Saturday's a Rugby Day

Saturday we played in a Sevens tournament. In Sevens only 7 people are on the field instead of the normal 15. This opens the field a lot. And there's a lot of running... a lot. The game consists of two 7-minute halfs with a one minute half time. It seems short and it is--but it's a lot of sprinting, so it's harder than it seems.

We've never played Sevens before. In fact, I've never even SEEN it played before. It was a fun learning experience.

Our first game was at 8am. Normally, I don't get up until 8 during the weekdays. So, for me to get out of bed at 6 and drive myself up to Thunderbird and 59th Ave by 7:15 was a struggle.

We played three games and actually played well in two of them. The third game was against an opponent that was just super experienced. Fortunately, we didn't have to play against Tempe, Camelback or Red Mountain. Those guys had insane skills.

There is this one guy that plays on Red Mountain. He's like the Michael Jordan of rugby. He is an Olympic athlete for his home country of New Zealand and has played in many national championships for rugby. Here's his bio and a grainy pic.

Some funny things happened:

--Our guys were gawking at all of the straight shirtless rugby players on the other teams.
--Karri (one of our Storm chasers) tries to surreptitiously take a picture with her camera phone of a hot guy as he walks by our canopy. It makes the LOUDEST camera shutter noise known to man. Of course, we all busted up laughing.
--A girl dropping her beer in front of our canopy. Joe gets everyone to point at her and laugh. Girl chases Joe, threatening him.
--During one of the games I sprinted almost the entire way downfield with the ball--as I was getting tackled I tossed it to Rickie who then tossed it to Anton. Anton got intercepted. I ended up chasing the guy who intercepted the ball, back down the entire field the opposite way. Oh wait. That wasn't funny. That sucked. :-(

All in all, we had a good day. It was a bit hot in the afternoon and starting and stopping was killer on the body. Today my body aches like it normally does. I have assorted scrapes but nothing like I normally do (they had GRASS!).

Oh. On a side note. I'm still crazy in love with Joe.

And I'm no longer a red head. I got that fixed. I am starting to look like a long haired hippy. My hair has never been this long. I'm thinking at the end of the summer, I'll get dred locks.

Monday night bowling with Jeff, Paul and Tim starts up in just a few short weeks! I'm psyched. I finally got my bowling ball. I have to practice a lot because the guy drilled the holes for me to start bowling with a curve. Tuesday night (since I refuse to watch the Suns game) I'm going to start learning how to bowl with a curve instead of a straight ball. Should be interesting.