frisbee
I just typed this out as a reply to Jenny in my other post, and it was too long, so I'm posting it here, because I need to vent, and I know at least one or two other people who read this and play frisbee and will understand.
I'm marginally better now, except that some stuff happened at our second frisbee game that really left me pissed off. Basically our second team had three people there at 2. The people we'd just played were willing to hang around to scrimage, so we asked if they had other people coming. They said they hoped so, didn't seem to know. We said we'd wait about ten minutes to see if they were going to have a team. They still didn't, but refused to forfeit & scrimage. They said we could assess a point every ten minutes but that they wanted to start playing right away (we had just finished a game with only one sub), so we should scrimage until 2:30, at which point if they had enough people we could assess three points and start playing. Our captain, who really doesn't know ultimate rules, has never played in wafc before, and hasn't shown up or done anything he's responsible for as captain in a couple of weeks (he wasn't even there for the first half of our first game), agreed at 2:25 or later that we could start playing and we'd start two points up. They had 6 guys and one woman - so still no full team. It's weekend league and friendly, so we said okay, but we did mention that we had two women, and they said if we wanted to play 5-2 they were willing to play with only 6 on the field. We started out scoring well, but since most of our team has gone AWOL, we had two guys who'd literally never played before playing with us, and the other team started scoring and pulled ahead to 8-6 at the half. We were still tired from our previous game, and frustrated because we'd lost it because of a lack of subs (we've beaten both these teams before easily), so our playing suffered, they ended up doing pretty well. During one point, their woman, who I was covering, got open several times, including in the end zone, and finally just walked off the field and said "When you're willing to pass to me, I'll come back on the field." She was completely right, and they ignored her - didn't call a time, which they had, to work things out, didn't apologize to her, just kept playing with 6 guys. At the end of the point, when they didn't talk to her and work things out, she packed up and left. At this point, they had 7 men and no women, and our captain basically refused to let us play 5-2 all game (meaning the women were getting about 50% play time, and the guys about 90% - and the woman on our team who wasn't me is very good, much better than the two guys who'd never played before). Since it's a coed league, I was pretty angry, especially since we'd done them a lot of favors throughout the game so that they could play, so I said that if they were going to have no women, they should only be playing with 5 men on the field, because they didn't have a legal team, and the reason they had no women wasn't because of bad luck, it was because they pissed off their one woman so much that she left, and they didn't try to stop her. I had to argue with my captain over this, though several of the guys on my team agreed, and when we finally did it, of course the other team got completely pissed off. They won anyway, since they had 13 points when she left, and they clearly should have forfeited, but regardless, I'm mostly pissed off because I didn't get to talk to them and explain to them why we were doing it - that it had nothing to do with trying to win, that we'd done them lots of favors, that it's a coed league and you have to have women to play. I'm still completely pissed off that there's no one I can talk to about this, because I'm used to getting less playtime if the other team doesn't have enough women, and I'm used to guys who won't pass to me when I'm open because they assume I suck (I was also better than about half our team in the first game, explaining things to people, and was at least better than the two guys who didn't know what was going on and kept throwing the disc away in the second game), and given that WAFC's coed policy is the only reason I play ultimate in the first place, I think it's actually important to respect it and accept that you are playing in a coed league. I don't think it's remotely okay to have your only female player leave because you had no respect for her in the first place and think that means you get to continue playing. I think it's even less okay to do that and then act like jackasses when the team you're playing against doesn't want to let you keep playing like nothing happened. Some people on their team were perfectly nice, but one guy in particular, the one who we initially dealt with who wanted to get to play but not to have to forfeit despite not having a team until a half an hour after gametime (they never had two women, so they actually never had a legal coed team). I might sound kind of bitchy about this, but the first team I ever played on was full of guys who were kind of sexist jerks, only let the women play if the team we were playing against had women in, assumed all their women were worse than all their guys, etc. So maybe I'd be less sensitive to it if I'd had better early experiences, but even on teams where most of the guys are completely reasonable and don't pay attention to gender when they throw, you still regularly get guys who won't pass to open women, and I've only seen a few teams that had enough assertive women that they ever got called on it.
