The Athlete Way

Apologies dear readers, if any of you happen to exist. I  seem to have strayed terribly far from my original purpose, which  I assume, by virtue of the blog title, had something to do with the Athlete Experience.  I have led you on a meandering path toward a cliff of randomness. And I have asked you to jump from that cliff into the oblivion of utter meaninglessness. I have failed wholeheartedly to keep you properly adrift of the athletic experience that matters to me, the way that has become my means - my mode of exploration, my celebration of humanity, and my form of art. And that is the way of the Red, White, and Blue. The Stars and Stripes. The United States of America. With a field hockey stick, a ball, and my teammates. I serve the greatest country in the world. So here is my attempt to rectify my failure, reclaim your readership and get back on track.  Now seems like the best place for the beginning of that quest. The time reads 6:28 AM IST, Irish Stand...

DISCLAIMER TO READER: To keep my mind sharp, my imagination fueled,  and my sanity in tact I sometimes write a bit of purposeless fiction. The following story is in few words, stupid, incomplete, and unedited. Do not expect anything profound, meaningful, or even particularly interesting. It  has nothing to do with sport, except perhaps for the fact that I wrote it  in my idle time between Hockey trainings. Read only if you are severely bored. Otherwise, I caution you this is a waste of time.   My name is Rodger George Renner. Since the day I was born, people been calling me a dreamer. Supposedly, I came out of the womb a unique fella, with long eyelashes, poutty lips, and deep ocean eyes that looked straight up toward the sky like I was searching for something that had been lost on my drop down to earth. Mama says I didn’t cry a peep, no boy, just looked around, and stared for a while. Finally, I looked back at her, accepted my lot in life, and decided, I p...

I was on the DC Metro recently.Trains amaze me. There is something magical, and mesmerizing, about them; an illusive mystery in the silent webs of steel that connect such bustling ports of human activity. They are machines of contradiction; mechanically beautiful beasts made of fixed vehicles with deep, piercing whistles, and steadfast engines that churn upon steel courses, tamed like untamable lions as they carry hordes of time-driven men and women to their ever-divergent stations of life; men and women who rush from here to there in the dizzying pursuit of real purpose. Yet, those men and women who esteem themselves often too busy to be busy, find respite in the train, in its pacifying purr, the melody of its metal hard at work. The business man sits in his finely pressed suit reading the paper beside the city bum who beats calmly upon his drum, both men equally lost in an underground world of grimy enchantment; a world of constant, purposeful motion. A world in transit, from stat...

The sport of field hockey is in a period of rapid transformation. The implementation of the self-start rule in 2010 spearheaded the games evolution from a controlled, structured game to a faster, more free flowing game with increased reliance on the technical and tactical intuition of players. In the past, on a blown whistle, a pass had to be made from a dead ball restart; once the ball was in play another player on the field had to touch it before the restart player could make a second attempt. Now, the restart player can make a self-pass,  roughly a meter touch on the ball, and then make a second movement on it. The opposition cannot have a defensive impact on the ball carrier until they have given a distance of five meters. A quick restart in a small-crowded space has the potential to burn opponents. Experimentation and competition to optimize the new rule has changed the face of the game. Literally, the...