So I'm 42. It's time to face facts; my athletic peak is in the past. I don't have any chance of impressing anyone with my competitive accomplishments without making use of the phrase "in my age group". It's time to look back on my athletic life, such that it was, and examine the highs and lows. Let's start at the bottom.
In a moment of stupidity during a full-on dorm-to-dorm snowball fight in my Freshman year at college, I decided to make a one-man charge across the frozen tundra between Mary Donlon Hall and Helen Newman Gymnasium. I don't exactly what I expected. Glory? Cathartic validation of my manhood? What I got was ice-pelted testicles, a black eye, and bruised ego.
Later in college, my friends and I assembled an inner-tube intramural water polo team. We were handed a fast exit in the single-elimination tournament in which we participated. On personal level, I had mistaken an ability to swim for competence at paddling awkwardly around a pool and throwing a ball into a goal. Not the same thing.
In graduate school, I had the privilege of playing on a really terrible intramural basketball team. We had at least three guys who wanted to point guard, but zero guys up to the task. I played the role of the lunky big man (lunky is combination of lanky and clunky) with no particular ball-handling skills and absolutely no touch. We played three games. We lost the first one badly, and that was our best performance. That pretty much represented my last attempt make use of my height to my advantage in sports.
I was also on a really terrible Berkeley Chemistry Department softball league team in grad school, but I kinda liked playing on that team. I also played on the league champion team one year, and that sucked.
All in all, I don't think that's such a bad list. Embarrassing? Yes, but it's not like I missed the game winning field goal wide right at the Super Bowl twenty-five years ago like Scott Freaking Norwood! I'm not bitter. Anyway, I'll get to the top moments in another post.
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