Stop trying to make us friends, Twitter. It’s not going to happen.
(As you can tell from the tense issues that arise through the course of this post, I started it immediately after the season ended and just couldn’t bring myself to look at it for a really long time. Have been working at it, working through some inner stuff that I was really disappointed with.)
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I have a hard time letting things go.
(This is probably slash this is an understatement of epic proportions. trollololol)
I don’t think I even need to give you any more specific examples; I’m sure about eighteen annoying things I talk about a lot are coming to your mind as you’re finishing this sentence. In order to deal, I do this totally healthy, totally emotionally/mentally stable thing where I just block everything out and live in a state of complete denial for as long as I possibly can, until it catches up with me. (This is applicable to about every facet of my life.)
But surprisingly, the possibility that I may soon hang up the cleats isn’t something that I have been shielding myself from. It’s actually something I think about and struggle with a lot. As I close the chapter on yet another ultimate season, I know that I’m in for another long “off-season”, yet another one where I will need to consider whether or not I want to return to the sport in a “competitive” capacity.
I wrote a post some time last fall about my 2011 club season. I never finished or published it, and to be honest, I look back on that draft from time to time and wonder what I had been thinking about and what I had been feeling when I wrote it. It’s hard to recall, probably because I ended that season with yet another concussion, but also because of the disappointment that I felt with the way everything shook out. I feel a different sense of disappointment this time around.
Last season, I think my disappointment centered around figuring out what I wanted from ultimate and from my club experience. It felt like there was something I could not give — I felt like I was at the mercy of some force over which I had no control. This season, my disappointment was solely about the way I had played and also my preparation and training. It was about what I did not give. When I’m coaching, I always say one thing — Take pride in your work. When the practice or game or season is over, when you look back at it, be proud not about the outcome, but about the work you did and the effort you put forth. That’s what matters. Simply put, I did not take pride in my work this past season. I didn’t give as much as I could have all the time.
I guess I’m just not the player I used to be. I can feel it “all”* slipping away from me. Turning or stopping on a dime are both impossible now. I can’t react to a cutter as easily or as quickly as I did before. “Top speed” now is different from “top speed” two years ago. It takes me much longer to get there, too — I feel a little like a steam engine, slowly chug-chug-chugging until I work up the steam to “go fast”. It takes my body much longer to recover from tough workouts. I really feel soreness now, and for much longer. It’s a lot harder to ignore the aches and pains. I’m playing with what feels like ten or twenty pounds I wasn’t lugging around two years ago. More than all those other things though, I don’t have the ability to devote all my time and energy to ultimate and training and fitness anymore. Worse, I don’t have the motivation or the drive to find that time and that energy. Everybody who plays this game deals with the financial and time constraints of playing, and everyone deals with the effects of aging. But the ones who really want to, find ways around them. The ones who really want to will work.
(*I guess “all” in this case wasn’t a lot to start out with, but it was something, and it was something I was proud of, you feel me?)
As I’ve noted, for me, this season was characterized by what I did not give. I definitely wasn’t in the best shape I could have been in, nor did I put in all the work necessary to get there. I was off in Hawaii/Vietnam/Hong Kong for tryouts, and the month before that I was making my cross-country grad school visits and freaking out about finals. In the middle of the season I went to Japan, and towards the end I had moved to Wisconsin and was missing a lot of practice. My fitness and training took a precipitous drop in ’round about late April, when I injured my knee, and to be honest, I never put a whole lot of effort to get back to the routine I had when I was feeling and playing my best (probably spring 2010 through summer 2011). I went to rehab as much as my insurance would pay for, and after that, if I felt good enough to work out at the gym or if I had the time for it, I’d go. If I didn’t, I just didn’t.
Maybe a part of it was psychological — if I sucked and was terrible and didn’t get any playing time, maybe it would be easier for me to decide not to play competitively anymore. I would be less invested, and I would see how awesome it could be to just eat whatever I wanted and not work out and sleep in instead of getting to the gym. Maybe a part of it was just as simple as me being lazy. Whatever it was, I know that I didn’t give ultimate my all this past season. I’m not proud of it. It’s a season that I’ll look back on and be disappointed with on a personal level. I just — I don’t know any other way to say it. I really sucked this season. I really didn’t put in the work, and I’m really, really ashamed of that. I can’t get this season back, and I can’t get that time back. It’s just disappointing and it eats at me to know that I didn’t give everything.
