2016 Plunger Toss!!!

The day came! I couldn't sleep much after five o'clock and between the excitement and the pressure on my bladder I was forced to get up. I got ready long before I needed to and ventured out in the pre-dawn to purchase coffee and breakfast for my hosts, She and Brown. It was a gesture of thanks for them letting me stay over and also for the ride to and from that She graciously offered to provide. I chortled down my breakfast as if someone was going to steal it from me then drank the first beer of the day. I woke She up at 7am as arranged and we got on the road. I was hyper. Like a little kid who just hit the candy bar at a family wedding. Basically picture a hulking human stuffed into the cramped front seat of a Chevy HHR who is vibrating while a stream of nonsense bubbles out of their mouth. That was me. She didn't get home from work until about the time I woke up, in fact I posited that her entrance might have been the ignition switch to my awakening. She was a trooper and said it wouldn't be an issue to drive me despite her lack of sleep. I was too excited to notice if she was tired. I could only think about what was to come. We got to the familial home of the GRP right on time and bid farewell to my ride and said hello to a fresh beer. Our other two team-mates arrived and we headed for the battle grounds to get a strong spot to post up for our home base, this is a crucial ingredient. We were marked as Team 1 on the standings board but filled in our team name for 2016. We stuck with the virus motif that E-Bowl-A's had given us. That was our name in 2015. This year we stayed topical and chose "Zika-Poo". If you figure it out you are ahead of the J-man, who was unfamiliar with the origins of the name. We'll call the other member of our team Big D for the purpose of this recap.  If you still don't know what the plunger toss is, check out this CTV video from 2014 that gives a decent overview. There was one from 2015 that is lost to the ages now and they were back for 2016 coverage that I haven't found yet. If there is footage we're sure to be on it as they filmed one of our games. I won't get too into the actual matches as I don't really remember all the details, part of drinking during the competition. I will say that drinks are left at one end of the rink and you take a sip each time you get back there and you reload between the games. Each game lasts about fifteen minutes. It makes for a very quick morning. There are two pools, the A and the B, which are based on sign up not on skill, which is not really an issue for this event. After a four game round robin the six rounds of playoffs begin. After the second round of the playoffs, the best two teams that lost their second round match are allowed back in. Last year we hated this process, but it is part of joining the two pools to make one bracket to determine the winner.

In the round robin, we started out strong with a 21-3 win. We next faced an Optimist team from Erin, we beat them 31-15. The next game we played the other Erin Optimist squad. They lost 32-2. Our final morning match was another win, 22-4. The Zika-Poos looked poised to make a deep playoff run. One troubling fact was that they hadn't faced tough competition yet and seemed to be getting their points late in games on chance ringers rather than getting out front early like in 2015. Lunch was served at the GRP family home, chili as usual. This time there was horde of unknown guests that just showed up with little to no invitation. Sierra Sierra did her best to stem the tide but in the end nothing got broken or stolen. 

In the first round of the playoffs, we faced the second Erin team again, this time crushing them 47-0. Ringers seemed to be on call in that one. The next match was different. We chased the ringers too much early and didn't get the easy points. When the whistle went we were down 20-11. Devastated we headed out of the Cow Palace. Content to drink away our afternoon we trudged to the scorer's table. There we learned that were we going to be one of the relegation teams! We were still alive because of our high seed through the morning and first two rounds of the playoffs! Good things we rained ringers earlier! So we promptly took advantage in the next round and took a 35-3 victory. We were now one win away from the Semifinals. Anything can happen when you get down to four teams. But this was not to be. We again ignored previous failures and tried for ringers when we should have been pegging the points. We fell 8-7 and it came down to the final few plungers to decide it. This year was all about the slow play with the odd ringer making the difference. This was the case in the final. The first plunger of the match was a ringer and it stood up. The rest of the match was a battle of cancellations. So in the end we finished 5th in a pool of 60 teams. That is a decent showing. I'm not sure if we'll have the cap space to keep the team together for another year but we'd certainly be one to watch for if we did. I had a nice adventure up in Alma and was real glad I got to toss plungers on a beautiful Saturday.