OT - Want To Feel Inspired? Try "Murderball"

  Don't know how many of you have ever watched the documentary film Murderball (it received several awards at the Sundance Film Festival last year, including nomination for best documentary.   )  Murderball is about the international league of paraplegic indoor soccer players.  It is being shown currently as one of the free pay-per-view movies on Time-Warner Cable T.V.  I tuned it in, being intrigued by the title.  I saw from the descriptive listing of the show what it was about, though, and assumed it would be about a bunch of rather feeble guys pathetically knocking a ball about with sticks from electric wheelchairs or something.  Boy was I wrong!     I soon found out how the sport got its nickname.    The participants in this sport use specially-designed, athletic, hand-propelled wheelchairs with huge aluminum wheels on them (they look like little armoured chariots from Ben Hurr or something, but "updated".)  And those guys get as physical as players do in traditional soccer, if not more so.  They pump those chairs like crazy and even smash them into each other like a demolition derby.      You can only feel sorry when two of them gang up on an opposing player and knock him over onto his side, without pity.     The rules of the game, of course, are somewhat modified, due to physical limitations.  They basically can only carry the ball (usually in one hand while propeling their wheelchair with the other) for a certain # of seconds before having to pass it to a teammate.  Many of the players are also missing a hand (or even two), yet still manage to knock it around with the rest.   The coaches are just as much a hardazz on their teams as in other team sports, too.     It really got me to thinking and appreciating what the human spirit can achieve, despite physical limitations.  The next time any of us get to feeling sorry for ourselves about what we think we can't do, we need to jus****ch that film for a few minutes.