120) Steamboat Springs - Challenge Edition

My junior year of high school our club team (soccer) got invited back to Steamboat Springs to play in the Triple Crown National Finals.  The year before our team made it to the semi-finals before getting beat in a close 2-1 game against the team that eventually won the entire tournament.  Our coach, learning his lesson from the previous year, decided that each player would be responsible for getting themselves to Steamboat Springs instead of renting a team bus.  So everyone flew.

Because of our overall tournament record, and due to the fact that we did well in the tournament the previous year, Triple Crown gave our coach the option to register our team as 17 and under or 19 and under.  Our coach liked challenges, so he registered us for 19 and under.  This meant we were playing college level guys.

We had players on our team who could compete at that level.  And then we had players like me, who were in the 5'6" - 115 lb range trying to play against college-aged athletes that were 6'+ - 185 lb range.  We simply could not compete.  We lost all our games by 4 goals or more.  We were completely outmatched.

Since we had 2 extra nights in Steamboat Springs, we spent our evenings drinking in the hotel instead of practicing and game planning.

The last night, several of us decided that we would stay up all night because our flight left at 9a and the team was waking up and checking out before 7a.  We bought 2 bottles of whiskey and several 12 packs.  Actually, my mom bought the liquor (she was good like that).

We began the night playing various drinking games.  I don't remember much of this part of the evening except the part where M. Bart got so drunk so early that we found him sleeping in the shower with the water running, wearing only his soccer shorts and a ski cap that he brought with him.  We worried about him drowning, so a couple of us wrestled with him until we were forced to walk him outside where he threw up for an hour straight.

Later that night I taught the team how to play a card game called Challenge.  It is a gambling game that can get expensive, but is fun if you know how to play it.  Since I taught everyone there how to play I ended up making close to $30, which was a lot considering that we played with dimes and the highest bet you could make was $3.  More importantly, I was one of 3 people to stay up all night, which meant I did not have a hard time getting ready for our flight.

Hm.  Story not as interesting as I remember it.