To: lira-kin@palladium.corp.sgi.com Subject: A Rare Day Date: Mon, 12 May 97 09:40:30 -0700 From: Liralen Li Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Liralen Li It's a rare day when Yura compliments me on my play. Yura is a fire plug of a player. Tow headed, built solid and tough and small, he's aggressive, fast, and decisive in his play. Like Patrick and most of the rest of the team, he's an ex-collegate athelete with a real life now, but the skills and desires of that player that he used to be. We joined this team about a year ago, because they were in desperate need of players and Patrick knew John and I from work, and eventhough we weren't really of the caliber of the rest of the team, we were bodies and we were willing to come out to play regularly. It's not as if Yura is mean or anything, he's simply fiercely competitive, and, as simply, I'm no where near in his league of competitiveness. I'm just there to play and play well, not to win. Or at least that's what I tell myself. But Wednesday night we started the game with only nine people, rather than the regulation 11. We set up a 3-3-2 lineup, which meant only three fullbacks, three halfbacks and two strikers/wingers, with the goalie implied in the equation. The back line, the defense started with John, Patrick and I. The other team had not only their full compliment of folks, but three substitutes for their men. The people we were missing were all women who couldn't come, either at the last minute or who had been injured previously. Their team, on seeing that I was the sole female defender, flooded my side of the field. This served to piss me off. I don't like people who assume that the woman is the weakest player and I really, really don't like it when they plan on exploiting that and, particularly, on exploiting me. Then, to add to my fury, they had a woman wing on my side, and because I had to play the ball whenever it came down on my side because I had multiple people to cover, I would play the guy with the ball and then he wouldn't pass to the utterly wide open woman. Instead, he'd try and pass it to another guy rather than use her. There is one important factor about having less people on my side. When we're short, I rarely hesitate on playing the ball because I know that I'm likely the only one to get to it. When, especially on this team, we have a full field of players, I find myself diffidently letting other players have the ball all the time, which has, in the past, caused problems. The problems stem from the fact that most of the players on my team assume that I'll play it and play it compitently rather than give it up. Opps. I'm learning. Thing is, if no ones there, I know I'm the only hope there is, so I *have* to play it. So, between desperation and fury, two internal barriers I had to just playing all out fell down. The third barrier dropped as play progressed because the team was a bunch of whiners. Every time the ref called something against them, every time someone on our team beat them either to the ball or with control of the ball or physically matched them and came away with the ball, they'd stand around and complain. Even when what had been 'done to them' was something they'd just done to one of us. This included but was not limited to knocking our players down, taking them down from behind, and running through someone that had played the ball already. I don't get angry very often; but when I see people get hurt, I get very, very angry. So I basically shut down my side of the field. Anyone and everyone that got the ball and entered my part of the field was going to lose it. That was what I resolved was going to happen. How I actually managed to execute that plan was fairly simple. I would go for the first person into the area with the ball. I didn't get too close, because some of their guys were fast enough to blow by me if I lunged for the ball and missed. Since the ref was fairly okay at calling when one of their guys tried bowling through me (yes, likely because I am a girl, because the guys weren't getting that call consistantly), I stayed between them and the goal with enough room to react to whatever direction changes they might make. Which basically meant that they had to pass, because if I kept them in one place long enough someone on my team would come by and take the ball or they'd make a mistake and I'd get the ball. This team was, luckily for us, not used to passing; and since the other folks on my team were consciencious about covering the people without the ball, they lost the ball when they passed more often than not. Especially since they wouldn't pass to their girls, we only had to cover the guys. A few of you might also, at this time, see the one flaw in the plan, if it could be called that. The basic flaw is that it meant that I had to be in front of, in the way of, and frustrating the hell out of a bunch of guys who were bigger, faster and meaner than I was supposed to be. I got completely bowled over twice, tripped by one of their women after I'd cleanly gotten the ball away from one of their guys, and I've got bruises about as big as my fist on both legs from the guys thinking they could quantum tunnel the ball through me simply by shooting hard enough. As expected, the ref did call fouls when I was just shoved aside, and there was a time when they actually apologized. But it got to be so rough at times that it turned out that one of their female players quit playing and sat on the sidelines and started cheering for *us*. It was somewhat surprising to hear a "Good play 16!!" from their sideline after I'd cleared the ball away on one play but I smiled, said "Thanks!" and kept going. Okay, it wasn't a flaw. It was glorious. But I was also so exhausted by the latter part of the second half that when Erik actually gave me a pass I just kinda blinked at it as it went out of bounds. While I could defend and take it away from them I hadn't been expecting us to pass to me. Which kinda shows you how good this team is, they actually pass to and amid the backline. I was used to the teams where the backline's only duty is to get it outta there, not to set up for the next attack. I did manage to get a couple of good passes up to our front line while I was doing the clearing, but I'll readily admit that there were times when I just kicked it to clear it out of the immediate danger of being in the area without actually giving it to one of my teammates. Sometime around the second half John moved up and Yura moved back to the backline and they had subbed in a really fast, really good ball handler who was also a real ball hog. He just would not pass, and could dance around most of us. He got around me, once, and someone else picked him up for a few, and so I came back to attack him again just as he got by the other person. I came back at him four times, at which the ball hog went, "Jeez, you're back again." and took his eye off the ball long enough for me to poke it from him to Yura. The ball hog just stood there, hands on hips, obviously disgusted and stared at me as Yura took off up the field with the ball. I grinned back at him as I trotted up with the rest of the defensive line. They turned the ball around, passed it up and he was called for off sides. Sometimes it really pays to hustle. What was funnier yet was that John somewhat reprimanded me for leaving the woman wing wide open and I said, right in earshot of the ball hog, "Well, if he ever passed, I would." and he *still* wouldn't pass, even after that. When the game was finally over, I cheerfully shook hands with all their players and one of the guys that had just completely bowled me over apologized and I cheerfully and, admittedly, rather snidely said, "Oh, I'm sure such things happen with you guys all the time." He looked at me kinda confused but took the cheerfulness as acceptance of the apology so he went on with the handshaking. Erik nearly died laughing. Afterwards, as we were gathering our stuff, Yura came to me and said, "You really played a great game, just completely shut them down on your side." That's all. I just said, 'Thank you.', but I'll admit that the glow of that single compliment has stayed with me throughout this week, and may well last a while longer. Oh, yeah. We won. One of the scores was when someone took it up one wing, passed to Terry, one of our three women, and she scored it easily because their entire defense had gone to the guy. The other was a sweet pass from Michelle to Greg, who tucked it in neatly. Greg went back to be goalie once we were ahead by two. There was a third, but it was just their fullback doing a pass back to their goalie, who wasn't expecting it. Opps. They only scored one goal on us... and that was my fault, somewhat, in that they had four people on my side, and both Patrick and Yura were up on offense when they turned the ball around. So it was a four on one, and, even then the guy that brought it down passed only to another guy to get around me. I wasn't fast enough to catch up again before the shot. Even then the follow up guy tried to take out our goalie. That was near the beginning of the first half and great start for my fury. - ------ Liralen Li liralen@netcom.com http://www-hep.phys.cmu.edu/~rostykus ------- End of Forwarded Message