The very appropriately named team “Matzo Ballers” participated in the Austin Sports and Social Kickball CO-ED league last Saturday. The 30-team league was divided in a first round of groups followed by the playoffs.

This ad-hoc team was formed with members of YAD. I joined in spite of not having played kickball since elementary school, where we call it fut-beis (pronounced foot-base), I decided to join in. Given that most teams in the league play together year-round and we were randomly thrown together, we didn’t have very high hopes.

But we surpassed our expectations by winning the first game. And the second one. And the third one.

At this point we had been out in the field for five hours on a sunny Saturday morning. This made us be both surprised and thrilled of winning yet sick of being all the way out in a park by the airport in the middle of nowhere. Read more for the rest of the story.

On the playoffs, we inexplicably defeated a far superior team but were finally eliminated in the semifinal, finishing third place in the tournament. Third place!

This whole experience turned out to be a twisted version of the Hannukah miracle: we lasted way longer than we were supposed to: over eight hours in a park, starting too early on a Saturday morning with nothing but beer, M&Ms, and left-over cake and challah to sustain us.

I can confidently say that I had a great time. I can also confidently say that I don’t want to play kickball for another twenty years. Thank you Matzo Ballers.