Old Man Playing A Young Man's Game

   Yesterday was a run day.
   So I ran.
   My ass off.
   Up and down a warm, sweaty gym floor, chasing around (and being chased by) a bunch of young ball hockey players in their twenties and thirties, all of whom play pretty well every single week of the year. And not just running but stopping and starting, twisting, turning, reaching, sliding, and diving. Running forward, backward and sideways.

Not me last night, but me back last summer. I'm the player in red on
the far left, bending over to hopefully prevent a pass...

   I was there at the suggestion of Charles, a young ball hockey player I've known for a few years who runs a couple of different teams in the London Ball Hockey Association. I'd been asking around for the past few weeks in an attempt to find a team to play on this summer and it was Charles who got back to me. He runs a night of pick-up ball hockey Tuesdays at a secondary school here in London and he thought it might be kind of cool if I showed up and played. This, then, would give him an opportunity to see what kind of player I was.
   The results of the evening were kind of a mixed bag. It's always a bit of a challenge to play with and against a bunch of players you weren't familiar with and and it took me some time to find my way and feel comfortable. What happens is you find out which guys have "moves" and which guys have "shots" and you either cover them more closely (if they're on the other team) or you make sure you get them the ball (if they're on your team). 
   All of this I think I did well enough at. For the life of me, though, what I couldn't do was catch up to the damn ball on one-timers. A one-timer occurs when someone passes you the ball in a good scoring position and, rather than cradling it and moving around with it, you immediately fire it at the net without even stopping it first. And this I could not do, all night long. There were probably about six separate opportunities for me to take beautiful passes and convert them to dangerous shots on net and I flubbed every single one of them. I would take this energetic wind-up and then the pass would go right through me. Prior to the game starting, I knew it might take awhile for the hand/eye co-ordination to kick in and I was prepared to whiff on a few near the beginning, I just never expected it to last the whole game!

Once again, not last night but several summers ago.

   Today, I am as sore as hell. My back and legs have stiffened right up and my knees this morning barely supported me. It was my first day back at work after a 5-day Easter weekend and, as long as I more or less kept moving, things weren't all that bad. Sitting for twenty minutes at a Timmy's was probably not a good idea but the rest of the day was go, go, go and that really helped. The other thing that wasn't a good idea was sitting down for the length of time it took to write this blog post.....
   So it is likely that I will be back playing with the same group of guys next Tuesday. Prior to the game I'll need to do a little work on one-timers, that's for sure. As well, I think I'm going to need to change the running routine a little, these leisurely 5K's I've been doing as training runs don't quite cut it on the ball hockey floor!