So I’d be lying if I said I was keen sportswoman. I am anything but. I would say the most movement is from my jaw that is gassing away-usually to the opposition-and my biggest concern being whether I’d have enough time to get back, and shower before all the hot water was gone. So it bemused my family and friends when I announced I was going to join lacrosse – my sister actually asked me if there was anything seriously wrong.
The fact is sports are a hugely social way of getting involved within the university. I had friends in my first year who had joined and raved about it and I had seen them – usually dressed in some bizarre assortment of fancy dress-go off every other Wednesday to their socials.
So this year I bit the bullet and signed myself up for lax (Lacrosse). Bearing in mind the last time I played lax was briefly in my last year at school – three years ago – where I went to all of three of the sessions and when I was there I arsed around pretending my stick was a broom. I actually think those three sessions scarred me as I had somehow found myself as goalie (a place where no-one wants to be) against a rival school. The girls were about twice the size of us and it made me question whether they had been injected with testosterone. The match was a disaster, and I was so terrified that the ball was going to disfigure my face or any other part of my anatomy I spent most the time screaming, before jumping out the goal. I was a rubbish goalie and by the time I was subbed off at half time we were losing 13-nil. Shocker.
However, it is , with slight hesitation, that I am proud to say, I am back – although for how long being highly debatable. I attended my first session for beginners, I was glad to see that they were all equally as hopeless as me at ‘scooping’ the ball. However we ploughed on and suddenly it was the first social of the semester; the theme being ‘safari’. I am lucky to have the lax social sec in my house, and the rest of my house had all decided to join beginners lax too – a group effort you could say. So on the day of the social we decided that as every person would be dressed as leopards, tigers or lions we would be ‘original’ and go as zebras. Turns out every girl in lax had the same idea and there were about 50 of us, all zebras, the odd lone tiger, and one poacher. We were quite the pack. So off we went to hit Vodka revs for our cheap drinks and free pizza – massive plus – before we hit B.E.D (the club) where we were united with every other sports social too.
I would say we definitely stood out the most and it was pretty obvious when someone had ‘found’ essentially one of the lax zebras, as they spent the rest of their night walking around with white and black paint smeared round their mouths. However the chances of them finding that ‘same’ zebra were slim, so I feel there was most likely a lot of incest amongst the lax crew who were looking.
When I woke up on Thursday morning, we had a ‘house chat’. Everyone had loved the night. Everyone was on a high and everyone bonded with at least one fellow zebra – even though we wouldn’t remember it in the morning. I guess essentially through joining a sport you really do bring out the team spirit within each other. It’s fun and reminds you that you can have a competitive streak, if you look really hard. So I would say to anyone thinking about joining a sport to do it. The saying ‘you’ll never know unless you try’ couldn’t be truer. At least you can say you gave it a go and you met some fun, like-minded people along the way.