Montreal Tournament, 9/22/01-9/23/01

The Harvard Suckwagon (this time Laura P., Tiff, Peter, Kendrick, Kevin, Eddie,
Arthur, Pat) ventured into foreign territory this weekend, to dominate over a
bunch of Canucks and sample their festive culture in one fell swoop.  We kicked
off the weekend by leaving a good two hours later than planned in our 12, no
make that 8-passenger van, after the car rental company took out the back seat,
leaving us with no leg room, but man, was our luggage comfortable.

After the van hit a few hours of Boston traffic and after Peter accidentally
hit (he claims to have been throwing to Kendrick) a woman in the parking lot of
a mall with a disc (luckily, the woman's boyfriend shrugged his shoulders after
the woman made an appeal), we hit up Montreal nightlife, starting with a
roscham to eat a french fry found on our table, with the lucky bid going to
Eddie Lee, which was only fair since he brought up the idea.  We all tried
poutine, that Canadian delicacy of delicacies (for those of you uncultured
peons who are scratching your heads right now, that's french fries with cheese
curds and gravy), and a selection of some finer Canadian beers chosen by our
friendly native, Pat Dolan.  We crawled into Pat's girlfriend Sonia's apartment
around 3 AM, but Piotr and Tiff chose to sleep in the van, for concerns over
space, of course.

So Saturday came and brought some menacing rain clouds with it.  We were
assured by meteorologist Kevin Connor, however, that the rain would "burn off",
and indeed it did (!), although a few 30-second showers throughout the rest of
the day perhaps weakened our trust in him.  Our first game was against McGill 5
(yes, they really put together 5 teams), and, in short, we crushed them, 13-3. 
Flow was looking pretty, and turnovers on our part were few.  We picked up some
women (as promised by McGill): Shanna (rhymes with banana), Heidi, Christine,
and Karu, all of whom lent much needed help and subs throughout the tournament.
 After the first game we also picked up Lou, a "valuable but controversial"
player, who added some height to the team, but hucked away at least as many as
he threw in anyone's general direction.  He did come up with an effective
endzone play, however, in which one person plays dump, one person stays in the
centre of the endzone while the other four cut to each of the four cones, a
strategy which we used to flatten many opponents.  Our next game was against U
of Rochester's Purple Pigs, whose losing streak was only ended when the hard
cap was called and we walked away, 10-4.

Then it was time for a bye, during which huck and layout contests were held. 
Harvard again came out on top---twice.  Kendrick took home 2nd place in the
huck contest with his patented wind-up-and-fall-over backhand huck upwind, and
Pat tied for the winning layout by catching TWO full extension, full speed
layouts which almost landed him into the astounded crowd as well as into a
camcorder taping the whole thing (thanks to Kendrick for perfect disc
placement).  Props to some guy from Hampshire who performed a layout in a kilt,
giving the entire audience a nice view of hairy ass.

The Suckwagon then went on to roll over Waterloo 13-2.  So far, the day had
just been one easy win after another, and the Suckwagon was starting to feel
confident.  However, we were about to face our stiffest competition of the day:
McGill 2, one half of McGill's A-team.  This pitted Pat against Sonia, America
against Canada, in an full-on contest of skill, speed, and determination.  The
game was tough, with both sides trading points until McGill was up 7-6 at the
half.  We tried to get our thoughts together but were distracted by the naked
point going on the next field over.  We shuddered it off, though, and pulled it
together to come ahead 9-7.  McGill was tough though, and once we got our 12-9
lead, they busted through to tie it up.  Game point had now dissolved and a
heated discussion between Lou and the McGill team ensued, with the decision
coming to play to 14. The Suckwagon sucked it up, and pulled ahead to win,
leaving them with a flawless day under their belts.

We headed back to Sonia's to take 5-minute showers, timed by Arthur with
1-minute and 15-second warnings (Eddie Lee stunned us all by dashing out of the
washroom in a record-breaking 3 minutes, 45 seconds!), but Sonia and Pat
decided to conserve water by showering in pairs. While waiting to go to the
party, we all played an "antagonistic" version of Canadian Trivial Pursuit with
the modifications provided by question-asker and antagonizer Kendrick.  Laura
and Pat took huge early leads (alas, Pat had the unfair advantage of knowing
all the Canadian trivia), but Arthur later proved he also has a large storage
of useless knowledge (mostly artsy stuff, ha ha). Also, Eddie consistently
stormed the scoreboard by dominating what Kendrick described as the "ooh, ooh,
quick-draw fast science" questions. Kevin, the self-described "slow one of the
family", gradually honed his thinking reflexes and later scored big on the
Seinfield- and sports-related questions.

The party that night (at the club "Le Swimming") was unfortunately subpar; I
guess nothing can compare to home-base Suckwagon fiestas. We thought we might
make up for it by heading to Super Sex, a five-floor strip club that Shanna
offered to take us to, but instead decided that the better action would be back
at Sonia's apartment, where we all promptly fell asleep.

Sunday started out just like Saturday, with us slapping RPI silly, winning 12-5
after the cap was called.  We were now in the semis, and about to face
McMaster.  After storming to a 4-0 lead, though, exhaustion and stupid mistakes
started to kick in, and we made a lot of drops, throwaways, and just bad
playing when they threw a Zed on us with a wing poaching upfield for about 10
points in a row.  We ended up losing 7-15, which placed us in 3rd place for the
tourney, since our consolation game opponents went home.  Side note: since we
turned in our bid so late, we were seeded last out of 22 teams - not a bad
seed-break, eh?

We left the fields around 3 in the afternoon and made good time through Canada,
only to hit a mile-and-a-half line at the border. Three hours and several cases
of liquor from the duty-free shops later, we made it back to the States to
start on wild rounds of word association games, in which Piotr seemed to
consistently blurt out, "Eddie's mom."  We made it back around 1:15 AM, back in
home sweet America, tired but victorious.

With a smallish squad, every individual played a huge role on our team. Pat
emerged as a go-to guy on offence, and on defence made several layout blocks
from out of nowhere.  Piotr scored a ton of goals with some spectacular
layouts, completed a pinpoint 30-metre hammer on one possession, and also made
some great layout Ds especially in the exciting McGill game.  Tiff was also a
solid receiver and took on some of the handling chores.  Laura made good cuts
and played tough D in the cup and person-to-person against some skilled
players. Kevin ran the field tirelessly and got open at high stall counts to
keep possessions alive.  Arthur caught a lot of contested deep throws and
showed intensity in the last game even after spirits were down. Kendrick, as
usual, hucked with impunity, and on zone D even played something other than
chaser (!).  Eddie rounded out the offense department by chilling the offense
down with his solid sixth-year handling skills...and also contributed an
amazing, out-of-nowhere-box-out D on a deep huck against RPI(?).

Big thanks to Pat for organising the whole tournament, and to Sonia for
providing Pat with a reason to go to the trouble of getting a bunch of
disorganised ultimate players to go to Montreal on less than a week's notice.

- Laura Perry, with additions from Kendrick, various Canadianisms from Eddie,
and small changes from Pat