Fighting Cracker

This coming weekend is going to be strange. It's not strange that I'll be driving 8 hours to go to a small college town in middle-of-nowhere Arkansas. It's not weird that I'll be playing ultimate frisbee in 40 degree weather with 30 mph winds. It's not even strange that I look forward to the idea of being sleep-deprived and completely exhausted before making the trip back to Knoxville. It is strange, that for the first time in about 4 years I will be taking the Frisbee field as a member of a team other than Harding Apocalypse. Apparently, due to the lack of our captain sending in a team name, we are currently named Gratuitous in honor of Whit Jordan. I don't mind the name so much...I think it's kinda funny. It brings back memories of Frisbee highlight videos with Whit jumping, kicking his legs up even higher, and landing 5 feet on either side of a guy that had fallen down in front of him. To many of you, that won't mean a thing. But it makes me laugh.

Luke did remind me, however, of my very humble beginnings in the world of frisbee. Rewind 4 years to my sophomore year at Harding. I'd probably played frisbee for about a semester or so after Paul had told me I should go give it a try. I couldn't really throw the disc, I had no idea what a flick was, I didn't know how to force home/away, and I certainly had no clue what a stack was. Before one of the SA ultimate tournaments I got a call or something from Luke, or maybe Will, or maybe someone else about a team called the Fighting Crackers. I figured, why not, I don't really know who I would play with, and it should be fun regardless. Little did I know.

I don't quite know what they saw in me as a Frisbee player at that point, since about the only thing that I had going for me then was that I was still in good shape, meaning I could run and sprint with about anyone. Other than that, the finer skills of frisbee were certainly not something I had mastered. I think that instead of throwing a flick I would rather risk throwing a left-handed backhand pass. I despised playing a man defense and always wanted to play a zone, regardless of the weather or wind. My concept of good movement on the field had not yet gotten away from that of soccer. I recall playing against teams consisting of people like Stephen Lamb, David Jones and Adam Kirkland. I remember losing to that team. But despite all of that, I had a blast playing, and got to learn quite a bit playing in those tournaments.

I mention this because, due to my being on a team with Luke this weekend that is not Apocalypse, he had the brilliant idea that since our team color is blue we should bring out the Fighting Cracker jerseys for one last go-around. It'll be fun to do so, but strange at the same time. I guess you can't stay on a college team forever, but at the same time, those were some of the best guys I could ever hope to play with, and it will be strange playing against the team that I was lucky enough to be on during the formative years. Maybe one of these days all of us "Former Apocalypse Members" can form up again as a team and go play somewhere just for the fun of it. I can't think of a better group of guys to do it with.

As an addition to yesterday's post, if you're looking to know what all the songs are, please go here. And as for gongs at camp (see the comments), I think that they should certainly have a couple at least. And then, instead of the whistle, they can let a couple lucky kids take a good whack at them to get everyone to come in to the ark or wherever else they're needed. Or perhaps, during the 15th song-sing-a-long-posing-for-a-talent skit, someone can just go hit it repeatedly to drown out the...talent?.