The Prairie Schooner Blog http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog en 3:33 Sports Short #25 // Quitter by Brooke Randel http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-25-quitter-brooke-randel <div class="field field-name-field-blog-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/sites/default/files/quitter.png" width="300" height="300" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>The first sport I quit was softball. I had been playing since elementary school, but by junior high, everyone had become bigger and stronger. They outgrew me. My bat speed wasn't fast enough, my fielding wasn't fast enough, I wasn't fast enough. I didn't even quit fast enough. The last season I played I got beaned in the head by a foul ball from another game.</p><p>The next sport I quit was basketball. This was the hardest one to quit. I had loved basketball more than anything else. Point came natural to me. Everyone may have been bigger and stronger, but they couldn't ball handle like I could. I could dribble low, weave it between my legs, around my back, around the girl guarding me. But after years spent practicing, scrimmaging, playing, traveling, training and competing, I started to dread it. The fluidity and joy I once felt—the snap of a crisp pass, the swish of a clean shot—was gone. What had been passion became convention. I played because I always played. But the game I loved now felt mechanical, unfun. I spent an entire year working up the courage to quit and then I did. After six years, I finally quit.</p><p>After basketball, I quit lacrosse. That was easy. I went to a large college.</p><p>Just this fall, I quit ultimate frisbee. No one knows yet but me. I liked the sport at first. Frisbee felt familiar, like lacrosse at its very freest, until it felt familiar, like basketball at its most confining. I know what it feels like to be in the zone. It's pure and unforced. Then, there's the slog. Instead of feeling the wind through your ponytail, you have thoughts (one), doubts (two) and frustrations (three, you're out). Nothing is ever good enough. You can always run faster, train harder, be better. But I've found that sometimes I am good enough. I don't need to break myself down, build myself up, rinse and repeat. So then I quit. It's become one of my favorite parts of playing sports. Hopefully I never give it up.</p><hr /><p>Brooke Randel is a short story writer and copywriter living in Philadelphia, PA.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-categories field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above clearfix"><h3 class="field-label">Categories: </h3><ul class="links"><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-0"><a href="/blog-categories/333-sports-shorts" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">3:33 Sports Shorts</a></li></ul></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-social field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><script> if (!document.getElementById("fb-root")) { fb_root = document.createElement("div"); fb_root.id = "fb-root"; document.body.insertBefore(fb_root,document.body.firstChild); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, "script", "facebook-jssdk")); }</script><a class="addthis_button_tweet" tw:count="horizontal" tw:via="theschooner"></a><a class="addthis_button_google_plusone" g:plusone:size="standard"></a><div class="fb-like" data-href="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog.xml" data-send="false" data-width="292" data-show-faces="true" data-action="recommend" data-colorscheme="" ></div><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#username="></script></div></div></div> Mon, 09 May 2016 16:21:25 +0000 Prairie Schooner 2169 at http://prairieschooner.unl.edu http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-25-quitter-brooke-randel#comments 3:33 Sports Short #24 // So Far by Mindy Misener http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-24-so-far-mindy-misener <div class="field field-name-field-blog-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/sites/default/files/rsz_screen_shot_2016-05-09_at_111746_am.jpg" width="300" height="361" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p><em>Today's pair of 3:33 Sports Shorts both concern one's relation to sports as time passes. Mindy Misener's piece below and Brook Randel's piece "Quitter" both explore loss, albeit in interestingly contradictory yet complementary ways. Enjoy!</em></p><hr /><p>I am in first grade and I am running full-tilt after a boy who has—as is the custom—seized and taken off with some girl’s plastic headband. My own teacher steps in front of me, intercepting me.</p><p>"Why are you doing this?” she asks me.</p><p>“If I don’t get them,” I say, “who will?”</p><p align="center">*</p><p>There’s a scrawny, pale boy in my fourth-grade class. We are both on the track team, a connection I treasure. I am an industrious, rule-abiding student; this boy tells dirty jokes when the teacher leaves the room.</p><p>One day in music class, we learn folk dances. I am partnered with the boy. We are instructed to walk in a circle holding hands.</p><p>“This doesn’t mean anything, you know,” he says, before he takes my hand.</p><p>“I know,” I say honestly.</p><p align="center">*</p><p>In high school I race a distance of three point one miles. I run farther and farther distances, mapping new routes through the neighborhood. Each new distance feels both reckless and right.