Two students are working to make their dream of a women’s rugby team at TCU become a reality. Though freshmen Kayla Bankhead and Erin House have proposed the idea, the team is not official yet.

Bankhead said in order to have a team, there must be at least 10 non-freshman students signed up. Once the team is created, Bankhead and House plan on finding a coach and preparing for their first season.

Bankhead said it will most likely be a year before the team competes in an actual game.

“We’ll spend the first year getting everything together like players, uniforms and drills,” said Bankhead, a freshman geology major. “Then we’ll play.”

Though neither of the women have any experience playing the sport, Bankhead and House have both worked to learn more about it.

“It seemed like a fun sport, so we researched it and started thinking about ways we could create a team,” Bankhead said.

House said she wanted to create a way to help boost the confidence of the women on campus.

“I feel that sometimes women are seen as inferior,” said House, a freshman religion major. “I really just wanted to empower the girls and let everyone know that we’re as good as the guys.”

With that goal in mind, Bankhead and House said, they have worked with the men’s rugby team captain, Nick LoPresti, to learn more about the sport. Even though the girls have never played the sport before, LoPresti said they are making progress.

“We’re getting them introduced to the game by using matches on DVDs and by teaching the basics, from passing to routes through learning drills,” said LoPresti, a senior philosophy major. LoPresti said he is helping with the women’s rugby team to increase awareness of the sport as a whole.

“Having a women’s rugby team is a great boost to rugby not only on this campus, but overall in the nation,” LoPresti said.

To inform students about women’s rugby, Bankhead and House had a booth at the activities fair last Thursday. Though around 30 women signed up for the team at the activities fair, attendance at the first meeting is most important, Bankhead said.

“Just because you have 30 girls sign up doesn’t mean that many will actually go out for the team,” Bankhead said. “We hope to get a good turnout at the meeting.”

If the team is created, Bankhead said practices will be held every Tuesday and Thursday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. with the men’s rugby team. Bankhead said the players will learn from scratch how to play the game.

From there, Bankhead and House said they hope to play games against other local club programs such as Baylor, Texas A&M and the University of Texas. In order for the team to get started, House stressed the need for upperclassman support.

“We need as much support from our fellow Horned Frogs as we can get so this thing can succeed,” House said.