Things I learned about sports (and lots of gooey sentiments)

I wrote this at the end of last year in honor of fencing and frisbee and how much they've done for me, but I never ended up finishing it. Here it is now, finished and edited... although I'm sure I will add more things to this list as I continue learning things about sports.

Things I've learned from sports from freshman year:

1) It doesn't matter what it is, but do it.

Have you ever loved something so much it hurts? Something you just wanted to throw yourself into completely out of love for the thing and the people and the everything about it? I think a lot of people had at least one of those in high school. For me it was musical theater, and at least for a little while, marching band. Thinking about putting on a show in theater or performing a “golden show” in competition for band made my belly ache just thinking about it, I wanted it so much. All my friends were in band, and my few friends who weren't soon dropped out of my life because I didn't have time to spend with them and all I wanted to talk about was music, anyway. I considered majoring in music my sophomore year. I didn't tell anyone, because I was embarrassed to be considering the prospect when I wasn't really good enough to make it work. But it was an obsession and an addiction and my whole life, and I couldn't imagine not centering my life on music.

I fully intended to join a band in college, but it didn't happen. Somewhere between my two sports and classes and meeting new people and having exciting new experiences, I didn't make time for it. But the full force of my slightly obsessive personality is now fixated on sports. To a certain extent, it doesn't matter what you do – if you have a passion for music, sports, theater, art, fantasy, gay rights, video games, etc etc – all that matters is that you do something and throw yourself into it and love it. I couldn't imagine living without music, but I also love sports and it was easier than I would have thought to give up music by replacing it with frisbee and fencing.

So if I ramble constantly about fencing and tell you fencing jokes and “this one time at a tournament” stories and won't shut up about how boss my frisbee team is, please forgive me. I fell in love.

2) You are capable of so much more than you think. Confidence is everything.

I've run track and cross-country, did marching band, and played frisbee for years. I'm no stranger to exercise. But being on Bella Donna (my frisbee team) has been the most demanding sport I've been a part of. 2 workouts a week, 1 practice a week, 2 weight-lifting sessions a week when we managed it, tournaments every weekend in March and April, and all those nights practicing until midnight in the Shell made for a difficult year. It was difficult with respect to time-management, balancing practice with fencing and classes and homework and studying and sleep and eating and a social life often seemed impossible, and sometimes I slipped up and and fell behind (usually with sleep and studying).

It was difficult physically – I don't think there's a single girl on our team who went uninjured all season. Working out and playing that much take their toll on your body, but it felt like disappointing the team to be injured, so most of us would suck it up and play through minor injuries like pulled muscles and rolled ankles, only taking time out if absolutely necessary. Most days I had 2 hours of fencing practice, an hour break during which I would sometimes but not always get the chance to eat dinner, and then either an hour-and-a-half workout or a 3-hour practice for frisbee. Sometimes I would watch the clock creep closer and closer to midnight, just wishing I could go home and catch up on sleep and rest my aching muscles.

There was a period of time in early spring semester when I didn't put much enthusiasm into either sport, and I'm a little bit ashamed of that now. Because what I've learned is that even when you think you're exhausted, that's just your brain. Your body is a remarkable thing and is way more resilient than you think it is. During your 4^th game on a Sunday of a hard tournament, you can simply convince yourself that you have more in you, and voilà! Somehow it's there. If my girl is running deep, I used to believe that she was faster and let her beat me, but rather recently I've discovered that I'm faster than I thought, and if I go in with a head full of confident arrogance and a heart full of belief in myself, I can almost always beat her. During my 6^th workout in 3 days when I'm feeling worn down and dispirited, I can just tell myself that I'm excited about it and still have plenty of energy, and somehow I always do. Why waste time believing you have limits when your body hasn't given up yet?

