Sunnyvale Savage Seven success!

Today was the first, possibly annual, Sunnyvale Savage Seven ultimate tournament. For years (tragically, yes, that plural is true and not just by one), I've thought that the fields at the local elementary school would be perfect for an ultimate tournament. Kris and I would walk by and see the little soccer players on the field and think, we want to play on this field, too!

So, after deciding that, yes, this was the year to host the tournament, I submitted the fields application, set up the website, announced the tournament, arranged the (unbelievably expensive) portapotties, then left the state. Sorta, but close enough.

Yesterday, after arriving home around 1 in the afternoon, I shifted from vacation mode to high gear, helped the delivery of the (unbelievably expensive) portapotties (mostly by dragging an unwilling Bella as I chased down , dashed off to Costco to purchase tournament food, assigned players to teams, and finished the tournament schedule, complete with an alternate schedule should an extra eight people show up to make another, eighth team.

Today, I shanghaied Kris into helping me set up the fields. He set up the three fields. The just-graduated-from-high-school or college freshman players all arrived exactly on time. Everyone else, of course, showed up late. I missed the first part of the first round, which started a half hour late. I managed to play all of the other rounds, however.

There were seven rounds, each team playing the other six teams, with one bye (since we had only three fields). We had eight players on our team, and only two women, so each round we picked up at least one woman. We won all of our games, including the surprising win over the mostly-Mischief team.

The sixth round, our second to last round, had us playing the other undefeated team. Kris really wanted to win that game, and gave it his all. We were up at half, but ended up losing. That round had the only high-strung players on it, with one player drawing fouls on Kris and annoying him. It was interesting to watch Kris try to rally the troops with his Mischief-inspiration talks about heart, intensity and focus. Didn't work, and we lost.

During the last round, Kris left to get the 55 burritos I had ordered for the tournament. Honestly, the (unbelievably expensive) portapotties were half the expense of the tournament, costing more than 55 burritos did. Kris, however, was smart, when he went to get burritos, as my knees were hurting so much during the last round.

I wasn't sure if the burritos would well received at the end of the day. I shouldn't have worried. Everyone loved them, with the first 51 going in less than 10 minutes as teams finished their rounds and came over for food. The remaining four disappeared shortly thereafter.

A large many number of players came up to me as I started cleaning up, letting me know they had a great time at the tournament. I had a great time, running the tournament I would want to attend. Honestly, the burritos and beer pushed the event into a loss. One of these days, I'll actually price an event so that I don't lose money. Considering this tournament was supposed to be a fundraiser for Mischief, I'm disappointed in the loss. I am, however, proud of how much fun the event was.

I blame the (unbelievably expensive) portapotties.

There were only two unfortunate parts of the whole day. The small one was that I forgot to take my camera. I have exactly zero pictures of the whole event. Boo. The larger one was an ankle sprain from one of the just-graduated players. I heard it wasn't a break, which is good. That she had a bad sprain, as I can well attest, sucks big time.

(Fortunately for me, other people did take pictures of the tournament. People like Tish Fagin took pictures.)