett, an ed tech at the Spurwink School, to Portland.

"In my decision to move, one of the main components in it was finding an area that had a women's rugby team," Fawcett said.

And, she adds, "Some of the best relationships I've been through are because of rugby."

The PWRFC continues its spring season May 19-20 at the New England Rugby Football Union tournament in Newport, R.I., and the PWRFC plans to hold another "Rent-A-Rugger" in June at Binga's Wingas restaurant in Portland.

To promote the sport, a passion for it is necessary.

"Once one person can explain the love of the game to someone else, that's how you can spark interest," Harris said.

"If I was to meet someone on the street, I would tell them, 'I love this game, this is why, so try it out.' "

Staff Writer Rachel Lenzi can be reached at 791-6415 or at: