It’s a cool summer evening and I’m standing on the spongy outfield grass of a local middle school trying to remember the points of properly throwing a frisbee: Plant the back foot. Look where you want to throw. Move the arm across the body in one smooth motion, then flick the wrist.
Relax.
I take a breath, turn, and throw, and watch the plastic circle arc up and far to the right of my target. With a pang of embarrassment, I watch my throwing buddy wave off my apologies as she runs over — waaaay over — to pick up the misthrown disc.
Malcolm Gladwell writes that it takes 10,000 hours to achieve expertise. By the count, I have about 9, 985 hours to go — roughly 20 hours a week for ten years — before I become an Ultimate frisbee virtuoso.
Growing up as a bookish girl in an immigrant family, it never occurred to me that sports could be fun. Also, even as a child, I hated feeling incompetent. The list of traumatic childhood memories associated with mandatory sports or physical activity is too long for one blog post: Standing on the outfield in kickball desperately hoping that (please, please, please) the ball wouldn’t come to me, being the last to be picked for a team, the torture that was the Presidential Fitness test — I could go on, but I will save the rest for my therapist.
For the past four years, I’ve watched my daughter Anna grow increasingly more devoted to the sport of Ultimate. I’d begun to regret that I’d never played a team sport. Over the years, I had learned to jog and even enjoy going to the gym, but learning a new sport seemed to be a privilege afforded to youth.
“If only there were a beginner-friendly way to play Ultimate,” I said more than once. “I’d totally sign up.”
So when a group of moms decided to form the Flaming Mother Huckers, how could I say no?
The FMH is a women’s Ultimate team made up of beginners or those who haven’t played for decades. We are good spirited and friendly, and we try hard. We are coached by experienced players (often our own children) who are generous and patient with our ineptitude.
I may hate feeling incompetent but, as it turns out, I enjoy learning new things — like how to throw, how to catch, and how charge across the grass toward my teammate — arms and legs flailing, looking every bit the uncoordinated newbie that I am — calling for the disc. Sometimes I catch it. Sometimes I drop it. But I hope it comes to me, every time.