Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
It whipped past my ear at an unbelievable speed. The next one hit my partner Dave in the eye. These guys meant business. We couldn’t have been more surprised if a lightning bolt had struck the court in front of us.
We thought we’d wandered into a friendly game of badminton, but to our opponents, it was all out war. If that seems a little strange to you, imagine what it was like for us. Badminton is a game for backyard parties, church socials, and for getting the younger kids involved at family picnics.
As it turned out, badminton is the national sport of Indonesia. Indonesians dominate the Olympic Games with their aggressive, hard-hitting style.
My partner was Dave Hayes from Iowa. A guy with a cannon for a left arm who made it to Double-A baseball in the Cardinals organization before injuring his throwing shoulder. Dave remained athletic in anything he tried, badminton included.
As Judge Smails says to Ty Webb in Caddyshack, “I’m no slouch myself.” Ty quips back, “Don’t sell yourself short, you’re a tremendous slouch.”
I thought I was no slouch, but in the matter of about 20 minutes, I was quickly proven wrong.
We were in Half Acre Gymnasium on the University of Wyoming Campus in the opening round of the intramural badminton tournament.
During my senior year, I decided to get my friends together and try to win the Intramural Cup, an award given to the floor, fraternity, or independent group that amassed the most points in the various intramural offerings at UW.
We had guys bowling, trap shooting, playing tennis, competing in archery, and yes, badminton.
As a group we didn’t have a lot of finesse, but we were competitive at most team sports. We were runner-up in softball and made the championship game in football before losing to the UW baseball team, but didn’t win many basketball games, and one night, an Army ROTC team with just two guys beat us in volleyball. Finesse wasn’t our bailiwick.
Our opponents on the badminton court were barely five feet tall. They were both petroleum engineering majors from Indonesia. Our overconfidence in seeing two guys a foot shorter than us was short-lived.
On their first serve, one of them jumped in the air about 30 inches, made a sound like a half-grunt, half-scream, and ripped the shuttlecock straight at us. We were stunned. Badminton was supposed to be played with a soft, underhand serve that could be easily returned. They were out for blood.
When it came my turn to serve, I tossed the shuttlecock over the net underhanded, and before I could look up, it hit me hard on my right ear.
It was a quick two sets. We were mesmerized by their style of play. We became more spectators than opponents as these two little guys ripped the air with precision serves and blasting, blazing returns. I think the scores were 21-3 and 21-2.
They didn’t win the tournament, they finished third. The first and second-place teams were also Indonesian engineering majors.
Earlier that year, on a cold, wet October afternoon, I had a little fun with a guy I didn’t get along with. He was a big guy from Pine Bluffs, (isn’t everyone from Pine Bluffs, or for that matter, Lovell big?) and we’d served as senators on the Associated Students of the University of Wyoming. (ASUW)
He was a frat guy and I didn’t care much for him, or his fraternity. The feeling was mutual.
Early in the game, he bullrushed me as I set up to block on a pass play and rolled me backward, end over end.
On the ensuing play he thought he’d do it again, but this time I dropped and cut-blocked him, taking his legs out. He landed on his face in the cold, muddy grass. The war was on.
For the next hour or so, I had the most fun I’ve had in a ball game in a long time. He tried to manhandle me, and I leg-whipped him, tripped him, hit him with upper cuts to the jaw. and drove a few well-placed knees to his groin. He tossed me when I wasn’t set well enough and leveled me a few times when I didn’t get low enough for leverage.
Sometime during this melee, my dislike of him disappeared. He must have felt the same way because we started to offer our hands and pulled each other up after each play. We still kept pounding each other, but we laughed a few times when one of us got a really good shot on the other guy.
The game ended and I said, “Good luck in law school Mark.”
He smiled, extended his hand and said, “Good luck teaching and coaching.”
Those were the final words we exchanged. I headed off to Lusk the following August to begin my teaching and coaching career and he became a first-year law student at UW. We lost track of each other.
Athletics are funny this way, and funny in the strange context, not the humorous one.
Dave and I had overestimated our abilities against a couple of diminutive Indonesian students and were roundly trounced.
Mark and I had a little dance in a long-forgotten intramural football game on a cold October afternoon in Laramie, but it taught me a lesson.
Competition brings out the best in many people, but the worst in others. If you’re a true competitor, you’ll do anything to win within the bounds of the rules. If you’re not, you’ll cry, whine, cheat, and embarrass yourself in the process.
It’s good as a young man to get your blood up, to stand your ground and face a challenge. The taste of blood, your own, is a great catalyst to push yourself beyond your perceived limits.
Hopefully, these lessons are still valued today. It was a long time ago, but I’ve carried them with me for decades.