Back At It

So, I just spent 5 days out in NYC. Got in on Wednesday afternoon, and naturally the first thing we do after dropping our stuff off at the hotel was to go run a few games down at the park. Get off the plane, and go play streetball. Because we're good like that. Me and the (not so) lil' bro ran a few games, first with halfcourt, and then a game of full. Played alright. Decent defense. A little offense, though I have to admit that I'm definitely not a streetballer. I'm running around looking for screens away from the ball and back-cuts. My teammates are just looking at me funny. So, a lot of my effectiveness (e.g., passing to cutters, screening for cutters) was out the window. However, I did have a couple muscle plays where I get a board down low, head fake, and then jump up for a little reverse layup taking the 4 or 5 hands on me up in the air. The next day, the muscles were sore, but the knees held up alright. Which is always a victory for me.

The rest of the NY trip was fun. Visited the Met, like I always do. At a lot of good Chinese food. The reason that I went was actually for my cousin's wedding. The rehearsal dinner was pretty awesome. You had a Chinese/Vietnamese wedding. So naturally, you have the rehearsal dinner at a Greek restaurant. So, we ate way too much hummus, pita, gyro, souvlaki, saganaki, and whatever else they brought to the table.

The next day, the wedding was fun, and the reception was amazing. A legit 10-course Chinese banquet. Every course was good. This was incredible food. They were able to take beef and broccoli and make it transcendent. We even had some Shark's Fin Soup, which allowed me to throw in another tasteless Steve Irwin joke.

Of course, the flight back was a different story. I had a flag football game at 9pm back on campus. So, I had a 4:20 flight out of LaGuardia, and a 6:35 flight from O'Hare that would put me in to Champaign at 7:25. Plenty of time to get back, get unpacked, changed, and out to the fields at 8:30 to loosen up. American Airlines didn't quite see it that way. First, the plane coming into LaGuardia was late, so we didn's get seated until like 4:40. Then, the crew botched the luggage. We saw them unloading the original luggage from the previous flight, and we see them load luggage, which was supposed to be ours. Then a few minutes later, they start unloading luggage, and then take it away and load up different luggage. Whoops.

We didn't leave the gate until 5:40, and didn't get in the air until 6:00. Not cool. I was real nervous about making the game. We needed all the guys we could get, plus I was running Q for us. Now, my flight from O'Hare was supposed to be 6:35. We certainly weren't going to make that, even getting the hour back going west. So I thought that I was screwed. We hit the ground at 6:50, and I hurry out the plane to check on flights down to Champaign. I saw a 7:20 flight that was boarding. So, I hustle down the H terminal and up the G terminal to make it to the gate in time to get that flight, which still had a few open seats. I hit the ground in Champaign at 8:10, and CJ picked me up at 8:20, to take me straight over to the football fields at 8:30. Now, you know where my priorities are.

Now, the flag football team that I'm playing for this year is a co-rec team. We had only had 2 practices, and neither of them were well attended. But, I had a good feeling. We had at least one guy who is a burner, and the girls seemed to be pretty athletic. I figured that with my experience back there, we'd be pretty good. I may revise this to say that we've got a shot at the title, if we can get another guy or two to play. Here's the story. We only had 3 guys show up. It's a 4 guy/4 girl league, so we played 8 on 7 the entire game. And we won 37-6. My favorite moment? I'm on defense (which is not a good thing), playing short zone. I drift back into coverage and the QB throws a duck. I see it wobble down toward me, and I decide that instead of drifting back to catch, I'd just jump up and knock it down, since it was 4th down. So, I jump, not quite as high as I figured, and a little earlier than I should have, and swing and completely miss the ball. But, I distracted the receiver behind me enough so that she dropped the pass, probably for fear of me landing on her and crushing her. Whoops. That's why you shouldn't let me play D.

Even without having practiced, and only having a few people with flag football experience, we actually looked pretty organized out there. Plus, we even managed to play defense with my slow ass out there. Of course, our two other guys were clearly the best athletes on the field, we probably had 4 girls more athletic than their best girl, and I'm still pretty decent back there at QB. Basically, we rolled. We punted once, but scored 4 TD's. Our other TD was a punt return in the first quarter, after we held them to 3 and out to start the game. I managed to throw two girl TD's to two different girls, and hit each of our guys for deep TD's, including a 66-yard play where my guy got behind the D, caught a throw that went just over the double coverage, and then just outran everyone for the last 20 yards. Now, this wasn't as cool as the 79-yarder to Randy back in the day, but this was a cool play, since it was the opening play of the 2nd half, and we were only up 16-6 at that point, and I had to talk my receiver into running the deep route, since he wasn't confident that our timing and accuracy was on for the deep ball. I guess that I can be pretty persuasive sometimes.

Overall, the legs felt good. I was able to push off and step into my throws, pain-free. I was able to roll out to both sides and outrun the defense (no sacks, if you can believe that). I even danced around a little bit, avoiding the pass rush. Not quite Ron Mexico-style, but maybe like Daunte Culpepper. Or Jared Lorenzen. Anyway, I was throwing a good ball - no picks, no balls that were close to being picked, and only one pass broken up by the defense. I made some throws in the pocked, and I made some designed throws on the run, as well as some off of the scramble. I had one throw slip out of my hand (that I think would have been big, since my receiver had already run by his man deep), and one throw that I just botched (to an open receiver in the endzone, no less). Other than that, I gave my receivers a good shot at catching the ball for just about all of the other throws. It felt darned good.

One thing that I find really interesting about me in co-rec football is that I'm not nervous at all. For men's games, I'm nervous and a little jittery because I know that everyone around me is depending on me and expects a lot. For co-rec, I'm doing as much teaching as anything else, since a lot of the girls that we get have never played before. So, I don't have time to be nervous, and whatever jitters may be there go away because I'm talking a lot. Or maybe, I just like having girls on the other team chase me around.

-Chairman