Broomball or Broom Hockey; Either Way, It Was Rough

Today I wanted to take some pictures of things in my room and write about them. The camera I use is out of batteries though, and besides: fuck that camera. It is old and bad. I want a new camera that is good (much better than this one).

Instead, I will tell you about Friday night's Broomball experience.

First of all, I should tell you a little bit about the game. I do not know very much about it to tell the truth. Friday was my first time ever playing it, and I had not heard very much about it prior to last week. It is a game played on an ice rink with sticks that resemble hockey sticks. Instead of having a blade at the bottom, there is a triangular stopper. This tool is called a broom. I assume it is called a broom because it resembles one. We played with a large ball which is about 1/2 the side of a soccer ball if I remember correctly. We wore our sneakers on the ice. The way we played it may not have been very correct according to the official rules, but let me tell you about it. It was like a game of hockey, but with less rules. We could use our hands to swat the ball out of the air, and we could also kick the ball if we desired.

So Pat Ruff asked Useff and I to come join him for a Broomball tournament that the university was having on Friday night. We met him and a student from the dorm where he is an RA at one of the indoor ice rinks on campus. This student, Emilio, would be our goalie. There, we were not sure what we were doing because we basically just showed up. A co-ordinator told us that we had to have eight people on the team, so he gave us four total strangers. Their names were Lei, Kelly, Brad, and Brian. I am not sure if those names are spelled correctly, because I never saw them in writing and had never spoken to these people before the tournament, and I have not seen or spoken to them since. Anyhow, we got all ready to play, which really didn't involve anything. Some of us wore helmets, some did not. We went to another rink to play against our first opponents, and the rink was really slippery. I fell and busted my ass a lot, and for the next two days I was basically just one big bruise because of all this falling. A lot of people were falling. I am still sore in some places. We beat this team 2-0 and we were very proud of ourselves. I was proud that I performed so well in a sport that I did not even know existed. Our next opponents were not so easy. They called themselves an intimidating name which I cannot remember. I gave our team the name The Eggs, which was not very intimidating, but I tried to convince my teammates that it was. Against this second team we played our hearts out, and I gave it all I had, but we lost 0-2. The good thing was that the rink was not nearly as slippery as the first one. The other team was extremely aggressive though, and a few of them were actual hockey players so they knew what they were doing. I didn't realize just how fucking sore I was until the next day when I had trouble climbing a set of steps. Even in spite of our loss and injury (No one really walked away without being hurt), I am still proud of our team The Eggs. We played like champions.

If you want to read more about Broomball, here is a link to the wikipedia entry on it. After reading that article I realize we were playing with eight players, and you are supposed to have only six in an official game. This is okay though.