A working mother of three young children, Tessa Lu, found herself exhausted by the daily grind of parenting and work. She had forgotten how to have fun. Then she discovered floorball, a fast-paced sport similar to hockey played on an indoor court.
The Awakening
After spending a season watching her daughter's floorball matches, Lu felt a pang of envy. The 10-year-old girls on the court seemed to be having genuine fun, something she had lost touch with. 'I was tired of feeling that daily life was an ordeal. It was time to play,' she said.
Lu took action. She recruited mothers from the school car park, cajoled colleagues at office morning teas, and even followed a friend off a bus after learning she had played hockey as a child. Within weeks, she assembled a women's floorball team of seven players.
The Debut Match
The team showed up for their debut match at a local primary school on a balmy Perth evening in March. They arrived with no sticks and several pyjama-clad children in tow. As the sky faded to pink, Lu walked towards the bright lights of the gymnasium, nervous and trembling.
The game began, and it was immediately clear they had no ball-handling skills or strategy. 'We were a pack of galumphing labradors: shouldering each other, stealing the ball off our own teammates, and turning helpless circles as the ball was lost in the fumbling under our feet,' Lu recalled. More than once, she swung hard and missed the ball entirely.
Physical and Mental Challenges
The referee's whistle shrieked at their many infractions: a stick lifted too high, a goalie dropping to two knees, a stick thrust between a player's legs. Unaccustomed to sprinting, Lu was soon panting and sluggish. When she staggered off the court for a break, her substitute teammate waved her back on, clutching a suspected quadricep sprain.
At half-time, the team was too stunned and breathless to brainstorm tactics. One teammate dashed to the toilet, calling over her shoulder: 'I've had three kids; my pelvic floor can't handle this!'
A Moment of Revelation
In the second half, the opposing team's goalie stifled a yawn as she waited for the ball. Meanwhile, their own goalie, in her enthusiasm, leapt over the ball and kicked in a goal for the other team. Despite the chaos, something remarkable happened. 'My feet ached as my orthotics were pushed to their limits. My wrist throbbed. Then something remarkable happened: I remembered I had a body,' Lu wrote.
Chasing the ball, her mind had no space for anxious rumination about climate change, interest rates, or microplastics. She momentarily released her mental load and rejoiced in feeling the burn in her legs, the ache in her arms, and the furious thudding of her heart reminding her that it had always been there, doing its job.
The Joy of Pointlessness
That day, they lost 16 to one. The other team applauded when they scored their only goal. In 35 minutes of game time, Lu had laughed at herself, fallen over, cursed, and cheered. She was hooked.
Now, the team plays once a week and continues to languish at the bottom of the ladder. They rarely train together. But some evenings, if there is a lull between dinner and the chaos of bedtime, Lu steals outside to practise hitting the ball. Through the windows, she sees her children illuminated in the kitchen. The double-glazed glass muffles their argument, and she hears the scrape of her stick on the paving and the thunk of the ball bouncing off the deck.
Lu used to think team sports were pointless: why waste precious time pursuing a ball? But after spending years accounting for her time in six-minute units and wringing every moment for productivity, she realised that the pointlessness of floorball is, itself, what brings her joy.
When she looks at a photograph taken after their first game, she sees their flushed, blotchy faces and sweaty hair pasted to their foreheads. 'We are radiant. We look like women who have had some fun,' she said.
