An exit interview.

I'm uncomfortable at Urban Open. Exhausted, really, even though it's only the first day. A mix of trying to photograph everything (while not being a photographer) and working up the nerve to ask people to talk with me for blog material. The stress of balancing frustrating interpersonal stuff alongside being wildly open and seen.

Alex is, perhaps, the closest someone has come to being a mentor in this sport, for me. There are dozens of people who have taught me, to be sure. Maybe a handful who've inspired me or helped me grow. But Alex is, singularly, the person I look up to in axe throwing. A mix of talent, community-care and earnest exhaustion at how much work all of it takes.

When I first started throwing - the very first time I went somewhere other than the Meadery, it was Urban Axes Baltimore. That was the first time I saw Alex in her element. I was too anxious to really talk to her, but I was amazed at how well she handled people, the tourney, everything. She was inexplicably cool, friendly, and able to get people excited about what was happening, seemingly without much effort.

I decided, at that point, to make her my mentor. My secret mentor - so secret that, at the time, even she wouldn't know it.

So I studied how she interacted with axe throwers. How she built community. I learned how she thought about throwing, and her process for getting better. I made what she cared about in the sport what I cared about in the sport. I tried to adopt a very heart-first attitude towards everyone I could, and to myself.

I worked up the courage to tell her I'd like her help. That I'd like to become her round, little, nervous student. And at Sharky's after Urban Open 2024, I was going to ask if she'd be up for it. But then her community used that very moment to give her a gift, and tell her how much she means to them. And that timing, friend, was all sorts of off for what I wanted to say, so I waited until I was safely behind a computer screen, and I told her how great she was/how much I've learned from her/how much I'd like her help in getting better, myself.

I was blown away by the immediate confidence and support she gave me. And I mean confidence in both common senses of the word: she built me up, and she took me under her wing. She supported every aspect of who I am as a person, the good and the bad, and stood by me when I thought I might be leaving axe throwing -- not to convince me to stay, but to hear me out, give me support, and listen to my growing sadness without judgement.

At Urban Open, while I'm exhausted and distracted and just want to go to sleep, Alex told me she's moving back to New York, at the end of August. To be with family again, she said, and I felt something important click apart from a larger whole.

I told her she's so important to community. I felt my voice getting caught in my throat and hope the noise of the tourney was enough to mask the sound of it.

I told her she's so important. She told me (again, part of her nature, I guess), that I'm important, too, and we got lost in trying to deny our own impacts while thanking each other for noting them. Earlier that day, Ericka told me she loves me, and how she's trying to tell the friends in her life exactly that, as much as she can.

Alex, to me, isn't just a pillar. She's more than one of the people who makes this sport amazing. She is comfort in a thing full of opportunities to be uncomfortable. She is reassurance when someone feels like they aren't ever going to be better.

She is a builder. An architect. She is the thrower I hope to be. Someone skilled at the game, sure, but unrivaled in their care of other throwers. We hug after she tells me, and she says I can hang out with her during the tourney whenever I feel overwhelmed. We do that hella dramatic thing in movies where people keep talking while they are embraced, and I tell her, again, because I can't say what I want to say (because it's too dramatic, and maybe a bit too much), that she's so very special to this community she's helped build. Because it's not goodbye, it's just a shift. A comfort and reliance breaking off from the whole for a while. A change to what made me love going to Baltimore. Messenger exists. The internet exists. Our phones exist. It's not goodbye, but it feels as such, regardless. I don't tell her I love her, or that she's helped make me a better thrower/community builder/care-about-myself-more-er. I just take in the comfort of someone who, simply, makes me happy to know them. I say my goodbye to what is now familiar, and begin to get comfortable with what's new.