I thought now would be a good time to talk about sports, seeing as I love them and it’s the start of March Madness! To be fair, I’m still not really into March Madness, but I am finding basketball more interesting these days. I’ve filled out a bracket for the NCAA tournament, but in classic Anya style, I didn’t fill out just one. I have a “serious” one (in quotations because none of mine are truly serious. I have Gonzaga winning in this one; I just liked their name too much to let them lose!), one where winners are chosen based on which mascot I think would win in a fight, and then finally one where I let ESPN autofill it based on a bunch of statistical algorithms. I’m using the third one as a reference to compare my bracket to, but also I want to see how accurately the algorithms work. The mascot bracket was just a fun way of knowing something about all the teams. There are some weird mascots out there (Xavier and Wichita, I’m looking at you). In case you were curious, I have Baylor winning that one because their bear looks real ferocious. Just go and compare him to the UCLA bear and you’ll see what I mean. In the larger realm of sports, it appears as though I’m becoming a Minnesota fan **insert awkward grimacing emoji face here**. I guess it was inevitable. I grew up in a household that, besides Cubs baseball and the occasional Bears football game, didn’t really watch many sports except soccer (my dad got a whole new dish just so we could get the Fox Soccer Channel) and the entirety of the Olympics because the Olympics is awesome. I love attending all types of sporting events and now I live in Minnesota so those are the one’s I go to. I’ll break down my thoughts by sport: Baseball: Don’t get me wrong, my love for the Cubs will never die, and I’m planning on trying to fit in a game at Wrigley this summer, but I love going to baseball games and the Twins stadium is pretty neat. And what’s great (and not so great?) about the Twins is that they’re bad. Or at least they were really bad last year, so that means awesome deals for this year! Alex and I just bought park passes, which is $99 for every Twins home game in the months of April and May. That’s 30 games, so a little over $3 a game?! Yes please. The best part is that the stadium is a 15 minute walk from where I work, so weeknight games are no problem. Basketball: My personal experience in basketball has been limited. I did shoot free throws underhand in 6th grade, though I think it was only in practice because I'm fairly positive I never scored a single point in a game. Now, the Timberwolves aren’t hard to like, but as in true Minnesota sports fashion, they aren’t phenomenal. But they do have a player from Senegal who only started playing basketball at 16 because they didn’t have soccer cleats in his size! Plus, watching Ricky Rubio play is pretty cool. He’s not known for his shooting and he certainly can’t dunk, but his passing is amazing. I know it sounds a little lame, but he has such vision on the court. Its incomparable to anything I’ve payed attention too before. At the last game we went to (which was this past Monday), he had 22 points and 19 assists. 19! That’s an unheard of number in basketball, and it set the franchise record. I really don’t mean to put so much hype on him because in a lot of ways I think he’s overrated, but I appreciate athletic vision. We were given free tickets to that game because we were going to the game last week that was cancelled due to “unforeseen issues with the playing surface.” What happened was that Disney on Ice had come to the Target Center the previous week and apparently they had put the court on top of some residual ice. It was unseasonably warm for the two days leading up to the game so the ice melted and made the court all slippery. So essentially an indoor sporting event was cancelled due to weather….that’s definitely a new one. The upside is that we get tickets to the rescheduled game and got free tickets to the game we went to this week, so I’m not complaining too much. I don’t know much about the Minnesota Lynx (that’s the WNBA team and I realize it’s not okay for me to not know much about them) but I know they’re good and I fully intend on attending some games this summer. I’ve also now been to a University of Minnesota men’s basketball game, and that was pretty fun. Having not gone to a big univeristy, it’s cool to experience but not something I’m sad I missed. And I have the Golden Gophers losing in the first round of the NCAA tournament so obviously that hasn’t sunk in much. Football: I still have no interest in football. I guess no interest isn’t entirely accurate, I do like to keep tabs on the Bears with my dad, but every time I’m sitting on a couch when there’s a football game on, I get super sleepy and end up napping through most of it. It’s pretty impressive. I slept through the entirety of Clemson’s fourth quarter comeback in the NCAA championship and woke up to see the final play. However, if one thing is going to make me a Vikings fan, it’ll be US Bank Stadium. I recently visited it to watch Macalester’s baseball team play a game there last week and it was SO cool. I’m still not sure I’m sure I’m onboard with the amount of money that