A few teams in the area set up a one day women's hat tournament from 1:30 to 6 pm on the Gilman fields. I signed up a few weeks ago because I had really enjoyed the women's draft league I played in for four weeks in the fall. Cree sent me an email telling me about the tournament, and I couldn't resist. The tournament was today, and it was a lot more fun than I expected. I met a lot of different women, and I saw a few that I had met in the draft league earlier this year. It was nice to catch up and meet new people.
Right when I had arrived at the tournament, I receieved a text from an unknown number about going sailing at Emeryville. It was signed "Ryan" and I felt like I knew who it was, but I wasn't sure. I verified, and I found out that my friend Ryan who I met playing ultimate has a 30 foot sailboat and he sails about once a month. I told him I couldn't go with him because of the tournament, but that I'd definitely be interested in going sometime. It sounds like a lot of fun.
The tournament was pretty simple. There were four teams, and it was played round robin style. My team didn't win any games, but we did show a lot of progress and improvement during the three games, which is all that really matters. One girl had never even played ultimate before. She plays a lot of basketball, so she had a few really bad habits as a result, but she tried hard and was actually a good contribution to the game. There were women on our team from Fury and Zeitgeist and Polar Bears, which are all very good teams in the bay area. They told me about a mixer the team have in March for tryouts, so I might go try out for one of the teams.
The last game ended, and Kristen E came up to me and said, Ryan just called, and wanted us to go to dinner with him and his girlfriend. I asked where they planned to go, and then I turned around and Ryan was there. He introduced me to his girlfriend, who is very nice and whose name I forgot because I am terrible with names. It turns out that Kristen lives in Sacramento, so whenever she's in the bay area, she and Ryan make sure to get together for dinner. He knew when the tournament ended and decided to meet us there. Ryan is starting his own ultimate team this summer, and wants me to join. The people he's recruiting are all people I really enjoy playing with, so I am definitely interested. I guess I have a few options for teams to play with this upcoming summer - I'll have to keep networking and find a team I have fun on but also has a good amount of skill and a somewhat steady roster. We ate dinner at Picante, which was very tasty, and I ended up really enjoying myself. Sometimes I avoid social settings like this because it's a noisy restaurant, I can't speak loud enough, I can't keep up with the group, but these guys were really deaf friendly. They asked me to repeat myself if I hadn't been heard (compared to most people just giving me a blank stare and being too "polite" to ask myself to speak louder), they made sure I could keep up with the conversation, and they really included me. I really enjoyed myself, and would go out with them in a heartbeat. Good day!
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