</p><p>I know where the neighborhood boys live, the ones I don’t have <em>official</em> crushes on but have known more or less since I was six and privately think are handsome and funny and have good hearts. When I run I imagine them watching me, and I imagine them seeing in me something I see in myself only when I’m running, and which I can’t exactly describe except to say it has to do with beauty and discovery and an ache I might call loneliness if it didn’t feel so good.</p><p align="center"><strong>*</strong></p><p>The summer before college, I train for college cross-country. I run thrilling new distances: eight miles, ten miles, sometimes more. I go running with one of the neighborhood boys. We are together for only an hour but it seems we have time to say everything. Our conversation is intimate, in that it is personal, and yet he reveals nothing that I don’t somehow know already, that doesn’t sound like an idea that could have started in my own head.</p><p>Less than a month later, he is gone. The work of a few moments. A confounding separation.</p><p align="center"><strong>*</strong></p><p>I’ve lost places, people, comforts, memories. Each loss finds its way into my body as a sort of shape: physical, neurological, an outline only I can trace. I’ve lost the ways in which I once thought, the assumptions that guided my steps through the world. I’ve lost the belief that I could use distance to get to anybody.</p><p align="center">*</p><p>Here is one thing I have. A scribble-scrawl map of miles laid over my old neighborhood. A most intimate drawing of desire.</p><hr /><p>Mindy Misener received an MFA from the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writer's Program in 2014.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-categories field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above clearfix"><h3 class="field-label">Categories: </h3><ul class="links"><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-0"><a href="/blog-categories/333-sports-short" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">3:33 Sports Short</a></li></ul></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-social field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><script> if (!document.getElementById("fb-root")) { fb_root = document.createElement("div"); fb_root.id = "fb-root"; document.body.insertBefore(fb_root,document.body.firstChild); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, "script", "facebook-jssdk")); }</script><a class="addthis_button_tweet" tw:count="horizontal" tw:via="theschooner"></a><a class="addthis_button_google_plusone" g:plusone:size="standard"></a><div class="fb-like" data-href="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog.xml" data-send="false" data-width="292" data-show-faces="true" data-action="recommend" data-colorscheme="" ></div><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#username="></script></div></div></div> Mon, 09 May 2016 16:15:29 +0000 Prairie Schooner 2168 at http://prairieschooner.unl.edu http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-24-so-far-mindy-misener#comments 3:33 Sports Short #23 // “Mad Man” Pondo by Dylan D. Debelis http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-23-%E2%80%9Cmad-man%E2%80%9D-pondo-dylan-d-debelis <div class="field field-name-field-blog-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/sites/default/files/100801356122616.jpg" width="200" height="200" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Screams. Drowned out by the weedwacker whirr slicing skin off “sick” Nick Mondo’s chest.</p><p>Light-tube graveyard. Florescent ghosts lodging themselves inside the gummy throats and wounds from barbed wire that replaced the ring ropes.</p><p>I called in sick to school more than once to stay home and watch Cage of Death matches.</p><p>Looking back on my skinny arms I’m not sure what drew the lines in like fish hooks through my eyes.</p><p>How far the knee will bend before the bone pokes through.</p><p>Two bodies, just over forty years between the two of them, sticking their veins with tacks and glass for a fifteen hundred person sellout crowd in a high school gym.</p><p>The reverence of violence. When his skull cracked against the concrete I heard the crowd let out a gasp of solemn prayer.</p><hr /><p>Dylan D. Debelis , a founding editor of Pelorus Press [PelorusPress.org] is a publisher, poet, performer, chaplain, and minister based out of New York City. A candidate for Unitarian Universalist Ministry, Dylan embodies his faith in praxis through his pastoral care and social justice activism. Dylan has been published in more than twenty Literary Magazines and Reviews including the Buddhist Poetry Review, Peaches Lit Magazine, and Carbon Culture Review.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-categories field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above clearfix"><h3 class="field-label">Categories: </h3><ul class="links"><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-0"><a href="/blog-categories/333-sports-shorts" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">3:33 Sports Shorts</a></li></ul></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-social field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><script> if (!document.getElementById("fb-root")) { fb_root = document.createElement("div"); fb_root.id = "fb-root"; document.body.insertBefore(fb_root,document.body.firstChild); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, "script", "facebook-jssdk")); }</script><a class="addthis_button_tweet" tw:count="horizontal" tw:via="theschooner"></a><a class="addthis_button_google_plusone" g:plusone:size="standard"></a><div class="fb-like" data-href="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog.xml" data-send="false" data-width="292" data-show-faces="true" data-action="recommend" data-colorscheme="" ></div><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#username="></script></div></div></div> Thu, 