When I first graduated from college, I would get all my “hunger pangs” at the familiar times — first morning lift, first practice, first tournament, the Series. I would suddenly long for the complex fields, for Wash Park, for the Armory, for Irwin. I would wake up at 5am to get to the gym, because I believed in some weird (creepy?) way that it made me feel closer to my teammates who were still in college, suffering through the first morning lift. I used to have all the tournament dates written in my planner, and I’d follow Twitter and ScoreReporter religiously. I missed every little thing about college ultimate. Every little thing.
You know what I’m talking about? That sad, kinda clingy, kinda desperate, wistful feeling? I don’t usually feel that for club, only for college ultimate. I don’t miss club ultimate until maybe March or April, and it’s usually only because I’ve gained fifteen pounds since the end of the season and have spent months doing nothing but sitting on my can and watching basketball. This season, I felt it almost immediately. I drove back to Madison with a lump in my throat. My chest was heavy, and I began to feel claustrophobic as I got further and further from Rockford. I think I might have tried to cry, but nothing came out. It still hurt like I was crying, though. It was like the dry heaving version of crying. I had to drive the last twenty minutes with my window wide open.
Was this it? Had I just finished my final season of club, of “competitive” playing? Was this the effort I was leaving on? Was this going to be my “legacy”? (Let’s all take a moment to snicker at my “legacy”. See: this, this, this, and also this.) Was this going to be my lasting impression of the sport to which I have dedicated so much of my adult life? (I obviously have not been an adult for very long.) A lot of signs pointed to yes. I got my shit rocked by better players on better teams. I was losing my playing time to better, faster, more aggressive players. I felt not myself (and I realize this isn’t proper grammar, but this is how it felt). I felt burnt out. I remember pulling in front of my apartment with tears in my eyes and a very heavy feeling in my entire body. I wiped it all away and decided that that was it. I slept for the next thirteen hours.
I don’t know how or when I’ll ever be at peace with my “career”. I don’t know how I’m ever going to reconcile my expectations with the results I achieved. I don’t know that I’ll ever actually be able to do that. But for now, I just need to know how to walk away. Because no one tells you how to quit. No one tells you how to walk away from a game with your dignity intact. No one tells you how to walk away from something you still (slash, will always) love so much. No one tells you how to move on with your life, without looking back or wondering or regretting.
Do y’all know the phrase “outkicking your coverage”? My whole entire life is the epitome of that phrase, and ultimate is no exception. My college team became my family. I’ve played at College Nationals. I’ve played with and against some real ballers. I’ve played at Worlds. I played on a club team with people that I look up to, who push and support me and whose company I genuinely enjoy. I’ve traveled the country and the globe playing a sport I love with people I love. I’ve tossed, ran, frolicked, and played against some gorgeous and sometimes even once-in-a-lifetime backdrops. I’ve had the chance to meet really incredible people that I never would have had the chance to meet otherwise. I’ve made life-long friends from all different walks of life who have helped me make some unforgettable memories.
When I was in college, my entire life was devoted to my team and ultimate. I had friends outside of the team, but I never hung out with them. I spent every waking moment with my teammates either playing ultimate, talking about it, or thinking about it. I chose it over everything else in my life. But now there are other interests and endeavors that take precedence over ultimate — my family and friends, food, school, food, work, food. These days, I get a bigger kick out of a pupil telling me that she’s so psyched she can finally throw forehands now than I do out of actually completing a forehand of my own. College-Me wouldn’t believe that such a reality could exist. But that’s the natural progression of life, right?
I feel like I’m embarking on a farewell tour of sorts. I had conversations about that with a teammate in Japan. There was a moment after getting spanked by Australia that I stood at the field for an extra minute or so. I had my cleats in my hand and I looked at the field from endzone to endzone. I took note of all the games happening around me, and I just felt so lucky. At every tournament I played this year, I enjoyed every warmup a little more. I soaked in each huddle. I celebrated goals like every single one was a Regional final DGP winner. I had so much fun.
There are times when I’m almost positive that I’m at a place now where I believe that I could be happy walking away from it all.
if this were a book
i’d call this song the final chapter
and if you read it
you’d be laughing