15. Oh, Canada

The longer I’m at school, the more I find there are plenty of fun things to do without being stupid. Aside from all the activities set up by the University, there are concerts in town and loads of people to hang out with. And the simplicity of the movie theater or borrowing a DVD goes without mentioning (I’ll mention it anyway). Most of my nights are not especially well planned, with fancy stuff like “somewhere to go” or “something to do.”

If there isn’t a concert to see or a sporting event to attend, I play videogames or watch a movie or wander campus with my friends. Prime example: spending Friday night tossing around a light-up football, hiking to the cliffs near campus, and watching Swingers with Dan and Scottie until Becca and Kristi come over to hang out. Simple, but so very good.

There’s a lot to be said for visiting with people and not actually doing anything, plus I’ve been to several house parties that were pretty cool. Sometimes we’ll get a group together to watch a movie in someone’s dorm room, and University-organized weekend distractions actually can be fun. Even for those who are tough to please, if you look hard enough you’ll find something good to do. Remember that who you are with means more than what you are doing – if you surround yourself with cool, reliable guys and girls, you will always have fun.

And if everyone’s out of town, bumming around is perfectly enjoyable following a stressful week of classes. Finally, if you’re feeling both bored and brave: find a karaoke night, sing in front of a room full of strangers, and make a fool of yourself without risking life, limb, and so forth. A goofy thing to do, but…ah, I have no ‘but’ for this... karaoke’s goofy, and that’s all there is to it.

I’m not being facetious or exaggerating: there are ways to have fun at school without drinking. I mean, come on – the University supports some 300 student organizations. With thousands of teenagers within a few square miles and all kinds of sports and special events going on, finding something to do is not a problem.

As if friends, movies, club activities and athletics weren’t enough, the University has a great music program...almost every week it seems like there is a glee club concert or opera or something to go to. But I’m a guy, so you know what? I’m going to talk about sports for awhile.

Intramural sports are great, not terribly expensive, and tons of fun when you find something you like. First semester I signed up to play on an intramural (IM) broomball team with guys in my hall. Since hockey is big at the University, broomball is a huge IM sport for those too clumsy to skate. In addition to the men’s beginner league my team was in, there are also a regular men’s league and both regular and beginner women’s and co-recreational leagues.

Broomball is exactly like hockey except the sticks are weird shaped, you play wearing shoes, and you hit a ball instead of a puck. Correction: broomball is nothing like hockey. But you can see how the ice thing makes it sort of similar. The point is, this is a game that’s awkward but fun!

Shockingly, I was good at broomball. I played conservatively, always hanging back near our goal. I was our last line of defense (other than the goalie), and stopped most of what came my way. Since I was not one of the worst players on my team, broomball was a blast. At a cost of only $10, I was on the ice for the majority of all 7 games we played. The smart players used their feet more than their sticks, so my two seasons of high school JV soccer turned out to be good for something after all! Broomball was a decent workout and a fun way to relieve stress.

Because the game is played on ice, moving around or even standing still can be tough. Most of our games, however, the surface was torn up enough to run on. On good nights I would fall down only three or four times. The positive news about playing on ice is that this makes it easy to knock people over. Broomball is supposedly a no-contact sport, but you usually have to do something real bad to have a penalty called. So you learn to use your stick for defense, and discover early on that to keep the ball you’ll need to be a little rough.

Kind of like little kids playing soccer, one problem with broomball is people’s tendency to bunch up and whack the ball all the way to the far end of the rink. Usually this made it easy for a defensive player such as myself to get at the ball, but if I held it for long I would be mobbed and beaten.

One game I perfected a tactic where I’d stand a few extra seconds with the ball near my team’s end. This gave my teammates time to set up, and sent half the other team rushing at me. Four times in one half I dished the ball up just before a player or two from the other team skidded past, swearing and/or hacking at my legs. They had left their defense outnumbered, and better yet a couple of them fell down trying to stop too fast.

