Been wanting to seek sweet redemption on that bleak dodgeball showing in the eighth grade? Get your gym class game face on at the second annual DC Field Day from DC Fray, a recreational organization with various beer-sloshing sports leagues across the city.
“I started Fray as an excuse to have fun with my friends. It was just a fun group of people playing Skeeball,” says Robert Kinsler, who founded the organization in 2009. That year, the Skeeball gang grew to around 200 players—today, DC Fray has over 60,000 participants spanning 19 leagues including kickball, bocce, bingo, and glow yoga.
On Saturday, the group will host its second annual DC Field Day at RFK Stadium, where teams will battle it out in childhood favorites like tug-of-war, hula hoop contests, and an inflatable obstacle course. “We kept coming back to this idea of wanting to do an elementary-school style field day,” says Kinsler. “I think everybody needs it.” Less traditional games include the “Wet Sweatpants Race,” in which players dunk their sweats in water, put them on, run across the field, take them off, and squeeze them into a bucket until the water hits a fill line. Think you’d win? Organize a team of at least eight players in advance or show up and join one.
“We have so much to be grateful for in this country, to be able to have the disposable time to go out and play as adults is really something,” says Kinsler. “I would say that the more there are conversations that pull us apart, the more we need play and sport to pull us together.”
The 21+ event will happen rain or shine. Tickets are $45 and include a beer and five bucks to spend in the Field Day “shop.” Players can expect beer, Red Bull slushies, and food trucks will also be on site. RFK Stadium is located at 401 Oklahoma Ave., NE.
Kim Olsen ([email protected]) is a freelance writer in Alexandria.
