The Catalan Guys

2006/12/17 1 comment

I’ve read somewhere that the obesity rate is around 65% in the United States. This figure is surprisingly high, and it means that out of every 100 adult people living in America, 65 of them are obese or overweight. With such numbers, I basically expected to find a country of fat people. Nothing further from the truth. Apparently, California is not representative at all of the rest of America. Here, there is some kind of body cult (no wonder Arnold Schwarzenegger is the elected governor), and I would say people are generally fit. Maybe this is a mentality thing, yet I don’t think so. In the UCI campus we have the ARC (Anteater Recreation Center) less than five minutes away from any campus residence. The ARC is much more than a regular fitness center. Any sport related activity can be performed there. There obviously is a fitness room, but also several basketball courts, racquetball, climbing facilities, indoor soccer, outdoor soccer, tennis, swimming pool, hockey rink, and the list goes on… The best thing is the fact it’s open 7 days a week from early in the morning to midnight.

With such resources, it is no wonder why people are so fit. As I see it, when you’re at home doing nothing, you can always go hang out in the ARC and play something. At least that’s what I do! Besides that, every quarter several leagues and tournaments are organized in many different sports. This is how we entered the indoor soccer intramural competition. In Spain, Soccer is the main sport; I guess it would be something like football in USA. Since it is the most practiced sport, I would say people are generally not bad at all, especially when compared to people from other countries where soccer isn’t that popular.

So, we joined this internal UCI league. The matches take place once a week during the whole quarter, and then the best teams make it to the playoffs. The game is short but intense. Since our team consisted exclusively of catalan people, we came up with the original name. The Catalan Guys. Yes, I have to admit we are not that bright… The thing is though, that with a name like this, you feel more like a national team representing your country It is a very diverse team though; all of us are UCI (ex)students ranging from 22 years old to more than thirty in some cases. The fact is that despite the diversity, we managed to create a nice team. It turns out, we did quite good throughout the competition. We won every single game during the regular season (you can read short summaries in here –they’re in Spanish though-). Since we already played against all teams during regular season we got the chance to see all of our future rivals, and the truth is we beat all of them.

I have to admit we were probably overconfident and already saw ourselves as champions. I mean, who wouldn’t after a perfect season. But then, when the first serious match came, one of out best players Marc (see video) had finished his master degree in UCI and went back to Barcelona. We should have taken that as a bad sign; we didn’t. And as you can imagine we lost the first playoff game and were out of the competition. It kind of reminded me of what happens to the Spanish national team in every world cup

From my side, despite the loss, I am just happy to be part of a team again. I love sports, and being able to play again after my knee surgery and my back problems is just all I needed. Anyway, the next quarter the championship will be ours, so, watch out for the Catalan Guys!