A Sunday afternoon game of croquet

I learned something new about myself yesterday. It was something I never would have suspected, especially given my lack of hand-eye coordination in most instances. But apparently I am a pretty good croquet player.

I went to a friend's birthday party in Salinas yesterday and they had a few activities planned. Most of the time, I stay away from any sort of competition, especially with people I don't know. I tend to get super competitive and I don't like to lose, so I often subscribe to the attitude that I should just not play at all if I am not going to win. It's my attitude with board games, card games, video games and most athletic endeavors.

But I didn't want to be a spoil sport - and the hosts said it was "mandatory" to play - so I lined up to see if anyone would pick me for their team. Since no one at the party knew my name, except for the hosts, I thought I might be picked last, but I was selected in the first go around. Maybe I looked like I knew my way around a croquet ball.

First off, let me just say that the croquet "arena" wasn't the best. Actually, it was set up once in a wily nily fashion by one guy at the party. Then another guy actually read the directions and set it up according to the diagram included in the game rules. Then a little kid came along and pulled out all the "wickets," the white plastic things you have to get the croquet balls through. For a while it seemed like the game might not happen, but then the birthday girl insisted that we play.

The course includes two sticks at each end and six wickets. You have to go through five in one direction and five in the other direction. The last two were staggered because we didn't have enough space before running into the pavement. Parts of the course were also close to dirt, tree roots, sticks and piles of leaves. But we managed.

I was on the green team with two other girls. For our first round, the first shooter, or whatever players are called in croquet, ended up a little off course. See, if you go past the wicket, you have to back track around to the front of the wicket. Luckily for me, when I was up, there were plenty of croquet balls in my path. I hit two on my way back toward the wicket, giving myself two extra hits. The rules say you get an extra hit for passing through a wicket, two for hitting another player's ball and one for hitting the stick at the end.

My team was ahead for most of the game. We avoided the death trap that was the dirt area near the edge of the arena. It sloped downward and many a player ended up in it. The one down side to being in the lead is that there were not that many other balls nearby to get the extra strokes, so we mostly ended up with one stroke each, while our opponents were often getting three.

In, the end, everyone's interest in the game waned as it headed into hour two. My team members stopped taking their turns and finally the team that had been in last place for most of the game ended up in first. We were going to continue competing to see who would take last place. But everyone kind of lost interest. At the end of the game, green was the further behind on the course. But at least prizes went to the winning team and the losing team.

I'll probably never play croquet again, but it would be interesting to see if my early shots were just beginner's luck or if I actually might have some sort of skill.