Intramurals

Dane and I have been participating in the intramural program at BYU. So far I have yet to see this bring out the best in people. Camille, my mother-in-law described it best, she said that it’s just a bunch of athletes that used to be good at one point in their lives… and they’re not anymore and they’re mad about it. This past week in intramurals gave me yet another insight to this truth about burnt out athletes. Of course the added pressure of it being tournaments didn’t help. Dane and I play on an Ultimate Frisbee team. This week we had our quarterfinal game. The game started out a little slow on our end, which got the other team pretty excited. They thought they were going to skate through us. At half time with the score at 6-4 (them) our team kicked it up a notch. We came back and got the lead. They were pretty physical, and even laid out one of our players, twice. It was getting pretty intense at the end and we were neck and neck for the W… at the beginning of the play this player runs by us on the sidelines… (I was standing with the girlfriends of other players) and tells us that “we’re bringing it right now…” ! Really! This was also the player that bent the Frisbee in half earlier by stomping on it. I mean really… is that completely necessary.
Then Friday night I had a soccer game. What I lack in skill I make up for in aggressiveness. This one girl and I were going after the ball, and I kicked hard for it. Unfortunately, I missed the ball and kicked her shin. She started swearing under her breath as I yelled sorry to her. Then her supporter on the sidelines calls out “kick her back!” She yells back to him “I’m going to!” I call over to her, from several yards away, for the second time, that I was sorry. At that point the ball had gotten near us again, and she starts charging me… literally sprinting straight at me and breathing really hard since she was still fired up. Luckily my teammate was closer to the ball and got it out of there so I didn’t have to deal with this psycho… or so I thought. Once the ball is back up field she turns around, face tightened and jaw clenched, and says to me, “I am going to HURT you!” I’m now more worried about my physical well being then anything else. I start having mental pictures of running my errands on crutches. No good. I try to diffuse her by offering my sincere apology. I said firmly and honestly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” I avoided her for the rest of the game. After we lost in overtime and were slapping “good game” she went straight back to junior high as she avoided my hand while going through the line. There are just some people that need to grow up and get over themselves.