“It’s only a game. A game that doesn’t count for anything and no one keeps track of. Just relax, you’ll forget about it soon enough.” Sadly, this was my mental conversation with myself after a few too many Ultimate Frisbee games in the past. My competitive side would get activated and something wouldn’t go my team’s way and I’d start fuming about it. Granted this didn’t happen every time (probably would have to stop playing if it was that frequent), but I’d say it’d happen once a month or so. Somewhat more often I’d make excuses for a missed play, blaming things on myself rather than giving the other team credit for a good play. I had focused a bit on giving myself an attitude adjustment while I was playing regularly in January, but then the semester started and I was back on the sidelines.
That was until the last couple weeks where I decided that I needed to get out more during the work day and could rearrange my schedule just a bit more for the days when I was feeling cooped up. Particularly of Fridays where, for the last two semesters, class was held during Frisbee time but since this year’s class starts at 8 am, I’m free for the noon games. The first few weeks Friday really dragged because I’d go from three hours of teaching to six hours of work with no break. Playing Frisbee again would break the day up again, so it would feel more normal. So I’ve been back on the field the last two weeks, and I promise that I’m not going back to the excuse well, but boy have I been dropping a lot more passes than before.
Now I didn’t drop them all, but there were several easy ones that hit my hands and flew of to nowhere. I did have one that somehow pinned my hand to my chest and bounced off before I could close it, resulting in a near perfect redirection back along it’s original course and just over my teammate five yards down the field. Yes, I totally would have claimed it was a pass had it worked. Actually one of the players thought it bounced off my chest and we decided retroactively that was my story, so, scratch the part above, I tried to pass it with my chest and it almost worked. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
As we got further into the games today the old skills started coming back and things settled back down. Our second game was at 4-3 with my team up and our allotted time coming to an end, so we decided first to five wins (we generally play first to five, but you have to win by two). It was pretty windy today and one of our players has a 200 gram Frisbee that’s a little heavier for windy days (the normal Ultimate Frisbee is 175 grams) which we were using. Our team was receiving the disc and we worked it down the field. I made a dash into the end zone with my defender trailing close behind and the Frisbee was released in our direction.
It seemed that the Frisbee was going long but I was headed in that direction anyway to try and create some separation between me and my defender. It was on a chest level trajectory and managed to curve just around the defender’s outstretched arm. I reached out to near full extension (though without leaving my feet) and the Frisbee slammed into my left hand . . . and stuck, like glue. We had won. Now look back at the first quoted section of this post. Note how all those things are still true in this situation as well. I (thankfully) kept that in mind and didn’t spike the Frisbee in celebration (although I did accept everyone’s congratulations as we did high fives) and I will admit it did feel really good. In the end, however, we’re just going to go back out next time, pick new teams, and go right back at it.
My main takeaway then is this: Enjoy the good plays, forget the bad, play hard, have fun, and be thankful for perfect days in March which you can go run around a field rather than being stuck behind a desk for 45 minutes.
A final treat to make your Friday complete:
Weight: 233.4 Max: 240 Min: 233.4 Body Fat %: 24.7
Yearly Mileage: 59.7 miles (+3 miles)
Current Belt: Orange – Next Belt: Blue – Next Test Date: 5/12
Fitocracy Level: 15 (24807 points, 1957/3500 to next level) – ID: disciplev1
Soccer – Last Game: L, 7-11 (Record: 0-2) Next Game: 3/11, 9:10 pm
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