SLIPPERY ROCK — On her first day of women’s rugby practice at Slippery Rock University, Laura Swanson was in an awkward position.

“I had my face between two girls’ hips,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh my, there’s no way I can do this.’ You can’t have physical boundaries when you play rugby.”

Swanson got over her shyness and is now the vice president of the women’s rugby club team at the university.

The Uniontown native, who played four sports in high school, has seen players come and players go during her three years on the team.

One thing has remained constant during that time: success.

Last weekend, the team traveled to Washington, D.C., to play in the prestigious Cherry Blossom Tournament. SRU won five games, including a 12-5 triumph over the University of Pittsburgh in the finals, to win the Championship Cup.

It was the second consecutive Cherry Blossom title for the team.

The reason for this sustained success? That is a complicated question.

“We have no idea,” Swanson said. “It’s kind of amazing, really.”

The team always has found a way to restock the talent.

Meghan Miller, a graduate student at Slippery Rock who played four years for the team and is now the coach, says there is a tradition in place of elder girls imparting rugby wisdom to the younger players.

“We work hard on recruiting in the fall and in the spring,” Miller said. “The way the team has always been set up is the younger girls learn from the older ones and then pass on what they learned. Plus, we get some pretty good athletes.”

Sam Karns, a Butler High graduate, was one of them.

In her third semester on the team, Karns has developed into one of the most lethal tacklers around.

Karns played basketball for the Golden Tornado and suffered two serious knee injuries during her time there. That didn’t stop her, however.

She played basketball and volleyball at Butler County Community College and when she transferred to SRU, she adopted rugby as her next athletic challenge.

While rugby can be a dangerous sport — Karns said several of her teammates have suffered concussions and one unfortunate player broke her femur on her first day of practice — she is not worried about another knee injury.

“I played two sports in college after my knee injuries and was OK,” Karns said. “There is a very big danger playing rugby, but if you love it, you’ll do it anyway.

“My family thinks I’m relatively crazy for doing it,” Karns added.

Karns was a physical player on the basketball court for Butler High and BC3. She found that she had to rein in her aggressive tendencies on the rugby pitch.

That’s because the rules don’t allow for diving for a loose ball or scrambling for one should you be knocked to the ground — things Karns did as a matter of routine on the basketball court for the Golden Tornado and Pioneers.

“The rules were the hardest thing to learn,” Karns said. “I knew nothing about the sport when I started and you sort of have to learn as you go along.”

Karns wants to continue playing rugby after she graduates this summer with a degree in exercise science.

“I just love the sport,” Karns said.

That’s the common denominator among players at SRU.

The players on the team are very close and the following around campus is rabid at times.

“It’s really almost a cult,” said club president Macey Ackman, a junior from Blackhawk who has been playing on the team for three years. “It’s almost a curse because we really have no friends outside of the people on the team. We spend so much time together, there’s really no time for anyone else.”

Two years ago, Miller tried to get the women’s rugby program at the school varsity status. That didn’t come to pass and the club has accepted that it may never happen.

That’s OK, members said, because the team is functioning just fine with its fundraising activities and the help they do receive from the university.

And they keep winning.

“Everyone keeps getting better,” said Swanson, who admitted the team was surprised to win the Cherry Blossom Tournament after a disappointing fall season.

“The things we were doing wrong, we suddenly were doing right,” she added. “No one left anything out on the field. I keep thinking back to that first day and wondering if I could ever love it. Well, I love it.”