Teenage Girls Take on a Brutal Sport

June 29, 2008 — -- Amber Medina lives in the Bronx and can boast a 99 average in school. She is undoubtedly an exceptional student.

After school, she plays rugby.

She is one of a group of girls that have brought this foreign sport, with terms like "scrum" and a point system that makes even American football scoring seem logical, to the concrete jungle of East Harlem.

What the girls have learned, along with the unfamiliar rules of the sport, is the value of comraderie within their team and the importance of empowerment.

"It doesn't really fit together," Medina told "Good Morning America Weekend Edition." "But it's me, you know?"

Medina said one of her teachers turned her and other girls on to rugby.

"My global teacher, Ms. Lake, used to come in with bruises and we were like, 'What's wrong with her? She gets beat every week?'" joked Medina. "And then she told us about rugby."

Like most of the girls, Medina was completely unfamiliar with the game before the teacher, Lisa Lake, explained it to them as their coach right in the middle of their first game. But the team learned and developed, as did each member.

"I'm matured so much," Medina said. "I've become a different person to myself."

At home, Amber's mother is more hesitant.

"I didn't want her to play," Carmen Medina said." "It's a rough sport -- a manly sport. And she doesn't even look like the type to play. It's like, 'Wow,' incredible."

Lake agreed.

"She came to us as a non-athlete," Lake said of Medina. "And because she's so smart and works so hard, she's a starting hooker [position in rugby] and she's a great rugby player."