I can easily say, without a doubt in my mind, that I have now had the worst tournament experience in any sport in my life this last weekend. I’ve had basketball tourneys in the past that I’ve not had fun at. I’ve not enjoyed disc tournaments in the past before, but never, ever have I hated a tournament as much as I hated Hallowinona this year.
Hallowinona is an annual frisbee tournament in Winona. Every year it’s been a lot of fun and our team has had a great time. We usually take a couple of teams from SJU and CSB every year because almost all of our club players go. This year was no different; we had 2 men’s teams and 1 women’s team. I was asked to play on the non-competitive team this year by our team captain. I really didn’t want to since it was going to be my last SJU tourney and I wanted to play hard in my last games here, but I guess our captain thought it better if he kept me off of the main team since I wouldn’t be here next semester. That topic is a beef to discuss another time, however.
I played B team with a bunch of SJU freshmen and some SJU alums (it was good to see those guys again). Our pool of teams, through wonderful scheduling, didn’t have any official fields to play on. To rectify our not having fields, they sent us down to a baseball field where we set up a playing field in the outfield (wow, the word field sure did come up a lot in that sentence). Anyhow, we waited for the teams we were supposed to play to show up. No one did. It turns out that the University of Minnesota’s opponents didn’t show up either, so we decided we’d play a game.
It was a great game that we came out winning 15-14. I had a great time, although the playing field was pretty crappy. There had recently been a lot of work done on the outfield so there was sections that were soft and others hard so it was a rough one on the ankles. After that we thought our opponents, or any other team in our pool for that matter, would show up. No one did. A couple of our guys went to the main tent to find out what was going on. When they got back, they gave us the great news—the other teams decided to tap a keg at 10 am and were now all really drunk and stoned. We weren’t going to have any more games.
This left us all in a very bad mood. We didn’t really know what to do since we were supposed to play four games that day and we had only managed to get one in…against a team not even in our pool. As we were waiting one of our opponents did show up…with jugs of beer and reeking of marijuana. They wanted to play and we were supposed to play them so we did and beat them 8-1 in about 20 minutes. They pretty much gave up and left to go get more beer.
By this time it was already later afternoon (3-ish, I’m guessing) and we were all pretty fed up with the tourney. Our team decided to go join up with another team and see if they couldn’t get a few more games in with them. I didn’t go with because they had plenty of people to play (our team plus the guys on the team they were joining up with), but instead went to watch Kristin and the girls’ team. They don’t ever really have many fans watching them so I wanted to support them. I actually enjoyed watching them play, but it only made me more frustrated at how badly this tournament was run.
Sunday we were also “supposed” to have games, but they simply didn’t schedule any for our B team. Because of that, most of our B guys, including myself, went home Saturday night. It was a long, dreary, 3.5 hour long drive home to SJU from Winona. To make it worse, it rained most of the way from Winona to the cities and then it switched to light snow the rest of the way home. I went to bed very frustrated and very disappointed, mostly because this was my last SJU tournament and everything seemed to conspire against me. I really wish I would have been playing A team, which would have made for a great weekend, but it didn’t work out that way.
Before the tournament, everything was going great for the weekend too. I had stopped by at home Friday and spent the day with my family. I got to play with Karma, our dog, and wrestle the crap out of Ryan. I brought back Krispy Kreme and we just had a nice, relaxing evening. Why did everything have to get so screwed up with the tourney? I don’t know, I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. I know that’s just a cop out, but it helps me to feel a little less frustrated with how things went.
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