Nov 7, 2006

Well, that was a weekend.

Friday was interesting. I was voted most intellectual, but that night I was called stupid numerous times. Possibly it was due to my wearing shorts? I also got my drunk friend to call Subway, which was amusing. Apparently they don't like it when someone orders a stuffed crust pizza or quarter pounder.

Saturday morning blew hard. I had to wake up early to drive to Huntsville for the SAT subject tests. I bought a graphing calculator the night before, so I played with my new toy before the Math Level II test, but it didn't help me much on the test. Maybe that was because I haven't taken a math course in nearly a year. Perhaps I should have taken the Level I test, but that could have just as easily backfired on me if I made too many stupid mistakes. The chemistry subject test went much smoother, and I answered all but about three questions. Unfortunately, we hadn't made it to all of the areas covered on the test yet.

I went to our annual youth group camp out a couple hours later than everyone else. We decided the best way to kick the night off was to make a movie. The result: twenty seconds or so of Rachel being chased by Tim. I'll be sure to post it somewhere once its edited.

We obviously didn't get to far with that, mostly because dinner interrupted us in the middle of shooting. Three chili dogs and a load of Fritos and Zebra Cakes later, we had the campfire mass, which is also cool. Then the action began.

One could say that the theme of the night was hardcore elementary games. We spent a good few hours playing hide and seek in the pitch black. Several of us sustained injuries, from me running through a lamp pole to Rachel's little brother being clotheslined a couple times. We settled down for some marshmallows and hot chocolate (even though it wasn't terribly cold out), and then we broke out a game of duck duck goose. I know are thinking "what kind of morons play duck duck goose?" It becomes much more interesting when it is played between various cross country runners and soccer players on slick grass. In the end, Sammy took the honor of winner, and we moved on to red light, green light. That one kinda sucked, and it took a massive paper rock scissors tourney to decide who would be the light. Afterwards, we all settled down again, and by this time it was around midnight. Tom attempted to herd us into our tents, but he made the fatal mistake of telling us we didn't have to sleep, or even pretend to do so.

Our response: busting out various Weird Al raps. Apparently neither Andrew or Zach liked this, as they took down the tent Tim, Sammy, and I were in at the time. IT WAS ON. Over the next two hours, a stealthily waged war was fought with marshmallows and burning sticks. All of this seems like a much better idea after midnight. After a few failed attacks and an incident involving Philip running into a van (incidentally, the one Tom was sleeping in). We decided to make our final push. Tim, Sammy and I crept out of the tent, shirtless (it wasn't cold or anything) and cover in war paint (ashes) of course , and executed a brilliant flash attack on Andrew and Zach's tent, pulling their poles out of the ground. They had no response to this awesome show of force, so, in celebration, we pelted Philip's tent with marshmallows for running into Tom's van.

Victorious, we went to sleep and rose in the morning to exchange stories with the bystanders and the enemies. The rest of the stay was fairly uneventful, but still fun.

Then, I had to return to Athens to play in the regional soccer tourney. We came in second in our pool the day before, so we faced the winner of the other pool: Killen. In the regular season, they were the only team to beat us ( I wasn't there for that one), so we made up for that with a 8 - nil thrashing. We all knew from the beginning who we would meet in the final: Albertville. For those who don't know, Athens and Albertville do not have a good track record in AYSO soccer. It is almost always us who are in the top two in both the regional and state tournaments, and it is never friendly when we meet. Albertville apparently thinks that AYSO is a big deal, because they will stop at nothing to win. This team dives (attempts to draw fouls) more than Italy. You can literally not touch them without an Albertville player falling to the ground, feigning injury and sometimes even crying. The sad part is that the refs are obviously not good judges of bad acting, so the calls are always terribly one sided. I had the luck of being captain for this game, so after a few minutes of this, I went up to the ref and very respectfully pointed out that they are trying to draw the fouls. He, like every other ref, said he would watch for it. After a few more minutes, my goal keeper and I collided, compounding an earlier injury, and I was out of the game. The calling only became worse as the game drudged on, and we were obviously going to lose, due to the fact that they could be Broadway actors and they have played together year round for years (most of my team had never seen each other before this year). It was exceedingly frustrating and being relegated to the bench only made this worse. The game ended 4-1, us obviously in second place in the area. After some not so friendly hand shakes, I went up to the ref and asked him if he was going to ref Albertville's next swim meet (in reference to their diving). He smiled, obviously not understanding what I was getting at, so I made it plain for him and told him that this was the worst showing of refereeing since the last time I played Albertville. His face fell, and I walked off with an accomplished smirk. About a minute later he walked over and gave me a red card. He asked me if I understood why I received this, and I said yes, as long as he understood why I said what I had. Needless to say, I didn't see him for the rest of the few minutes I was there.

That was the last AYSO game I will ever play in, and I think it was a fitting way to finish it: frustration and poor refereeing, but also sitting on the sideline, cracking jokes and honestly not caring much about the out come.