Savage Dogs versus the Jungle

This weekend Gamboa hosts some sort of national ultimate Frisbee tournament. I’ve been told that teams come from all over the country for some reason to play out here in the middle of nowhere.

 

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Peter had told me stories of this tournment from the past two years, but I had been out of town both times. Anyway, when Janni invited me to play on the local Gamboa team, I eagerly accepted.

 

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Our team, the Perros Salvajes (Wild Dogs), was a sort of band of misfits made of local gambodians and some scientists who played pick-up games on fridays. Peter said that our name fit us nicely because the Gamboa teamusually “had a lot of raw talent, but was sure to lose because we don’t work as a team, and just sort of run around.” This seemed to clearly be the case.

I looked around and as the other teams were warming up and running drills, our team was smoking and passing around beers. We lost both games the first day, but showed signs of our skills and took the lead briefly in the latter game.

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After the first day’s tournment, our team hosted a huge party in the main part of the little town. It was grand enough to hear from all over gamboa and the jungle. I had to miss the party due to work, but it took quite a toll on our team. When I showed up the next morning to play, half the team was nowhere to be seen. We played almost the whole first game without any subs. The only other person to arrive, was our team captain at the end of the first game, but he was holding his head pretty hard in a deadly hangover sort of way. Despite the missing/hungover team, somehow we were doing amazing. We were leading the first game, which had to be decided by a tie-breaker. The final game, we fought against one of the best teams (who ended in the finals), La Jungla. At this point our team was so tired, they were busting out every dirty trick in the book. We called fouls constantly. Moved incredibly slowly whenever we were in the lead to run out the clock. And tried to ignore when the other team had called fouls on us.

Despite this hard, strange battle, we still lost, but I think everyone we faced ended up pretty well chewed by the Wild Dogs.