Contact Sports

Even if Marc Young didn't have all the right moves his freshman year, he had seen the right movie. Young, now a senior at the Haverford School, was stretching with his lacrosse teammates three years ago. The guys were talking about movies, and North Shore, an obscure 1987 surfing film, came up. Young was one of the only team members who had seen it, and he was promptly nicknamed "Turtle," after one of the characters. "I wasn't incredibly fast, but I wasn't a real turtle," Young said with a laugh.

The setting was almost serene: a low-profile women's soccer tournament at Haverford College during Labor Day weekend. No one was expecting what would happen during the Drexel-West Chester game. Midway in the first half, as Drexel goalkeeper Kelly Schimmel bent over to scoop up the ball, a West Chester player collided with her. Schimmel crumpled to the ground screaming. "We all thought she had had the wind knocked out of her," Drexel coach George Griffin said. After trainers rushed onto the field and treated her, Schimmel was taken by ambulance to Bryn Mawr Hospital.

Think "rugby," and you probably picture a knot of gigantic, thick-necked Australian guys in striped shirts going at one another in the dirt for an oblong ball. Think again. Think five-foot, slender teenage girls going at one another in the dirt for an oblong ball. Those would be the Lady Dragons of Doylestown, a club rugby team of about 25 girls who decided in January they could show their male counterparts a thing or two about contact sports. "Hit first, hit hard, hit fast.

Twelve years ago, Lisa Cocco was chatting in a friend's kitchen. Unknowingly, a floor above Lisa, her 5-year-old daughter was teetering on a narrow window ledge. Mandy Cocco was bravely practicing a fire-escape plan with a friend. It was one of Lisa's first indications that her oldest girl was not easily spooked. "I knew then to prepare myself," Lisa said. But when Mandy told her mom she wanted to play rugby, Lisa was surprised. "I told her, 'You are crazy,' " Lisa recalled.

William Tennent's Rick Brauning has set a few personal goals for this season. "I'd like to hit 1,000 yards and score 15 to 20 touchdowns," the senior running back said. From his performance in Friday's season opener against visiting Sun Valley, Brauning is on track. He rushed nine times for 117 yards and three touchdowns in a 38-7 win. The 6-foot, 185-pounder scored on runs of 12, 6 and 49 yards. Last season, Tennent lost its first six games by a combined score of 174-46 and went 3-8 overall and 1-4 in the Suburban One League's Liberty Division.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled yesterday that high school cheerleading is a contact sport and therefore its participants cannot be sued for accidentally causing injuries. The court ruled that a former high school cheerleader cannot sue a teammate who failed to stop her fall while she was practicing a stunt. The court also said the injured cheerleader cannot sue her school district. The National Cheer Safety Foundation said the decision is the first of its kind in the nation.

It was the grand finale to an unusual calisthenics session in the school gymnasium. Students standing shoulder to shoulder, arms stretched above their heads, passed a six-foot-tall inflated globe down the line. For the youngsters at Willingboro's Martin Luther King Elementary School, it was a chance to display something unusual in a phys-ed class: a grasp of geography. On this day, students learned that Long Island is part of New York state, and not one of the four states smaller than New Jersey.

No one knows how the custom of tossing a bridal bouquet came to symbolize a marriage proposal for the lucky recipient. From what I observed at a recent wedding, my guess is that Darwin has more to do with it than fate. As soon as the bride lifted her bouquet into the air I witnessed a dramatic change in the single female guests. A moment before, these young women were politely sipping champagne. Suddenly, they were transformed into linebackers, scrambling for position, ready to elbow or knee anyone who got in their way. It was my plan to disappear discreetly, but my boyfriend gave me a hearty shove into the center of action.

For a problem that has no doubt been around as long as humans have been falling on hard objects and bashing one another's skulls with clubs, brain injuries are still surprisingly mysterious. Scientists, including a cadre at the University of Pennsylvania, are lifting the veil, though, and what they're seeing is already "dramatically" changing American sports, said Douglas Smith, who heads Penn's Center for Brain Injury and Repair. Everyone from parents to pro athletes to military leaders is suddenly paying more attention to "mild" brain injuries, or concussions, and their long-term consequences.

When an elementary school student knocked out several teeth while frolicking on playground equipment, the school district ended up paying for treatment because the child's family did not have adequate dental insurance coverage. The district paid for the treatment to avoid litigation costs over the parents' liability claim. Last year, said School Superintendent Walter J. Dold, the district received $2,500 in such claims - and had to spend a "significant amount of time and expense" on legal advice and negotiating with insurance companies and parents.