Here I go again--

meaning it looks like I'm about to jump in to something that, if I'm lucky, could result in serious injury to my ego. Hopefully not too much physical injury. At least I know a lot more about football than I knew about law (& law school) before I started THAT project, so I'm not signing up in a state of nearly complete ignorance about what it is I'll actually be doing.

Tryouts on Saturday involved a pretty easy warmup and some timed drills. My best 40-yd dash was 9.62 seconds. The fastest woman there ran it in under 7 seconds, but I was in the ballpark of the faster end of the group.

I did pretty well with the kicking considering only two previous kicking practices. The coaches offered some suggestions for increasing my punting distance--I was hitting the ball too high, I need to drop it lower or wait longer before I connect with it.

My standing jumps were pretty good. We were supposed to take three jumps in a row and then the coach measured the total distance traveled. My best of two attempts was 19'4". The record for the day was over 21 feet.

I caught on to the team cheer right away--"rage on three--1, 2, 3, RAGE!" At the end of the tryout the coaches gave us some of the fine print and reminded everyone that this is in fact full-contact TACKLE football (apparently one year somebody went through tryouts and even bought all her gear, then was utterly shocked when the first full-contact practice took place and quit in horror). Even though everybody gets to be on the team who wants to play, I was very impressed by the level of athleticism and skill I observed. There were a few veterans there as well as the new hopefuls. I seriously wondered if I'm really up for this challenge to my physical and mental toughness. But I think it will be good for me. The fastest running and farthest- jumping player trying out was there with her 3-year old son. No wonder she's so fast.