Photo Credit: Martin Bouda
Once again I attended the Aleš Hrebesky Memorial tournament in the Czech Republic this year. I didn’t feel like entering my Love You To Death team with Plunkett this time around because sometimes it’s too hard to find dudes that are good at lacrosse, and that aren’t sketchy, but I agreed to play for my old buddies from the Boston Megamen.
Here is a long-winded account of my week, that starts with too much detail, then tapers-off as I get bored of typing…
Woke up Sunday, flight day, still hadn’t heard from my travel companion and team-mate (who’s flight I paid for) for days. Tracked down a friend, who tracked down his brothers, who told me he didn’t plan on going, and was in New York City for the weekend. Cancelled his ticket for a $640 fee. Messaged my team rep, told him we were even shorter on the right side, and felt like a jerk. Packed my goalie bag and two carry-ons. Had so much extra gear to sell, that I almost went over the “over-sized-oversized” limit. I ended up one pound shy of having to ship my gear cargo. Asked my bass player to drive me to the airport. He was cool about it, but I own his soul anyway.
Airport. Went to security. Waited in line for about 15 minutes until I realized I had my own line as a Nexus user. I was able to cross the rope and the dude laughed at me. Got through. Bought my Czech buddy a bottle of Crown at duty free. Plunkett made me buy him some big airport Coffee Crisps cause the don’t have them in Germany, where he now lives. It took everything I had not to eat the chocolate bars and drink all the rye on the flight to Paris. Watched a The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and Rush on the plane. Didn’t sleep, because I have giant femurs, and planes are no longer glamorous.
Landed in Charles De Gaulle in Paris, which instantly smells like pee, the second I deplane, every time I’ve been there. Walked and took shuttles for more than half an hour to get my connector. They kicked me out into the street and made me check back in eventually. Having a sealed duty-free bag on me absolutely blew their minds when I checked-in from the outside. They opened it and swabbed it for explosives, or drugs or ghosts or whatever, the re-sealed it, kinda. The flight to Prague was only an hour and a bit, but it was crazy cramped. Miraculously my gear made it all the way with me… which doesn’t often happen. Each year, the tournament organizers are really on the ball, and know everybody’s flight details in order to pick you up from the airport and take you to your hotel. Something went wrong with mine this year, but I managed to find some dudes from the Nova Scotia team and went with them. My hotel wasn’t ready, so I stayed at the rink, an outdoor bowl in the small suburb of Radotin for a bit, had a blast and drank some Crown with the coaches of the Green Gaels and a Canadian ref.
I have a buddy who is the food and beverage guy at an amazingly cool hostel in Prague. He picked me up and we went downtown. Jack Daniels happened. Ate at a Hooters… which comfortingly, has terrible wings in Prague as well. We went to many bars. Prague is very old and beautiful. Like me. More Jack Daniels. Things got really nuts by the end of the night, as he kept taking me to more and more after-hours and “underground” places. He was so drunk that he started speaking to me in czech exclusively. I don’t speak czech. We ended up at a brightly lit place, that looked like a deli (but with no meat or anything), with super sketchy locals and some lady, who my buddy seemed to know, who seemed nuts. Our names went on a list—a scribbled-on piece of paper—and I was fairly certain he had just signed me up for a prostitute (he confirmed this the next day). Freaky. I got out of there and stayed at the hostel, where my buddy had arranged a six-bed room just for me. I slept finally.
Woke up with a crazy headache and a dead cellphone. Walked around Prague for a while, with the intention of getting a crapload of food and taking the train back to my hotel in Radotin (pronounced Rrrrrrrrrraw-doh-teen, or else nobody there knows what the hell you’re trying to say). It was just Easter, so there were dozens of street venders selling all sorts of traditional and delicious-looking czech foods. I couldn’t decide, and ate McDonald’s instead. Food and drink is bizarrely cheap in that country, yet McDonalds costs slightly more than ours does here. I would wonder why anybody would eat McDonalds there…. except I did twice.
