A Ball and a Puck

Saturday was the big game against the Chicago Dragons. I was pretty excited about the whole thing as this was my first game as a Minotaur, even though I wasn't scheduled to play. I arranged a ride at Thursday's practice, so come Saturday, a teammate and two others piled into my car and headed down bright and early.

The trip was bereft of traffic and full of today's top hits. I really didn't mind the music as mostly we were talking over it anyway. My teammate asked me if I had a boyfriend, so I had to out myself as straight again. After two seconds of long silence, he asked if I had a girlfriend. Sadly, I said, no. The directions were spot on and we made it from doorstep to the pitch in under two and half hours with one stop.

The first thing we noticed was that gay rugby was happening in a park surrounded by a community of what seemed to be orthodox jews. Maybe they weren't orthodox, but it seemed to be an odd juxtaposition. The main game soon went underway and the team slowly filled in to the sidelines. I hadn't planned to play, but I kind of wanted to. Problem was I hadn't signed up the USA Ruby yet, but in today's wired world, that wasn't a problem. The problem was that neither a blackberry nor an iphone could display the webiste. A patient teammate and I tried a Starbucks, but it was part of a grocery store and had no Wi-Fi. So we did the 2003 thing and called my roommate on my cell phone and he signed me up. After the payment of dues and a signing of the waiver, I was officially part of the Madison Minotaurs.

We started warming up, and all was well between the stretching, the tackling drills, and the passing. The problem crept up when we sprinted and I realized that my groin muscle was not going to let me play. I was quite pissed, because I've been nursing the damn thing for a two weeks. (Note to self: yoga on Tuesday.) Instead of being the waterboy, our captain nominated me to be a line judge, or whatever you call it, to mark when the ball goes out of bounds. That turned out to be great as I ran up and down the sidelines the whole game and was able to see it all up close.

The game was meant to be more of a learning one for both the Minotaurs and the newer guys on the Dragons. After an equal start, one on our team took the ball and ran it down to the goal, dodging about five players. He scored the first try in the team's history. The rest of the half went great as our scrum pushed the other's around and we almost scored again except half time hit. The second half didn't go as well as the Dragons switched out almost their whole team while we had limited substitutions. Given that we were playing fresh players, we played them hard, but lost in the end. I am amazed at how much the team has improved between when I first saw them three weeks ago and Saturday. The guys on the field played one hell of a game.

The third half was held at Big Chicks on the north side of Chicago. The bar was absolutely packed with three rugby teams, including all million of the Chicago Dragons. The beer was free, actually already paid for, so it flowed freely. I fucked up at one of the songs. Apparently Jesus can play rugby with VD. Like the one who fucked up before me, I had to drink beer out of a rugger's shoe, which wasn't half bad. Beer is beer, after all.

Anyway, maybe I'll write more.