Monday Night Lights

Last night my scheduled ultimate game was played at Frank Clair Stadium at Lansdowne Park, home of the local CFL team. It was kind of fun to play under the lights in a proper stadium (no crowd in the stands, of course). Unfortunately, my team got shredded by a bunch of high schoolers, so the fun was limited. The high schoolers are the Canadian Junior champs or something, so they are legitimately good, but still.

Man, my team is not good. The most frustrating thing is that we don't have a single guy on the roster who can throw the long bomb, which severely cramps my co-ed playing style (oh, how I miss you, Ale House). The league here is huge, but the talent pool is shallow, or maybe spread too thin to raise the overall level of play. Plus, the league uses a ladder system to schedule games, meaning your future opponents are determined by results against past opponents. The ladder updates every two weeks, so theoretically, your games should always be pretty evenly matched. But it doesn't seem to be working. Since the ladder kicked in all our games have been lopsided wins or losses. Not a lot of fun no matter which end of the score you're on. Oh well--only a few more games to muddle through until winter shuts us down.

On the bright side, my team went out for beers after the game, and I enjoyed hanging out with them. Five players have kids under 18 months, so there was plenty of baby talk at one end of the table. The other people seemed to be sharing drinking stories. Hmmm. . . The divide in interests was pretty sharp. Anyway, one guy works in the same field I do and gave me some good info on the job market, another is a financial planner who's going to hook us up with a tax advisor so we don't make some expensive mistake due to our border-hopping lifestyle. And one of the drinkers told me about a big wine tasting extravaganza happening in a few weeks that sounds like fun. These are the kinds of connections I was hoping ot make when I signed up to play, so I'll be mellow about the distinct lack of on-field connections that occur during our games.