Futbol as it's called here in northern Mexico (what some refer to as San Diego) is known as "The Beautiful Game." It was anything but on a clear April Saturday afternoon behind Mission Bay High School. 8 men were able to take the world's most popular sport and make it look absolutely terrible. Well at least seven of us did.
The current first place man and the current last place man, Couls and Johnson respectively, were soccer players. The rest of us would probably have a hard time matching up against a team of 9 year old select players.
SOM 5 consisted of three events. Juggling, time trial and goal keeping. Juggling was actually way more competitive than last year. Jantz won the juggling challenge last year with 14, which would have placed him in 5th this year. Couls dominated by scoring a 38, and probably could have kept going, but he only needed to beat Pete's 36. The rest of the field didn't even get half of that. Johnson underperformed and his weak 14 garnered him a 5th place, which was surprising given his supposed soccer skills. Bing and Jantz both stayed consistent and finished in the top four for the second straight year, although Jantz would ultimately fail in defending his soccer crown from Couls. He did successfully out juggle Bing in a tie breaker. Sean and Jeff would also tie, though at the more embarrassing figure of 4, with Sean winning the tie and avoiding last place.
The final standings for juggling:
1st Couls 38
2nd Peter 36
3rd Jantz 15
4th Bing 15
5th Johnson 14
6th Zach 5
7th Sean 4
8th Jeff 4
The Goal Keeper Challenge could have easily been renamed "Guy in the Goal While Everyone Else Sucks at Life." You didn't really have to block any shots to win the challenge this year, you just had to be standing there when the rest of us missed the most amount of shots and you were GG. These were supposed to be FREE shots. 9 times out of 10 the striker is scoring in soccer. Oh no no, not this group of turds. 14 shots per Man challenger in the goal and the average made goal per round was 4. 4 of 14! It's not like we were Patrick Roy out there. Most of the shots were just outright pure misses. There were some bright spots though. Couls (and maybe Bingaman) did have a legitimately harder time in the goal than the rest of us with more shots actually being blocked than missed. The winner of the event Sean on the other hand just had the fortune of almost every single person basically whiffing on their goal opportunity. His 2 goals out of 14 scored on him, as well as Jantz's and Johnson's 3 goals, were more a testament to how shitty the rest of us were at penalty kicks than to how good they were at goalkeeping. Our mistake this year was counting a miss and a block as the one in the same. In the future to help better measure our goal keeping skills I intend to rank blocks as higher and misses as lower and also possibly award points for how many shots you make while shooting minus points for how many misses while shooting. Then the ratio of blocks/misses combined with how many goals you successfully make will dictate where you place in the goalie challenge. That would take away the option of tanking a shot to give a person a half point rather than a full point because you would also be penalized for misses while shooting as well as rewarded for makes. But this year we learned that just maybe (and by maybe I mean absof%^&*inglutely) the best goalie did not win the goalie challenge.
Final scoring for goal keeping, where each man defended the goal against the 7 other competitors over the course of three rounds were as follows:
1st Sean 2 of 14 shots scored
four way tie Jantz/Johnson/Bing/Couls for second place with 3 of 14 shots scored...after tie breaker
2nd Couls 0 of 3 shots scored on by the other tied competitors
3rd Jantz 2 of 3 shots scored (tied with Johnson, but ended up beating him in a sudden death shoot out)
4th Johnson 2 of 3 shots scored (lost shootout to Jantz)
5th Bing 3 of 3 shots scored
6th Pete 4 of 14 shots scored
7th Zach 5 of 14 shots scored
8th Jeff 6 of 14 shots scored
The final event of the day consisted of a timed lap dribbling the soccer ball 30 yards up the field through a series of cones and back, ending with a shot from 10 yards out on goal. Miss a cone, knock over a cone or miss the goal and a time penalty is added on (2 seconds cone knock, 10 seconds missed cone and 5 seconds for goal missed).
