For the First Time

                Footy (Australian-rules football) practice began today.

                Let me tell you about the difficulty of walking without use of your quadriceps.  Forward leg extension at the knee is painful.  Even more difficult is the act of lifting the leg at the hip.  Laying on the ground, trying in vain hope to stretch my quads back into operation, I wanted to cry.  Later, walking down the halls back at res (on-campus residences), I moved slowly enough to admire the pattern in the carpet for the first time.

                I don’t kick things.  Even back in secondary school, when I played gridiron (football), I didn’t kick the ball.  I was a lineman.  I didn’t even touch the ball, except to dive on the occasional fumble.  I guess I used to kick a soccer ball back in primary, but I guess my right leg forgot about this.  And I wouldn’t have believed it until I experienced it myself, but when you kick a ball for an hour or so, you feel it.  You feel it very much.

                And it’s more than just kicking.  We ran.  I’ve been running a few times a week to get in shape for footy conditioning, but I clearly did not do enough.  Plodding along for 30 minutes at a time is not the same thing as 90 minutes of sprints.

                I wonder how I’ll feel when we actually start hitting.

                But I am okay.  I walked off the field (they call it the Pond; apparently it floods when it rains) and am here sitting at my computer.  Tomorrow I will know how okay I really am, but right now, I feel fine.  And actually, the reason I’m sitting at my computer right now is that I feel more than okay.  I realized that when the coach called us together after our last drill, as we were all encouraging each other and giving high-fives, for the first time, I felt like an Aussie.  I felt like I belonged.  I wasn’t surrounded by people asking “oh, Nebraska, it’s cold there right?” or “so, why did you come here?” (a question that always throws me).  My mates and I, we’d made it through a rough day of practice together, as a team, and I was a part of it.  That makes all the impending soreness very much worth it.