We Survived St. Louis and St. Louis Survived Us

This past weekend while hanging out with some of the hockey girls, I was reminded of a ridiculous weekend from my days playing on the OSU club team. We left Thursday night for a "Mardi Gras Tournament" in St. Louis. St. Louis supposedly has one of the largest Mardi Gras celebrations outside of New Orleans. If you were there (and remember anything) feel free to add details. Here are some of the highlights/lowlights:

Losing our first game :( We always played like crap our first game after a long road trip.

Getting beads at the parade

Riding the pods to the top of the St. Louis Arch

Playing drinking games in our hotel room. It's funny how you can have a good time anywhere when you're with the right people.

Getting sloppy drunk with the team and dancing on the stage at a packed bar. I'm pretty sure I saw C fall off the stage at one point. No wonder our team had more drinking injuries than hockey injuries.

Dragging W from the bars after she started pulling beads off of strangers' necks and threatening to fight guys twice her size

Catching the last train back from the bars then piling 14 drunk people into the mini-van while Coach T drove us back to the hotel. Good thing it was only 2 miles.

Coach O deciding he really liked our beads, but only the blue ones. He kept yelling, "I want more blue beads. Give me your blue beads." But with his slur, it came out as, "I want more boo bies. Give me your boo bies."

Losing two of our teammates at the bar. They ended up crashing a party at another hotel. J woke up the next morning between a random guy and girl and called with the message, "Done chillin' at the Holiday Inn."

S's parents getting escorted from the hotel by two cop cars for verbally assaulting the hotel clerk. The clerk was a diminutive man (less than 5 feet tall) and walked with a pronounced limp so we kind of sympathized with him. Oddly, we later found out he also worked as a bouncer at a strip club.

Coach O passing out against the counter in the lobby with one of the decorative silk plants as a pillow

Most of our team showing up to the game on Sunday hungover or still drunk... then finding out that because we lost our first game, we had to win our next game by 8 goals and not allow any in order to make it to the championship game. We won exactly 8-0!

Someone handing J an orange cone on the bench in case she needed to puke

Passing the puck to B for a break-out, then watching her circle back around the face-off circle. I remember thinking it was a very unusual break-out just seconds before she shot on our own goalie. All of us on the ice yelled, "F@#%" including B as she was shooting.

Visiting W in the hospital after her concussion

Winning the tournament!!!