This belief in oneself, this confidence, is also a huge factor in fencing. One of my foil mentors (hey Stephen!) likes to tell me I fence too timidly, which cracks me up because I'm an incredibly aggressive fencer as long as I stay in control of the bout. (He is right, though – as soon as the other person takes control of the bout and puts me on defense, I lose confidence and my limited ability to plan ahead.) But I will unashamedly brag about how well I did at club nationals in Tennessee, because I decided I was going to be a boss and scare the crap out of every girl I faced on the strip, and surprisingly it worked! My strategy is to be fast and aggressive and scare them until I hit them with my incredibly large lunge that they really should have parried if they weren't so intimidated. Against better fencers, this wouldn't work at all, but apparently this is good enough for club level fencing.

On a more philosophical note, it is my experience and my belief that people become what you expect them to be. If you treat someone like a criminal and a delinquent, there's a darn good chance they'll act like one. In high school I would get in trouble for breaking rules that I only broke in spirit, like getting disciplined for “ditching class” when I really only ditched school rallies because I hated that we were required to go to them. They had strict rules precisely because they expected us to push the limits and break all of them, and so I did. While on the other extreme, my parents treated me like I was a responsible, independent adult capable of making rational decisions from about age 12 or so. I can't even imagine how horrible it would be to let them down, since they believe that I'm a better person than I really am. So I try to live up to their expectations, and when I fail, it hurts and sometimes I try to hide it. So whatever you want people to be like? Treat them like they already are as kind, responsible, etc as you expect them to be, and hopefully it will push them in the right direction. Expectation is powerful, and I don't know which is more powerful: the effect other people's expectations have on you, or your own. But your own are far easier to hack. So go believe yourself into being good at math, sports, music, languages, and especially people skills. I believe it works for all of these.

3) Your teammates might just be the most influential people you'll meet.

It's hard to just generate confidence on your own though. A lot of us don't believe in ourselves and can't just start with a snap of the fingers. That's where the sidelines come in. On Bella, we really emphasize the importance of the “8^th man on the field”: the players on the sideline. This is useful for practical and strategic reasons (telling the defensive players where the disc is and where they can be to play most effectively, for example) but also to give you the much-needed confidence boost when your fuel tanks are flagging and you don't believe you're fast anymore. You need people to believe in you for you sometimes, and for me that takes the form of my weight-lifting buddy Romy screaming her head off at me on the sidelines telling me “You're so fast, Ikwe! Deeeep! DEEEEEP!”. Or it's our coach Robyn sobbing after a point with too many turnovers to count in the most important game of our season, because she believes in us so much and was so overwhelmed with pride that we stuck it out and won the point. It's standing in a huddle, looking around at the determined faces of your teammates, knowing there is no one you'd rather play with, because we believe in ourselves and each other and we've worked so hard together to learn that trust. Being a part of a team is a powerful feeling. It makes you better AND it's the single most rewarding thing about playing a sport.

I've met so many amazing people through sports. They've inspired me and changed me and I feel incredibly lucky to know them. I was consistently humbled by the dedication and fire of the senior players on Bella (Forty, I'm looking at you) who never seem to lose intensity and are always working to become the best players they can be. My fellow new players learned the same lessons I did this year about time-management and pushing through pain and fatigue, and we've lived the same struggles and figured them out together. As for fencing, well, I owe everything to the senior foilists on the team. We have a coach, but he can't teach us all individually, so it's no exaggeration to say everything I've learned about fencing is thanks to David, Stephen, and Ruby. They gave up so much of their practice time to teach me, and were somehow patient through the frustrations of learning how to treat a thin piece of metal as an extension of your arm which is in turn an extension of the wire springs that are a fencer's legs. And we got to know each other, somehow we all became best friends. I guess fencing attracts a certain kind of personality, quirky and interesting and intelligent and kind. All I know is I could spend all day talking about how cool my fencing friends are, Stephen who's like a brother to me, Victoria who's a 500% nicer version of me, Foil-Mama David, Tommy who crushes lizard skulls in his free time, Sean the adorably neurotic punk, I could go on and on. What a cast of characters. There should be a reality TV show about us. Anyway, I didn't mean to go on and on about my friends because that's not very interesting to read about, but the point of all of this was that when you play sports, you become close with your teammates which is the best way of making friends I've found so far. And I am a very different person thanks to the people I met last year and my relationships with them.

