I just finished watching the U.S/Canada gold medal game in the Olympics. (BTW, congrats, Canada, good game.) Anyway, I was struck by a few things while watching. I'm used to watching either Pee Wee boys, or 10 year old girls play, and men play quite differently. First of all, it's a lot faster. In fact, so fast that I had a lot of trouble following the puck. This makes the play by play by the announcers all the more impressive. Their brains work so fast! They must be geniuses. (I'm serious)
Another thing is that none of them wear face masks which makes me think that men think it's cool to lose teeth. Hey guys, it's not that cool. I see that they wear mouth guards, but that is not going to prevent a puck that's going 100 mph from smashing through all of your front teeth.
There was also a lot of spitting. More spitting than I've seen in any other sport. Why are they spitting so much? No wonder they are so thirsty. You never see a figure skater spitting on the ice. Maybe that's why they don't wear facemasks, in order to have more spitting freedom.
My last observation was that they are constantly racing from one side of the rink to the other. That has to be tiring. Why don't they pick a position and stick with it? My friend Tonya did this in gym class and she was the all-time highest gym-sport scorer in the history of FHS (this is a totally anecdotal guess on my part. I don't think anyone actually keeps those statistics.) She would stand right next to the goal and wait. Usually the goalie was Joe, who was the star hockey goalie on the school team. I bet Tonya made more goals on him than any single other person.
Here's Joe and Tonya in their soccer positions:
Here they are in their floor hockey positions:
Here they are in their ice hockey positions:
Here's Tonya making a goal in soccer:
Here's Joe's reaction to it:
He has just jumped onto the chain length fence that surrounds the field and is shaking it to get his rage out at being scored on by Tonya for the 500th time.
Here he is after she scored on him during ice hockey:
He's hanging off the boards and shaking them and screaming. Tonya made more goals than anyone, her team never lost and she never broke a sweat running around like a fool. I hope she got good grades in gym.
Looking at this post, I know how pathetic this is, but I worked HARD on those drawings. This is my best work. Seriously. I'm ashamed.
ReplyDeleteUmmmm...I think a correction needs to be made, it was ME in the floor hockey in the gym at Backus. Boy that was fun making him so pissed when really all I did was stand there at the corner of the net and wait for the puck. How hard could that be? Much less running around that way :) Fond memories! Which reminds me of another memory of that very same gym....YOU wearing red parachute pants (with a white floral shirt = nice combo) doing the Van Halen jump off the stage. Very impressive...
ReplyDeleteSo sorry for giving Tonya the credit for your floor hockey prowess, Jill! But I vividly remember Joe hanging off the soccer fence screaming "Koeneman!" So, did you get good gym grades, Jill? I remember those parachute pants too. They were cool.
ReplyDeleteI also remember getting in A LOT of trouble for doing that Van Halen jump off the stage. It was worth it.
ReplyDeleteYour drawing of Joey is perfect. I remember him always looking like that.
ReplyDeleteNot taking anthing away from Jill, as I know what an awesome floor hockey player she was, but I do also remember Tonya being an MVP, too. That was in high school though, when we had to play against the girls because the boys were way too wicked. And probably because Joe would get too angry.
Sarah - I forgot to comment on how awesome and accurate your pictures were. You are right about the soccer part for sure....I don't even remember playing soccer, so I would have to say, no, I did not get good grades in gym!
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