The Renegades Blog

2010-11-19T11:15:00.000-08:00

Renegade Moments
We Will Never Forget

"We wear our poppies without a pin!"

Cara -
Yoga on the beach !!

Although I have had many great water polo memories the one that always comes to mind is not one of the two national championships our team has won or my summer on the junior national team, but one game from a small tournament when I was a first-year bantam. It was Saskatchewan Open and one of the first tournaments that I had ever travelled to. We had made it all the way to the gold medal game in which we had to play against another team from our club. All the girls on this team were a year older than us, and being the underdogs, we all assumed that we were going to lose. Even though we didn’t really feel that we stood a chance we were all excited about our first gold medal game and we were ready to go out and give it our all. Although my details on the game itself are fuzzy I remember, very well, the outcome. With a great amount of effort and spirit we ended up winning the game, two goals to one. One goal scored by the lefty of our team, Sami, and one goal from myself, but mostly we won because of amazing goaltending by Breanna. After the game as our team celebrated we saw the older girl’s team that we had just beaten all sitting in the hot tub crying. Normally this would have been a sight that would have made us feel sad but in this instance we were happy. We had just beaten a team that we would’ve never thought that we could and we felt amazing and strong because we won an important game for the very first time. For the very first time in my water polo career myself and my team had accomplished something we believed impossible and that is an amazing feeling that every person deserves to have.

- Shelby (Ms. Loquacious) Taylor

Ashley -

Playing giant chess with Ellen, Raine, Zoe and Julia.

Rae -
Winning nationals for the first time, great girls great game.. 'nuff said

Julia -
All the western teams cheering for us...mostly Valley..
Writing stories on trips... And always cheering for the older teams.. (and getting cheered for!) bringing baked goods for trips or after practices

Zoe -

(song the Okotokians made before youth nats )
We Spell Renegades W-I-N

Renegades win, Renegades win
We throw the others in the garbage bin

Renegades own, Renegades own
We sit upon our golden throne

Renegades rule, Renegades rule
God thrusts light upon our pool

Renegades achieve, Renegades achieve
We kick those out who disbelieve

Renegades swim, Renegades swim
which brings us back to where we win!
(alternate ending: We wear our poppies without a pin!)

By: Breanna, Elaine, Julia, and Zoe!

Mikayla -
Defs cheering the older teams!!!! Sooo much fun!!

Alynn -
Lols, I have more to add to Rae's. When the coaches all just jumped in the water after our gold medal. No pushing necessary.

Elaine -
Playing ninjas with Julia in Flordia. Crawling around in plain sight and laughing at the obviousness of our fellow teammates. Also the best part was when we ran into Breanna and Raine also being ninjas! Wow! We're little kids...

Breanna -

When hygiene is ignored on trips and your hair
(I mean Elaine's hair) stands straight up on its own.

Ellen in England - Chapter 1

2010-10-28T08:18:00.000-07:00

I Stick My Toe in the English Water Polo Pool

Hello my fellow Renegades! The Renegade newsletter guy has asked me to write a blog about my English adventures. He promised me that it would be easier (and more fun) than writing university papers and that it might be my ticket to fame and fortune if the
Ellen in England story gets picked up by Hollywood. I hear Jessica Alba is already angling for the lead role. I already said "no" to Angelina Jolie (she's way too old and all those tatoos would be distracting in the water polo action scenes!)

Now I expect avid readers, maybe even some fan mail if you are feeling particularly loving. Actually I am planning a pop quiz when I get back to Calgary ... be prepared!

Now that I have your attention, it’s time to get down to business and take a peek at the British Water Polo League. Just to give you a little background on British water polo; they currently have 4 divisions, with about 8 teams playing in each division. I am playing on the Manchester A team which is in Division 1. The other teams in my division are Manchester B, London Otters (terrifying name), London Penguins (even more terrifying), Liverpool Lizards (our main rivals), Liverpool Liver Birds (what people do for alliteration), Sheffield and the Leeds Sharks.

I had my first taste of the British Water Polo League last weekend and this is what I noticed.

Now it might surprise you to hear that a British water polo tournament is quite similar to a Canadian water polo tournament, with a few obvious and a few not so obvious differences. OK, I will start with the strangest … The goalies don’t count down the shot clock! As Emily, I am sure, distinctly remembers this is kind of a big deal for Canadian goalies, not so for the British. I still can’t get over this fact, I am shocked and, quite frankly, appalled and plan to do something about it, well at least for my goalie.

Then I found out that they don’t shake hands in England. I have to admit I got a few strange looks as I got out the pool and made my way toward the opposing team, hand extended in welcome. I guess this is another illustration of Canadians’ famous politeness.