4) You belong on the field.

In organized sports, everyone has a role. In frisbee, you're a handler or a cutter. No matter where you are on the field, you know what your job is. If you're a chaser, you look to open a window deep and then come under either as a continue or as a cut if the shots did not get open. (Yes, I realize this means nothing to you if you don't play frisbee.) On defense you're even more necessary. If it's man-on-man defense, you have to follow your girl, and if you don't do that, in all likelihood she'll score and that point is all your fault. In zone defense you're responsible for an area of the field, and not doing that makes the rest of the defense fall apart. My point is, you are necessary when you're on the field. You can't hang back because you think the other people on your team will do a better job. You know what you need to do and your team is relying on you to do it.

My coach Robyn mentioned an article that I can't seem to find right now talking about how women's sports (and specifically Ultimate) are so important because they teach women to be unafraid of their bodies, unafraid to take up space and be physical and use what they've got. All too often I see girls who try to take up the least amount of space possible. If they're tall, they stoop a little in embarrassment. They weave through crowds where large men usually just walk straight and people move aside for them. I experimented recently with not moving out of my way for people on sidewalks, just to see what would happen. I got ran into a lot and got some surprised looks, and eventually figured out a technique of walking with squared shoulders, head up, and looking people in the eyes that somehow made people step aside for me. This is why girls should play frisbee. Take up space! Box your girl out, and run as aggressively as you can in her space without making it a foul. I saw this at camp this summer too – when girls don't have mirrors for 4 weeks and are forbidden from using makeup or wearing pretty clothes by the circumstances they're in, somehow they become more comfortable with their bodies. They get muscle from canoeing, they get pride from portaging canoes on their head, and they get respect for how hard they work. They're worth what they can carry, what they can do to help, and how they contribute to the group, not what they look like. (Incidentally, one of my favorite parts of being a counselor was getting to break the mirrors off the port-a-potties so they wouldn't see themselves for 4 weeks. 21 years of bad luck here I come!!)

I want everyone to feel like they belong in whatever space they're occupying. Sometimes I'm on the field not knowing where to cut or how to help, but my goal now is to just cut more until I figure out how to do it better. By not participating, you're hurting your team, so get out there and be a presence on the field. You belong in your space. Own it.

So go out and play a sport. You might learn something. I learn something every single practice, and it's an amazing feeling.

Summer

I haven't written at all this summer, and I have a lot of things to write about and don't quite know where to start. I finished freshman year, did lifeguard training, became a Voyageur camp counselor, chilled in Minneapolis and then the North Woods near Minocqua, came home, and went backpacking in the Emigrant Wilderness. It was a summer of laughter, love, learning, and lots of other clichés. I went looking for myself and found me in the woods where I belong. I learned that the most rewarding thing I could be doing is teaching high schoolers how to camp and appreciate the wilderness like I do, teaching them how to take care of themselves, be responsible, and have the confidence and maturity of the young adults they are becoming.

Being a camp counselor was a crazy and wonderful experience. I've always loved French camp, but I love it even more now. It changed my life and gave me a sense of self-worth when I was 14 and didn't love myself, showed me that I had valuable skills and interesting things to learn from interesting people. And that makes it very powerful for me to see that change happening in others. My family knows – when I came home all I could talk about was my campers, how cool they were and how much they learned and how proud I am. It's an intoxicating feeling, especially for someone only a few years older than they are, who's never experienced being a teacher before.

