Tuesday, May 09, 2006

weekend update

somehow that finite element analysis final wasn't so bad! i guess the trip to ghosh's office asking him so many hard questions worked. i almost wish i had studied some more, because a lot of those problems were really easy... but! maybe i'll still get an A.

i ended up finishing four of my five papers yesterday. it took a long, long time, and i think the quality of writing dropped exponentially with every one. i've been spending so much time down in the ME lab (our "dungeon," as we like to say, but really it has some very nice windows) that i think i might actually miss it next semester. it's times like these that i say to myself, "no! no, you're GLAD that school is over! remember all the bad times?" and then yes, i do remember the bad times, and i snap out of it. snapped.

so that concludes the scholastic portion of my weekend. now we'll move on to hockey. ah, hockey.

the games this last weekend were the first playoff games for this season. for some bizarre reason, my team played my brother's team, even though i think we're tied for last place. nick had ray and mark on his team, and ryan as his goalie. hugo and i actually had gabe show up to goaltend for us, which i think has happened only one other time this season, but we were very glad to have him.

playoff games are different from regular games because of three things:
1.) if you lose, you're out.
2.) no stats are kept.
3.) you can't pick up any players.

that # 3 was the killer for us. dave and matt didn't show, so hugo and i were the only skaters for our team. we played (almost) the entire game shorthanded, 2 on 3. playing the entire game is rough by itself, but playing shorthanded is just exhausting. and hard. you have only one person to pass to, so if they're attacking you and covering him, you're in trouble and you either have to lose the ball or dump it or bust a mad move. i'm not much for mad moves, i'm a defender, but luckily, hugo is all about the mad moves.

would you believe that i scored the first goal of the game? somehow we got a 2-on-1 rush and hugo gave me a great pass and we scored! yay!

would you believe that hugo scored the second goal of the game?

no, we didn't keep our two-goal lead, but it did take them more than half of the first period to finally overtake us. i think it's pretty impressive that we kept up such good pressure the whole game and that we only lost by three. i'm proud of us. we did good. of course, it would have been extremely embarrassing for the other team if we had won, especially since they always had an open man and more than a few times hugo and i both attacked, leaving no one on defense.

i tried to rush back to help gabe out whenever we both attacked and lost possession, and that was the worst. i sprinted as hard as i could back down the court and usually just missed the play. of course when i stopped the exhaustion would catch up to me and oh my goodness. it was hard. at one point, after i rushed back and missed the play, i stood next to gabe catching my breath and told him i wasn't going to do that anymore, that he was on his own. he said okay, but i couldn't do it. i kept rushing back, even though it felt like it was going to kill me, even though it was much better game stategy to pace myself. i guess the defender/coach in me will never die. i just can't leave the goalie by himself. i just can't skate without hearing "HUSTLE!" in my head.

hugo got a penalty in the first half, so i had to play by myself while he took a rest (the system's messed up). i actually held them off (with lots of help from gabe) for a minute and a half before they scored. if you can't tell, i'm pretty proud of that. 3-on-1 is hardcore. they finally beat me because, well... my brother is just so much bigger than i am.

of course, mark got a penalty in the second half, but we scored right away. so we had one even-strength goal, four shorthanded goals, and lost by three. that's not bad at all. :)

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