Now on the other hand, there were a lot of similarities between the British and Canadian water polo. The girls eat as much food as possible, there are bruises and scratches in places they shouldn’t be and refs make bad calls. The other thing about the referees is they wear formal clothing and give all the players big hugs before the game (see photo, if you don't believe me!)

Finally, water polo players still make silly mistakes. One particular event took place in my third and final game and brutally reminded me of this fact. One of my teammates shot the ball and as it came off the crossbar, it most fortuitously came to good old Ellen, and only two metres from the goal.

As I brought the ball back to shoot, a voice in my head said rather ironically: “Wouldn’t it be funny if I missed this shot.” Bang! You guessed it, right off the crossbar! The next thing that crossed my mind, well after I thought about bursting into tears, was “my Renegade girls must never hear about this!” Now you should appreciate how I am willing to sacrifice my pride to make a fairly obvious point, that even if Brits don’t shake hands after a game and the goalies don’t count down the shot clock (still so weird,) some things about water polo never change. Somehow, against all logic, a player can miss an open net from two metres in front of the goal (I mean I think it is easier to score than not score at that point). As I got out of the water, my coach said with a small smile on her face: “I distinctly remember talking about shooting low in our team meeting.” And again, all I had running through my head at that point were four little words. “Perhaps, a skip shot.”

Next time on Ellen in England, I will try to fill you in on the wacky English language, especially when it comes out of the mouths of the English.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re having any trouble going to sleep at night because you don’t know how my Manchester team is doing, here’s the website that will set your mind at ease ….

http://www.bwpl.org/Results/Womens%20Div1.html

Renegades: Our Love Knows No Bounds

2010-10-19T09:40:00.000-07:00

Under the B ....

Renegades climb on airplanes and buses, kick back in hotels and run up the kind of food bills one would expect from healthy, active, young women burning insane numbers of calories. And where does the money come from? Well, there are all of those registration and travel cheques written with trembling hands, and the annual casino, and its poor cousin, the dreaded fund-raising bingo. It is here on the dark side of Hell that money is raised by parents who would otherwise never willingly indulge in acts of masochism. Seven-hour shifts that seem more like seven days give a person a lot of time to think, probably far more time than is healthy. These young women may not know it, but it is - hands down - the most selfless expression of your love for your little Renegade. And if somehow you have never had to pull on the dreaded Satellite,
Bonanza or Early-Bird bingo bib, then you should get down on your knees and count your blessings.

My first venture into the land of the damned came during the last gasps (pardon the pun) of smoking bingos. Actually smoking bingos was a misnomer; they were more like chain-smoking bingos, and for non-smokers they were frightening places indeed. Bingo No. 1 saw me choosing my clothing with more thought than I have for job interviews - namely picking pants and a shirt that I was prepared to never wear again. Eight or so hours later I was standing on our deck stripping off every piece of clothing and hoping none of the kids were wandering around the house while I made a frantic dash through the door, up the stairs and into the shower. Lathered from head to toe, the industrial-strength loofah is brought in to save the day. The skin is furiously scrubbed to a healthy pink and, for good measure, to a redness just this side of actually drawing blood.
Repeat this process three times until your skin is painful to the touch. The next morning dawns and I allow myself to think that maybe, just maybe, that whole bingo thing was just a really, really bad dream. Except I can still smell smoke. Back into the shower, more scrubbing, some cursing and a bit of whimpering under the assault of the loofah (man, those Swedes are a bunch of masochists). And guess what, the smell of smoke is still there. Thoroughly panicked, I call the nearest health-care professional who laughingly tells me the smell will be there until I clean the hairs in my nose (the same hairs my daughters periodically instruct me to trim before their social lives are forever ruined). Quick now, stick the corner of the soap bar into a nostril, rotate vigorously and inhale hard enough to make your eyes water. Repeat two times on each side.

By the time my next bingo rolled around, legislation had moved smoking to the parking lot and I thought I just might have the whole thing licked. Boredom, I can handle that; I’ll use the time to think deep, creative thoughts, maybe practice a second language. Sure, why not; I’ll sell the bingo cards in Spanish. This plan never really got put into action because within the first half hour I became the first person in bingo history to suffer a back injury while selling tickets. While leaning over a table to pick up a loonie from an elder of the Enoch Cree First Nation, a searing spasm started at my hip, trundled up past my shoulders and exploded somewhere deep in my brain. Unable to straighten up, all I could do was smile at the lovely old lady who didn’t seem to mind the attention. At the same time, I knew that our friendship just wasn’t going to last if I didn’t move out of her way by the time they started calling numbers for the next game.

