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| Redacted 2019: left to right (back) Ethan, Joe, Roxy, James, Chick, me, Garrett, John, Taran, Maria. Front: Woody (captain), Sarah (captain), Hoppe (Jessica), Mac, Peach, and Casey. |
I am a bit late posting this content, but then original content takes time.
I enjoyed the end of Spring season for Portland Ultimate League with the Saturday tournament on June 8th.
What a great team, and what great things the Portlanders do on a regular basis to build community, inclusiveness, spirit, and overall fun.
My team -- Redacted -- was definitely built for fun, and we had fun. As I like to say, we put the fun in funky.
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What a great group of folks!
Sadly, I caused the last turnover of the season when I called for a swing and was standing out of bounds. Terrible. Embarrassing. Especially after noting that so far that day I had not made an error: no throw aways, no drops, no missed Ds that I could have made and was close. When I assess my play and being error free, I do not count good throws that other people drop. If I put it right in somebody's hands, easy catch, and they still drop it, then that's not on me. If under or over throw or just throw high or low so the catch is difficult, then that's on me. I had an error-free day until that last play... Not counting when a couple of players took me deep on the first cut and I could not beat them. I should not front people.
Now, shy about my debilitated physical condition, I played within myself. The whole season I did not try any hucks or hammers. I did not try big loopy throws and only the most occasional invert. I did not dive either, though I was ready and willing.
All that said, we had the most positive team I have ever been part of. No one made anyone feel bad for mistakes or not getting back on D. I saw other people practice "conservation of greatness" when they chose not to chase down a defender who was thirty yards away catching the score. No one is going to get there. Save the legs.
One thing that Portland Ultimate League does that I know is common in many leagues throughout the country: spirit games.
Portland league does cheers, too, but they take their spirit games very seriously. We had two games as "Redacted" named due to the black (because we were the team with the black shirts) pen "redacting" of text in the Mueller Report, which came out right before the season began.
One game was a mingling elimination game (which I didn't fully understand the first time I played) using activities from the Mueller thing: paper shredding, burying evidence, and press conference.
The other game, seen in the pictures, was a mad libs style sort of competition to reconstruct the story of the day's game by filling in the redacted portions of the original message. It was a hilarious and chaotic experience that yielded many great turns of phrase, like moist, eager eggplant.
We played other spirit games presented by other teams, such as a grape-squashing, wine making game seen in the photos among others.
The dedication to these games, the creativity, the spirit and inclusiveness demonstrated is something I have never seen before and something my beloved Kalamazoo league should include. It prolongs the night as the games take much more time than a cheer, but they are also very fun!
The night ends with spirit voting in which the whole team ranks the other team's spirit in multiple categories. Great idea!! I wish I could remember all the categories, but they are what you might expect: fair play and so on.
ALSO, they play with a gender-side tradition. One end zone is designated the gender zone, meaning that the team lining up there to start the point determines the gender ratio for the field. Mostly either three or four women out of the seven players. I RARELY saw them have to default to two-five. Amazing!! KUDL rarely has enough women to go four women players on the field per team.
The final high-low circle and FUs.
After tournament play for are team was over (two games and done), we did a circle of our high and low moments for the season and then a circle of Fuck Yous until we had all finished this bag of wine. The FUs were meant to be back handed compliments, and mostly they were but some were a bit heckly, which is what I am used to.
I had seen Abby bring this season end wrap up inclusiveness and team-solidifying spirit practice to KUDL, but it did not catch on with other teams.
I had SO MUCH fun playing in Portland Spring League 2019. The whole league is full of great people but my team was especially wonderful. Thanks everyone.
Portland only .... traveling boom box
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1906.23 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1450 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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