I'm a positive person: I'm friendly, outgoing and very rarely mean. I try not to take small things too seriously and I hate offending or upsetting people. All of these things are true — most of the time. There is one thing that causes me to undergo a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type of personality transformation. It's no magic potion. It's sports.
I'm almost six feet tall. Whenever I meet someone for the first time, it seems like they always say the same thing: "Wow, you're tall. Do you play basketball?" Though I have told a few old ladies that I play for the WNBA just because I was feeling combative, I usually tell the truth. I am terrible at basketball.
I played basketball as a child and I loved it. But I was an awkward, clumsy kid. When we did that exercise where you have to dribble around traffic cones, I always knocked down at least one of them. I was probably the slowest player on the team, despite my long legs, and I was also easily distracted. I was in about the 5th grade when I realized that improvement would require huge amounts of practice and dedication. So I left basketball and never looked back.
I also played softball when I was younger; I preferred it greatly to basketball. Speed wasn't quite as necessary and there was much less of a chance that I would run into someone. I could manage catching a ball and occasionally hitting it. But I gave that up as well when I didn't make my high school team in favor of some things that required no physical coordination; writing for the school newspaper and my personal favorite, debating.
As much as I loved my newfound hobbies, I couldn't help feeling that there was something missing in my life. I had a little resentment towards the softball team for certain. Part of me was completely okay with not playing sports, but there was another part of me that really wanted to compete in something other than a speaking competition. I realize now that I was just really dying to hit something.
I got my chance when I was a junior in high school. Because of my size, and probably due to the fact that many of them had never seen me play sports, my classmates thought that I would be quite an asset to our powderpuff football team. I joined the team, which made me a little nervous because I knew very little about football and I was no good at catching, throwing or running. But this decision turned out to be one of the best I made in high school.
Our coaches were boys in our class who either played football or were incredibly obsessed with it, and they found a proper place for me. Because I was quite a bit taller and stronger than the other girls, they found I made a pretty decent lineman.
It was at this point that three years of pent up sports rage came out. I had changed a lot since my softball days, and it felt great to run across a field, simply chasing after a ball or keeping people from getting that ball. It was the ultimate form of stress relief.
We practiced a few times a week. The other girls on my team got nervous when they stood across from me in the line-up during practice. They called me the bulldozer because even though it was flag football, I had a real skill for knocking people over. It's really an awful nickname, but I was terribly proud of it. For once, my affinity for running into things was an asset. I ended up playing both games (our powderpuff football was organized as a tournament with all four classes playing).
After I graduated high school, I figured my football days were over. I never would have guessed that I would get to play co-ed intramural football here at Longwood. Playing football brings out a different part of me. I might get less polite and start cursing like a sailor and I might be guilty of a lot of "illegal contact," but playing football makes me happy.
Football has made me realize how important it is to have a balance in your life. Typically, I'm content to argue about politics or read books, but every once in a while, I need to unleash my inner bulldozer and get really pumped up and angry about something that really isn't too important. If I can get out all of my anger playing football, it won't show up in other aspects of my life.
So I would encourage anyone to try intramural sports; it's a sort of fun, no pressure environment to get your energy out.