I hate being pissed off and not being able to communicate with the person who pissed me off - I was being perfectly nice and very retrained, but I was really fucking pissed.
I'm marginally better now, except that some stuff happened at our second frisbee game that really left me pissed off. Basically our second team had three people there at 2. The people we'd just played were willing to hang around to scrimage, so we asked if they had other people coming. They said they hoped so, didn't seem to know. We said we'd wait about ten minutes to see if they were going to have a team. They still didn't, but refused to forfeit & scrimage. They said we could assess a point every ten minutes but that they wanted to start playing right away (we had just finished a game with only one sub), so we should scrimage until 2:30, at which point if they had enough people we could assess three points and start playing. Our captain, who really doesn't know ultimate rules, has never played in wafc before, and hasn't shown up or done anything he's responsible for as captain in a couple of weeks (he wasn't even there for the first half of our first game), agreed at 2:25 or later that we could start playing and we'd start two points up. They had 6 guys and one woman - so still no full team. It's weekend league and friendly, so we said okay, but we did mention that we had two women, and they said if we wanted to play 5-2 they were willing to play with only 6 on the field. We started out scoring well, but since most of our team has gone AWOL, we had two guys who'd literally never played before playing with us, and the other team started scoring and pulled ahead to 8-6 at the half. We were still tired from our previous game, and frustrated because we'd lost it because of a lack of subs (we've beaten both these teams before easily), so our playing suffered, they ended up doing pretty well. During one point, their woman, who I was covering, got open several times, including in the end zone, and finally just walked off the field and said "When you're willing to pass to me, I'll come back on the field." She was completely right, and they ignored her - didn't call a time, which they had, to work things out, didn't apologize to her, just kept playing with 6 guys. At the end of the point, when they didn't talk to her and work things out, she packed up and left. At this point, they had 7 men and no women, and our captain basically refused to let us play 5-2 all game (meaning the women were getting about 50% play time, and the guys about 90% - and the woman on our team who wasn't me is very good, much better than the two guys who'd never played before). Since it's a coed league, I was pretty angry, especially since we'd done them a lot of favors throughout the game so that they could play, so I said that if they were going to have no women, they should only be playing with 5 men on the field, because they didn't have a legal team, and the reason they had no women wasn't because of bad luck, it was because they pissed off their one woman so much that she left, and they didn't try to stop her. I had to argue with my captain over this, though several of the guys on my team agreed, and when we finally did it, of course the other team got completely pissed off. They won anyway, since they had 13 points when she left, and they clearly should have forfeited, but regardless, I'm mostly pissed off because I didn't get to talk to them and explain to them why we were doing it - that it had nothing to do with trying to win, that we'd done them lots of favors, that it's a coed league and you have to have women to play. I'm still completely pissed off that there's no one I can talk to about this, because I'm used to getting less playtime if the other team doesn't have enough women, and I'm used to guys who won't pass to me when I'm open because they assume I suck (I was also better than about half our team in the first game, explaining things to people, and was at least better than the two guys who didn't know what was going on and kept throwing the disc away in the second game), and given that WAFC's coed policy is the only reason I play ultimate in the first place, I think it's actually important to respect it and accept that you are playing in a coed league. I don't think it's remotely okay to have your only female player leave because you had no respect for her in the first place and think that means you get to continue playing. I think it's even less okay to do that and then act like jackasses when the team you're playing against doesn't want to let you keep playing like nothing happened. Some people on their team were perfectly nice, but one guy in particular, the one who we initially dealt with who wanted to get to play but not to have to forfeit despite not having a team until a half an hour after gametime (they never had two women, so they actually never had a legal coed team). I might sound kind of bitchy about this, but the first team I ever played on was full of guys who were kind of sexist jerks, only let the women play if the team we were playing against had women in, assumed all their women were worse than all their guys, etc. So maybe I'd be less sensitive to it if I'd had better early experiences, but even on teams where most of the guys are completely reasonable and don't pay attention to gender when they throw, you still regularly get guys who won't pass to open women, and I've only seen a few teams that had enough assertive women that they ever got called on it.
I hate being pissed off and not being able to communicate with the person who pissed me off - I was being perfectly nice and very retrained, but I was really fucking pissed.