I'm still undecided; I don't have a major yet and don't plan on choosing one soon because I'm still exploring. But if I could be a camp counselor all year round, I would. I'm starting to look at outdoor schools and alternative education programs in the woods, because I believe so strongly in the good it does. I don't want to be a teacher because I don't want to sit in a classroom all day, but I do want to teach kids and see their confidence grow and watch them get better at French, or being responsible, or lighting campfires. We'll see where this takes me, but I've been waiting and waiting to see what I feel called to do, where my passion lies... and if there's anything I'm passionate about, it's this. I struggle with the idea of not doing something more academic, that the child of my brilliant parents “should” be doing, but on the other hand, I know that teaching makes a difference in the world, and in the end that's what I want.

Enough of pondering what to do with my life; I still have time before I have to decide anything. So camp was full of glorious sunrises and sunsets, cold Northern lakes and sun-warmed granite, beaches that disappeared under 5 feet of extra water and trees drowning in the record flooding, learning how to teach, loons, and sleepless nights packing equipment and writing blog posts. (I'm the blogmaster at camp! Here it is: (link) But I'm not responsible for all those 2^nd session posts, so read everything earlier than July 22^nd to get the stuff I worked on!) We had an amazing staff who are all very close to my heart, and amazing kids who worked hard, learned a ton of French, and suffered admirably through mosquitoes, cold nights, broken canoes, and last-minute changes of plan like always happen at Voyageurs. After one week of staff training and four weeks of campers, I left for Minneapolis, hung out with family, and ran my first 5k. I “trained” briefly with my cousin, meaning we went on a total of two runs, and then matched each other neck-and-neck during the whole race, finishing 15^th and 16^th place with the same time of 23:08. (That's a 7:27 mile time, and I was the 3^rd woman to finish! Yes I almost threw up after the race... worth it!) I think 5k is a great distance for me and I'd like to run more of them and improve my time. My dad and Grace ran it too, and did pretty well. My dad finished 2^nd in the 60+ category and was mad at the one 60-year-old who had the nerve to beat him.

Then I headed up to Minocqua with family, and had a week of relaxing at the cabin, running and swimming across the lake every day. My aunt is an amazing cook and spoils us rotten, so even though the cabin sounds like a rustic place, it's actually the height of luxury. Still, I was glad to get home, see friends, and play pickup Frisbee again.

But I can't stay out of the woods for long. I was invited by my good friend Tim to go on an “advanced” backpacking trip in the Emigrant Wilderness with 3 other experienced backpackers. I was the wild card; I had never gone backpacking with any of them before, but Tim assumed I could keep up because of the sports I play and my experiences backpacking and canoeing. What I wasn't used to was being the slowest one of the group. This crew was intense. We took plenty of long breaks, so much so that it felt practically leisurely, but when we were on the trail we hiked fast and covered a lot of terrain. A typical backpacking day that I'd plan for with my family or less experienced friends would be about 7 miles – that sounds short, but miles are different when you're at altitude, have to change elevation, carry a heavy pack, and are on rugged terrain. We were doing 11 mile days and still had so much daylight left over that we'd spend hours just lying in alpine meadows or swimming in granite lakes.

Excerpts from my journal: (August 19) “We broke out of the rocky stark mountains and came upon this beautiful high meadow, a plateau covered in green grass and abundantly strewn with wildflowers – Indian paintbrush, lupin, and many more I didn't recognize. Turning around we had a view of the granite peaks we just climbed, stark against the blue sky, and turning south to where we were headed, we could see a grey thundercloud starting to form. It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, with so many different kinds of beauty juxtaposed. So we hiked into the thundercloud that awaited us....” Fortunately we got our tents up before the skies opened up too much.

(20 August) “It rained during the night and everything was wet, but we were still without water, so we decided to eat breakfast at the next water source and dry out our tents then. So off we went, through a meadow strewn with dew. Everything was in miniature, from the stunted pine trees to the tiny perfect flowers and blades of grass, beaded with water so each was translucent and sparkling in the morning sun. It makes you lose your sense of size, like you're a giant in a world of dwarf plants. Four miles later, we finally stopped to eat breakfast at Deer Lake...” That night there was a beautiful sunset and then a sky so clear and star-strewn that it was hard to pick out constellations because there were too many stars. We stayed up late just looking at the sky and making our own constellations. The next morning there was frost on the ground.