If you are not a bingo player, entering this strange world is a surreal experience. A couple hundred people, nearly all of whom are guided by varying degrees of superstitious behaviour, await you with bizarre requests, hand signals that make no sense and heart-breaking stories of bad luck involving missing $1,000 blackout pots by a single number. As it is abundantly clear that these people will do anything to improve their luck, I expand customer service by offering to rub their cards on my bald head to impart a little bit of good karma. At no extra cost of course, but nobody takes me up on the offer. I guess they don’t want to win that badly. With a serious face one woman explains how she drives to the bingo hall by different routes each night of the week and has a special route she uses when she is on a losing streak and needs to change her luck. They buy cards according to inexplicable numerological patterns. Some want cards only from the top of the bundle, others from the bottom and some want them chosen randomly. Selling the last card is all but impossible and don’t even try to pawn off a card that has fallen on the floor. Those babies are tainted and only a fool would play them.

Players mark their cards with coloured blotches from “daubers” that are lined up in front of them in some sort of ritualistic colour code they firmly believe brings them good fortune. Some use the five-minute breaks between games to play a few hands on their handheld poker games. Talk about making the most of what the liquor and gaming commission euphemistically refers to as the “gaming experience.” And now there is a new technological advance that allows players to buy more cards than they could ever play manually and upload them into a digital monitor which they track much like you watch the stock ticker online. And like mutual funds over the past 18 months, most of the news they get isn’t particularly good. The hall seems about evenly split between people applying daubers to paper cards and the techno-savvy crew playing “digies”. This is probably what it was like when early automobiles started showing up and the writing was on the wall for horse travel. Some players play “digies” as well as paper, but you can’t help noticing the paper and dauber crowd looks a lot more engaged, while the “digi” crew take on the trance-like look of VLT players hitting a button and waiting for good news that rarely comes.

One crusty old woman suggests that buying a bingo card is a lot like picking a husband. They all look like winners until you play ’em and discover there are way more losers than winners. Her three buddies gravely nod their heads and chime in with knowing quips with just a hint of good-natured lewdness. One bemoans tired old daubers that have run out of ink and I respond with some sort of defensive comment championing male virility. Chuckles all around, before they go back to concentrating on the task at hand.

Personally, I would like to see the game go retro, with players playing on wrinkled old cardboard cards and covering the numbers with buttons they get to use only after they promise to put them all back in their grandmother’s button box the minute they get home. At least then bored bingo volunteers would have the prospect of watching fist-fights when somebody bumps a table and scatters the buttons off a card that needs that elusive one final number.

Another intriguing feature of the evening is something called the loonie pot. It would appear to be a separate payout resulting from a winning card being completed with a specific number determined on a nightly basis. A more intriguing way to run a loonie pot game would be to require that players must play while wearing straight-jackets and mark off the numbers on their card by using their noses as daubers.

Presiding over the proceedings is the bingo caller. In practiced dulcet tones he calls the numbers, mixing in rules, procedures and creating a bit of ambience. Some liven the proceedings by adding a bit of flair and refer to numbers by what appear to universally-understood slang terms for certain numbers. One guy gets the crowd tittering by calling the number 19 with an exaggerated Australian accent. “Oy noynteeeeen.” Players in the crowd nod their heads appreciatively, the first smile of the evening forming on some of their faces. You can’t help wondering what crossroads in life point a person toward bingo calling as a profession, but they supposedly make good money and they get play out their God complex on a nightly basis. And lets not forget the pre-bingo ritual where a volunteer is called upon to “check the caller’s balls.” All lasciviousness aside, the presence of all 72 balls must be confirmed before they are put into play.

The night doesn’t just drag by; it grinds along like that factory assembly line job you lasted exactly one summer at. Like an afternoon math class on a sunny day in May. That mandatory university statistics class has nothing on this. If you watch the clock, it stops moving. It just sits there taunting you; four hours to go and they are going to be the longest four hours of your life. Quit whining!

So when you quickly give up on practising your Spanish, you find yourself doing crazy things to pass the time. Like trying to guess the number that will be called next, or even worse, trying to concentrate all of your mental powers to see if you can actually influence which ball will pop up the tube and into the caller’s hand.

And why do you put yourself through this? Is it love? Is it a commitment to healthy young bodies and minds? As you trudge through that final hour with your lower back screaming in protest, your tired feet on fire, and bad bingo concession food assaulting your stomach, your thoughts drift to a single comforting thought. One day your kids will have kids. And those kids might play a sport, or dance or do something that requires equipment and travel. And you will oh, so happily pass the torch to the next generation of parents who will pull on that bingo seller’s bib and head out onto the floor with 50 Bonanza cards clutched in their hand.

Welcome

2010-08-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the new Renegades Blog.

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