As if I haven't been hurting myself enough lately, I've decided to try a new sport. A friend of someone I play soccer with is trying to organize Australia Rules Football for women here in the Southland. A bit surprisingly, Aussie rules football for men is already reasonably organized in the states and there are about 40 teams across the U.S. that play in competitive leagues, not counting recreational leagues. Even so, at the U.S. Nationals last year (yes, U.S. Nationals for Australian Football), though there were three divisions of about 30 men's teams, only 4 women's teams competed. So my friend's friend is trying to introduce women to the sport through soccer, since punting the ball is an important part of the game. We met up last night with a couple of people to learn the basics of ball handling. The ball is moved up the field through punting the ball from player to player, or passing it with a sort of vollyball like punch with the hand. I had a lot of fun and am interested to see if she's able to get enough people together in town to organize some pickups. Here's a promotional video for Aussie Footy - I'm going to assume that since women's recreational hockey in no way, shape or form resembles NHL hockey, that women's Aussie rules football will hardly resemble the play you see in this video. Take notice of how a player can crawl up the back or shoulder or an opposing player to gain height to catch the ball.