Football

This post changes tense in the middle and I'm too lazy to change it. Deal with it.

The club fair at KU was 2 weeks ago, and they had some pretty cool organizations. They had multiple club baseball teams, two rock bands (One metal, one more mainstream), a traditional folk music club, a rock climbing/outdoors club, a  traditional Korean percussion club who let me hit rice cakes with a big wooden hammer, a ton of christian organizations, and the one that caught my interest: The guys in full football gear.

 

I played football in high school and miss the physical and social aspects of the game. I miss the hitting and violence as well as the dicking around and general football team antics. I figured I'd try out for the team to see if it was anything like high school.

 

I can't speak Korean, so I asked one of my KUBA buddies to ask if the guys if allowed exchange students to play. The guy then responded in English.  "Yeah, I'm an exchange student from Canada. You can for sure play." I was thrilled. I took the team's card, gave him my number and Kakao ID and got ready for practice on Tuesday.

 

On Monday night the captain of the team asked me if I knew where the locker room was. I assumed it was in the tiger dome, which is about 3 minutes away from my dorm, adjacent to the practice field. Nope, I was wrong. He told me to meet him at the mail library and he'd take me to the locker room from there. This surprised me, the main library is WAY down the mountain. Unfortunately, the locker room was even further down the mountain.

 

I met the captain at the library and he asked me if I've ever played football. I explained that I played for 4 years in HS and how I played on the line. He smiled and said they needed linemen. We then walked down a large 4 story staircase to the locker room. (I measured this because there's a building who is adjacent to this staircase. Its exit on the ground floor is on level with the locker room, and the 4th floor exit is level with the library.) The building that houses the locker room houses many locker rooms for many sports. At the end of the hall is the Tae Kwon Do room, across the hall is the fencing room, and next to football is the Kumdo/Kendo room. I could tell right away by the screams that there are some serious Kumdo people here in Korea. It was then I realized that in America I did a Korean sport, and now that I was in Korea I was doing an American sport. 

 

I stepped into the locker room and all eyes fell on me. The captain said that I was an exchange student from New York and that I wanted to play. Some of the guys on the team said hello in English  others in Korean, and there was a lot of bowing. One of the linemen greeted me and we started talking. He had played here at KU for a few years and was going to help get me gear. Right off the bat I got my helmet, shoulders and lowers. I was surprised that I was going right into full gear, but I was kind of excited: I got to hit early and knock off the cobwebs at full speed. Surprisingly, they had everything in my size. The equipment was a little old, but whatever. I didn't have to pay a deposit and I was gonna play football!

 

Before we get to the field, the locker room decoration deserves its entire section. The locker room has a wall of lockers on the right side of the room and a TV, whiteboard and bench press on the left. Opposite the door on the other side of the room is where shoulder pads and cloth (jerseys, pants, etc.) are. The room has some old chairs, a ton of trophies ranging from new to SUPER old, and some of the most eclectic and dated football football posters I've ever seen. My locker has a picture of a VERY young Donovan McNabb on it. The one above it has Atlanta Falcons QB Michael Vick. Chad Pennington's picture is up on the wall next to a picture of the old Giants stadium. These may be from as early as 2009 or 2007, but trust me, these are from about 2001 judging by photo quality. There's also a huge Vince Lombardi quote poster, a history of the NFL poster and a surprisingly large number of Tampa Bay Bucs posters. I guess with no NFL team loyalty every team gets represented. It's interesting not seeing Giants/Jets gear everywhere. At least there's not much Patriots stuff. 

We then lined up outside the locker room and walked up the hill. Nights in Korea are cold. REALLY cold, so the walk up was pretty rough since we carry our pads and helmets up the hill. We put our gear down on the turf and then lined up on the sideline. Then we started a cadenced run around the field. With my very limited Korean background, I could glean that the cheer involved Korea University, and I could also glean that the grunts were a signal for me to grunt as well. Consider me a master linguist. I often forget a lot of these guys were in the military, so this cadenced run must have been normal. I liked it, the yells echo off the hill and concrete bleachers nicely. I could already tell this was a good choice. 

We then stretched in a style similar to the stretches I did in high school, so I wasn't too lost in the beginning. Then we suited up and got right to hitting. We did tackling and blocking drills, which were fun to do again, but there was one problem: I didn't have cleats. I was getting put on my ass all the time because I had no traction. Also, the guy I was paired with was really good at football. He got out of his stance low, and fired across the ball really quickly. He was also about 3 inches taller than me. Unfortunately he shipped out for military service the other day, so I only got to know him briefly. (After his last practice he stood looking at the locker room and I asked him if he needed help. He said, "No. Just taking a look." That's heavy man, that's heavy).

Ok, I've been practicing for a few weeks now, so the rest of this post is gonna be bulleted little stories from the team.

• It doesn't matter what country you're in, dick jokes with squirting water bottles will always be made on the football field
• Women and beer are two topics that a lot of my teammates can discuss with me at lengh in English
• We have female equipment managers from the nearby women's university. It's awesome because they laugh at me for speaking clumsy Korean and are also very cute
• I have learned how to say construction worker because all the guys on the team call me that when I wear my safety orange sweatshirt into the locker room
• There's a lot of formal bowing to the captains, coaches, and Alumni (OB/Old Boys) who are playing with us for the spring season
• The team gets food together after every practice and the lady who owns the restaurant we frequent complimented me on my ability to eat spicy food. It was nice.
• A lot of the guys on the team have engineering majors, which is cool. One of the guys is in my ECE class, so we complain about the craziness that is voltage drop over an essential mesh. 
• The guys on the team think it's cool that I'm from NY, but they also think NYC is the most dangerous place on earth. Illegal guns in America is a topic of interest across the globe it seems. 
• A lot of guys on the team think all American girls are fat. I then call them crazy.
• A lot of guys on the team think Korean girls are very beautiful. I then agree with them.

Ok, this story warrants more than a bullet. So the team gets out of dinner on Thursday night and very few people have classes the next day. One guy starts saying "Deathmatch? Deathmatch?" I only assume this is some aggressive drinking game. So everybody starts laughing and sounding uneasy until the guy approaches the two managers and says "Manager Deathmatch!!!" They then agree. I assume the next thing I'm gonna see is two girls try to chug a bottle of soju, but they then start playing rock paper scissors. I asked my friend if this is a drinking game and he laughs and says no, the loser buys the team ice cream. I laugh and think, oh, this is gonna be fun and kinda cute. It was the most intense 5 minutes of my entire life. Each manager was a team captain. They played rock paper scissors against each other and whoever won picked a player for their team. I got picked pretty early because I'm pretty hard to miss, and I introduced myself to the manager that day. Score. So once all the players were picked, it was a "deathmatch" single elimination team tournament. It was heated. Lots of long strings of ties and draws, a few long streaks and LOTS of cheering and yelling. All in the middle of the street on a Thursday night at 10:45 PM. Then out of nowhere a school bus drops an 8 year old kid off. They don't mess around when it comes to education in Korea. My team won the tournament, and then the losing team did an internal tournament. The loser of that then bought us all ice cream. It was awesome because I just grabbed a random one because I have no idea what the wrappers said. All I know is that the coffee/chocolate swirl comes in a green and blue package. 

I'm really happy to be playing football again and I hope my verb tenses didn't change too much in this blog post. There are pictures of me suited up, I just have no idea where our managers have all these photos saved.