went into it or the giant viking horn in the corner, buuuuttttt I have to say, it’s a pretty amazing structure. There are so many windows and I also noticed that there are no seats where your view could be obstructed by a pillar or other structural apparatus! Ice hockey: I think the Wild are the only Minnesota team that’s truly “mine”. I never knew it, but I like hockey! Except from the random boxing matches that go down in the middle of games. I don’t understand those. But other than that, I like it! The Wild are doing really well this year. I’ve been to two games so far and I can’t wait to go to more. I think my liking hockey is due in part to broomball, which I played for the first time this winter. Broomball is essentially a combination of soccer and ice hockey, so I was good at some parts and not so great at others. It’s pretty similar to ice hockey in rules, so I won’t get into that but basically you run around on the ice in some special shoes and try to score in the other team’s goal with your stick. The fun thing for me was that basically I can just play soccer because the ball is essentially a mini soccer ball and you can pass it with you feet! Downside is that you have to score with your stick. I had almost figured out how to use my stick by the end of the season, so it’s looking up for next winter! To go along with the hockey theme, Red Bull Crashed Ice comes to Saint Paul every winter and it’s exciting. If you’ve never heard of it, you should read about it here. It’s essentially snowboard cross (like from the Olympics) but with four people on ice skates! They race each other down an ice luge with jumps and other obstacles. It’s very fast and definitely isn’t super safe, but it’s entertaining and is free to attend!. The men and women who compete in it must be crazy. Maybe next winter my goal should be to learn how to ice skate properly, since I seem to like skating sports so much. Soccer: This year is Minnesota United’s inaugural MLS season! I’m super excited that I get to be here for that. I guess I want the Orlando City soccer team to do well, but they didn’t reach MLS status until after I’d moved away so I wasn’t able to really appreciate it in the moment. I have plans to attend the MNU vs OC game in May if I’m in town! Minnesota's first ever home game was this past weekend and, in true Minnesota fashion, was played while it was 20 degrees out and snowing. Honestly it would have been weird if it was any other way. The Loons (Minnesota’s mascot) aren’t doing so hot. They’ve played 2 games and have 11 goals against already (awkward grimacing emoji face is back). I'm still going to watch every game though. I love soccer too much. Don't worry, I’m not just watching sports, I’m still playing them! On top of broomball (which is over now), I’m playing soccer as much as I possibly can and I’m helping out with my old water polo team at Macalester, so I’m getting some pool time in too. And I snuck in some additional snowboarding this winter! Also, remember how in the last post I said that I was going to run the marathon? Weeeelllll, that’s not going to work for this year. The men’s water polo team that I coach will have a tournament in Iowa that weekend, but I’ve found a great replacement! I’m part of a team of 12 that will be running the Ragner Great River! It’s a 200+ mile relay race from Winona, Wisconsin to Minneapolis, Minnesota. The course is broken up into 6 segments, and our team into two vans of six people. Each van takes a segment and you relay amongst the people in your van. Then, once the first van completes a segment, the second van’s runners start on the second segment. And you keep going all day/night until you finish! It’ll probably take us something like 24 to 36 hours. I’m really, really excited about it. 5 months to start training...and GO. One thing that’s glaringly obvious about this blog is a lack of women’s representation in professional sports. I realize that’s not really my fault and I’m not going to stop watching or enjoying men’s sports because of it, but I still don’t like how underrepresented women’s sports are in the United States, and in the world for that matter. Unless they’re an Olympic gymnast or a beach volleyball player, female athletes don’t get a lot of love. Even the ones that do, it’s not always for the right reasons (aka their actual athletic talents). I have a lot of thoughts on the divide between men’s and women’s sports and I hate it, but it’s also hard to see it ever becoming more equal and I think that’s the worst part. It makes me angry and sad that in order for change to happen, there would need to be a total upheaval of how society thinks about gender equality, especially gender equality in sports. It doesn’t look promising and it’ll be slow, but it just takes bringing one person at a time to that realization. So maybe that’s part of why I wrote the post. If I can help one person see what I’m talking about, it means I’ve done something right.
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Meet AnyaHi, Hola, Bonjour, Ciao!
I’m Anya Phillips, a data analyst and travel enthusiast who is always on the lookout for the next adventure! Categories
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