I ♥ My Helmet

Yesterday was my first camogie practice outside. When I joined the team last September, I started on the day they moved their practices indoors. Although I got to play two matches outside, all my training sessions were in a small gym with a wonky wooden floor. I did a bit of practicing outside by myself over the winter, but it's different to practice with the team out on the pitch.

We did a quick warm-up drill and then a running drill, both of which had most of us doubled-over and panting. It's amazing how different running on the uneven ground in boots is. Then we got to the fun stuff – a practice match.

The trainer divided us into two teams to play a half-pitch match. We essentially had an offense and a defense and then a weird line of forwards who were back but playing forward. Yeah. He's always doing weird stuff like that. I think the trouble was he had two more girls than he had positions, so this weird back-playing-forward line was divided into two two-person teams. We were each had someone to cover but, in the end, we had the same goal – to get the ball forward toward the goal.

Yeah, I was one of these strange Billy-no-mates in the back-playing-forward line. I didn't care because it gave me a simple job – hassle the player I was meant to cover. She's one of the young hockey-converts and she's fast, so I had my work cut out for me. Sometimes she'd cover more ground than I could, so I'd just let her go and pick up one of the players on the team who were playing defense.

It was in one of these moments that I formed a deep and abiding love of my helmet. It all happened very quickly – I was moving in to hassle a girl who was trying to clear the ball. She's a transfer to our team and she plays hard – her swings are always crisp and forceful. She struck the ball in the air and got my face as part of her swing. The force of it was enough to make the tweeting birds and spinning stars of a cartoon head injury circle my head.

I was okay, but when she asked me if I was okay, she told me I was bleeding. This was news to me and when I stuck my finger through the face mask, I could feel the blood on my mouth. I stood there for a minute, dumb-founded. How could her hurley make it through my face mask? It took me a couple of minutes to figure out that I'd just bit my lip pretty badly.

Had I not been wearing a helmet with a facemask, I'd be missing some teeth right now at the very least. I don't even have a fat lip this morning, since most of the damage is to the inside of my lip. I do so love my helmet!