Poultry Days 2014

It was a warm and sunny Friday afternoon when the ultimate players began arriving in Versailles, OH. The Fogies first representatives made it into town around 5 PM and promptly concerned themselves with 4 things: 1) how many chicken dinners to buy, 2) where to camp, 3) did they have enough beer forFriday, and 4) whether Owen and Sarah got arrested on their drive down. Luckily, all 4 of those questions had simple answers. We quickly claimed good camping space near the path and the tourney hotel. After a few beers, we set out for chicken dinners and Poultry Days 2014 was officially underway. Throughout the evening, more and more Fogies arrived to find us in true partying form. Beer box was soon begun with some Fogies from the Cleveland team joining us. Tent space was available to all. Owen and Sarah were not in jail. Beer was being consumed in large quantities. And of course Danny Young was getting ready to dominate cancer...and Ethan Yourd...so hard that both would cry.

Saturday morning began with Brady waking all of us up with his lovely mantra of "alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic." While none of us were alert or enthusiastic to start off, we did all survive the night and even made it to the fields for our first game against Michigan State. They were a good team and quickly took a 5-1 lead on us. Luckily, we then became alert and enthusiastic and came back to be down 1, 6-5, at half. Unfortunately, the 2nd half was not our strong suit and we got rolled 11-5. MSU was not the most spirited of teams, but we've seen worse at Poultry Days in the past. Our second game was against a really fun and awesome Iowa team. This was definitely a game we should/could have won. We were down at half again but really close. Unfortunately, we ended up losing this one 11-6 as the 2nd half was not our forte once again. However, a few of Iowa's guys did play beer box with us after the game...while their next game began. Our next game came against a fun Canada team we had met the night before. This game was close early on but we slowly began to pull away using a strong 2nd half. We finally got up to 10-7 and decided to put in the old line to close it out. After a few turns, the winning score began on a swing from PK to Future. The defender thought it was down while Future thought it was up. We decided that the only fair way to settle this call was to shotgun for it. Future finished his beer while the other guy was still deciding if he liked his. Keeping the disc, we moved it around for a bit. I got myself into a crappy position in the corner, and instead of clearing out, went behind Justine. She dumped the disc to me on stall 8 and I hit Beffel, our only pickup of the weekend, with a stall 2 hammer for the win. Lessons learned: shotgun for your calls; hammers do win games; being dumb can let you be the hero. However, our day wasn't over yet! We then went on to battle the 1 seed, Hoosierchicken. This game was close until we were down a break at 8-7. Indiana finally put us away there with a final of 11-8. Our last game was against a Boston team known as Wanna Boatrace. We crushed them easily in the game, winning something like 11-4. However, they lived up to their name and crushed us in the boat race. Lessons learned: Owen sucks at boat racing. Fogies went 2-3 for the day and played a lot of beer box. Chicken dinners were consumed directly after the game.

Upon returning to the tent, we promptly commenced with a few key moves - drinking, showering, and trying to convince everyone to add a buck to their donation for the egg eating contest. The team stepped up big with help from Dave Arters and Michael Lyrenman, whose companies will match any donation they make, to raise a total of $195 per egg. Danny Young, then proved that he has hair on his chest, When asked how many eggs he will eat, he felt no fear of the 6-time defending champ Cleveland team or their eater of choice Ethan Yourd. Danny proudly announced that he would eat 1 more egg than Yourd and that he would win. When it came down to it, Danny trounced Yourd with a heroic effort and ate 16 eggs. We raised $3,380 to fight leukemia as a team and claimed our first egg eating contest. Lessons learned: the Gobies drinking song can be adapted to be about eating; people will give you weird looks when you sing "Eat motherfucker!" over and over again. Saturday night was of course spent celebrating Danny's manhood and drinking heavily. Lots of Lunn's "water", containing lime, gin, and fresca, was consumed. Dancing at Meyersville happened. Long random walks around the park happened. To summarize, good times were had by all.

Finally, we come to Sunday morning. The Fogies woke up and this time even Brady was not alert or enthusiastic. We got to the farm fields for the prequarters of the B bracket and came out great on the first point. We got the D and punched in the score. They then went up 4-1 on us. Well, we were not having any of that and came back a bit. They then decided to go up 6-3 on us. That's when the Fogies we know and love finally came to play. We took half 8-7 and didn't look back from there, winning 13-10. This was against a team with some random OSU guys and some random old dudes. Highlights here included Justine dominating some girl in a knee brace so much that I'm surprised the girl didn't just sit down and cry; Lunn being able to hang with their aggressive deep cutter; and Erik having to explain to somehow that a strip can only happen if the offense catches it first...not when Erik gets possession first...and the guy STILL calling the strip. After that, we faced an Arkansas team in the quarters. This was a strong team that really wanted the game. They were fun and spirited...and really douchy at the same time. They made some really questionable calls like calling a strip when their guy tried to gain possession on offense on Beffel's way down with the disc and a girl letting Kari get in front of her for a D and then calling the foul. They went up early and stayed up by a few the whole game. We finally lost our last game by a score of 13-8. We ended up finishing in the top half of the tourney