05 May 2016 21:33:26 +0000 Prairie Schooner 2167 at http://prairieschooner.unl.edu http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-23-%E2%80%9Cmad-man%E2%80%9D-pondo-dylan-d-debelis#comments 3:33 Sports Short #22 // Foil by Ann E. Michael http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-22-foil-ann-e-michael <div class="field field-name-field-blog-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/sites/default/files/200fencing_foil_target2.png" width="219" height="200" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Today's duo of Sports Shorts both share formal qualities insofar as both are short, lyric, meditative bursts on sports quite different from one another: fencing and professional wrestling. Below is Ann E. Michael on the former, click here for Dylan D. Debelis on the latter.</p><hr /><p>Foil once meant the material one wraps leftovers in. Then my family, myself excluded, took up fencing. This is what I loved: the jargon of the sport. Strip, lunge, parry, riposte, flèche, arrêt, lamé, plastron, disengage, off-target or, god forbid, corps-à-corps—attack, attack, attack. Arcane-seeming, so damned French, not a team sport, it fit my children’s temperaments. Speed and reflexes, the need for quick eyes; I never did develop the acuity necessary for a fine understanding of the bouts but sat with parents and coaches engaged in the weave and leap occurring on the piste. I read them too many fairy tales, I thought to myself; of course they became enamored with swordplay. But I could not deny the grace, the fluidity of slender blades thrust and recoiled, whip-like, as youthful bodies evaded one another, curved in air. And the call of the directeur: touché.</p><hr /><p>Ann E. Michael is a poet, essayist, librettist, educator and author of <em>Water-Rites</em>, among other poetry collections. Her poems and essays have appeared in <em>Poem</em>, <em>Natural Bridge</em>, <em>Ninth Letter</em>, <em>The Comstock Review</em>, <em>Diner</em>, <em>Sentence</em>, <em>Slant</em>, <em>ISLE</em>, <em>The Writer’s Chronicle, </em>and others.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-categories field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above clearfix"><h3 class="field-label">Categories: </h3><ul class="links"><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-0"><a href="/blog-categories/333-sports-shorts" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">3:33 Sports Shorts</a></li></ul></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-social field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><script> if (!document.getElementById("fb-root")) { fb_root = document.createElement("div"); fb_root.id = "fb-root"; document.body.insertBefore(fb_root,document.body.firstChild); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, "script", "facebook-jssdk")); }</script><a class="addthis_button_tweet" tw:count="horizontal" tw:via="theschooner"></a><a class="addthis_button_google_plusone" g:plusone:size="standard"></a><div class="fb-like" data-href="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog.xml" data-send="false" data-width="292" data-show-faces="true" data-action="recommend" data-colorscheme="" ></div><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#username="></script></div></div></div> Thu, 05 May 2016 21:23:02 +0000 Prairie Schooner 2166 at http://prairieschooner.unl.edu http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-22-foil-ann-e-michael#comments 3:33 Sports Short #21 // Pick Up Soccer in the City by Rob Jacklosky http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-21-pick-soccer-city-rob-jacklosky <div class="field field-name-field-blog-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/sites/default/files/rsz_event_17151469.jpg" width="300" height="207" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Seven years ago, six strangers met in the "dust bowl" of Central Park on a hot Saturday morning to kick a soccer ball around. The woman who organized this "Meet Up" was named Julie. It was called the "The Manhattan (Beginning) Pick-Up Soccer Meetup." Others in attendance that day and the succeeding Saturdays were Dale, Paul, and Simon. Like other Meet Ups organized through Meet Up.com, these people had nothing other than soccer in common, and affiliated randomly on the basis of a whim. They somehow found the Meet Up post, paid two dollars and met at the corner of Central Park West to see what was up.</p><p>Since that time, those in attendance have organized Meet Ups in Queens, Bronx and all over Manhattan. They have names like “NYC Co-ed Soccer” (6400 members); "Manhattan-International-Co-Ed Soccer" (3400 members) and "Manhattan Co-ed Soccer" (2400 members). Rules evolved and "regulars" came to know each other through these permanent floating soccer games. This is not a league. There are no uniforms, and until a few summers in, there were no tournaments or win-loss records. The only organization it involves is the organizer securing permits for the city parks, but the cast of characters and teams are week-to-week improvisation. Games (three thirty minute games between rotating teams) are posted by organizers and co-organizers. Players rsvp, are sorted into teams based on ability, and show up as their schedules permit. Prices have risen from that original $2 to $6 or $8---still a bargain.</p><p>Players are men and women, all ages, all skill levels, and come from all backgrounds. I found that just as in the novel <em>Netherland</em>, about a similar cricket culture, lawyers and financial analysts play with laborers, restaurant workers and recent arrivals from Britain, South Africa, and Argentina. Here, the roster of nations would include Brazil, Mexico, Italy and Guyana.