Log In Register

WAKA, WAKA

Utilizing a bold new social platform called face-to-face, kickball has been making friends and ending bachelorhood in Albany since 2010

by Ali Hibbs on October 2, 2014 · 1 comment

 

Kickball. It’s the new Match.com.

“Our wedding was pretty much kickball, but without the grass,” says 35-year-old Elizabeth Galarneau. “It was a kickball wedding. And we wanted to do it that way because that‘s how we became one.”

“Yeah,” says Jeff Galarneau. Sitting on the patio at Lionheart in Albany, Elizabeth and Jeff smile at each other sweetly. The couple will be celebrating their one-year anniversary on Nov. 2, one day before his 38th birthday.

“I saw a post on one of the Times Union blogs,” he says, explaining how he became involved with the growing Capital Region phenomenon. “And it sounded like fun.”

“I moved back from New York City and in with a college roommate,” she says. “And he wanted to make new friends. At first I thought it seemed pretty silly, but then I thought it might be a good way to meet new people. I didn’t really know anyone at the time.”

Kick it! Kick the ball! photo by Yuliya Peshkova

Neither husband nor wife signed up with the intention of looking for love, and certainly neither imagined they would soon be walking down any aisles. “I was all set to be a cat lady,” she says. “I was all good. I just wanted to meet some people my age.” Nor was it love at first sight: Even though they played for the same team, they “actually met more at the mid-season party.”

“As you can tell, he’s quiet. And, as you know, drinking can give you that little bit of motivation to speak up a little more.” Elizabeth Galarneau laughs. “We just started talking and it turned out that we had a lot of things in common.” They say the relationship grew gradually. Their first date was in Troy (where they now live) at the Ale House.

“We’ve always been on the same team,” says Jeff, when asked if things ever got competitive during their courtship. He had already been playing for a year when she joined his team, Ball and Oates, in 2011.

With names like Menace II Sobriety, Balls Deep, Bluth’s Frozen Bananas and Hypergalactic Sasquatch Attack (this summer’s league champions), it’s hard to imagine that these games ever engender much competitive acrimony. While there are reportedly a few players who take it pretty seriously, the general consensus is that most people come for the social aspect and don’t get too bent out of shape about whether they win or lose.

Affiliated with the national organization, the World Adult Kickball Association, which was founded in 1998 by a couple of guys in Washington, D.C., who were nostalgic for their social college years, Albany’s kickball league is organized by Jen Adams, 31, and her husband, Rob, 33. The couple played with a league in Florida; after the Adams moved back to the Capital Region to be closer to family, Jen answered a WAKA posting on Craigslist. She gets paid, she says, but not much.

Both local teachers, the couple didn’t meet on the kickball field but as students in Oneonta. They became involved with WAKA through a friend while living in Fort Lauderdale after graduation. Their first reaction, says Jen, “Was like, ‘Kickball? That’s weird.’ But once you play, it’s very addictive.”

WAKA rules are pretty simple, and just about anyone can play. It’s a lot like baseball. Only it’s a big red rubber ball. And you kick it. And, according to at least a few players, a drink or two beforehand can often improve your game.

Getting involved isn’t hard either. “You go to the website,” says Rob. “And you can sign up one of two ways. You can create a friend room, where you and a bunch of your friends all sign up under the same team name and you’re put together on a team, or if you’re a new person and don’t know anyone yet, you can sign up as a free agent and be placed on a team.” Even after five years, he says, a lot of people are still just learning about it. “A lot of times people sign up as free agents,” he says, “And the next year, they sign up with the same team because they’ve met and made friends and they want to play together now.”

“The first season we had seven teams in the spring and 11 teams in the summer,” Adams continues. “We didn’t do a fall that year.” This summer they had 20 teams. “We’re supposed to max out at 16. We’re at the point where we have to tell people to be sure to sign up early or they’ll miss out.” The Adamses say they like to mix it up and join different teams every season to get to know newcomers and teach new participants the rules. This season they are playing with Team ‘Murrica, but they’ve also recently played with Sons of Pitches and Schoolyard Bullies.

Nate Walker, 35, has been playing since the league began back in 2010. “I joined with my brother-in-law to help him come meet people and, hopefully, a girlfriend,” he says from the sidelines of a game at Hackett Middle School on Delaware this September. Did it work? His brother-in-law did get married, he says, but they actually met elsewhere. She did, however, join the league while they were dating.

