That's What She Said (Williamsburg DB)
Fonsecas Illegitimate Children (Manhattan Bball - Part 1)
Fonsecas Illegitimate Children (Manhattan Bball Part 2)
That's What She Said (Manhattan DB)
Schweatty Balls (Manhattan DB)
© 2007 ZogSports
| NYSC's Play For Your Cause Award - The "Fabulously Fit" Award Nominate Your Team for this NEW Play For Your Cause Award: New York Sports Clubs’ “Fabulously Fit” Award Think you have the most “Fabulously Fit” team in all the ZogSports leagues? Wondering just what “Fabulously Fit” means? For the first ever “Fabulously Fit” award, we want YOU to tell us what this means to your team. What do you interpret “Fabulously Fit” to mean and why is your team deserving of the first “Fabulously Fit” award in ZogSports history? Send us a quick note, picture, or anecdote to prove that your team should win this award and we’ll pick which team is deserving of the $500 prize! Yep, that’s $500 to your charity of choice! We think that’s a pretty great reason to prove you’re “Fabulously Fit”. Send your nominations to info@zogsports.org. We'll announce the winners of the Spring Season "Fabulously Fit" Award at the End-of-Season Party.. NOTE: Only teams who show up to the End-of-Season party will be considered for the award. So bring the whole squad and make sure you arrive embodying the “Fabulously Fit” spirit! |
| AND THE WINTER SEASON WINNER IS... Inigo Montoya (Manhattan Indoor Soccer) ZogSports and New York Sports Clubs congratulates the team on winning the first ever "Fabulously Fit" Award! The squad received a $500 check to donate to their cause, the Foundation for Fighting Blindness. Scroll down for their winning nomination. Spring teams should start thinking now about what makes them "Fabulously Fit" - the competition is going to get even more intense this season! Nominees RULE 76 (Manhattan Touch Football) says... That’s easy! We literally snuck through a gated fence out in Long Island City to practice! Almost our entire team came out on a freezing Saturday the week before our first scrimmage to have some fun and play some football and get fit! I’m pretty sure the temperature didn’t go above 30 degrees . . .That makes us “Fabulously Fit” with a bit of grit. . .how’s that? I even rhymed! We don’t let the weather or the closed gate stop us! And the team that climbs fences together stays together and wins championships together. It’s science. HOT TAMALES (Manhattan Indoor Soccer) says... We've all heard the song "We Go Together" from the ever so popular movie/musical Grease about a clique of high school students, but how about "We Fit Together" about a bunch of soccer-playing accountants? The Hot Tamales may not be the most physically fit team, but I think I speak for most of the players when I say that this team has formed friendships that will last well beyond the years of soccer. I never imagined joining a company team would provide so many laughs and memories that will stick with us forever. Please allow me to express a few reasons why and how we "fit" together so well. The Hot Tamales have not missed a Zog season since their inception in Spring 2005; Always on the pitch ready to run, jump, slide and dive! For those last 10 seasons we've been able to sport the RED Zog shirt; And I bet our goalie tops the charts on getting hurt! We've seen two players become parents in the past year; And have dressed the baby Tamales in Zog/Tamale gear! One of our team members came up with our current slogan "we're a second-half team"; And one Captain brought a playbook to the games - as crazy as that may seem! The Tamales host nights out that are hard to top; Where the offense vs defense flip cup tournaments will never stop! We've proven by championships that a team of accountants can do more than calculate a realized gain; Our level of play has been so impressive that we have fans cheering us on in the wind and rain! If you have a team that fits together as well as we do; It makes playing fun and it's easier to bring home a W! These are just a few reasons the Tamales are "fabulously fit"; My only hope is that this poem is a hit! THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID (Williamsburg Dodgeball) says... (see photo in right column) We the members of That's What She Said would like to nominate ourselves for the "Fabulously Fit" award. We are passionate about our charity, Girls on the Run. Four of our team members are the coaches of our school's team. Our charity is all about teaching young girls about self-esteem and having a healthy body image. We also do running with them to get them into exercise, which is so important for girls in the city who do not have that much of an opportunity for it. I think that it was only fitting that our team was comprised of mostly females. We basically walked into this season figuring, well we are probably not going to win very many games, but we are going to have fun. The first game when we found out about the Best Team Spirit award we decided that if we won that award, it would be a successful season! We didn't win any games the entire regular season (we did tie our last game!!!), but we didn't let that get us down. Through it all we were positive and enthusiastic. Winning was not the object to us, having fun was. The entire season we never gave up and played each game with all of