You could call me a sport fanatic if you wish. Last night was packed full of sporting events/situations. First of all, I got a friendly phone call from my good friend Aleni (rhymes with colony, you can thank Jess for that one). Her phone call started with "Camille! We need you on our intramural soccer team!" After verifying with her that I was the correct Camille that she intended to call, I proceeded to explain to her that Soccer is not my sport. I can pretty much hold my own in all other sports, but soccer? That's a whole other dimension that I am not familiar with. To me, soccer is just a lot of running and falling because running and kicking is a most extreme combination for us clutzy folk. I am easily persuaded and she told me that she did not want to have to "beg". So, to spare some ridiculous begging, I agreed to be on the team--this is going to be one heck of an adventure. I've had several people offer to explain the positions and rules to me as well as even coach me a little bit, I'm sure they have no idea what they are getting themselves into.
On a more successful note, I played my first singles intramural tennis match last night. I had a weak and wimpy start to say the least. She didn't hit it very hard so I had a difficult time being aggressive with the ball. I did a lot of dinky ones back, kept my feet glued to the ground and my knees straight, barely even breaking a sweat. I quickly and frustratingly found myself down 5-1 (we play a pro set to 8). At this point I realized that something had to change. I have no doubt that I could have taken care of this match in a few minutes if I was still in my high school game, but I have since lost my mental game and a little bit of skill and agressiveness since then. So I decided that it couldn't hurt to completely change how I was playing. I started looking for opportunities to go to the net and I was pleasantly surprised to find that this intimidated her quite a bit. I started rushing the net even when I didn't have a good approach shot just so that I could intimidate her. I also had some pretty sweet net game...I started hitting winners and it felt good. My adreniline was pumping and I was bouncing up and down to stay pumped up. It wasn't long before I found myself sitting at 6-5...I had won 5 straight games to pull into the lead. I had a momentary break down where I was a little too complacent and she won another game to where it tied it 6-6. I kept telling myself that I could not let her get to 7. I squeaked by another win to put it at 7-6 then it came down to deuce in the last game...the point was a long rally and I was saved a couple times by a few close balls, but I came out on top! It was a most sweet victory I must say...I forgot how much I love the game of tennis. I had a few supporters as well: Stacey, Jake and Jerika were all there to cheer me on. I should also do a shout out to Jake who also came out on top (although quite a bit easier winning at 8-1).
Oh don't worry, the night is not over yet. We also went to Dave's intramural flag football game. The other team was pretty fast and good at pitching the ball to each other as they ran down the field. That's all I'll say on that subject, I'm sure Dave can tell you more...maybe he'll post something on his blog, maybe not. After arriving home at about 10:30 and showering, I get a call from my next ping pong opponent. I am in a ward ping pong tournament where there are 64 people playing, so it is just like march madness. The guys that set up are pretty into it and created a huge poster size copy of the bracket with the BYU logo in the background. Monday night I played my first game against the counselor in the bishopric. He is a young fellow and just got married about a month ago which is weird that he is already back into a singles ward. He is also probably a good 2 feet taller than me, you may think I am exaggerating, but I'm really not. Anyway, I played him best out of three games to 11 (I guess that is how they set up the official way of playing for this tournament). It was kind of an embarssing victory because he only got a few points in the two games I played him. I am indeed grateful that we had a ping pong table growing up and Dave and Jake were patient enough to play me every now and then when they needed a break from each other. So I was on to round 2 which brings me to last night when my next ping pong opponent called me. I had heard rumors circulating around the ward circuit that this guy was quite the ping pong player and had shut out his first opponent with no mercy. He even had some sort of funny nickname like "Austin I'm a big shot and can school you all in ping pong Hatchet" I made that up but it was some sort of ridiculous nickname like that. Anyway, we started playing and he was a little taken back by my ability to return anything he dished at me. He had a great spin serve but everything else didn't have any spin so we had incredibly long rallies. We played best out of 5 games this time because no one was waiting for the table. In all of our games he only beat me by a few points and I beat him in one of the games. I was disappointed I couldn't tally up another victory for the night but it was a lot of fun playing him and all the guys that were there watching were rather impressed at my ping to the pong skills.
Well, that's all for now folks. My first soccer game is next week (it was actually supposed to be last night but thank heavens I had a tennis match at the exact same time) and it is ironic because we are playing the ward I am in now..luckily I don't know any of the girls. I'll have to tell you how that soccer game goes because there is no doubt that it will be comical.
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