It was here that controversy entered into the man challenge. Let it be said that in Jantz's defense, we have reason to believe that his parents dropped him on his head at a young age so it's not his fault that he is almost completely retarded.
To those of you reading that may not be familiar with the greatness that is SOM (Summer of Man), this is our second year of competition. Last year it was basically 6 men just flying by the seat of our pants, making things up as we went. Everything was new to us. Rules were inserted as the need for them came up. This being our second year of competition, we have a bit of experience at our backs. It's still a work in progress and questions still arise. To combat this I've done my best as commissioner to try and map out every possible scenario so that when problems do arise a solution is easily identifiable. This would be a difficult task in and of itself alone. Now add to the mix eight, cocky, self involved, semi retarded, attention deficient, hyper competitive men and what you have is a text book clusterfuck. At the beginning of each event I announce the rules, how everything is going to go down and how it will be scored. This is not to say that the announcement is heeded. Going into the final event of the soccer challenge, this fact was made abundantly clear when Jantz violated a rule that was clearly defined prior to his running of the trial.
Now this would not have been that big of an issue with a slightly less competitive group of people, but unfortunately we are not that kind of people. Jantz pleaded for a very unmanly "REDO" and was granted one (mainly for the aforementioned clumsiness of his parents). When Peter found out about this REDO he was less than thrilled about it. Oh and why did Peter "find out about it" you ask given the fact that he is a man challengers and one would think that he would be there when the REDO in question occurred? Peter had better things to do than hang out with his friends and had already bounced from the challenge at this point in time...but that's whole other issue that has already been beat to death. (for more on that feel free to browse... http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_189870081035929&ap=1) Long story short, Jantz was wrong to even ask for a REDO, but we just as guilty for granting his down syndromed ass one.
Basically what it did was jump Jantz from third to last (yeah he still beat Pete and Jeff even with his numb skull screw up) to second place. Days later, after a man vote, it was agreed that Jantz would be given a penalty which placed him back in 6th place. It was also agreed upon that if a Man Challenger ever invoked the possibility of a REDO in the future he would be punched in his huge vagina and docked a man point. So settles the drama of the REDO.
Time Trials
1st Couls 23.5
2nd Zach 25.9
3rd Bing 27.4
4th Johnson 28.5
5th Sean 28.9
6th Jantz 30
7th Pete 32
8th Jeff 35
After it was tallied here were the final standings for SOM 5 Soccer
1st Couls 23 pts....two first places and a second, played up to his favorite status and owned a challenge that was thought to be his in the first place. What a commie bastard
2nd Jantz 19 pts...followed up 2010 soccer win with a strong second place
3rd Bing 14 pts.....3rd, 4th and 5th place finishes, very consistent
Tie with 13 pts Johnson/Sean....we decided that Oklahomas had to be done for even the soccer challenge and what better match up then the one between the hated rivals? Classic battle with the win going to Johnson who made a terrific goal line stop that the commissioner's office had to go to the tape to verify. After a slow motion review, the tie breaker went to Johnson
4th Johnson 13 pts...underperformance of the summer so far given the fact that we all thought Johnson was a soccer player
5th Sean 13 pts...a hard loss at the hands of his hated rival will either inspire or depress the Bayhorse. Which will it be?
6th Zach 11 pts....not a good showing by the zVirus who, like the Red Sox, has dug himself into a pretty deep hole
7th Pete 10 pts....an awful showing for the self proclaimed Great White Hype who followed up a strong juggling performance with two sub par events
8th Jeff 3 pts.....three LAST PLACE FINISHES exposed Jeff as the most over rated man challenger of 2011. He also bounced early, most likely to go home to douche. It was only a matter of time that the he would be the first SOM dropout.
After 5 Challenges Couls retained the first place watch while I took the yellow loser last place bracelet and would hold on to it for next 5 weeks. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Up next Arcade Night at Dave and Busters....
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