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Despite what it looks like, I am not following up Beatles Week with Vanilla Ice Week (regardless of Brent's suggestion).

On Saturday, a bunch of Careerians went to an Indiana Ice hockey game (weirdly, their webpage has an ad before you get to any content.) It was only the second hockey game I've ever been to, and while it certainly was fun, nothing occurred during the game that would elicit a reaction anywhere near this:

From L. to R: Jen, some of Melissa's hair (I think maybe she's glad she didn't show up in a picture where I look like a raving loonie), me, Jodi, and Melissa (a different Melissa!)

That picture actually shows up on on the Indiana Ice website, in the photo gallery for this game, along with a few other pictures of our group (thanks, Jonell, for finding them!). I think we can all be glad there is no video of me trying to get a free T-shirt by whooping and hollering. What's a little loss of dignity in the face of getting a free T-shirt? Sadly, it didn't pan out, so lost some dignity for nothing. That probably would have happened without the prospect of a free T-shirt anyway, so I'm okay with it.

As I've mentioned, the game was fun. Hockey's kind of like a fast moving, more violent soccer. While no actual fights broke out (much to Lee's disappointment), there were plenty of solid hits. It was relatively high-scoring for a hockey game (4-3) and even went into overtime and ended in a shootout, so it's hard to complain about the lack of a fight.

What was more interesting to me was the immediate sense of community bestowed by the game. I'd never been to an Ice game before and was only barely aware there even was a hockey team in the state, but there I was rooting for the Ice like I'd gone to school with each of them. Collective pronouns were par for the course - "We need a goal!" "Our guy just smacked into that other guy!" and that kind of thing. It wasn't just me, either. We were all rooting for "our" team, made "ours" because it says "Indiana" right on their jerseys and we, being Hoosiers, had to root for them. If it had been two Indiana teams, we would have had to choose between them using a complex algorithm using geographic proximity, experiences in the respective towns, and location of family and friends.

I was again reminded of the Jerry Seinfeld bit where he talks about sports (paraphrased): "You got a guy on your team and you love him. He's the greatest guy there is. During the offseason, he gets traded to a different team, and when that team plays against your team, you hate the guy. He's the worst guy ever. What's different? The guy hasn't changed. All that's changed are the clothes he's wearing. We're rooting for laundry, basically."

I'm not a full-on Sports Guy by any stretch of the imagination. I don't memorize stats, I barely know the players on my favorite teams, and I don't plan my day around watching games. Even so, I find it's easy to get excited in the sports atmosphere. There's a sense of camaraderie with the other fans, even if you're rooting for different teams - rivalry is its own specific sort of camaraderie - and it's a good feeling to have that connection with other members of the human race, even if it's for something as unimportant as a minor league hockey game.

It was a good time, and I really only have two quibbles:

1. Our team lost.
2. They never once played "Ice Ice Baby" in the arena, a song that you would just assume would be their theme song, wouldn't you?

Labels: career class, Seinfeld, sports

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A couple of weeks ago the Career Class met for a Bible study and the "introduce yourself" thing this time was "tell something about yourself" and the rest of the class would guess whether or not it was true. Most everybody said something that was true and the few who said something false were guessed as false right away. When it got to me, my statement was, "I lettered in four sports in high school." Everybody thought that was pretty funny, and when I listed them (football, basketball, wrestling, and baseball), they came to the (correct) conclusion fairly quickly that I went to a small high school. I even mentioned this a long time ago, and those who remember that will also remember that the letter in basketball was for keeping stats.

While I didn't end up playing all four years of football in high school, I do have some fond memories of it. When I made the switch to tight end my Junior year, I felt a lot better about things - catching the ball made more sense to me than blocking people, and I never had the size back then to block well anyway. As I'm sure I've mentioned elsewhere, we got a new quarterback my Junior year and ended up having primarily a running game that year, but I did catch 100% of the passes that were thrown my way (a grand total of ONE).

So when it was announced in the Career Class a couple of weeks ago that we'd been challenged to a flag football match by the Young Marrieds class, it sounded fun to me. I wasn't getting all Uncle Rico or anything, but I thought it might be fun.

The game was this past Saturday and our class won by default - they had two guys show up. Since we were all there, though, we went ahead and split up into two teams and played. Luckily for me, my team had one more guy on it, which gave me the opportunity to sit out every other series... which quickly turned into sitting out more plays until someone needed a break... which turned into me sitting out all the plays and just keeping track of the line of scrimmage.

I knew I was out of shape, but, man. My lungs were hurting, I got dizzy, and toward the end of it, my legs weren't cooperating. Sheesh. This is why everyone laughed when I said I played sports in high school, by the way - this is the exact reason. I had remembered the catching passes part, but had forgotten the running up and down the field part.

So yesterday I was pretty sore. Plus I've been kind of low-level sick for a while, and coughing was really painful. My legs and my back hurt so much that it was painful to step on the accelerator in my car. Today my back felt a bit better, but my legs were worse. The media specialist at work asked me what was wrong because I was walking funny.

So I'm hopeful I won't be as sore tomorrow, but time will tell. I'm older and out of shape, and I guess there's something I can do about one of those things.

And that is: never play football again.

Labels: career class, sports

6 comments