</p><p>There are many soccer leagues in the city, and other Soccer Meet Ups: "Better Than A Gerbil Wheel" is a long standing one. But many of the pick-up soccer games that proliferate on MeetUp.com now are direct descendants of that first Saturday morning. They are, as the names suggest, Co-Ed and International in character and emphasis casual, easy-going play: "No Slide Tackling!" They play through the winter, sometimes shoveling the snow off the field before the day's games began.</p><p>Despite the easy-going ethos that typifies all of the pick-up soccer Meet Ups no matter the borough (the Bronx Meet Up is especially affirming), a feud is what precipitated the splintering of that first group into many. It was a disagreement over the ratio of beginner instruction vs. actual play that caused Dale and Paul to move on to their own Meet Ups. But once those original players fractured and spun off to different boroughs, a self-sustaining, ever-growing good-natured soccer culture of "Soccerheads" took root across the city.</p><p>It is a culture that is affirming and supportive and deceptively gentle. In fact, when I played a game outside the structure of this Meet Up web, I broke a finger: upended by a rough challenge that I was not expecting. Pick-up soccer absent the Meet-Up ethos, I learned, can be dangerous. But when the metal pins came out of the finger, I returned to soccer---but the gentle Meet Up soccer that was apparently my speed, now.</p><p>Let's be clear: I am not what you would call "good." I am old---44 when all this started, and 51 now. I am an English professor whose best days--never all that good-- were on a High School playing field. I am not very "skilled on the ball." When I have what I think is a moment of creativity and make what I believe to be a deft pass to the corner flag, my Brazilian-teammate-for-the-day may look at me, shake his head, and say "That's <em>never</em> going to happen." And when, after $8,000 of surgery and two months of recovery, I was eager to get back on <em>the pitch</em>, and my wife asked "Why?" I couldn't exactly say.</p><p>But here’s a theory. English Premiere League commentators talk about “finding Joy,” as in “Arsenal is finding no Joy down the right wing today.” Joy is in short supply in adult recreation. I’ve run a lot of road races (four marathons, five half-marathons, and lots and lots of shorter races), and there’s no such thing as runner’s high, in my experience. I’m slow and it’s hard. I’m even a member of a local running club, where there’s some comradery, but even in a group, running is private, and often, pretty grim. So, it might have something to do with being able to (for 30 or 90 minutes) forget yourself, and become another person: not a professor, not 51, and capable of competing, collaborating, assisting, and given a chance or half-chance, of scoring. I wouldn’t say this out loud, at least not to my wife. (I should probably look into that.) I am a little ashamed of “finding Joy down that right wing” on a random Saturday on a small field. on 135<sup>th</sup> Street and Amsterdam Avenue.</p><hr /><p>Rob Jacklosky has been published in McSweeney's Internet Tendency (where he was a columnist, writing a series of dispatches over two years); Sonora Review and Dappled Things. He was a top-ten finalist in the Esquire Short Short Fiction Contest, judged by Colum McCann.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-categories field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above clearfix"><h3 class="field-label">Categories: </h3><ul class="links"><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-0"><a href="/blog-categories/333-sports-shorts" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">3:33 Sports Shorts</a></li></ul></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-social field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><script> if (!document.getElementById("fb-root")) { fb_root = document.createElement("div"); fb_root.id = "fb-root"; document.body.insertBefore(fb_root,document.body.firstChild); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, "script", "facebook-jssdk")); }</script><a class="addthis_button_tweet" tw:count="horizontal" tw:via="theschooner"></a><a class="addthis_button_google_plusone" g:plusone:size="standard"></a><div class="fb-like" data-href="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog.xml" data-send="false" data-width="292" data-show-faces="true" data-action="recommend" data-colorscheme="" ></div><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#username="></script></div></div></div> Wed, 04 May 2016 23:27:55 +0000 Prairie Schooner 2164 at http://prairieschooner.unl.edu http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-21-pick-soccer-city-rob-jacklosky#comments 3:33 Sports Short #20 // Twenty Years of Tango by Tariq al Haydar http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-20-twenty-years-tango-tariq-al-haydar <div class="field field-name-field-blog-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/sites/default/files/diego-maradona-01.jpg" width="234" height="234" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p><em>Today's pair of 3:33 Sports Shorts are both about the most popular sport in the world: <span>fùtbol, or, as we more commonly call it, soccer. Below is a post by </span>Tariq al Haydar about how a Saudi winds up being a fan of Aregentina's soccer team. Click here for Rob Jacklosky on playing pick up soccer in New York City.