Stickball.

The game the Cherokees traditionally call “little brother to war.” Yeah. junk is intense. Next to boxing, this is probably the most physical game I have ever played. Chris Smith has told me there are usually ambulances on standby at men vs. men games and he has seen a guy get a broken jaw and have a seizure before. Back in the day, many warriors would die in games that would go on for days. Aside from the rocky exit of one or two horrendous relationships, I have rarely seen girls be so vicious.
Men vs. Women, that’s right. And men barely stand a chance. For anyone who doesn’t know, the rules are that guys have to use two sticks with tiny nets at the top to grab and shoot (you never pass) the ball whereas girls have no rules whatsoever. The goal is to hit the fish (statue) atop the pole for two points or to hit the pole 3/4ths of the way to the top (above a marked line) for one point. It’s not easy. Anyways, we played along with the UGA crew, Scott Ennis, Chris Smith, his friends, and a couple other Talequah natives. It started slow, but quickly the women got rough and it became an incredibly fierce, intense game. By the end of the game, most of us looked like we had just gotten done mud wrestling, which was almost accurate.
Kelsey spent a good deal of the game on her knees in the mud. I was hugged, grabbed, clawed, elbowed, choked… the list of abuses goes on. While taking the beating, it almost seems like a way for women to vent years of pent up physical frustrations towards men. And in a way, I almost see it as foreplay. But in review, stickball was awesome and even playing against girls will make a man out of you.