The Seattle Majestics tryouts were yesterday at 11 at Kent Memorial’s French Field. I showed up around 10:30 to fill out paperwork and hopefully work through some of the major jitters I was feeling–the night before, I was pacing around my apartment and had trouble sleeping. After telling them what my special skills were (outside of athletic abilities or lack thereof) “Uh, I can whistle really well? I’m…uh…sickeningly cheerful?” and resisting the urge to answer the question “What are your expectations for this season?” with “PLAY SOME GODDAMNED FOOTBALL BECAUSE I’M THE GODDAMNED BATMAN”, I grabbed my tryout shirt and headed onto the field. The girls I was with formed a large circle, just to warm up with passing and catching while everyone else was getting signed in–after about 45 minutes of doing really well, catching everything, and even getting better throwing the ball, I misjudged a ball coming at me and really jammed two of my fingers. Had I been going out for wide receiver, I would’ve been really upset as I was absolute shit at catching afterward, but since I wasn’t, it didn’t bother me much.

They warmed us up by doing a LOT of running. A LOT. Run with high knees. Run while kicking yourself in the rear. Run while gradually increasing speed from 1/4 to half-speed to 3/4 speed. It’s not a contest, but don’t come in last. Do all of this four times. Then after all of the running, it was time to test our running speed and agility by doing the shuttle run and the 40 yard dash.

My first time on the shuttle run, the coach instructed me to get lower as it would improve my time–I was focused on listening to him and lost track of where my feet were and wiped out flat on the slippery astroturf. My second go-round, I did much better, stayed low, and more importantly, did not fall.

After the shuttle run was the 40 yard dash, which I did pretty well at both times–I wasn’t the fastest girl on the field (and I never have been), but I also wasn’t the slowest.

Next came push-up and sit-up tests. If you had asked me beforehand which of the two I thought I’d excel at, I’d have told you, hands down, it would be sit-ups. In reality, I kicked ass at push-ups (unmodified, no girl-style for anyone), shocking even me, and I struggled, hard, with sit-ups. After a while, I made the mistake of saying “I can’t do another one” and all of a sudden I had three coaches standing over me, shouting at me to squeeze another one out, which is sort of what I imagine boot camp might be like. I really, really, really tried and got half and 3/4ths of the way up a few times, but I couldn’t get another full sit-up. Still, they said it wasn’t about the number, but rather your effort, so I hope they noticed my effort on that last one.

After tests, they had everyone split out into their areas of interest–special teams in one section, wide receivers, QBs and runningbacks in another section, and linemen in a third. I split off with the linemen, and was surprised, yet hopeful, to see that my group was the smallest, which gives me less competition. From the looks of group sizes, most everyone wants to be the superstar positions. They had the lineman hopefuls get into 2-point, 3-point, and 4-point stances, and had us rush from stance. We worked on timing, and they taught us that if we were caught offsides, the most helpful thing to do was point a finger at someone on the other team to, you know, help the ref out. Shifting blame, as it turns out, is a special skill that I forgot to list at the beginning of the day.

All in all, things went really well. Although they call it tryouts, the girls who were on the team last year said that basically, if you want to be on the team, just show up to practices and workout sessions, show dedication, and you’ll make the team, that the tryouts were basically to input basic stats on the interested, and to help actually gauge the interest of the interested as many, many, many of the girls have never played the game before.

We all met up after tryouts at Poppa’s Pub in Kent so the owners and seasoned players could answer any questions we had; all in all, it was a really great experience–all of the other girls were really nice and encouraging, not clique-y at all. My friend Nicole (who also tried out yesterday) said that she’d tried out for the Rat City Rollergirls last year and it was basically Bitch City, so even if she’d made the cut, the attitudes would’ve driven her away–and if the Majestics were anything like that, I also would’ve thrown in the towel.

I couldn’t be happier about how things went–even if I wasn’t the best at any one thing, I gave everything 100%, and I’m thrilled at the idea of playing with everyone when practices start in a few weeks.

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