By Dana K

Last weekend was the Rose Charities annual Street Hockey tournament – otherwise known as the funnest day of hockey ever where you play ALL THE HOCKEY in 80 degree weather (80 degrees, every year, I swear) and then drink ALL THE BEER (me) and then you go to the bar and buy ALL THE RAFFLE TICKETS (Alok) and then proceed to hug ALL THE PEOPLE (me again).

Ok, so before the beer and the hugging there is the hockey. Quick disclaimer to this reporting: due to a slap shot to the eye (thanks so much Eitel, that was NOT the plan in the huddle. T, to review, I had said, “hit it right in the sky!” and yes, that’s a super weird thing to say in a huddle but no one else was talking and I apparently cannot stand silence.) I only saw half of the things that happened at the tournament so there might be some blind spots (nailed it!) to this reporting. I’m sure though that the things that I missed were very small and not that big a deal. Everyone knows that your right eye sees all the things and your left eye is there only to be like, ‘yeah, that totally happened.’ Science, guys.

Ok, so the first thing we all noticed –(well, the first thing I noticed is that my worries about sunscreen quickly vanished when worried about the future of my left eye –), ok, the second thing we all noticed was the reffing was ON POINT during the games. Thank you to all the volunteer refs:, Creamy, Alok, Kirkham and Schuie and whomever else reffed on the left side of my face that I didn’t see. You all had very different reffing styles;, Kirkham cracked his first obligatory ref beer before the first game started. Alok decided that this was the time to really crack down on charity and turned into Alok’s evil twin and called all the things. Creamy, who as Chadwick described “looked like he wandered out of a 1960s barbecue and stopped in the middle of the court to watch some hockey” tried to ref a tight game and when that didn’t work said, “Fuck it, kill each other for all I care.” Which was very much in keeping with the spirit of charity.

It got hot, like 3 trips to the bodega for Gatorade and Smartwater hot. The hockey continued. As the rounds went on, the teams began to show their personalities. Rachel’s team was accused of being the super team. It’s true, they were super – Hi Ben! Rachel scored a goal on offense and did her signature two legged Laverne and Shirley jump in celebration. Filthier all paid more to be on the same team because they misunderstood and thought that it was a charity for ugly people. “We’re here to give to those that have so much less than us,” James said.  Ann didn’t even play because that would have just been too mean. “Like running at a charity event for the legless, you know?” she said. Julie taught an entire team of newbies what off-sides meant, had a solid “Dangerous Minds” teacher moment and then Gabe showed up. My team kept losing Bullmooses (bullmai?) due to injury but rock stars like Morgen pretty much scored all our goals with assists from Olivier *I’m pretty sure it was Morgen you guys, but you know, THE EYE.

Ok, so then it’s the final game and we’re all like, holy crap I can’t believe we have to play another game right now and Schuie’s team was all, we don’t have to play another game, let’s get beers and ice cream, wohoo! And I was all, you are not being supportive of my eye by getting ice cream. Ok, so then we played the final game and again you guys – Morgen was on fire! She’s knocking everything in the net and doing this slightly gratuitous goal scoring dance, but again I can only really see half the court, and I can’t really blame her because she’s scoring ALL THE GOALS along with some guy named Alex that I have never met before but was really nice.

Ok, so then we get to the bar – Jamie giggles his way into winning half the things, as he somehow does every year, and Diana wins the big prize of the house in Maine and absolutely flips her shit because she’s never won anything before ever.

All in all it was a great day of hockey for a great cause and we all hated ourselves the next day due to drinking all the beers. THANK YOU ROSE CHARITIES!