Vassar Bangers Weekend

This was definitely one of those weekends that you look back on and will point to as being one of the best highlights from college. It took me till my senior year but the Jive Turkey's finally made it to Vassar and in typical Jive fashion, we left quite an impression. It was the perfect tournament, and as a Jive rook, I could not have asked for a better tournament to start my college career.

By Friday 5PM, we had 21 Jive dudes ready to make the 4+ hour (in Matt's case 7 hour) trip to Poughkeepsie, NY to participate in the Huck for Red October. Sidenote on Vassar: Dickinson and Vassar have always been close in almost every aspect. Both are small liberal arts schools, very solid frisbee teams and great party'ers. They have been to almost every Jive Fest and several other Dickinson events so its about time we took part in some of their festivities. 5 cars left ATS including the frisbee van packed with Itkoff riding shotgun, Simon, Gabe and Shapes rounding out the crew. The ride up was great. An awesome crew and in Dan Jones fashion, i made everyone burn a CD for the car. I have never been more impressed with the musical taste of everyone in the car. Nearly every song that came on I enjoyed which is essential for long drives like this. We took a pit stop in Jersey for some MacDos and eventually arrived at Vassar a little after 10PM.

We were fortunate enough to be hosted by Itkoff's friend Zach for the weekend so big ups to him and his housemates. I mean, who would want 21 dudes to stay at their house, well unless they were Jive Turkeys. We pulled out a bottle of Mad Dog that got cannonballed in literally like 2 minutes. I blame Mittens. Luckily I had a secret bottle hidden in my bag plus some admiral so we were good. Before Hartwig arrived, all 3 bottles were killed. Some people decided to stay in the house, claim good bed spots and get some decent sleep. The rest of the team headed to the townhouses or TH's, a magical development of townhouses where drunk college students spill out into the front yards with kegs and everything else you could want from a party. Inside the one house we were at contained some sort of jungle juice that had an assortment of liquids, only one of them being non-alcoholic. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived the keg was kicked and the alcohol was pretty much gone. I hung out for a little before heading back to the house although stopping for some late night pizza slices which were amazing but very expensive. I slept on the floor upstairs where Jack was in a dog bed, Goliath in a closet, Nate being a bitch and sleeping on our hosts bed (What a guy!) and retarded Ian also on the floor. I say retarded because I woke up to him standing in front of Jack about to piss on him but fortunately for Jack and especially Ian, I yelled at him and made him go to the bathroom.

Waking up Saturday was an interesting process but we somehow managed to get to the fields in time for the Goucher game. It was a beautiful morning and the fields were simply amazing. Just seeing the fields made it worth the $300 dollar tournament fee. I didn't get a chance to really warm up and it showed right away. My throws were terrible and I made a lot of stupid turn overs but we were just a better team taking half 7-1. Even if we turned it over, and we did a lot, our defense was solid and Goucher was having a rough morning. A ton of frosh got playing time and the final score ended up being 13-6.

We had a bye next so a lot of people slept off their hangovers. Most us just chilled, enjoying the beautiful weather and watched the Goucher-Vassar game. Seabiscuit wound up announcing some of the game from the scaffold which was awesome and hilarious while Martin got some usual tournament action.

We had a solid warm up before Vassar and looked like the better team throughout the first half despite the score being close. Our starting O-line consisting of myself, Jack, Matt, Nate, Timber, Shine and Simon was getting the job done and didn't get broken the entire day. Our pull play was working well and by the second half, our D joined the party. Vassar seemed to lay down and Jive finished strong with a 13-7 victory.

The rest of Saturday was one of the more enjoyable afternoons I have ever had. We played a very cool and new team Central Connecticut and got the freshman on the field for a ton of playing time as well as certain people playing in spots they would not normally play. While the final score was 13-10, the game was never out of hand. The Vassar B game was even more fun. I played the game barefoot and spent most of the time watching people on the field. Dino, turtle points and ridiculous throws dominated the game while Jive wound up taking the "highly" contested match 13-10. Highlights go to a terrible Ian Hall hammer, a Timber blade that was easily one of the worst throws I have ever seen and Matt showing how to dominate B teams. After some showering and what not, we enjoyed a BBQ which was very sweet by Vassar. Ton of food and a good hang out with the other teams.

