Get Outta Here, Soccer - Real Football Has Arrived

     One great thing about studying abroad is you do things you either would never expect yourself to do or you would never have the opportunity to do at home. For me, one of those things is playing football. Nope, not soccer - American football. The University of Glasgow has a team, and by British standards, they are actually a very good team. I decided to go to their training day just for fun to see what it was like and since then have not turned back. Keep in mind that I have never played for a football team before in my life. In fact, I have never played a contact sport in my life. One of the knocks on being the youngest child - your mom has had the opportunity to see your brother get hit hard once and you are forever banned from anything that involves taking a hit. Well, not forever, I just have to go halfway around the world to do it.

     Not having played before I was willing to try any position they thought I could play. On the training day I was running receiver routes and tossed the ball back to the guy who was throwing, and he immediately stopped me and asked me to throw. I did and apparently for a Scottish team I can throw the ball decently. So they had me tryout for quarterback. To be honest, I would rather have played receiver, so I was somewhat glad when another American showed up and was at least six inches taller than me and could throw the ball at least twenty yards further than me and had a great spiral every time to boot. So I got to play receiver for a while and loved it. Then our star quarterback had a family matter that called him home and suddenly I was looked to as quarterback again. I said I liked playing receiver more, but now that I am getting the hang of quarterback I am having a great time.

     Today was our first game and thankfully we were able to win. It was an ugly game, but we won 16-0 and it was a great experience. I took some hits, but had fun, and even though I did not play all that well, I am looking forward to next game and feeling a lot more comfortable and confident playing. Who knew I would be playing football in Scotland?