Your Sports Story
By Staff • Jul 1st, 2009 • Category: Interact, Missy's Musings
What’s your story?
Maybe you came to sport late.
You found it in the gym or the studio.
Maybe you discovered it early, on a court or a course.
Maybe it’s walking, maybe it’s running, maybe it’s dance or yoga or swimming or hiking. Maybe you found your sport when you saw your daughter transformed by that first athletic success and knew that your own transformation was out there waiting for you. Maybe you found it on your way to something else—a kid’s practice, a healthier life, a friend’s race. But no matter where each of our sports stories begins, we all end up at the same place, a place where we are becoming our own best selves.
Tell us your story!
Founder, Missy Park
Email this author | Written by: Staff
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A Paddling Love Story
Have you ever had someone come into your life and leave you so altered you wanted to write a great novel about it, paddle oceans, perhaps sing a poem from a mountain top, dance on main street, or build a pinwheel garden just to tell the world “hey, because of this person, I am not the same!”?
Whatever we do in our lives, everyone hopes to leave something behind from their time on earth. One of the most significant things we can leave behind …is our story…or stories. If you were loved and altered by someone’s story, how their lives touched you…it is a story worth telling.
Cancer sucks! There really isn’t anything else to say about it, but that. I hope you don’t mind my telling this story…it involves magical friendships, courage, victories, loss, wisdom, and lessons learned. It is about celebration of life at its best and most temporary, and of course, paddles, bubbles and pinwheels.
Outrigger Canoe paddling came into my life five years ago by the arm twisting of a close friend. Since, I can’t swim well and don’t much like the water overall, being on a very narrow tippy boat on the lake (or especially the ocean) is NOT where I prefer to be! It wasn’t right away, but over time the sport of paddling grew on me and I fell in love with the unlikely.
Soon after came the arrival of four other women who felt the same way (with a lot less arm twisting), all with strong personalities, yet very different, contributing to a team whose whole was more than the sum of it’s parts. One of those women was Jennifer Andrews. The first time we met, I raved about the sport to her. And here was this woman, who told me how much she loved Hawaii, and who loved the water, but I thought she was way too glamorous to ever join us. Jen came out the next day and never left until she couldn’t join us any longer…!
She became our best friend and confidante, hours on the phone, funny stories over wine, we were never without her support, compassion, and uncensored humor. One year she gave us all an Easter basket (she loved holidays) full of forgotten childhood wonders…a candy necklace (remember those?), pinwheels, and bottles of bubbles! It reminded us to play, enjoy, and believe in the moment!
The six of us did everything together, growing as friends, each contributed something to the group that made us all better. The friendship was intense, and seemingly exclusive, we couldn’t help it…we were on “borrowed time”. That camaraderie afforded us success in races, success we would have never dreamed possible. A novice team from the desert? Competing on the ocean? All over 45, two of which were grandmothers, winning medals? Nonsense! But we did. In our first race together, the canoe seemed to just glide with the magic of teamwork, and every race after that just got better. We were full of ourselves, reveling in the moments and the love that was “sixasone”. And…we thought we had forever to continue the magic. We had no idea it would end so soon.
When Jennifer was diagnosed with stage four cancer, a year later, our worlds were rocked to the very core. We found ourselves in a different kind of race and everything changed. It was a long tough fight for her, in which she complained little and still laughed and bossed us around when she came out. Being the sass, sparkle, and spunk to any occasion, she kept us uplifted instead of the other way around. We sought to encourage her with themed gifts which, we left on her doorstep when she returned from her long trips to the hospital. One time it was a super hero stuff, with individual homemade capes, bubbles, another time, a pinwheel garden outside her window. There was even a flat cardboard version of her that went to every race in her absence, lovingly known among all the teams, as Flat Jen!
In 2008 she asked us to “pinky swear” that when she was done with Chemo, we would all do the Rig Run in Santa Barbara with her. It was the dream of doing that race that got her through two months of radiation treatments in the Chicago winter. That summer, on a perfect May day in Southern California, the six of us paddling together again, all of us believing in miracles, she was the happiest, strongest, ever and paddled 12 miles! We didn’t win a medal but of course no one cared, our prize was so much more.
As hard as we prayed, paddled, and wished for a miracle for her, we never got one. Last January we met at her house to help her take down her Christmas decorations, all together in one room,” just like old sixasone times”, she said smiling. The laughter was bittersweet, somehow we all knew it was over and it was… we never saw her again.
Now, I wear her silver paddle around my neck along with the words Kinipela which is Jennifer in Hawaiian…she is never far from me! I miss her more than I can say! There is so much more I would like to tell, so many stories of how she changed us, but that will require pages still to be written. But this is what I want to say most…Jennifer’s death taught me to live…the only thing about cancer that is worthwhile.
Most of us have been touched by this disease, or know someone who has, and have to find peace with it in our own way. It is a journey for those who live and die with it and those of us who walk beside them. Who teaches who? Who inspires who? Who is the most courageous? We are all courageous who have been touched by cancer, but none more than those who fight it within their bodies every day!
Thought I would die initially, from the grief, then I decided to live, REALLY LIVE. Jennifer changed me, she made me better. And we were able to give her a gift as well…two years of adventures that felt like a lifetime to all of us. She did things she never dreamed of, and had five best friends to celebrate life with, and that makes us all smile whenever we think of her.
On the first anniversary of Jennifer’s passing, we will honor her on the water, wearing a purple shirt (her favorite color)… with a pinwheel on all water craft to honor her or someone else loved and lost… someone whose story altered our life. It will be a celebration of the temporary, celebration of sunshine on the lake, smiling and laughing, we will celebrate life…with paddles in the water and spinning pinwheels in the wind!
Thanks You for listening! Pam
Freestyle Frisbee is my sport.
I’ve competed and played for nearly 30 years. I’ve won several world titles. Frisbee has taken me to Japan, Europe and cities all over the United States. Frisbee friends who I met through competing all therse years are still my friends today. I met my husband at a frisbee tournament. We’ve taught hundreds of school kids, entertained thousands and played with some of the most skilled athletes in the world.
Frisbee is a piece of plastic that spins either clock-wise our counter clock-wise through the air when you throw it. There is something about a flying object cutting throught the air that catches your attention. You can’t not look at it. On the old Whamo packaging it encouraged people to “be creative and invent new games” (something like that).
For the past 30 years I’ve been inventing moves and creating choereography with this spinning object. There are hundreds of ways to throw and catch a frisbee and inbetween endless number of movements you can use with your body. You can delay the disc on you finger nail, while it spins. You can tap, kick, brush, roll and spin with the disc. Finally you can catch it – infront, behind or away from your body. You can be air born, rolling on the ground or holding a one arm handstand and catching the disc with the other. It is never ending, the number of moves you can create is endless and that is why frisbee is so compelling to me.
Something so simple as a frisbee has touched my life and has brought so many friends and positive experiences. It has brought me so much joy and happiness, and keeps me youthful. I’m nearly 50, I have 2 kids but I still play and plan to compete at the world championships. Seattle, August 5-6th, 2010.
freestyledisc.org
Sincerely,
Carolyn Yabe Hubbard