our effort and enthusiasm. We actually ended up improving our game! We went into the finals figuring we were probably not going to win. Amazingly, our positive spirit allowed us to beat the burgundy team and we made it to the final game. Somehow, we are still not exactly sure, we took home second place! We were in such a state of shock after that last game. It still makes us smile a little wider to think about it! One great thing about our team was that we took our positive energy into our every day lives. Most of our team (all except two) are teachers at the Manhattan School for Children. We were so excited about our season that we decided to have an awards ceremony at our school. We nominated our team members for various awards (most spirited, most improved, best cheer, best dancer, most likely to wear tube socks...). We brought our classes to the gym and presented the awards. The students then had the opportunity to play dodgeball. They had a great time and so did we! PAULIE BALLNUTS (Manhattan Indoor Soccer) says... Top 10 Reasons Paulie Ballnuts is the MOST "Fabulously Fit" Team: 10. We managed to have enough stamina to play after the treacherous climb up the many flights of stairs to get to the gym 9. We rarely had subs and we all managed to persevere through the ENTIRE games 8. We did not pass out even though the average temperature in the gyms was about 100 degrees. 7. We all invested in NYSC memberships for some pre-season workouts (that's dedication!!) 6. We worked through our horrible Sunday morning hangovers to get to the games (that's rough!) 5. We still managed to enjoy some post-game happy hours and team bonding (even though we were exhausted!) 4. We rocked our matching black t-shirts (ok so maybe that doesn't make us fit, but we did look fabulous!) 3. Even our shins were fit --- Paulie Ballnuts did NOT do shin guards (no tears or bruising when the other teams kicked!) 2. Our super "fit" captain managed to scare our opposing team's members off the field (at least one per game!) 1. Soccer season wasn't over and we already began training for our Spring softball season (so we can apply for this award once again!!) FONSECA'S ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN (Manhattan Co-Ed 3-on-3 Basketball) says... (see photos in right column) We, Fonseca's Illegitimate Children or FIC, are proud to submit our nomination for the new NYSC's "Fabulously Fit" Award. We at FIC believe a team that is "fabulously fit" is not only physically fit, but also mentally and emotionally fit. First, our ability to comprehend the ZogSports 3-on-3 Co-Ed Basketball rules clearly demonstrates that we are mentally fit. Only geniuses can figure those rules out. Of course, it did take us four (going on five) seasons as a team to figure them out, but whatever! Second, being "Fabulously Fit" also means one should also be emotionally fit. Only an emotionally fit team could stay out until 1:30 AM on a Monday night after a basketball game just to finish off the 14th pitcher of Bud Light of the night. We, FIC, are the proud three-time Best Drinking Team defending champions of ZogSports Manhattan 3-on-3 Co-Ed Basketball. We would be proud and honored to be the first winners of the NYSC's "Fabulously Fit' award and the $500 that would go to our charity, the Komansky Center for Children's Health at New York Presbyterian Hospital. THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID (Manhattan Dodgeball - NOT the same team as above) says... (see photos in right column) "That's What She Said" Dodgeball team & "Fabulously Fit." They go hand in hand (that's what she said). Our team truly is Fab-fit for a variety of reasons, but first a bit of history. Many know our faces from the long-running University of Michigan touch football team. The team members were becoming less and less U of M and more and more BFF, so come the end of last football season, we decided we couldn't go one winter without each other and just HAD to play Dodgeball to avoid extensive withdrawal symptoms. And thus, a dodgeball team was born. I'm not going to pretend like we were the best team ever, but we managed to do pretty well considering it was our first time (that's what she said). Our team embodied everything that makes ZogSports great - a competitive spirit (with just the right amount of trash talk), a charity we all care about, and an unhealthy addiction to flip cup. And we always came to play - fabulously. Perhaps our shining moment as a truly historic dodgeball team came when had our only 4-0 showing when only four players showed. Yes, our overall record might not be the best in the league, but that day, we felt like we could take on anything. Fabulous? Check. Fit? Double check. