The End of an Era

For the past 10 years I have played soccer at the Castle Sports Club 4 (or more) times a week. For a while I was playing 3 leagues on Sunday, Monday night, Wednesday night and Thursday night. I was a premier member which meant I also had access to the gym where I worked out quite a bit. During that 10 years we also played roller hockey at the Castle. Pretty much, the Castle has been my home away from home for a really long time.

There has always been some frustrations with the Castle - refs who don't pay attention, not enough soccer balls, our players not showing up, other teams forfeiting, indoor games getting canceled due to rain, horrible conditions on the outdoor field, fights, etc, etc.  But for the most part, those frustrations were outweighed by the facts that I like playing soccer, I like my teams, I like that it is only 3 minutes from home, I like that it is comfortable.

Lately though, the frustrations have been getting to the point where I can't look past them anymore. Just as an example - a few weeks ago, the soccer director and the ref yelled at my team for whining when we asked if we could use a ball that wouldn't draw blood. 3 people were already bleeding from the peeling plastic parts of the ball cutting them when it hit them. We were such "whiners" for asking for a good ball, that the soccer director refused to give us the good ball because someone's toddler was sitting on it and that was more important than 2 paying teams getting to play. This kind of stupidity happens a lot and we usually just brush it off, but lately it's getting harder and harder to do so.

In addition to that, Jace and Christy stopped playing on Mondays and Thursdays (because of work and kid commitments) and despite bringing in a bunch of new people to replace them, no one stuck. We forfeited all the time and I HATE forfeits. And in addition to that, teams are dropping out like crazy. Leagues that used to have 8 teams are down to 4 teams. And usually, at least one of those teams forfeits each week.

It got to be too frustrating. My team withdrew from Mondays and Thursdays so now we play only on Sundays. We are considering quitting Sundays, too.  So sad - it's the end of an era!

This is the first season of the reduced soccer schedule and it is really sad. I miss seeing my soccer friends on a regular basis. I'm super lazy since I have so much free time and I have a lot more time to eat now, so I've been doing a lot of that! :)

To help combat the laziness and overeating, I joined an Ultimate Frisbee league. Yes, I'm about as good at throwing a frisbee as I am at flying or speaking chinese, but I joined anyway. As expected, I suck. I'm not exactly sure I like it. Games are 2 hours long and I don't seem to have the attention span for that. And being a sucky player, I'm pretty much just taking up space on the field. No one really throws it to me and I'm assigned to guard the sucky people on the other teams who also never get the frisbee, so I'm barely playing any defense either. Pretty much I'm just running up and down the field for two hours for no reason. Perhaps it will get better when I get better?