Sunday, December 16, 2007

Joyful Movement--Broomball!

Broomball, what a game! Running on ice in your tennis shoes chasing a ball and swatting it with your broom, trying to beat the other team and get that dang ball into a goal while remaining upright on an incredibly slippery surface...what could be more fun?

Tonight I played Broomball from Midnight to 2 am with a bunch of my friends. It was A.J.'s birthday and his wife Beth had planned quite an evening. We started drinking at a dive bar near the ice rink and then migrated over to the rink. Beth had bought 20 brooms at the dollar store and blue and red tape to tape the bristles with. I was nervous. Afraid I wouldn't be able to keep up, afraid I would fall and seriously injure myself, afraid I'd look like a fool.

I fell and I probably looked like a fool, but the great thing was that all of us did. No one was automatically good at this and though I wasn't the fastest or the most coordinated, I felt like I contributed to the team (I played goalie for the first period and stopped about 15 shots!) Some were better and some were worse than me, but overall I had a great time. I laughed and ran and slid and fell down hard a few times but at the end of the night I was committed to finding a way to play games like this more often. This was so much more fun than the treadmill and it was an intense workout. It made me want to do more yoga (to improve my balance and strength) and work on my endurance but only so I could have played longer. I am proud that I was able to play the whole time and was still going strong when we had to get off the ice to let the Zamboni come clean the sheet. My extra padding probably helped me a bit too as some of the falls I took were definitely less damaging than they would have been if bone was hitting ice instead of a nice fleshy hip or bum. Of course I'm going to have some bruises and be a little sore (too many goal tending splits I think!) but I'm so happy I did this. So happy I didn't let my fear keep me from getting out there and participating and moving my body.

What a night, what a game, what a body!

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