</em></p><hr /><p>I’m a Saudi who loves soccer but hates the Saudi national team. I started rooting for Argentina in the early nineties, when the great Diego Maradona’s career was tiptoeing toward its twilight. Sometimes, I tell people that Maradona seduced me into loving Argentina, but that’s a lie. I fell in love with Argentina because of a video game. Pixelated players with fictional names: Fuerte, Domingo, Repala, Capitale. My cousin gave his fictional Germans nicknames like “Son of Satan” and “Hell’s Messenger.” To this day, I can’t stand Germany.</p><p>My bond with fake Argentina carried over into real life. Before the second round match against England at the 1998 World Cup, my stomach clenched. When Gabriel Batistuta wept on the bench in 2002, I threw the remote at the wall. For more than twenty years, Argentina won nothing. Argentina has given me nothing but pain. Insane coaches. Players with unfulfilled genius. Exiting World Cups via the lottery of penalty shootouts.</p><p>For more than twenty years, Argentina never got past the quarterfinals of a World Cup. Then, in 2014, they reached the Final. I had converted my brother into a fake Argentine. Friends who couldn’t care less about the whole of South America came to our house and painted their faces white and sky blue, just for the hell of it. The game was scoreless for 113 minutes. When the winning goal finally came, it was a German who scored it. Fucking Germans.</p><hr /><p>Tariq al Haydar's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Normal School, Down & Out, Crab Orchard Review, The Los Angeles Review and others. He is an assistant professor of English at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-categories field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above clearfix"><h3 class="field-label">Categories: </h3><ul class="links"><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-0"><a href="/blog-categories/333-sports-shorts" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">3:33 Sports Shorts</a></li></ul></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-social field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><script> if (!document.getElementById("fb-root")) { fb_root = document.createElement("div"); fb_root.id = "fb-root"; document.body.insertBefore(fb_root,document.body.firstChild); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, "script", "facebook-jssdk")); }</script><a class="addthis_button_tweet" tw:count="horizontal" tw:via="theschooner"></a><a class="addthis_button_google_plusone" g:plusone:size="standard"></a><div class="fb-like" data-href="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog.xml" data-send="false" data-width="292" data-show-faces="true" data-action="recommend" data-colorscheme="" ></div><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#username="></script></div></div></div> Wed, 04 May 2016 23:23:35 +0000 Prairie Schooner 2163 at http://prairieschooner.unl.edu http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-20-twenty-years-tango-tariq-al-haydar#comments 3:33 Sports Short #19 // Sixth Man by Nick Ripatrazone http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-19-sixth-man-nick-ripatrazone <div class="field field-name-field-blog-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/sites/default/files/10915340_405944.jpg" width="300" height="294" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Havlicek, McHale, Walton. Sundays meant 10:30 mass at Our Lady of Mercy, then our family cramped on living room couches, watching the NBA on CBS throughout the afternoon. The Celtics were our team, Boston Garden my home, and my dream was to step on that parquet. I hated the flashy Lakers. Jack Nicholson was an asshole in <em>The Shining</em> but he was even worse courtside. I preferred Bird and Parrish over Worthy and Johnson. I was raised to love the Celtics.</p><p>My father and brothers taught me about John Havlicek and his legendary steal against the 76ers. Havlicek proved that the bench had been given a bad name. My father, who played football at Holy Cross a few years after Bob Cousy played basketball, said Cousy thought the sixth man was the most important player on any team. While playing for the Celtics, Cousy’s sixth was Frank Ramsay; Tom Meschery called Ramsey “the first designed shooter off the bench in NBA history.” The Celtics considered the bench essential and necessary. Benches were meant to be deep, not thin; full of reserves, not rejects. Red Auerbach agreed, of course, and for me the Celtics have always been synonymous with planning and patience.</p><p>This was the opposite of my earliest memories of sport: Sunday afternoons watching my brother play football for the University of Delaware. 22 helmeted, shadowy figures hulking across faded hash marks, slow-motion effigies from NFL Films. Only years later did I discover the finely crafted, thick packets of Blue Hens plays in his bedroom closet. I grew to embrace the idea that sport was possibly more parts mind than body, that hustle needed to be complemented with knowledge. The sixth man was the ultimate synthesis: the not-so secret weapon, the fresh legs, the rested body.</p><p>The sixth man, at least for the Celtics, ensured the game was never finished until the final second disappeared from the clock. Yet the Celtics do not own the concept. John Wooden recruited players to specifically serve as sixth men. Mike Krzyzewski considers the Cameron Crazies Duke’s sixth man—as do most visiting teams. Slightly less intimidating is the “Sixth Man,” the fans at Stanford’s Maples Pavilion. The NBA gives the Sixth Man of the Year award, beginning in 1982 with Bobby Jones, an honor McHale, Ricky Pierce, and Detlef Schrempf have all won twice.