On Thursday we hiked cross-country to Snow Lake, following an unmaintained trail which we lost halfway over a mountain. Going up was fun, hopping from boulder to boulder, and finally standing on top of the peak and seeing the view all the way down the long valley to Huckleberry Lake in the distance, spreading our arms and shouting “I AM ON TOP OF THE WORLD!” into the wind. But the way down the other side was tough on my knees and Kate's and Tim's ankles. So our “short day” didn't feel very short, because hiking cross-country is a horse of a different color.

The last two days were less beautiful and more strenuous. We were above the treeline for much of it, hiking at high altitudes which made our hands puffy and our faces windburned. The wind was enough to drive anyone mad, especially on Friday when we hiked over Big Sam and had to walk with a wide stance and bent knees to avoid being blown off the mountain. Even during the evening while we were cooking dinner at Leavitt Lake the wind howled mercilessly around us, making it a cold and haunting place to be. When it finally died down a couple hours after sunset we were incredibly grateful to be able to sleep in silence and warmth. On Saturday we hiked out of Sonora Pass, and Tim and I hitchhiked back to Kennedy Meadows to get our car. My first experience with hitchhiking was an astonishingly easy one: literally the first car that was going in the right direction stopped to pick us up, two nice old guys who were happy to give us a lift all the way to the parking lot where we left the car.

I feel humbled and accomplished at the same time to have done this 55 mile week with backpackers who could leave me in the dust. I would go again in a heartbeat, but it's a good reminder for me that you can do a lot more than you think you can, and that you're not the most hardcore person out there just because you go camping a lot.

How did summer go by so quickly? I don't feel ready to go back to classes yet. I do feel ready to see my friends in Madison, get back to fencing and back to my frisbee team. But I wasn't ready to leave home. There's some very special people in Sunnyvale who I'm going to miss a lot more than I'd like to admit. So here I am on an airplane somewhere over the middle of the country, sleep-deprived because I stayed up late packing, a little buzzed on caffeine, writing about how great my summer was and confused about whether my eyes are wet from happiness or sadness. All I can say is I hope this semester goes as well as summer did, because this summer was perfect.

Staying Silent

Someone I look up to and respect very much told me when I was fairly young about being groped and dry-humped in the Paris subway, and keeping quiet because of not wanting to make a fuss. I remember saying that I thought that was silly, that I wouldn't hesitate to scream and would turn around and try to punch the slimy bastard. She said something along the lines of “Good for you. A little assertiveness will serve you well, and I'm glad you have no inhibitions about that.” I thought it was silly that anyone would have inhibitions about getting a creep away from you.

Now, I have had a normal amount of interaction with creeps on busses or at frats, though I hesitate to use the word “normal” because normal ought to be zero. But it isn't. “1 out of every 6 women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime” (more stats) and I would be surprised if any of my peers (young college age women) have not had some point been harassed, groped, or otherwise objectified without permission. (Side note: I have also read statistics saying that 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted during their 4 years at college, which is both a higher percentage and a shorter time period than this statistic from RAINN. I don't know which is more accurate, though the discrepancy probably stems from broader or narrower definitions of sexual assault. Either way it's a lot.)

Now, rates of sexual assault have been falling in recent years, which is great, but it remains a huge problem. Look around a classroom full of people, or a supermarket if you're not a student, and realize just how many 1 in 6 is. It also remains a highly unreported problem. 60% of rapes go unreported to the police. Why is this? I can think of several reasons.

