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Team sports
May. 27th, 2012 05:29 pmPart of participating in a team sport is also watching it. This is not something that I've ever been especially drawn to but in this case I've been utterly sucked into it. I went up to Bendigo yesterday with some of the other girls who aren't yet bouting to watch my team participate in a couple of bouts, one as the actual Northside Rollers travel team, being the Death Stars and one where the teams were made up of skaters from several different leagues, one being from my team and in her very first bout so that was exciting.
One of the girls borrowed a Tarago from work and seven of us piled into it for the trip up. The GPS settled on the wrong Holmes Rd and guided us out the other side of town to a paddock rather than to the show grounds which left us panicking and thinking we were going to miss things but as it turned out we still arrived in plenty of time and even secured suicide seating (right on the safety line at a minimum distance from the track) I browsed the merch stalls but didn't buy anything other than a t-shirt for my own team although had the ridiculously awesome purple coat with lacing up the sides and down the forearms been just a trifle larger than I would have come home with it. I also managed briefly to catch up with Racy Rapidfire who's another trans skater from Brisbane and currently visiting a few places. She was busy taking bout notes as she's participating in all sorts of coaching and training so I didn't chat as long as I would have liked but it was great to at least say hi face to face. Most of the time there was of course spent watching the bouting.
NSR are only in their first year of competitive bouting and we were not the favourite to win this bout. We trailed by somewhere between 10 and 30 points for most of the match but managed to claw back and edge into the lead right at the very end. The whole team has been fizzing with glee all of last night and today and I'm now very much regretting not hanging about for the after-party, especially as getting back to Melbourne landed me at Flinders St station just after midnight at which point I gave up and went home to bed rather than going to another party which was why I came back to Melbourne rather than staying in Bendigo overnight. I think I would have kicked on rather longer in Bendigo with everyone on a high and it sounds like it was a fantastic evening.
I've never been particularly fond of the tribalism that happens with team sport, in fact I usually hate it, but I think the difference here is the way in which it manifests itself. There's none of the usual sledging of other teams that I've seen in other sports and the loyalty to your own team in no way precludes not only being friendly with, but actively helping other teams. It occurred to me this morning that the chanting we came out with had nothing to do with what we were going to do to our opponents or even the prowess of our own team. So what were we shouting?
"All together.
All the time."
Sums it up nicely really.
One of the girls borrowed a Tarago from work and seven of us piled into it for the trip up. The GPS settled on the wrong Holmes Rd and guided us out the other side of town to a paddock rather than to the show grounds which left us panicking and thinking we were going to miss things but as it turned out we still arrived in plenty of time and even secured suicide seating (right on the safety line at a minimum distance from the track) I browsed the merch stalls but didn't buy anything other than a t-shirt for my own team although had the ridiculously awesome purple coat with lacing up the sides and down the forearms been just a trifle larger than I would have come home with it. I also managed briefly to catch up with Racy Rapidfire who's another trans skater from Brisbane and currently visiting a few places. She was busy taking bout notes as she's participating in all sorts of coaching and training so I didn't chat as long as I would have liked but it was great to at least say hi face to face. Most of the time there was of course spent watching the bouting.
NSR are only in their first year of competitive bouting and we were not the favourite to win this bout. We trailed by somewhere between 10 and 30 points for most of the match but managed to claw back and edge into the lead right at the very end. The whole team has been fizzing with glee all of last night and today and I'm now very much regretting not hanging about for the after-party, especially as getting back to Melbourne landed me at Flinders St station just after midnight at which point I gave up and went home to bed rather than going to another party which was why I came back to Melbourne rather than staying in Bendigo overnight. I think I would have kicked on rather longer in Bendigo with everyone on a high and it sounds like it was a fantastic evening.
I've never been particularly fond of the tribalism that happens with team sport, in fact I usually hate it, but I think the difference here is the way in which it manifests itself. There's none of the usual sledging of other teams that I've seen in other sports and the loyalty to your own team in no way precludes not only being friendly with, but actively helping other teams. It occurred to me this morning that the chanting we came out with had nothing to do with what we were going to do to our opponents or even the prowess of our own team. So what were we shouting?
"All together.
All the time."
Sums it up nicely really.
