Ball Hockey Report 21 January 2018

Written by Dave Gutteridge

After an unusually long new year's gap of over a month, some of the players were a little rusty, but there was no lack of energy as the pace was high. Unfortunately the night saw an unusual amount of injury, with two players being knocked out of the game early in the night. Newcomer Nick collided with Chad in a way that exacerbated an existing knee issue, which hopefully won't discourage him from future games. Regular Hiro caught an unlucky bounce of the ball just above the eye, resulting in a pretty deep cut and he was taken to a hospital by Yuusuke and Aiko to get a few stitches. Hopefully Hiro will be back next time, looking slightly more bad ass as a result.

We divided into team White and team Black, as usual, and the teams started out fairly evenly matched, with White winning the first game with a close score. However, after the injuries, there was some imbalance in the number of subs, so White gave up Ted to team black. It's my theory that Ted was the only thing holding White's defense together, because after Ted went to Black, White's defense was almost non-existent. However, James, who was playing defense for White all night, has an alternate theory, which can be summed up as, "Fuck you, Dave."

The night saw the long awaited return of Genghis Chad, who, in spite of too little hockey and too much good Italian food for a year in Milan, got right back into it with a few goals and some solid plays. Early scouting reports suggest that with regular hockey from here on out, he'll actually get his shots on net and not scattered high and wide all over the glass. Of course, players like Chris and Dennis tallied goals all night, as they do, but the real story of January 19th was Ronnie, who had something like an eight goal night, bringing his lifetime tally very close to eleven. All night long he seemed to be finding the right position to pick up the pass and sink the ball, carrying team Black to victory for every game of the night after the first. Has Ronnie used his 2018 goal quota up already? Only time will tell. All told there were four games, with the last game running out on time. Rob and Masa tended goal, coming up with some game changing saves for both teams. It was possibly the greatest day of hockey ever played, until next time.