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Web Exclusives: From the P-Nut Gallery October
9 , 2002:
And now playing in
PAW's corner: By Nate Sellyn '04 Starting this fall semester, I'll be PAW online's new sports columnist. This is the first part of a spectacularly brief overview of my experiences with the five major sports. I will, of course, try to cover far more playing fields than these during the year. By way of introduction, however, you get this: Hockey I grew up in Montreal. Enough said.
Soccer I was a geek in junior high. I remain, to this day, a geek, but in junior high I was an exponentially bigger geek. Other geeks would steal my lunch money from me after my own had been stolen, bullying me with mathematical equations and GameBoy cartridges. I spent more time in the toilet than on it. I took my aunt to the prom because my cousin didn't want to miss her appointment at the dentist. Then I tried out for the soccer team. My town had an extensive community soccer league, and after five years of participation I was adept at appearing occupied/injured whenever my coach scanned the bench for a sub. So, why did I try out for the school team? The past season I had discovered the ultimate form of 'inclusion without participation' — the backup goalie. You were part of the team, but all you had to do was sit around and cheer! I thought I had found my calling. Never had anyone been so cool with so little effort. This coolness, I was sure, would translate into my school life if I could find a way aboard the team. Our junior high coach was a prized student from the 'no pain, no gain' school of athletic training. At rugby tryouts earlier in the year, he had made students run until they vomited, and then crabwalk their final lap across the field. (I had been miraculously unable to participate, due to what the doctor thought might be a hole in my lung. This was authenticated by a hacking cough, which I demonstrated for him several times.) The goalie tryout consisted of a simple drill: All the players line up and blast a ball at goal. Coach watches. Surviving keepers are evaluated, some are kept, many are humiliated. I was last in line. I saw tears, I saw blood, I nearly wet myself in fear. Perhaps half a dozen other prepubescent kids went to their fate ahead of me, and they all seemed, to me at least, fairly impressive. Danny Vokurka, the last victim before me in line, had played for the intercity team during the summer, and he brought down almost every rubber missile they launched at him. And then there was one. Worried that I might not be ridiculed enough, I replaced my industrial-strength glasses with protective goggles, a byproduct of the weekly squash game I played against my mother. The goggles were at least an inch think, designed to withstand both nuclear radiation and wayward squash balls. My brother said they made me look like a homosexual spaceman. My mother said I looked intimidating. I love my mother. I slipped them over my head and wandered into the crease, doing my best to ignore the muffled laughter that surrounded me. The first shot came low, a white leather rabbit trying to escape between my knees. I dropped and gathered it, tossed it aside. But I took too long. The second blast was on me before I could stand, catching me full in the face. My protective goggles shattered, splitting directly between my eyes and flying behind into the net. Their crack brought all action on the field to a halt, a gunshot in goal. Players turned to look at me, the coach paused in mid-command. I looked at their faces, every one praying that I would cry. I looked at the coach, jaw dropped to his tracksuit collar. They waited. "Arrrgh!" I yelled, voice breaking in mid-roar, and clapped my gloves together in triumph. The next shot came, and I was reborn in that goalmouth. My pathetic eyesight barely allowed me to track the ball, and for every one I fell on, four more rolled by me. The coach had seen what we wanted though — a warrior. From that day forward I walked the backup goalie's path to coolness. Well, that and the highway of contact lenses. Baseball When I was 12, I was still hitting tee-ball with the seven-year olds— and they made me play right field. Enough said. Next column: Football and Basketball!
You can reach Nate at nsellyn@Princeton.EDU |
