Rugby!

I just got back from Rugby practice, and I must say, it's one of the funnest games I've ever played. (And yes, I do know that you can't find "funnest" in the dictionary, but I think it sounds better than "most fun" so shush.) It's like the lines of football with the speed and soccer, and no rules!
Ok, so it has rules, but none on tackling people, holding them, throwing them, and in general beating other guys up. But because there aren't any pads, we learned how to tackle properly, without hurting ourselves on the other guy (well, not hurting him much). We didn't exactly have enough people to play a real game, but we had a lot of fun doing tackling drills and running passing plays.
The tackling drill was a version of "Smear the Queer", where one guy tried to break through a "d-line" of players spread across the field, and whoever tackled him then tried to get through going the other way, requiring the d-line to reform very quickly, which is a necessary skill for a Rugby team since there aren't any breaks between plays like football.
Then, for the passing plays, we line up on the field diagonally, because in Rugby, you can't pass the ball forward, you can just lateral it behind you. SO the point of the passing plays is to run up the field bouncing the ball back and forth in order to confuse the defenders. So the guy at the top of the diagonal throws to the next guys, and so on down theline, while we're running up the field. Of course, there are variations to confuse the defenders, like passing back, or looping around. It was funny to hear Hank Zepeda was shouting the names of the plays across campus, because two were named for tutors (Nieto and Letteny), and the third in honor of a student who was killed in an accident shortly after graduating the year before last (Jean Frances). After sprinting back and forth across the field for 45 minutes, we were all pretty exhausted, so we ended with a bit of passing drill. Practicing rugby passing is kindof strange, just underhanding the ball to one another, and tricker that it first looks, but it's fairly easy to catch on. At least when you're standing still. While running at full speed, keeping an eye on the defenders, and twisting to see the guy behind you, it's a bit more difficult.

Hopefully though, we'll get enough guys to dedicate their time so that we can form a team to join a local league, which would be really fun.

And beating other guys up for awhile can be very therapuetic.