Sportsing All Day Long

My backpack today was about 25% school stuff, 75% sporting clothes and equipment.

As I type this, I am laying on my bed, finally not smelling horrible after a shower, sore on every part of my body with an ice pack on my knee. But man did I ever have a good time today!

There is a 4.5 hour break in our schedule on Tuesdays so my friend and I decided to organize a sports day where we all play football or whatever is the popular vote in a nearby field to pass the time! We did this a couple times last year, getting about 6 people at most but still having a really good time. What changed for this go at it was that we created a facebook group and had no shame at all in inviting everything we knew that would be vaguely interested or had free time and the number of people that showed up was 12!

It was really exciting okay she and I were so happy!

So that happened for around an hour and I’m not even sure who won but touchdowns happened and there were some runs and great catches and everyone got to participate with snapping the ball and being the quarterback if they wanted, totally low-key.

But this is not the end of my day of sports.

It just so happened that we scheduled our first football day right before my first quidditch tryout of the season meaning that a half hour later, I had helped carry some hoops to a different field and was replacing my bright blue running shoes with my bright blue cleats. (Gotta keep some things constant)

The tryout was a lot of introductory stuff for the people that were completely new to the sport with simple drills for them to get used to the broom between their legs and what to do with each particular ball. And new people there were! It was exciting to see how many new faces showed up that were genuinely excited to try out the sport. I tried to talk to a bunch of them to make them feel welcomed because I remember being super nervous at my first tryout.

The whole thing lasted a total of 4 hours for me as there was an introductory hour where some veterans helped new people get the feel of quidditch without being stressed about making a good impression and then an additional 3 of actually trying out. We only did a total of 5 types of drills plus some scrimmages at the end but because of the heat and the constant running I was genuinely exhausted and basically collapsed in bed when I got home.

It was all worth it though, I love being active and I’m definitely going to feel today in my muscles tomorrow but at least it means I did something!

Quidditch

Wizards and broomsticks and snitches oh my!

I don’t know if you’ve heard of this book series called Harry Potter? I think they made a movie or two where he was the main character also. Well, on the off chance that you have, you will probably then have heard of quidditch. It’s the biggest sport in the wizarding world so who would have thought I would be able to spend the last year physically playing it?

Quidditch has become a real sport in recent years, mostly starting up through universities thanks to enthusiastic and determined people. Getting a team together for a fictional sport off the ground can’t be easy! (And by off the ground I don’t mean on flying brooms, unfortunately physics is not on our side here.)

Canada gets more and more teams joining its ranks every year and many of the US teams are quite formidable. There’s been a world cup tournament that has happened for the past few years and I actually have friends that played on team Canada. Amazing to think about.

For people who are just trying to wrap their heads around a way for muggles to be able to play the sport (and yes, it is a sport) without any magic, let me break it down for you.

The first thing to note is that yes, we kept in the broom part but no, we have not yet figured out how to use them to fly. There are official quidditch brooms but most people just use a length of plastic pipe that is has to be held between their legs at all times while playing. Having one hand occupied most of the time does make the game a little harder!

You’ve got chasers which are the ones that score. Each team has 3 chasers and a keeper who does exactly what a chaser does except they’ve got a few extra privileges. They deal with the quaffle and the hoops. It’s basically handball where they can run with the ball and pass to each other in order to put the quaffle/slightly deflated volleyball through one of the three hoops. It’s pretty much the same as in Harry Potter except that it’s not way up high in the sky and we have full contact tackling.

Next are the beaters which are super important to muggle quidditch strategy. They use the 3 bludgers which look suspiciously like slightly deflated dodgeballs to hit whomever they want from the opposing team in order to make them get off their broom and run back to their own hoops before remounting. Where it differs from the movies is that the bludgers do not have a mind of their own to be redirected by beater bats but it’s still not fun coming against a beater that could make you basically run a suicide during a game. A quidditch team must always have 2 beaters on the field at a time.

Finally, the piece of equipment most people tend to ask about first: the snitch. In Harry Potter, the snitch is a tiny golden ball with wings that flits around very quickly and must be caught by the seeker in order for the game to be finished. Our real live snitch is a human being, usually dressed in gold or yellow, that has a sock with a tennis ball at the toes velcroed to a pair of shorts. There are manufactured snitch shorts that looks way more official than what I just described and it’s actually really difficult for a seeker to actually reach this sock located right above the snitch’s bum. The snitch does not have to use a broom and can mess with the seekers however they want, throwing them to the ground or pulling their broom out from under them, it’s all fair play.

There used to be off-pitch seeking, in which the snitch would be hiding somewhere away from where the game was  actually happening and the seekers had time to go and look for it just like in Harry Potter but as the sport developed, that was deemed impractical and all the seeking is done right in the middle of game play.

It makes for a difficult time for the spectator to choose what to watch with the scoring and the face-beating and the yellow-clothed person running around.

Hopefully that makes quidditch make sense to those of you who hadn’t heard about it being played in real life and hopefully you agree that this full-contact, co-ed sport deserves being called a sport despite its eccentricities.

