After two intense days of workshops, little sleep, and lots of hard work, I was a mess. Completely exhausted I sat at the information table in the afternoon. I couldn’t stop thinking about the articles I was supposed to write, the trouble with my internet connection, the presentation I’m giving tomorrow, and on top of it all, I was freezing. All I could do was sit there and feel sorry for myself, one of the not so productive ways I handle stress.
After several hours of sitting in the cold shade at a not very active information desk, I was finally relived, only to have to go to another meeting. This one, though, was with a friend of mine who used at Advocates for Youth and is now on our Board of Directors, Mark Hiew. We decided to take advantage of our meeting time and sit in the sun on the grass. The University of Toronto’s campus is beautiful, although so far I had only seen the inside of a couple of the classrooms.
It was during my meeting with Mark that I found what saved my afternoon, a pick up game of Ultimate Frisbee. Ultimate Frisbee is a team game where you throw a plastic disk around. So after we concluded our meeting - of course - we jumped up to join them. Several players were conference participants and others were local students just hanging out. We quickly formed teams, set up the end zones, and began a very reenergizing game of Ultimate.
I have been playing Ultimate Frisbee in a recreational league in Washington, DC for a couple of years now. While I’ve never been the star of a team, I have always loved playing. There were a few people in our group who had never played it before, but it did not take long to explain the rules and get the game started. I cannot imagine a more perfect way to bond with other participants, get my energy flowing, and become invigorated for the rest of the day. My first international game of Ultimate (stopped only because another team came for practice) literally, saved the day. As I’m sure many hardcore sports fans would agree a good game has a tendency to do just that.
