TWBFL First Live Game

TWBFLSunday was The World Bikini Football League’s first live game!  We have all been waiting for the day where we can play at an actual football stadium in front of live fans during the middle of the day (normally we play in the middle of the night at a closed off soccer stadium). 

My bff and I flew in from southern California for this game and the premiere of The Taken the night before.  Since being back in Washington, we had three practices, one every day leading up to the game.  Unfortunately we were both hurt from the prior weekend hosting southern California tryouts, so we were not at the top of our game.   We also had the disadvantage that our team did not practice while Christine and I were out of state.  She plays quarterback, so it would be hard for them to practice without her, but I had found our team a coach, Ryan, to run practices for our girls while we were out of state, if only they actually showed up to practice…

We left Seattle early Sunday morning around 8am to make sure we arrived in Bellingham by our call time of 10:30. Our team, the Vancouver Yellow Jackets was the first to play so we did not have much time to get ready and on the field warming up before the game actually started.  Originally we were supposed to play with eight girls on the field at a time, but the only team that showed up with over six girls was the Seattle Emeralds who had nine.  The three other teams barely had six.  The Emeralds had the advantage of switching girls out for offense and defense instead of running them all into the ground.

Our game started a little after noon, not bad considering all of our other games started at least an hour late, so fifteen minutes late was nothing.  We played against the Portland Tsunami’s.  They won the coin toss and started with the ball first.  The first throw was caught by their girl and as I went to grab her flag, their team captain blocked for her and instead of just blocking, purposely ran into me, almost tackling me down to the ground, which in our league is against the rules.  Their team kept trying to tackle my girls and each and every one of them kept blocking their flags, swatting our hands away as we went to grab them, also against the rules.  Almost all of their players were also way larger than my girls, so again, they had a huge advantage, especially when they were practically knocking us to the ground. 

I yelled at the refs several times for not catching/stopping/or calling the pushing/blocking/tackling/flag guarding and FINALLY they started to call them.  I hate being the first team to play sometimes because we are the tester team.  The person running the time clock stopped the clock in the first inning for seven minutes while we were still playing (and way out of breath).  They then decided to keep running the clock and just as we were about to win, they stopped the clock in the last minute allowing the Portland Tsunamis to score on us and win the game with one touchdown ahead.  We got screwed!  Our coach, Ryan, myself and my whole team argued about the time clock to the refs, and then to the league owners.  Several of them realized we were screwed, but did not want us to replay the game because the next two teams had to start playing.

My team was so frustrated with the way that game went down, that we decided not to continue playing (and not in a poor sportsmanship type of way).  Christine could not throw any longer – her arm was swollen and hurt really badly and I could no longer run, I had pulled a muscle in my leg and since my team had no subs, we had to forfeit.  No worries though, Christine and I will now be playing on the southern California league where we can practice on a constant basis with our girls.