</p><p>Havlicek is not the only sixth man to hold center stage. Whose dunk capped Kentucky’s 1978 NCAA championship over Duke? Sixth man James Lee. Sixth men evolve; Kobe Bryant was runner-up for the league’s award in 1998. He is no longer a sixth man. Bill Walton won the award in 1986; eight years prior he was MVP of the entire league. Sixth men also revert, but usually for good purpose.</p><p>Poet Edward Hirsch has lamented that though “there is an enormous literature in American poetry related to baseball, because it’s pastoral,” much less exists about basketball. Hirsch is certainly aware of the Midwestern basketball archetype, from the cinematic <em>Hoosiers</em> to the storied grassroots teams from Kentucky and Indiana that reeled across panoramic screens at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Basketball, in fact, lives and breathes apocrypha: from Magic Johnson’s claims of shoveling a row of snow from his hoop in Lansing to the fact that no other sport sustains such a healthy pickup existence. The sixth man could, and should, be a romanticized archetype.</p><p><em>The Sixth Man</em> (1996) is one of the movies Roger Ebert “hated, hated, hated,” nothing but a “paint-by-the-numbers sports movie.” The sixth man in the movie is the helpful ghost of a recently deceased player: supernatural bench assistance. Chris Ballard, in <em>Hoops Nation</em>, relates “The Sixth Man Club . . . a group of Boca [Raton] ballplayers, aged twenty-nine to forty-five, who gather at local gyms four times a week, all year round, to play no-bullshit basketball.” The sixth man is the ironic underdog: good enough to start, humble enough to sit. It is nice to have your name announced from the rafters during the opening lineup, but I doubt Kevin McHale cared. He seemed to play more than some starters and even Larry Bird gushed that the long-limbed McHale was essential to the Celtics’ championships during the decade. In basketball, five, it seems, is never enough.</p><hr /><p>Nick Ripatrazone is a staff writer for <em>The Millions</em>, and has written for <em>The Atlantic</em>, <em>Esquire</em>, <em>The Sewanee Review</em>, <em>The Kenyon Review</em>, <em>Prairie Schooner</em>, and elsewhere.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-categories field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above clearfix"><h3 class="field-label">Categories: </h3><ul class="links"><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-0"><a href="/blog-categories/333-sports-shorts" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">3:33 Sports Shorts</a></li></ul></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-social field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><script> if (!document.getElementById("fb-root")) { fb_root = document.createElement("div"); fb_root.id = "fb-root"; document.body.insertBefore(fb_root,document.body.firstChild); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, "script", "facebook-jssdk")); }</script><a class="addthis_button_tweet" tw:count="horizontal" tw:via="theschooner"></a><a class="addthis_button_google_plusone" g:plusone:size="standard"></a><div class="fb-like" data-href="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog.xml" data-send="false" data-width="292" data-show-faces="true" data-action="recommend" data-colorscheme="" ></div><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#username="></script></div></div></div> Tue, 03 May 2016 22:01:26 +0000 Prairie Schooner 2162 at http://prairieschooner.unl.edu http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-19-sixth-man-nick-ripatrazone#comments 3:33 Sports Short #18 // Green Monster by Marissa Landrigan http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-18-green-monster-marissa-landrigan <div class="field field-name-field-blog-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/sites/default/files/rsz_156079118_6560c8bd33_z.jpg" width="300" height="200" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p><em>Today's duo of 3:33 Sports Shorts share a geographical affinity... both relate to Boston, Massachusetts, one of the truly great American sports cities. Marissa Landrigan's piece below gives us a first person account of just what it's like to be in Boston's Fenway Park. Click here for Nick Ripatrazone's piece about Boston Celtics Sixth Man John Havlicek.</em></p><hr /><p>The only time I’ve ever come close to getting punched in the face was at Fenway Park. I was somewhere around twelve or thirteen, on one of my family’s regular summer Saturday outings to see the Sox play. The air was heavy, thick with humidity, and smelled of hot dogs. My father’s clear plastic cup of beer nearly melting in his hand, my ears buzzing with the electric hum of the crowd’s cheers, the drumbeat of stadium anthems a constant drone.</p><p>I don’t remember the play, but one of the umpires made a call against the Red Sox and the crowd turned on him, booing and shouting curses, a mob’s mutual anger stemming from singular devotion to the team. I had just started working that summer or the last as a referee in the youth soccer league, and felt a thoroughly unpopular affinity towards officials, so as the crowd died down, I shouted something along the lines of <em>don’t feel bad about yourself, ump, that was a good call.</em></p><p>I felt a hand on my shoulder spinning me around. Suddenly, I was facing a twenty-something guy, Sox cap on, beer in hand, as he bent over at the waist to bring his face close to mine, shout-slurring <em>the fuck you talkin’ about</em>? Luckily, my father interfered, less-than-gently removing the man’s hand from my shoulder and bringing his own face equally close, hissing <em>she’s thirteen years old jackass</em>. My father put his big arm around me, drawing me into his side and bending down to kiss the top of my head. <em>It’s ok, sweetie</em>, he whispered, <em>just ignore him. And maybe don’t cheer for the umps.