SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5

My last game, with the Moth Balls just two nights ago, left a really bitter taste in my mouth. After all, I had been called a poor sport because I throw too hard. Like licking batteries. However, I was hoping to cleanse my palette with an easy victory over SLAUGHTERHOUSE. A team that I would classify as Not Very Good, as indicated by our 16-13 victory over them earlier in the season.

No such luck.

Our game was late at night in one of the gyms at Havergal. Havergal is a beautiful girls private school, across the street from the rough and tumble senior school that Smirnoff, My Pet Monster, Hot Sauce, The Deal and I all attended: Glenview. In addition to a solid academic reputation and short skirts, Havergal has excellent athletic facilities.

Unless you want to throw a lightweight foam ball across the width of one of their gyms. Then its way too big and it'll kill your arm.

This was the big issue for us against Slaughterhouse. The Evil Empire, although it's very experienced and has lots of clever strategies and tactics, does not have a very good set of arms. We can throw with power, but not accuracy, at big gyms like Havergal. Or we can throw with skill, but not strength. With this weakness in mind, I made the Reg Dunlop Award all about getting catches and not getting caught out.

Unfortunately, Slaughterhouse quickly had us rattled, largely by complaining about the rules and claiming we were out most of the time. It was, in many ways, a replay of our previous game where one of their players (sarcastically nicknamed by us "Asian Sensation") got under our skin. Jimmers, in particular, was pissed off by this guys flapping gums.

This was all reflected in the play of our team. We rarely threw together in barrages, which ruined a key strategy in a big gym. We threw from the back line, allowing Slaughterhouse to get easy catches, and generally played poorly.

The one "play" that was good was actually a slick veterans play by your esteemed captain: me. About two-thirds of the way through the game, we were tied 5-5. I heard one of their teammates say to his team "Come on, one more win and we'll be tied up!" Obviously, they thought they were losing by one. We won that round, and I immediately went over to Slaughterhouse's bench and asked them the score. 7-5 is what they had. I went over, added an extra win to our scorecard, and kept playing.

The final score was a 9-7 victory for us, but if you count the round I stole from them, it would actually be much closer. Definitely not our best game.