Although he admits he “wasn’t super excited to get into it at first,” Walker now tries to play every season—spring, summer and fall. He sat out the spring season this year because his wife gave birth to twins and, although he was clearly thrilled, he says that didn’t stop him from missing the games. “When I had chances, I would go out and see how my team was doing.” Walker’s team, Balls Deep, is one of the longest lasting teams in the league: “Since the fall of 2010, the core of our team has pretty much stayed the same. We’ve really grown and become close.”

Balls Deep are finished playing for the day—they beat the Ball Busters 17-6—but Walker is hanging around to watch the next set of games. There is a definite tailgating atmosphere among spectators, many of whom don’t play but still like to show up and watch the games. This, says Walker’s teammate Megan Baldwin, “isn’t even that many people. You should see it during the summer. It’s huge and fun and crazy. We have themed games where we get dressed up, and it seems like there’s something different every week.”

Baldwin has also been playing since the league began. She originally signed up with some friends, but, she says, “I’ve wound up meeting a really great group of friends that I probably would have no way of knowing if it weren’t for kickball. . . . We all get along really well and have a great time and it’s something to look forward to every week, a different group of people outside of my normal social circle.”

“For me,” says the 30-year-old Baldwin, ‘I’ve found that, as I’ve gotten older, it’s been more difficult to meet new people and to find activities that are fun to do and to stay engaged in.”

The gang's all here: Capital Region kickballers at the Lionheart, photo by Yuliya Peshkova

“It’s a really great way to make new friends,” says Tommy DeMond with a grin. DeMond, 33, has been playing kickball for three years and says that he joined the league as a way to meet new people, even though he’s from the Capital Region and seems to already know just about everyone. “I’ve even been to a couple of weddings of people that met through kickball. I’m actually going to one in three weeks,” he adds before running back out onto the field where his team, Faces Loaded, is losing to Menace II Sobriety.

DeMond’s friends, Jen Sherwood, 33, and her fiance, Mike Lauer, 34,  are too busy planning for their Oct. 11 wedding to play this fall. But they say they definitely plan to return next spring to resume their kickball careers as husband and wife.

“I was on Friends With Benefits,” Sherwood recalls her first team with a laugh. “And Mike was on the Justice League.” Both have been with the league since the first season, she says, but they didn’t meet on the field—they met at the bar, a popular postgame destination any given week.

Back in 2010, the games were held on New Scotland Avenue and players would converge on Red’s Park Place on Madison across from Washington Park (now Park View Pub) after they had faced off on the field to dissolve rivalries in their pint glasses and make friends of their former foes. “There was this sort of mashing and mingling of teams,” says Sherwood. “We all loved it so much that we would play pick-up games whenever we could and get together to play beer pong.” Her relationship with Lauer began casually; they would joke around and tease each other during the games.

“And then one day he walked me home after I had a little too much to drink at the bar,” she says. “And we sat on my stoop talking and I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’” That was four years ago; The couple got engaged last July.

“My maid of honor in my wedding,” says Sherwood, “She was on his team. And another one of my bridesmaids is a friend from kickball too. It’s just amazing to me the kind of network it provides. . . . If you ever need anything, you just have this insane network of people you can go to.”

There are also relationships that didn’t work out, adds Sherwood. “And it can get awkward. But,  people like it so much that usually they work through the awkwardness and end up coming back. I don’t know if it’s the sport or if it’s just that the people are so great, but my favorite thing is definitely the people.”

Now that they play at Hackett, the bar of choice is Lionheart Pub just up the street where Center Square begins—especially since the bar began sponsoring the league two years ago. If you happen to be sitting on the patio this fall after 5 PM on a Saturday, you can expect to be besieged by a group of kickballers in tell-tale WAKA T-shirts, still talking good-natured smack.

“People come from everywhere,” says Elizabeth Galarneau. “There are people that come from Amsterdam to play. And Saratoga. We like this league. We’ve met our friends here; we go on wine tours and have BBQs, we’re in a volleyball league at JCC with some of our kickballers. It’s like a family.”

 

 

Leave a Comment


5 × four =

{ 1 trackback }

  • Jeff Foley Photography » Blog Archive » A JFP wedding image makes the cover of Metroland