</em></p><hr /><p><em>Marissa Landrigan's work has appeared </em>in <em>Creative Nonfiction</em>, <em>The Rumpus</em>, <em>Guernica</em>, <em>Orion</em>,<em> Salon</em>, <em>The Atlantic</em>, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Writing at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-categories field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above clearfix"><h3 class="field-label">Categories: </h3><ul class="links"><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-0"><a href="/blog-categories/333-sports-shorts" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">3:33 Sports Shorts</a></li></ul></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-social field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><script> if (!document.getElementById("fb-root")) { fb_root = document.createElement("div"); fb_root.id = "fb-root"; document.body.insertBefore(fb_root,document.body.firstChild); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, "script", "facebook-jssdk")); }</script><a class="addthis_button_tweet" tw:count="horizontal" tw:via="theschooner"></a><a class="addthis_button_google_plusone" g:plusone:size="standard"></a><div class="fb-like" data-href="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog.xml" data-send="false" data-width="292" data-show-faces="true" data-action="recommend" data-colorscheme="" ></div><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#username="></script></div></div></div> Tue, 03 May 2016 21:57:26 +0000 Prairie Schooner 2161 at http://prairieschooner.unl.edu http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-18-green-monster-marissa-landrigan#comments 3:33 Sports Short #17 // On Saturday Night’s Coin Flip, Cardinals 26, Packers 20 by Rob Stephens http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-17-saturday-night%E2%80%99s-coin-flip-cardinals-26-packers-20-rob-stephens <div class="field field-name-field-blog-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/sites/default/files/imrs.php_.jpg" width="300" height="212" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Modern athletes stretch their bodies upon an anvil, the spectators raising the scalpel, the clamps, the hammer to destroy that body, a reverse transubstantiation in which the body turns into spiritual nourishment for the spectators, their bodies an oozed opiate leaking into the stands and through the TV. The sporting event bills skill as the deciding factor in a match between the bodies, and that skill is a measure of the body’s malleability as the athlete dashes, hops, throws, catches, crushes, or sways. Football players cover this malleability with the plastic and styrofoam of their pads, and so we demand more brutality from them to expose the body for an hour.</p><p>When that hour fails to fully expose the football players’ bodies, we turn instead to the coin flip, to decide who will get the first opportunity to win, to crush themselves into the painted field in what we deem “sudden death.” The winner of the flip gains agency in the form of the ball, which they must protect like bulls carrying postage.</p><p>And then somehow the referees fucks up the seemingly unfuckupable, the coin flip, as we saw Saturday night during the Cardinals-Packers game when the referee tossed the coin, it landed on heads giving the Cardinals the ball. The referee claimed the coin didn’t “flip,” so he reflips it, and this time the coin spins like a whirligig.</p><p>What if the coin flipped tails the second time and the Packers got the ball? The guardians of the game would have to reconceptualize the ritual for the spectators, to remind us that the we are all slave to the rules, which make the body more beautiful and create the game that is our opiate. And these rules include the skill of properly flipping a coin, which the referee was demonstrating for us.</p><p>Our favorite athlete stands at the podium defeated, as Aaron Rodgers did Saturday night, and we look at the cracks in his face as he must explain defeat, explain why his body could not stretch as we needed even after he threw an aorta out of his arm. He will mention but cannot blame the coin toss because he too expected more from his body.</p><hr /><p>Rop Stephens's nonfiction has previously appeared in Entropy, and his poetry has been published in journals such as Copper Nickel, Epoch, and Poetry Quarterly.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-categories field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above clearfix"><h3 class="field-label">Categories: </h3><ul class="links"><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-0"><a href="/blog-categories/333-sports-shorts" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">3:33 Sports Shorts</a></li></ul></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-social field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><script> if (!document.getElementById("fb-root")) { fb_root = document.createElement("div"); fb_root.id = "fb-root"; document.body.insertBefore(fb_root,document.body.firstChild); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, "script", "facebook-jssdk")); }</script><a class="addthis_button_tweet" tw:count="horizontal" tw:via="theschooner"></a><a class="addthis_button_google_plusone" g:plusone:size="standard"></a><div