April Fools
It’ll reach the sixties in Boston today and tomorrow. Do you know what that means? FoOls!
April Fools that is. The tournament I remember most fondly out of all the tournaments I ever played in. No amount of intense competition can replace the joyful feelings I have for loading-up a rented van and driving twelve hours Bull Run Virginia, where you might still find civil war rifle shot under the ground we played on. I kid you not.
“I used to plan a ski trip the week before Fools, and then travel directly to the fields,“ My friend Matt said to me recently when we talked about our team WeSwill.
“Me too,” I answered, remembering a particular trip to Vail late one March. A year when the deep snow of the Back Bowls morphed seamlessly into hucking backhands deep for goals.
Strategy! We used to call it. Huck it deep. Set up the zone. Force a turn. Score. Rinse and repeat.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Dan Weiss said to us the year he guest-starred on our team. “Why would you willingly turn it over?”
The answer quite obvious.
Fools! And the promise of beginning another season playing the best game on the planet. Maybe not the best game to watch, but definitely the best to play for so many reasons.
Fools! The tournament to mark the end of winter. Sure, there’s daylight savings. Sure, there’s warmer temps and melting snow. Sure, March’ll come in like a lion and leave like a lamb. That too.
But Fools! A chance to run, throw and and catch with no real concern for anything else in one’s life. An excuse to forget one’s troubles, and occasionally even a chance to shroom.
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“Jim, wanna try ‘em?” I asked my older brother the year he joined us for another classic Rude Boy weekend.
“No thanks, I brought a book. I’ll be fine.” He said. Can’t blame him. We’d had some previous high-flying experience, while he hadn’t. He played with us that weekend, but stayed grounded. We? Not so much.
Fools! The two days spent in Virginia on or around April 1 that signaled to my body and psyche that we’d made it out of the dark — spring sprung.
Fools! A chance to live in the moment.
2026 has been a colossal winter for snow. After decades of warming, this winter we experienced near record snowfall and cold.
“It’s going to get colder due to global warming,” I read in the paper.
Huh!?!
I’ve not played at April Fools in twenty years, and I won’t be this year. But that small fact won’t keep me from remembering WesWill’s mantra.
Our Year!
We’d say it every year, regardless of our prospects. A foolish prophecy that one occasion came true. But winning wasn’t the point. Playing was. Being foolish was. And to think we didn’t train for Fools. Hadn’t played since October. Hadn’t thrown a single pass for almost six months.
Our Year! We’d yell as we hucked it deep with abandon.
And so with the temps popping up to the mid sixties for a couple of days here in early March I revel in the thought of being in my twenties, buying so fit I could just play, and being foolish.