Despite several losses, my team snuck into the bottom of our division’s tournament bracket. Since we were the last team to make the cut, our first tourney game was against the number one team from another beginners’ bracket. Their numbers were ridiculous – an average of three goals scored a game, with .66 goals allowed per game. We assumed it would be another team of hockey players, like the one we’d played during the regular season. That had been an ugly match; we were shut out and every steal we had got us all but murdered. The refs don’t call many fouls during 11:30 PM games.

Expecting a repeat of that helpless, not-much-fun experience, many of my teammates talked about getting trashed the night before our Sunday morning tournament game. Granted, it was only intramurals...and we stood little chance anyway...but I was glad when most of them decided not to. One of my next-door neighbors apparently missed the memo – he stumbled out of his room that Sunday with a freshly pierced eyebrow.

“When did you get that?” I asked.

No response. My question registered after a moment.

“...Yesterday. ...Damn. I’m still drunk,” he replied weakly.

When we left for our hike to the hockey rink, he was sitting on the bathroom floor dabbing antiseptic on his eyebrow. He was our leading scorer by a long shot, so the game would be a more severe beating without him. Luckily, his girlfriend drove him to the rink – he was there, mildly sober, in time to start. Although we all knew our season would soon be over, we tried to be a little optimistic. We hoped to not get crushed, and would try our hardest to prevent that from happening. It’d be fun, so long as we didn’t get thumped completely.

I played one of my best games, but hit a snag early on. I don’t know whether my stick was knocked away from me or if I just dropped it, but I found myself empty-handed and facing an opponent who had the ball. Without my only weapon and alone in front of our goalie, I had few options.

I slid at the ball, kicking at it while my opponent tried to control it with his stick. Stumbling over me, he tried to make a pass but I sent the ball the other direction with my hand. Mistakenly thinking this would buy me some time, I got up and turned to grab my stick. But the other team came back with the ball, and I spun around to see a not-very-defensive player alone to defend our goalie from what would be an easy shot.

Re-equipped and ready for action, I rushed to place myself between the ball and the goal. I was too late. The guy looked like he was about to shoot, so I did the only thing I could think of – I yelled as loud as I could. It didn’t seem to faze him, but he didn’t score either, so I felt alright. Ridiculous, but alright…at least the other team did not score their first goal on account of me!

Our opening tournament game was the whole team’s best performance. We passed as a team, controlled the ball, and had an all-around impressive showing. We forced an undefeated team into a shootout, after tying them 1-1 and then keeping their offense down through an overtime period. I myself blocked several shots and our solid goalie blocked many, many more than that.

An animal on the ice, (not an intimidating animal…maybe a wombat...but still an animal) I also provided the assist for my team’s lone goal. It was an exciting game and we never expected we’d have anything to get so pumped about. We were let down when we lost by one goal in the shootout, but still were very happy to have done so well. Later that day I discovered a nasty lump on my leg where someone had jacked me with a stick and I hadn’t noticed. Half the fun of sports is getting banged up, I think.

Going to a University football or hockey game is almost as much fun as playing intramurals. Hockey is my favorite – since I can’t skate myself the next best thing is to watch other guys tearing across the ice, checking people around like rag dolls. It’s hard at first to keep track of the puck and understand the rules, but the barely-controlled violence and speed are far too sweet to pass up. I mean, seriously, who can resist a sport where players go flying head over heels, into the bench, or right out of their helmet?

I’m glad my school has a good hockey team, and happier still that students get in free with a University ID. Combined with the knowledge that hilarious guys like Norm MacDonald and Mike Myers are Canadian, hockey is almost reason enough to consider moving. Ok not really, but it earns Canada a little respect.

Combined with wandering in the company of friends, watching movies, and playing video games or intramurals, varsity hockey and other sports are more evidence that we students are not limited to narrow options for having fun. For the four-dozenth time, think about how you relax and reconsider how cool it really is fitting with the college stereotype.