class="fb-like" data-href="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog.xml" data-send="false" data-width="292" data-show-faces="true" data-action="recommend" data-colorscheme="" ></div><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#username="></script></div></div></div> Mon, 02 May 2016 22:56:17 +0000 Prairie Schooner 2160 at http://prairieschooner.unl.edu http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-17-saturday-night%E2%80%99s-coin-flip-cardinals-26-packers-20-rob-stephens#comments 3:33 Sports Short #16 // Sports are Fun? by Theressa Slind http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-16-sports-are-fun-theressa-slind <div class="field field-name-field-blog-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/sites/default/files/rsz_sports-are-fun_large.jpg" width="300" height="152" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p><em>The 3:33 Sports Shorts are back! We're kicking off this week with two posts that explore one of sports' most consistent bedfellows: anger! In this post Theressa Slind talks about raising a daughter who plays sports for *gasp*... fun. <a href="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-17-saturday-night%E2%80%99s-coin-flip-cardinals-26-packers-20-rob-stephens" rel="nofollow">Click here</a> to read Rob Stephens's post about the (occasionally) rigteous anger that sports fans direct at referees.</em></p><hr /><p>I twitch as my daughter hovers, bouncing from one leg to the other, at the edge of the four-on-four soccer scrum. I want to shout “Get in there! Get the ball!”, but she’s only six, this is community association soccer, and there are other adults present. Plus, she’s being the polite girl we’ve taught her to be, respecting her peers’ boundaries, trying not to hurt, staying safe, sharing. “Kill ’em!” is the phrase that comes to mind. At least she’s not the girl with a fist-full of dandelions, twirling at the other end of the field.</p><p>What to offer her in terms of sport? My partner and I both grew up in rural Saskatchewan. The only organized sports in the winter revolved around the rink: hockey, figure skating, curling. In the spring we played ball, which meant baseball. In the summer I swam in a lake and he golfed. Don’t think country club. And of course there was the unorganized Wild West of the school playground. Strangely, soccer was a winter sport, the field snow-packed and borderless, the rules flexible. We now live in a city with a comparatively infinite choice of sports in which to enroll our girl, and we are overwhelmed, falling back on the principles of the crowd (soccer), proximity to home (gymnastics), and survival (swimming lessons). </p><p>But we both played sports fiercely, passionately. I remember my gym teacher pointing me out to the rest of the class, still sprawled after sacrificing my body to defend the net in floor hockey. “Look at Theressa, everyone. That’s the kind of effort I want to see, people!” And my partner has been known to engage in the odd hockey fight. How did we create this non-competitive little girl? She seems to be having fun. Is fun really the point?</p><p>Our daughter emphasizes the comedy and drama in sport. In her gymnastics class, in lieu of controlled landings, she prefers the dramatic flop and groan. She fakes extreme fatigue when she’s bored, panting and swaying, like a loose-limbed drunk. She’ll excel at the soccer dive. And then there’s the sheer joy of jumping and running when your body is new and fit. “But Mommy, you can’t run,” she said me one day. <em>Oh, yeah? I’ll beat you in a foot race, twerp.</em></p><p>And I find her sporting life funny, too, even as I expect her to take it seriously. There is no better physical comedy than at the end of a community soccer game when the entire roster of both teams tumble onto the field and buzz en masse around a ball. Sometimes the ball squirts out of the pack and comes to rest before any of the players notice.</p><p>So, for now, I enjoy children’s sport for its comedic potential. Reason enough to play. Reason enough to have a kid, really. For me, sport was life or death; for her, sport is fun: <em>let’s play</em> rather than <em>kill ’em</em>. Crazy.</p><hr /><p>Theressa Slind is a librarian and beginning writer from Saskatoon, Canada. Her fiction has appeared in <em>Grain</em> and <em>paperplates</em>.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-categories field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above clearfix"><h3 class="field-label">Categories: </h3><ul class="links"><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-0"><a href="/blog-categories/333-sports-short" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">3:33 Sports Short</a></li></ul></div><div class="field field-name-field-blog-social field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><script> if (!document.getElementById("fb-root")) { fb_root = document.createElement("div"); fb_root.id = "fb-root"; document.body.insertBefore(fb_root,document.body.firstChild); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, "script", "facebook-jssdk")); }</script><a class="addthis_button_tweet" tw:count="horizontal" tw:via="theschooner"></a><a class="addthis_button_google_plusone" g:plusone:size="standard"></a><div class="fb-like" data-href="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog.xml" data-send="false" data-width="292" data-show-faces="true" data-action="recommend" data-colorscheme="" ></div><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#username="></script></div></div></div> Mon, 02 May 2016 22:44:54 +0000 Prairie Schooner 2159 at http://prairieschooner.unl.edu http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/333-sports-short-16-sports-are-fun-theressa-slind#comments