The Ambulance Chasers team has been around for about 10 years. I joined the team in 1992, after a bad experience on another, more "competitive" team. If you look at the team goals listed above, you'll notice a few objectives are missing: "winning", "power", and "personal glory" do not appear in the team philosophy. I leave that to people who, in my opinion, take the game far more seriously than it deserves.

My own philosophy is difficult for me to explain, but I'll do my best. There are two aspects to how I approach touch football; on the personal level and as a group activity.

Personally, I take the game seriously on the field as a test of my skill and ability. It's a sublimation of the normal human comepetitive urge, where I basically come onto the field and say "here's the best I have today, what do you have?" I measure my success by what I can accomplish that day. The worst feeling for me, win or lose, is coming off the field feeling that I played a bad game. The worst epithet I can level at myself is "That was sloppy." However, once the game is over, I let it go. I'll take what lessons I can from what happened, then remind myself (sometimes forcefully) that This Is A Game. It does not affect my salary, will not feed children in Africa, and cannot usher in a new era of peace and prosperity in the world. The only thing to change is the size of my laundry pile.

The sports side brings together a group of people who work together to be better than sometimes even they suspect. As a centre, I've had games where I didn't get a pass thrown to me. The quarterback would apologize, and I'd respond, "I don't care if the only time I see the ball is when I snap it. I'm taking two defenders with me wherever I go. Find the open guys." I don't get passes, don't gain yards, but the team succeeds. Our defence, which is primarily zone coverage, has consistently been in the top half of the division. That's with a group of people (me included) who are not super-athletic speed demons who can run like the wind. We work together and end up better than any one of us.

I see the team as equally a sports group and a social group. Part of the enjoyment I get from the games is going to a restaurant after the games for breakfast in the mornings, or for a beer in the evening. We can sit and brag or commiserate, or even talk about subjects other than football. Twice a year the coach/manager holds a party at his house, where we get to see not only each other, but families as well. It's not a team that happens to socialize, it's a group of people who happen to play touch football.

There, in a brief babbling, is how I approach the game. The philosophy isn't perfect, and the application of it isn't either, but neither am I.