Soccer Tennis

This Memorial Day weekend I spent on Block Island, I am fortunate to have great friends to spend the weekend with. If it was up too me, or if I was filthy rich to pay off all my friends, I'd spend Memorial Day weekend and the rest of the summer all the way to Labor Day weekend there. We drink, fish, laugh, play, swim, hike, SCUBA, bike, joke, off-road, etc.. It's becoming a tradition dating back to the late 1900's. Real late, like 1990's. I hope that some day when we are old, grey and bald we are still going to Block Island for Memorial Day Weekend. Or even better when we retire (young) we can stay there for the whole summer.

Usually we get into some intense Croquet matches. We send people down the hill, become poison, and just smack balls around. I have no idea if we are playing by the official Croquet rules, but I do know we are playing by the Block Island rules and that's fine by me. A friend of mine, Dan, even went to Croquet camp to get better - JK. Another year we had a great Ultimate Frisbee game. That was a little too physical after a weekend of drinking. So we stick to Croquet. This year we set up the Croquet court but we broke out into a Soccer-Tennis match! Go Figure. My brother and I are really the only Soccer players of the bunch, so we couldn't be teammates. So he got Dan, and I got Nick. They are athletes in their own right. They both grew up playing mainly basketball, and remain active in that and other sports. They held their own, but their juggling style was a lot like Hacky-Sack. Anyway we had 8 fun matches. We used the benches from the picnic table as the net and our sandals as out-of-bounds markers. To my surprise Dan & Nick loved the game and the others who were watching actually like it too. Kevin actually ref’ed one of the games - it was controversial since he was taking sides with whom ever got him beer, and complimented him the most. The house we stayed at sits on top of a hill, so our soccer ball (size 4) was constantly going down the hill. We took turns sprinting down there and back up. The non spiriting players drank beer, and complimented Kevin. In the hot sun, and all the spriting the beer was very refreshing. The only thing that was missing were ring girls (to announce the score and stuff like that), ball girls (to fetch the ball down the hill), and waitresses (to fetch the beer). Well wives and girlfriends were present but they were too busy cleaning and cooking. I mean reading and gossiping. It was an awesome afternoon, I was happy to show stereotypical American athletes how simple and fun soccer can be. We played by my brother's (Lou) rules. He coaches a u-12 girls premier team and uses soccer-tennis to improve their soccer skills. The official rules of the ASTO are posted on their site - http://www.soccertennis.org/. But like I said we didn't use a tennis court or anything fancy, we used a picnic table bench and sandals. It was a laid back, stress free, and Nick and I still owe Lou and Dan a drink for losing.

We're going back to Block Island again in August for a whole week. Hopefully we'll play more Soccer Tennis. Maybe I can introduce my friends to Brazilian style Volleyball. That's Soccer-Volleyball for those who don't know. And if my dreams and wishes come true, there'll be girls with thongs playing with us - lol.