Once I finished washing the blood and dirt off my knees, I was able to appreciate how happy I was with our open practice this Saturday.

After this spring, where it felt like every Saturday was raining and attendence never got above ten people, I was a hair’s breath away from suggesting we cancel these open practices.

But around Thursday, I realised I wouldn’t be able to go to the pickup game on Sunday and so if I didn’t hold the practice on Saturday, I’d have no Ulty all weekend.

This could not happen.

So, I called the practice, hoping to have at least enough people to throw around, maybe play some Box. I wasn’t hopeful.

(You see, the whole mixed touring scene in Halifax has dropped far to the background this year. In the past couple of years it had grown and grown to the point where we had had four separate mixed touring teams in Halifax for the past two years. But this year, suddenly everyone was all focused on playing open and women’s. And that’s great! We need to develop teams in all divisions, especially if we plan on respresenting in all divisions next year at Nats. (Have I mentioned that Nationals are here in Halifax next year?) But the touring community is small enough that once the focus shifted over to open and women’s, mixed touring dropped off of people’s radar screens. And our open practices on Saturday mornings are not always the highest level Ultimate — they are geared more towards teaching skills and strategy to new and intermediate level players.)

So, I show up Saturday morning and what do you know? We got almost twenty people out! We had some regular Squids, some of the usual Bunnies, and then we had a nice selection of newer players and some more experienced touring players. It was just the right amount of people to properly do some drills yet not so many that people got bored waiting their turn. We did some box drills to warm-up, then did a drill for practicing short hammers over a cup, then some hucking and deep cutting work, and then we had the scrimmage that wouldn’t end. (After scrimmaging for a while, we called “game to three” to finish the day off. After we got to three, that changed to “game to five”. Then “game to seven”. I started to wonder if I would see my home before sunset.) In the end, practice went about an hour and a half longer than normal, which was a really good sign.

And the blood on my knees? I laid out three times. In a row. In box drill. That felt really good. So in honour of that, I’m sharing what is probably the first picture ever taken where I’m even close to laying out:

Thanks to everyone who showed up. It made me feel like what we were doing had some real value.

I guess what I’m saying is… I don’t think we should cancel the practices any time soon.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 11th, 2005 at 11:35 am and is filed under ultimate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.