By 8:15, we were anxiously awaiting the start of the Vassar version of the HTOD. Jive was ready to go as evident by Timber launching a blade into a crowd.....hilarious stuff. We got separated into 10 teams and began to make our way to the events. Our squad included Itkoff, his boys, The Shiner and Vassar Noah as our captain. We did a "boat race" which turned out to be a stack race except we held the frisbee. This was troublesome because most of the beer spilled onto the floor. There was also some alcoholic basting in the other room. I wasn't feeling my best which figured becasue of the food and the 2 90 minute IPA's I consumed before. The next station was a smoking station and booty juice. This was awesome besides the fact that the booty juice nearly made me puke. One of the most interesting smoking apparatus' I have ever seen was a bowl attached to a frisbee that Radam showed us. Classic Vassar!

The next station was the Party Box which is always a classic station. After trying to chug some warm sparks, I knew I reached my limit. I ran outside and executed a flawless boot and rally. I had never felt better and returned to the party in prime form. I polished off two Colt 45s and was now chugging alcohol at tremendous speeds (love making GZA references). I was humming now and began cheering non stop "Shit, Fuck, Lets get drunk TH's." I think i texted ten people that at random points in the night. And yea I prolly said that 50 times over the course of the weekend. We got to the flip cup station which Shine and I decided to Wolf. It was only somewhat successful as half of the beer ended up on me and moonshine cut his gum. Well shit.

After this it was time to head to the Vassar Depot. I quickly realized that I was not drunk enough to stay here so I went back to the TH's with Sperling and Colicch. We didn't find much but a drunken Joe Stormes and some Ying pounders. AS we walked back, some Vassar DPS caught us and told is to pour out our beers. Stormes, noticeably drunk was asked if he was a student which he responded with "Yes...I mean No, Yes, No!" Luckily they were real cool and let us leave without incident. Being 21 is nice! The rest of the night for me was lackluster. The dance floor consisted of some Jive, noticeably Simon sucking face with some girl against the wall for a while. After some homo-erotic Jive dancing, Itkoff and I left for the TH's and chilled at some random party for a while. I feel like this happens a lot at Vassar. By 1:30 we left and got some food and i was asleep in the house probably around 2. While my night was fairly avg. other Jivers carried the weight. Stormes puked on a Vassar kid. Shine broke into a random Van with some girl, Jack took something and left his glasses but got them back, Simon and Gabe slept at the fields, Goliath in more closet's, Jack winning morning parties, Posey showing why they call him King Pose (ok that's only me), Gardner slept under a mattress, Sperling drank some loco bombs. The rest of the stories not mentioned simply pass into Jive Lore. A place where things may or may not have happened.

Sunday morning came and somehow everyone showed up to the field around 10pm for our semi;s game against Ramapo. I felt great and was ready to go but some of the team was definitely not in any shape to play. Ramapo threw a zone which we were not ready for. Fortunately, Matt played savior and was huge in the first half. I was launching backhand bombs and he came down with everyone. After being down 5-3, we took half 8-7. I stressed to the team that if we picked up our defense the game would not be anywhere near close and their zone would be ineffective. While we had some trouble on offense, our D was horrendous in the first half, mainly due to being lazy. Jack returned for the second half and began popping very effectively . Their cup grew tired and we started scoring with relative ease. Our D stepped up and clamped down and we jumped out to a 13-7 lead and finished off the scrappy Jersey squad 15-9.

This set up a rematch with Vassar in the final who had just beaten their alumni squad on universe point. I knew this would not be the same Vassar team that we beat yesterday. It showed when our O-line got broken on the first point which was rare. Our deep game was off but we kept putting it which put us in a hole. Our D was also lackluster as we were playing uninspired ultimate, expecting to cruise to an easy victory like we did on Saturday. Vassar had a big crowd behind them and they took half 8-5. They opened up the second half with a quick score to make it 9-5. We couldn't seem to break the Vassar momentum trading points until it was 11-7. We received the disc and turned it over. It was at this moment when the switched turned on. Matt and Simon were harassing the throwers with big marks while Jack and I had huge layout D's on in cuts to close the gap to 11-9. Jack was getting called for fouls all day by a guy who was having trouble getting open on him all game. Bad call after bad call didn't deter him when he came up with a huge catch D and yelled "disc don't lie!"

Again with the disc, Nate roasted his defender up line where Jack hit him with a push pass to make it 11-10. Nate emphatically threw the disc to the ground showing emotion for the first time ever. Jive showed pure guts as the score was tied 13-13. After a long point, we took the 14-13 lead knowing that we were going to win it on this next D point. After getting the turn, we worked it up with some big cuts and eventually got the disc to myself where I broke my defender with a quick flick to an open Matt to seal an epic comeback win and championship for Jive 15-13.

To be down 11-7 to the home team in the championship and win the game was something I was very proud of. Jive doesn't play a lot of big competition and winning this tournament to start the year was an incredible feeling. It definitely made the near 5 hour drive back much more manageable. Again, one of the best weekends of my college career.