The time I almost joined a women's tackle football team

...but didn't. Sorry to give the punchline away so quickly there.

I'll back up.

One day, a friend of mine broadcast on Facebook that she was trying out for a women's tackle football team. I was intrigued. Except by "intrigued" I more mean, "OMG I WANNA BEAT SOME BITCHES SIGN ME UP." You know how I do.

After some back and forth of exchanging info about the team, waiting many weeks, and even a trek in the snow to the park to toss a football around for practice, we headed to tryouts.

I use the word "tryouts" loosely because everyone at our tryout (we were the last of probably 5) made the team. And I imagine this was the case for every tryout. Whatever.

Tryouts were pretty interesting but insanely fun. Lots of push-ups and sit-ups and sprinting and footwork drills and agility tests and other stuff that I don't typically do unless someone is hovering over me telling me to do them. And because you don't actually have to have any football experience to join the team, the only real football-related thing we did was run different routes and try to catch the ball when the QB threw to us. Which I did with a success rate of 100%. Booyah.

It was also pretty hilarious because the people from the team who were there used all this footbally jargon that I don't understand because, oops, I hate football (sorry, don't tell them). Except watching football (BORING) and playing football are 2 different things. This much I learned when I played 2 seasons of flag in b-school.

Anyway, tryouts were had and then they were all, "you made it!" and I was all revved up to get in my helmet and pads and start taking some girls out. And THEN they started talking about how much it actually costs. Apparently it costs an obscene amount of money to get a jersey and helmet and a bus to travel to games and pay for coaches who by the way used to play in the NFL but don't ask me their names because I DON'T KNOW.

And then they started talking about the practice schedule and I'm thinking about all the things I need to cancel from now until June in order to make this happen (volleyball, dodgeball, kickball, happy hours, dinners out, Friday night drinking, Saturdays, living in New Jersey).

So in the end, I decided not to join the team. It's a lot of money, an insane time commitment, and the commute back home to NJ would be hellish and/or impossible with the practice schedule. And while I could probably deal with 1 or 2 of those problems, it is way too short of notice to take care of all 3. So I'm going to let my friend, who had no qualms about handing over her credit card, play for this season and see how it goes. And assuming all goes well, I'll consider going back next year.

It sort of makes me sad to do this because I was looking forward to the sense of badassness that I imagine comes with telling people you play on a tackle football team. And also I really wanted a jersey with my name on it. Plus I love team sports. And seriously, a jersey with my name on it WILL SOMEONE PLEASE BUY ME ONE MY BIRTHDAY IS OCTOBER 24TH. And maybe if I played football I would take more interest in the Superbowl aside from the 7 layer dip I plan on making tomorrow. Yum.

On the bright side, I have another year of life in which I am less likely to get seriously injured. So that's good. I told my Jewish worrier-mother and I'm pretty sure she's hoping I forget that the team exists between now and next year. My brother played exactly 1 year of high school football and managed to get a concussion in that time and thus he ruined it for me because my mom is never going to associate anything else with football except concussions.

So maybe this time next year I'll be writing a post about the joy of purchasing shoulder pads that come with space for your boobs. Who knows.