Got on the subway and got off at the train station. As I was waiting for the train (a quick, two-stops from Rrrrraawdoteeen), an abandoned member of the Nova Scotia team saw me and came to hang out. A train arrived, and in hindsight, I kinda knew it was different-looking than the normal train I take. But I got on it, assuring my new buddy that it was the right one. It wasn’t. And he and I ended up taking a commuter train to a city 40 minutes west of Prague. Sorry, man. We exited the train, 40 minutes older, asked a cute train station lady about our options to get back, waited with a beer, and took the next train back to Prague to our original meeting point, got on the correct train, and ended up in Radotin two hours after our intended time. We saw a whole lot of awesome Czech landscape at least.
Much of my team was due to arrive that day, so I hung out at the arena and ate. During the course of the tournament there is a man who runs a grill 20 feet from the playing floor. Chicken, pork, and sausages. I ate there a lot. There’s also an amazing restaurant attached to the club house. Though its free and normally-reliable wifi was screwy all week, and it sent people into fits. Probably Tinder blew it up.
A couple of my teammates arrived and we went back to our hotel. Our hotel was actually awesome. It had apparently closed years before, and the family that owns it, who live and work out of it, only open it for the tournament for our Boston Megamen team. We had the whole place to ourselves, and each room had a spiral staircase and a loft containing two beds on the upper floor. The stairs were a polished wood, and very steep. The most serious injuries I had all week were from slipping on that staircase while wearing socks. And dehydration. Jack Daniels.
That night, Plunkett, Bendig, and I took the train into Prague, to the O2 arena to see game 3 of the KHL final. Prague vs. Magnitogorsk. The arena is steep and dark, and the fans are nuts, which was awesome. There are only 10 doors and two elevators to get 16,000 people in and out of the arena though, which was absolutely Czech and insane. After, we went to my buddy’s hostel for food and drink, then took the train back to the hotel for slippery stairs and sleep.
Next day, Wednesday, was game day. Teams gathered from Canada (3), Czech Republic (4), USA, Germany (2), Iroquois, England, Ireland (largely Canadian), Scotland (largely Canadian), Israel (largely Long Island), Slovakia, Finland, Austria, France. Of course everything was abuzz about the one missing Iroquois team.
The venue was redone this past year. It’s an outdoor bowl with seating on two sides, a big scoreboard, and a beautifully done TV feed screen on the one end, and the clubhouse, tents, and chicken-cooking dude at the other. It’s a decent-sized floor, and turf that gets pretty slippery after a little rain. One corner is perpetually slippery from being in the shade. I think it’s haunted. Literally every person that runs into the corner goes down. One dude from the Scotland (I think) team, no word of a lie, was STANDING in the haunted corner during warmup, his feet slipped, and he simply inverted and ended up on the ground. . He was down for a little bit too. I’m not even sure anybody else saw it, but it was maybe the hi-light of my trip… besides my name being scribbled down on a list, on-deck, for a sketchy prostitute.
We played Scotland early that first day. Won 12-2 I think. I only had about 6 shots against me. I allowed one from roughly half-court. I can’t be expected to pay attention ALL of the time.
There was an opening ceremony, where each team is lead onto the floor by a kid holding a sign with our team name. The Czech anthem, which may be the saddest-sounding song in the entire world, is sung. It’s such a bummer. Plunkett (a Canadian), started lightly chanting “USA USA USA” during it, in order to get the Americans in trouble. Lots of ceremony on the floor. A whole bunch of people talk about lacrosse, and the history of the tournament. Everything is said in Czech as well as English. Many teams get fidgety, and every year somebody at the back of one team-line, lightly practicing his shot on the empty net at the one end, fires one off of the post and causes a stir. Usually it’s a Canadian. This year an Iroquois. It’s entrapment, really. If you don’t want us shooting amongst a crowd at a long, dual-language ceremony, don’t put a bunch of lacrosse players, in uniform, on some turf with an empty net 10 feet behind them. It’s like blaming birds for chirping.