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I attached some photographic evidence to show how very fabulous and fit we are. We're not the biggest, we're not the strongest, but we can take a big red ball to our face....and love it. (That's what she said). INIGO MONTOYA (Manhattan Indoor Soccer) says… "Hello. Our name is Inigo Montoya. You killed our father, prepare to die." Revenge is exactly what our fit team achieved, entering the playoffs as the #3 seed, we avenged our two losses during the season and beat previous champs, the mighty Brazil Waxed Penalty Box 9-2 in the semis and then After School Special in the finals. As a true sign of fitness, we had no female subs and only 1.5 male subs (1/2 person due to groin injury) for the playoffs. We showed that fitness is superior to youth, as our 38-year-old captain has to be the oldest member of a soccer championship team in the history of ZogSports. "Grandpa" is also a triathlete who would typically swim an hour and spin for two hours on Saturday, followed by long runs Sunday morning, culminating the weekend with soccer games (and ultimately groin injuries) Sunday afternoon. We have another 38-year-old player who is a past Ironman finisher and 7-time marathoner (his season ended with a hamstring injury, which makes us want to revisit the hypothesis that fitness is superior to youth); also on the older side, we have a 36-year-old player who stays fit jogging and bullying people, usually women on the other team. One of our younger, twenty-something team members had ACL surgery several years ago and through intense physical therapy regained his fitness and helped led the team to the championship. Our women were genetically speaking, robots, who HAD to be fit, because never more than two seemed to show up for any game, despite bribes, offers of flowers, etc. Not only were we fit, but we were internationally fit, with two Spaniards, a Frenchmen, a Pole, a Swedish Brit (or British Swede, can't remember which) and others with funny last names that meant they must be from somewhere other than the US. Inigo Montoya is "fitness" personified. The name comes from the character in the Princess Bride who wanted to exact revenge for the death of his father. 10 years ago at the University of Chicago Business School, our current captain, along with our 36-year old player were teammates on an indoor soccer team that lost 3-2 in a championship game. They hadn't played soccer together since then, but had been training with the singular purpose of exercising, or should I say, exorcising the demons of that loss. Today we are proud to have accomplished our goal through fitness, and can now get back to a normal life, and more importantly, physical therapy. SCHWEATTY BALLS (Manhattan Dodgeball) says... Why is Schweatty Balls Fabulously Fit? Well, to borrow from Merriam-Webster… Fabulous(ly): of an incredible or astonishing nature. Fit: adapted to the environment so as to be capable of surviving. We are all of the above. As a rookie team, we had no expectation of having any skill whatsoever, nor did we have any idea what it really took to play dodgeball. But that all changed our first weekend out when, much to our astonishment, we learned that we were actually decent at this game that no one had touched since grade school. Sure, we still didn’t have a clue about strategy, but that came quickly enough as we met and learned from the other talented teams of the Manhattan Weekend West Division. By February, we’d mastered the basics (catch, don’t try to hide, the ball will find you), and were moving on to more upper-level tactics (synchronized throwing/no binge drinking the night before a game/catch). As March approached, our team statistician informed us that our most difficult challenges lie ahead. We were due to face the first and second seeded teams in the division. With our eyes on a playoff berth, we strategized our butts off, crossed our fingers, took to the court, and held our own, securing one last trip to P.S. 111. March 8 began like any other winter day, only this day was different. This was the day that would define Schweatty Balls as a dodgeball team and determine whether or not we would go down in ZogSports history. There was tension in the air as we lined up to play. We were nervous, yet confident. We’d made it this far, why shouldn’t we be able to win a round of the playoffs? The whistle blew and the games began like a blitzkrieg. Round after round our balls took out the opponents, as one hour stretched into two, stretched into four, and we were still alive. Call it divine intervention (after all we do have three Popes and a Madonna on the team), but not only did Schweatty Balls succeed in winning one round of the playoffs that day, though sheer determination and will-power, we managed to turn a sixth seed into the Manhattan Weekend West Division Champions. This brings me back to why Schweatty Balls is the most Fabulously Fit team in all the ZogSports land. Our story is fabulous. As an inexperienced and underdog team, we were by no means expected to win the division, and yet, we were clearly fit enough to do so. But the real reason that Schweatty Balls is Fabulously Fit is because of the dedication, enthusiasm, and heart of this little team that, like our charity, only needed a fighting chance, to prove that we too, could be champions. |
| NYSC's Trial Membership When You’re Not On the Field or the Court, Our New Partner, New York Sports Clubs, Invites You to Take Advantage of Their Many Gyms and Prep for Your Next ZogSports Game! NYSC Has Helped its Members:
Take a Two-Week Trial Membership for only $19.99. During your trial membership, our trained and knowledgeable staff will help you explore our wide variety of programs and services. Click here to start working toward your fitness goals today. (Applicable sales tax applies.) Visit www.mysportsclubs.com for More Information! |