Saturday, May. 28, 2011<\/p>\n
By JOEY HOLLEMAN – jholleman@thestate.com<\/a><\/p>\n Who knew? Kickball, a game that for decades was forgotten after grade school, turns out to be an ideal means for adults to find a mate.<\/p>\n At least that\u2019s the experience for the Grasskickers of the Columbia kickball league. In six years, four couples have married after first meeting at Grasskicker games or practices. The littlest Grasskicker, 19-month-old Vann Mullis, is the progeny of one of those marriages.<\/p>\n \u201cKickball\u2019s better than match.com,\u201d joked Colleen Mullis, mother of Vann, wife of Stephen and founder of the Grasskickers in 2005. \u201cWhen you\u2019re playing, you\u2019re real. You\u2019re just out making fools of yourself playing kickball.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt has something to do with meeting people under no pretenses,\u201d Stephen Mullis surmised.<\/p>\n \u201cIn normal dating, you have control over the presentation,\u201d said Jen Hunsicker, who first connected with her husband Jon at Grasskicker practices. \u201cHere it\u2019s no makeup, no dress up.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat did I have to worry about when we started dating? He\u2019d already seen me covered in mud. I thought, wait till he sees me in a dress.\u201d<\/p>\n Colleen and Stephen weren\u2019t looking for love six years ago.<\/p>\n Colleen saw a story in The State about the forming of a new kickball league in Columbia and recruited several friends to play with her. Stephen heard about the league and wanted to play, but he didn\u2019t have a team of his own.<\/p>\n League organizers stuck him on Colleen\u2019s team, and the rest is family history.<\/p>\n First practices in early June. Team bonding in post-practice outings to restaurants. Some bond more than others. Colleen and Stephen\u2019s first real date is June 25. They are married the next June 3. Their fifth anniversary is this month.<\/p>\n Before kickball, Colleen had joined a young professionals group. \u201cI thought I might meet somebody through that,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I thought I\u2019d play kickball just for fun, not to meet somebody or network for my job.\u201d<\/p>\n Colleen had been friends with Jen and Jon before kickball, but they were in separate orbits of her world.<\/p>\n Colleen didn\u2019t trying to fix them up through kickball. It just happened.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter the first few practices and games, I knew it was easy to talk with Jon,\u201d Jen said. \u201cAnd that was before all the date pressures.\u201d<\/p>\n Jen actually recalls the moment she was sure Jon was more than just another guy on the team who was fun to hang around with.<\/p>\n A bunch of Grasskickers stuck around after one of their games to watch the next game, in the rain no less. Jon and Jen were beside each other. Jen\u2019s purse started to slip off her shoulder, and Jon reached around and pulled it back up. She appreciated his attentiveness.<\/p>\n Jon and Jen stretched out the dating process more than Colleen and Stephen. They\u2019ve been married three years.<\/p>\n Another member of that early Grasskickers team was guilty of cavorting with the enemy. Back in the early days of the local kickball league (before it exploded in popularity and lost a bit of the collegiality), most teams gathered in Kelly\u2019s Pub after games. A female member of the Ballrockers worked up enough liquid courage to start up a conversation with Jimmy Martin of the Grasskickers.<\/p>\n They hit it off, and, with their teams playing against each other shortly thereafter, they bet on the game. The loser had to get dinner.<\/p>\n \u201cI ended up making dinner for him,\u201d Sarah Martin recalled. \u201cWe dated for two years, and in the fall of 2008, we were married in Jamaica.\u201d<\/p>\n The Martins and the other Grasskickers couple \u2014 Erin and Rich McCaskill \u2014 haven\u2019t been able to fit kickball into their schedules in recent years. But plenty of other couples have taken their places throughout the league. The green grass and orange clay at Earlewood Park seem to be a better forum for matchmaking than eHarmony.com.<\/p>\n Almost every team has some couple that met playing kickball, Jen Hunsicker said.<\/p>\n Melissa and Ryan Toole joined the Balls of Glory team just a couple of months after they started dating. They found the kickball diamond was an ideal place to get to know each other.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s another way to get together and hang out with friends,\u201d Melissa said after Balls of Glory beat the Grasskickers May 25 in their final regular-season spring season game.<\/p>\n Melissa and Ryan\u2019s one-year anniversary is Sunday.<\/p>\n Asked what they would have done if Balls of Glory had had a game scheduled on their anniversary, Ryan glanced toward Melissa.<\/p>\n \u201cWe would have played kickball,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Read more: http:\/\/www.thestate.com\/2011\/05\/28\/1837138\/kick-love-match.html#ixzz1ODQhuRuu<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Saturday, May. 28, 2011 By JOEY HOLLEMAN – jholleman@thestate.com Who knew? Kickball, a game that for decades was forgotten after grade school, turns out to be an ideal means for adults to find a mate. At least that\u2019s the experience for the Grasskickers of the Columbia kickball league. In six years, four couples have married… More \u00bbSome Columbia adults find their mates while enjoying kickball<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wikipediapreview_detectlinks":true,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","neve_meta_reading_time":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=999"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8853,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions\/8853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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