1. Even when reported, rapists rarely spend time in jail. Maybe victims feel that it isn't worth it to go through the trouble when they probably won't succeed in putting the rapist behind bars anyway.
2. About 2/3 of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim. Maybe the victims feel that it isn't worth the pain of further destroying whatever relationship they had, or complicating relationships with other friends or family who would have to pick sides. Since the assault already happened, they probably imagine that it's less destructive just to ignore it and not make any more waves, since there's no undoing what has been done.
3. On a related note, many victims probably feel that their assaulter does not deserve the full consequences of being tried for rape, or that their accusation wouldn't hold up in court, since many cases are more like cajoling women into sex rather than outright violence. Many rapists did not intend to harm the victim and did not consider it rape, which is no excuse but means that women are less likely to report men they don't see as malicious.
4. Trauma. It goes without saying that rape or sexual assault can be highly traumatic, and simply not wanting to relive the event could drive people to not report it. Many people deal with trauma by trying to forget that it happened.
5. Most people have this idea of rape being committed by a stranger and being fairly violent, while the vast majority of rapes are not either. Perhaps victims feel they can't talk about it or report it because it falls into the “gray rape” category and is therefore less real than those other mysterious rapes that adhere more to the stereotype (and are very uncommon).

But it seems like there's something more, to be. These are probably valid reasons, and there are probably more obvious ones I haven't thought of. But it also seems to me that sexual assault is one of the most taboo subjects there is, and that reasons for not reporting these incidents run deeper than this.

I theorize that somehow, even though most people don't dare to say it, people blame the victim. You hear about this all the time if you spend as much time on feminist blogs as I do. Google “Slutwalk” to find some examples: all of them are carrying signs with some variation on “Not asking for it.” This is a movement that's gained enough traction that most people will no longer say outright “Well, she was dressed kind of slutty, so what do you expect?” But they still think it. Other women who've had the good fortune not to be assaulted explain their success by what they think they've done right – naturally, humans like to attribute their success to their own actions and not luck, which is why rich people get all defensive if you remind them that they got that way because of the circumstances of their family, education, and other factors outside their control. (“Hey, I Worked Hard to Get What I Have!”) We all caution each other to not drink too much, have someone you trust walk you home, carry mace, and many other pieces of advice that may or may not actually help. If these pieces of advice did work, we would be smart to tell people to do it even though we shouldn't have to protect ourselves this way. But most advice is highly misinformed, assuming that rapists are scary ghetto men who jump out of bushes at night and put a knife to your throat. I wrote earlier about feeling safer walking home alone than with anyone other than a close friend or a whole group of people (link).

So, there's something that keeps women quiet. I think it's partly how society views sexual assault and ends up blaming the victims, and partly the other factors I mentioned earlier. But I still think there's one more thing.

Last night was a big deal for Badger basketball. I don't follow sports, but we made our way into the final four for the first time in a long while, and it was impossible to ignore. Everyone started yelling and running outside. State Street was insane: totally packed with people wearing red, screaming, giving high-fives, climbing stuff, and getting yelled at by the police. I was on State with a group of friends, all girls, and as we pushed our way through the crowd, we all got ass-grabbed by some disrespectful guy thinking with the wrong brain. This isn't the worst thing that could happen by far, and I wasn't shaken up over it. But still, I noticed that my reaction was just to keep walking and say nothing. How interesting. After thinking about it, of course, my reaction was a strong desire to go back and punch the guy in the nuts, but I didn't know who did it and the moment had passed. Why is the natural reaction of even a fiery “assertive” girl like me to stay silent? Why do victims often experience embarrassment and guilt?

I have no idea.

The best thing I've found that sounds right to me is this article by a rape victim who says: “But there’s another reason some women stay silent: Women have internalized the message that if it happened to them they must have at some deep, subconscious level caused, invited, even wanted it to happen.” I don't know how this happened or who gave us this horrible message. It seems pretty inexplicable to me. But it's the only thing that makes sense, given the shame victims carry with them and the stigma attached to being a victim.

I wish I had more concrete answers, and if you do, please share your thoughts. It's just something that puzzles me that I've been thinking about.