London Ultimate Club

Hope you enjoyed my last, very rambling post about the comps. I'd like to write a more thoughtful post about the exam process, but for now I've enjoyed the chance to think about ANYTHING ELSE, so it will have to wait.

Meanwhile, this summer John decided to join the local ultimate frisbee club. He'll probably write a separate post about it later, but for now, I wanted to post some pictures I took at the game two weeks ago (again, trying to learn how to take action shots with the fancy new camera).





















Most of these are in no particular order, and in some cases, the moment I captured was less triumphant than it looks. It was easy to take pictures that made the team look like they were doing something impressive.
For example, I snapped the next three pictures as John caught a frisbee close to where I was standing.





John spies the frisbee.


















The frisbee approaches.














He makes the catch!















Unfortunately, the reason I was able to take such close pictures is that John caught it out of bounds. But like I said, it photographed well.

He was able to receive some good passes that were in bounds, though I'm not sure if any of the actual points were John's.











Note the cows behind the goal post. It's just like rural Indiana!



































I've gone along to a couple of games, once just to be supportive and the second time to take photos, and I've really enjoyed meeting all his teammates. John registered as a free agent and was placed on the New Wednesday Team that normally wears powder blue.





The guy in blue with the leg brace is Chris, another PhD student on John's team. Their facial expressions make it look more like they're running from a UFO.












At some point the team name was "That's What She Said," but this year they've also considered calling themselves "NWT," "Layout Melroy," and "Stinson," or "Stinson's Mom," the last couple referring to two different members of the team whose names they like to shout.










Paul (?) makes a lot of photogenic catches.













It's been fun to see John play a sport since he's lost a ton of weight in the last year. It's like he gets another shot at high school gym class, except now he's leaner, stronger, and generally less awkward.
















He gets a huge kick out of every game, and a good work out, since they run almost constantly for at least an hour.




















Every week at least one teammate asks if I want to play (they're often short on girls and it's co-ed), and every week I say no thank you. I've played ultimate a handful of times, only one of which I enjoyed. I can run (at least I think I can), and I like to be active, but I've only ever really played me-against-me sports like swimming and running. I have no concept of the strategies they use and it just doesn't appeal to me. The good news is, though, ultimate frisbee is actually fun to watch - especially with the camera. The game pictured here went by quickly, but that might have been because everyone wanted to get to the bar to watch Boston vs. Vancouver in what I think was game 4 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Either way, it's been nice to meet new people and for John to put all his super fast running to good use.