I have included a video below to showcase the sport in action:

Oh, and what’s my position? I’m a chaser and I just love it. If I could seek, I would but I might just be too small for the job.

World Cup

Flashback to grade 5.

It was the end of the school year and halfway through 2006 where, if you count back two sets of four years, the World Cup was happening in Germany.

Now y’all know I’m from Brazil (if not, surprise, I am!) so I cheer hardcore for them during this competition even though I’m not the biggest soccer fan in regular life.

My teacher at the time was from France. Like literally he moved here during the summer. So, obviously he was basically France’s biggest fan. We used to have these morning exercises like pop quizzes for math and stuff and for one of those he actually asked “Who’s going to be the champions for the 2006 World Cup” and the correct answer was France.

So you could imagine it was pretty tense between us. BUT THEN there was anther girl in our class who was from a big Italian family. She loudly proclaimed that Italy was the one that will steal the show.

//I feel like I’m making this more dramatic than it actually is but it’s way more fun like this anyway, right//

There was lots of friendly banter and competition ie my teacher calling both of us out whenever our countries didn’t do too well and us in return doing the same to him. That said, there was a kind of camaraderie between me and the other girl that we just needed to beat the teacher. Like it would suck if our own country didn’t make it but at least we wouldn’t have to suffer through him celebrating France’s victory.

You don’t even know my relief when Italy won. Life is good.

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In 2014 World Cup news, Brazil played the opening game against Croatia in Sao Paolo and they DOMINATED.

My whole family watched it and man was it stressful. Croatia getting the first goal of the game only thanks to one of the Brazilian players accidentally nudging it into our net. Thankfully, there’s a guy named Neymar who is my new favourite person that got 2 of the 3 goals Brazil scored during the duration of the game!!

There were some sucky calls and everyone was really aggressive and probably stressed but overall it was a great opening game (especially for Brazil fans!) to start out the FIFA 2014 World Cup.

How About That Gold?

I’m talking about how Canada brought home the most physical gold medals in the winter Olympics this year because we dominated at hockey and curling.

I have to admit, I didn’t watch the curling finals but I did however witness the two gold metal hockey games because how could I call myself Canadian if I didn’t. The men’s one involved me waking up at 7 on a weekend so that is some intense dedication.

CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE CANADA VS USA WOMEN’S GOLD MEDAL HOCKEY FINAL??? Can we talk about the fact that the US was up by 2 whole points until there was only 3.5 minutes left in the third period. At this point you kind of just call it and accept the fact that there’s nothing you can do. BUT NO. The Canadians make one goal. But that doesn’t change anything unless they make another. Which they do with only seconds left, thus tying the game and sending it into overtime.

But not before the most stressful thing ever happens.

We took our goalie out of the net to go into overdrive for scoring that second goal and somehow, the puck got shot towards the empty net from further than half court. (half ice?) There was no one in between it and the net and it totally looked like it was going in. AND THEN IT HIT THE POST. I could not believe that actually happened. It was just a beautiful moment for everyone.

But yeah, we then won pretty quickly into overtime and set the standard once more for the men’s hockey team to step it up for their game a few days later.

That game was incredibly boring, Canada getting three goals and just doing really well in general which was obviously exciting. It was a Sunday morning so we had to be at church but since this is a hockey nation it was playing on a projector downstairs. Of course.

Olympics

It’s that time of year that only comes around every 4 years that Canadians go ballistic over…

The 2014 Winter Olympics have begun!!

I’m filled with the crazy sense of national pride where I just want to shove it in everyone’s faces that I’m Canadian except everyone around me is also Canadian so that doesn’t really do anything except annoy them and then I’d have to apologize and buy them some timbits or something.

Seriously though, this is the place where Canada gets to shine and get recognition for being an actual formidable country and not just nice versions of americans. It’s very invigorating.

Because obviously my university and whoever planned the Olympics conspired together to make sure that I would be too busy to watch anything until reading week, I haven’t actually seen anything happen live. I did get the recap of all the highlights and blunders (Bermuda in bermuda shorts, the countries with only one representative, the glitch with the olympic rings, etc, etc) through tumblr along with everyone’s commentary and do make an effort to google the medal standings at least once a day! And, of course, whenever Canada wins a medal there is no way for escaping hearing about it within 0.2 seconds of it happening so I’m totally always up to speed on that.

Luckily, the Olympics run until the 23rd which gives me plenty of time to sit around and be lazy while I watch amazing athletes compete in the different events.

Some quick stats for y’all:

– Alex Bilodeau who was the first Canadian to win gold on Canadian soil 4 years ago in Vancouver 2010 also became the first to defend his title two years in a row in men’s moguls!!

– Mark McMorris, who claimed the first medal win of Canada’s for these Olympics, HAD BROKEN HIS RIB 2 WEEKS EARLIER (plus he’s a cutie)

– This actually is the first time in history the Canada has lead in the medal standings this early into the Olympics (summer or winter) with 7 medals and almost half of them gold as of right now. We come out on top at the last winter Olympics but it took us a while to get going.

So are YOU watching the Olympics? What’s your favourite event? Who are you cheering for?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P08B_lBUL0E