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This past weekend I played in a little informal tournament between a few companies. We played Google, Cisco, Genentech, Oracle, and LookSmart, and although we only won one game, I still had fun out there. One of the requirements of the tournament was that at least one girl had to be playing all of the time. Another girl and myself rotated in to be the one girl. At some times, we both played, simply because some of the guys needed a break as well. I didn’t make all of the games, but I did get a chance to get out and play again. I showed up halfway through the game against Google, and although we were down by quite a few when I showed up, we stayed pretty even with them from there on out. OK, OK, you’re thinking, hey, if Kara is out there as the girl, then she has an unfair advantage. Well, I’m not fully recovered from the surgery and being away from athletics for 1.5 months to recover didn’t do anything to help either. It’s been a slow road getting back to my athletic condition before surgery, plus the combination of getting older along with the effects of the hormones hasn’t helped anything. Anyway, Google had 3 really good women on their team while, before I showed up, we only had one. She was, I would say, very tired since this was her second straight game of playing all of the time. I didn’t run as fast as I could have, so I stayed pretty even with the other women, but I did score a few of the points while I was in there.

I’d just come from electro, so I was worried that I might not look entirely female while playing. So, I threw on a little makeup and wore a pink shirt, as well as one of those open air women’s visor hats. As far as I know, there was no question to my gender. Some of the guys messed up once in a while, calling me by my old name or slipping in the wrong pronoun, ‘he’, once or twice. Luckily, my old name is androgynous, with a slight lean toward the feminine side, so it didn’t really matter. Funny, I still get the question “why did you change your name?” If you want the answer, Google the following three words without quotations: "karaflynntg presented Scooby."

After the tourney, our team kinda sat around chatting, drinking beers, and waiting until there was enough energy in our bodies to walk back to our cars. As we did, I watched a large number of very fit women head down to the area we had previously played. One of the girls from Google went down there as well. It appeared to be a semiprofessional team that was practicing. They were really good as I watched them warm up and practice drills. It would be nice to get out on a team sport again and, perhaps, make a few new friends while having fun.