We later played Mališice, a Czech-league team, who, although isn’t one of the top Czech teams, ALWAYS gets us in a one-goal game. I think we were still bummed from their depressing anthem from the opening ceremonies. They planned it that way to take advantage of us, catching us off-guard as we wrote emo break-up poetry, and applied our eye-black to make ourselves look like dudes from The Cure.
We partied that night at the arena bar I think. Jack Daniels.
I wiped-out the next morning coming down the spiral staircase in my socks. I’m not a morning guy. Took it easy that day by the arena. Ate a lot. This was the day that someone on the Iroquois team told me that they ALSO bought my missing teammate/travel-companion a plane ticket, as he told them that he would play for them as well. They were smart enough to get travel insurance. The world is topsy turvy.
We played London as our eighth finals game. Won handily. I got chirped incessantly, from the crowd, by two dudes from the Ladner team. When I get chirped I usually agree with them and further rip into myself along with them. It usually works… like Eminem’s freestyle at the end of 8-Mile. But these dudes would not shut the hell up. I didn’t get the memo saying we were supposed to take this week so seriously. I vowed to defeat them in our quarter final game the next day, as well as impregnate their girlfriends and slaughter their parents.
That night we decided, as a team, to head to the “Chinese Disco” in Radotin—so named, by tournament-goers, because it’s a bar with a dance floor (and stripper poles), whose building is attached to a Chinese restaurant. We were there with the London team, two local girls, and eventually some of the Finnish guys, and a local friend of ours. At the end of the night she acquired for us three orders of some sort of pig elbow dish, that we ripped apart like cheetahs. Walked home. Crammed into the only part of the hotel with wifi, a cramped little hallway, and watched an NHL playoff game on a laptop.
Friday “morning,” after falling down the stairs and depleting Radotin’s hot-water supply with an hour-long shower, I had a leisurely breakfast-lunch with Bendig and Scotty Joyner. I ordered, for myself, what turned out to be a fajita meal for two or three, which for some reason had curry in it, and cost me, like, 7 dollars. I took it easy all day and got psyched up to play my fellow countrymen, Ladner, in the quarter finals.
Ladner defeated. Girlfriends impregnated. Parents slaughtered. Nice.
I declined an invitation to a spot on that night’s all-star game. There were a number of deserving goalies this year. Also there was whiskey to consider, which I fed to the goalies on the bench who were done playing their respective quarters.
The All-Star format at the tournament involves each non-Czech team selecting a few deserving players to play on the “world” team, and assembling to play an All-Star Czech team… which usually roughly means a gathering of the Czech National team. This year there were a number of younger Czech players instead, with a few of their better players sitting out. This was the first year, that I can remember, that the World team defeated the Czechs. It was a friendly game, so girlfriends and parents were safe.
The next day was reserved for the semis and finals, so I took it easy that night, and shut ‘er down early.
We ended up losing our semis to my fellow countrymen Green Gaels, 3 to 2. THREE TO TWO! I had no idea we were playing soccer. We also lost our two top scorers, and a key tranny guy to injury, so we went into the bronze medal game with Radotin fairly depleted. Shortly after that bronze game started, we lost another player to ejection, and yet another to a broken elbow—on the same play, no less. Tough loss, though I can honestly say I had a blast that game. And I may or may not have sent an obvious knee into a crease-diver, and kinda shoved a ref.
After our game was the final in which the Iroquois beat the Gaels.
As always, after the final, there was an awards ceremony on the field. I won a “Tournament All-Star” award for either goaltending or “Most-Handsome-of-Face”—I can’t remember which. We got our fourth-place plaque (Megabowl!), shortly after which the lights went out and we were all treated to an insanely impressive, if not code-violating, display of fireworks. Josh Potter got hit in the mouth with a falling chunk of ‘splodey rock. I cowered under a table, whimpering, until it ended.
There’s always a big party at the clubhouse and arena bar on closing night, with a dj, a dance, beer pong and other boozey events. Don’t worry, everybody stayed properly hydrated. I mostly hung out with various other goalies, and JD, and likely talked non-stop about nonsense.
The next day, we all said our goodbyes, Plunkett and I hung out and partied with our buddy in downtown Prague, I slept a little, and flew home.
