End of the Oompa Loompa Season

We ended our season with a perfect record...... we LOST every match!

But we had fun doing it. A sprained finger, bruised toes and a few scrapes were to be expected out of me since I am so competitive. Tag rugby is much more of a contact sport then I thought given that it is co-ed. There is a lot of force needed to pull those tags off the special made shorts. I missed the first three matches, but made it to everyone after that. Kevin and Tom have played their whole lives and they did great to help us all learn the game. Ruthie and Catherine were our coaches and did an amazing job having wash all the shorts each week, get our jerseys made up for us (I was called Bambi - see earlier posts to see why that is my nickname) and cutting up orange halves for us to have at half time. By the end of the season we were good at the hand off technique from the two lads to us girls. This move is very important since girl tries are worth 4 points and guy tries are only worth 1. I ended the season with 3 tries in all! During the last match (which we nearly won) I did a glorious three turn somersault right in front of John (main boss man) and landed at his feet after the opposing team pushed me while pulling off my tag. The look of horror on his face that I had hurt myself was priceless but I bounced up, shook my head, laughed it off and ran back onto the pitch for another go. They were amazed. With enough adrenaline you never feel the bumps and busies until later anyway.

The clubhouse served burgers so after the match you could go in, grab a pint, sit down with your burger and rehash the game highlights with the team. After our final match we voted and gave out prizes to the most competitive, best girl, best boy, best tagger, best scorer and whimpiest injury. I got none of them, but I came in close second for both best girl and most competitive. Hehehe! My team knows me. Now if i could only have gotten them to all agree which one I was better at. However, it had to be said that the greatest moment of the game was when a novice player, Tullia, scored her first try early in the first half of our last game. In what was a stunning piece of play she caught the ball in full stride thrown, skillfully as always, by our best boy billy whiz (Kevin) and heroically threw herself over the line to put us on the scoreboard first! She is always so full of energy that it is great to watch her play. Almost every game was ended with a 'victory' dance just for having gotten out there and doing it, and have fun.

Luckily our season also had no rain at any of our matches. Karen came to be our cheerleader and Catherine even brought her pompoms for her to cheer with. I taught them some of my cheer leading moves since in High School all my friends did it. I was amazed at how many cheers I remembered. Although most of the team were beginners, we learned so much and improved tenfold over the past several months. I look forward to playing next year for sure since we will all know what we are doing on the pitch!