NATASHA MILLER
Arlington

She left one guy "eating through a straw for a couple of days."

But when you're the only woman on the VMI rugby team, you have to prove you belong there.

"I've laid into some of these guys," said the 5-foot-7, 145-pound Miller.

When she first joined the team, the men were reluctant to play tough with her, she said. What better way to make them feel comfortable knocking her around than by knocking them around first.

She won them over eventually. When the VMI administration tried to stop her from playing, her teammates came to her defense. She went on to play three seasons on the men's team.

Miller, 24, seems to have earned the respect of even the most diehard opponents of women in the corps.

"It's kind of nice when guys come up to you and say, ‘We didn’t really want girls here, but we think you're OK,’ ” she said. “You don’t exactly know how to take it, but you understand it's a good thing.”

The transfer student from Norwich University, a military college in Vermont, graduated in January with a degree in electrical engineering, but will return to participate in Saturday's commencement.

She just landed a job with Computer Science Corp., a Northern Virginia defense contractor, developing radar for surface warfare for the Department of the Navy. She's also about to become officially engaged, she said, to a 1995 VMI graduate who works in the VMI administration.