Until now. The girls are totally different, and that's OK. The current captain this year is someone who doesn't really know the alumni that well, and i don't think she particularly wants too either. The only alumni she really knows are Erin and Nikki, but she isn't the same kind of player or leaders as either of them. The team this year has a more serious vibe, along with a more serious coach, and hopefully they will perform better and more competitively than past teams... lord knows i talk them up around ATL, so hopefully they'll live up to the hype that i continue to spread around.
Big Orange Screw: Joint Summit 2004
But it makes me sad to realize that this isn't my team anymore, and it doesn't resemble any team that I was a part of, or the one's that came directly after me at all. These girls are doing things that I only wish I could have done with my team, but they are doing things that I don't get at all. Not going to Itchfest is one, but also not letting alumni practice (or Knoxville women for that matter). I guess it is a difference in times and numbers: during my time as captain, we were lucky to get enough out to scrimmage 6 vs 6, and that was with help from the local club women. My first year as captain, we played hotbox after running drills and learning plays because we just didn't have enough for anything else. And we always let alumni come and practice with us if they were in town... always. I mean really practice: drills, scrimmage, everything.
But times have changed, and it is hard to watch something that I worked so hard to keep together and that Erin fought so hard to build to what it is kinda go in a completely different direction-- or at least a different direction vibe wise. We all hoped that UT would be this competitive (mostly because we all were on the inside), but we always wanted it to be the fun, welcoming team that it was for us. I guess at some point you have to let it go and watch it grow, no matter the direction. But I'll always be a Big Orange Screw supporter and groupie.
Big Orange Screw and Brutal Girls: Itchfest 2002
1 comment:
First - I didn't know that you blogged.
Second - I read this entry in the same way as a person listens to the eulogy of a loved one - remembering the good times and the hard times, and all the while, trying to accept that life, in how it revolved around the loved one, will never be the same.
I am saddened by how I feel like I've been forgotten by BOS since I've graduated. No one bothers to email updates on the team's progress, and apparently I would not even be welcome at a BOS practice if I were to pop up in my hometown. Do the players not realize that the alumni now have money, connections, homes to stay in, and most of all - a love for our alma mater team?
Did you and I forget our alumni like they have done to us? Perhaps. I group-emailed occasionally, but never really thought that anyone cared. I was always too shy to ask for money.
What will happen to these current girls when they graduate? Will they be forgotten by newer players and team leaders? Or is a new, tight-knit group being created where girls who graduate from here on out will stay in touch and be included in future team activities, while you and I and everyone who came before us are left on the outside? If the later is the best case scenario, then out of love for the team, I hope it to be the case. A team that annually casts off any foundation on which is once stood in order to stand alone will become nothing but a hollow, brittle facade.
Even as a BOS player, I happily ancipated the days when I would be in my post-UT life and join former UT Women to enter an alumni reunion team in a tournament. Like so many other teams that I saw, I hoped that one day I, too, could escape for a few days with players who came before and after me, enjoying a weekend of fun Ultimate and talking shop about our college glory days. That anticipation is still alive, but I fear that it has reason to be fading.
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