Boston, MA, November 25. Destiny was reaffirmed after OH won the EC championship to add to last year’s RC championship. With honor on the line, OH showed their true colors by coming back from a 0-4 deficit to win a stunner in sudden-death overtime by the score of 5-4 over OE.
The gamesmanship began days before the actual event as OE and Capitan “Free” Willy Uppington dueled it out over when to play the match. Will unfortunately did not put up a good fight off the field and both teams settled for a 7am start. When asked about the start, the Latino contingent of Maximo “el gladiator” Hang replied, “The only reason that I am ever up at 7 is after a solid night of dancing at Pravda’s international night.
Doesn’t OE understand that nothing good ever happens by haggling and annoying the competitor over when to play?”
As OE – aka 8 Ball – were downing their favorite malt beverage, little did they know that vengeance was in the minds of OH over setting the alarm clock for 6am. Perhaps they planned it all along, as OH started the first half slowly. Brian “Tech Rep” Caputo placed the blame squarely on Microsoft. “It was like we all woke up to the blue screen of death and had no way of ripping out the battery to try our luck again. We just had to sit around and watch the blue and hope that Microsoft brought us back from the abyss.”
At halftime, destiny looked far away as a drowsy and humbled OH devised a strategy to come back and win the trophy. The lonely fan, Ken “Dinomite” Dinovo shouted, “We need a BHAG”, remembering what the lovely Leslie Perlow would say. David “Trabek” Bell rang in with, “I got it, let’s win this game”, thinking OH didn’t have a prayer of achieving this BHAG. Murmurs around the huddle turned to joy then back to horror as the team realized that next step was to align the 7 S’s, but no one could remember for the life of them what they all were.
At the same time in the other huddle, OE was passing around a few 40s and smoking a few blunts, or at least that’s what we speculated. Dan Shapero (OE) was already thinking about how to bring rugby into his winning soccer team’s article. Colin Brady (OE) was thinking of movie ideas about their season, and others were just bringing out the lawn chairs.
Things were looking bad for America’s team, OH. Winston “Churchill” Kung knew that the time was right for one of his motivating speeches.
Winston kept it short and sweet: “OH, do not despair. Just because
reciting LEAD frameworks is not your core competency, all is not lost. The price of greatness is responsibility. We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire…Give us the tools and we will finish the job. Stick to what makes you unique OH.” With that, an unknown section mate raced across the field naked holding only a large H. With the symbolism and Winston’s great motivation, Pierre “Who’s your daddy” Pujol exhorted, “I’ve got it, we need to be ourselves. We win because of our hooliganism, not our strength of framework play. Let’s go out their and cause chaos!”
Shortly after the half began, Teddy “Ballgame” Hill took a quick pass from Kevin “It doesn’t” Matto to score the first goal. “The hooligans have arrived”, exclaimed Ted starting the ball rolling. Shortly thereafter, someone else scored, then another rumored to be by Alfonso “Stick figure” Leon even though he was not even at the game. After reviewing the tape, it turns out that Ben “Game MVP” Chatraw had scored both.
With 5 minutes to go in the second half, Ben added another and so evened the game with a superb shot after a pass from (N)Omar “Garciapparrra” Abou Sayed. Explaining his superb pass to Ben, Omar said of his motivations afterwards, “I heard rumors that members of OE took some of my specially designed Capri-shirts. I wanted to show them that it was not about the style of the shirt, but the heart of a man inside the shirt that matters.”
With seconds to go in the game, Chatraw threaded the needle with a strong pass to Brian Caputo which Brian knocked in for what looked like the winning goal. OE resorted to their core competency as well and cried out that Brian was off-side. While neither team was really sure if he was or was not offside, the captains decided that justice would not be served by ending a great game in a controversial manner, and sent the game to sudden death overtime.
Molly “Sticky fingers” Hellerman, also known as our star goalie, brought the troops together and refined the strategy just slightly as only a great coach could do. Overtime started, and both teams started strong in the battle for bragging rights. A few minutes in, Ben was tripped up as he was heading directly towards the goal, setting up a direct free kick only 20 yards out. On the sideline afterwards, Captain Will explained the next crucial moments. “Ben and Pierre carefully developed a strategy and after some dupery by Pierre, Ben made a blistering shot into the corner of the net securing the closest victory we have ever had at HBS. Despite some controversy, this was a very memorable game. OE was definitely the toughest team we faced all year as well as being a good bunch of people. But the bottom line is that we are the EC Champions and we’re going back to the HBS Intramural Championship!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
After a long season of ups and downs, destiny was reaffirmed as the Hooligans continued their dominance of the intramural soccer league.
When asked what he was going to do next, the leading goal scorer, Ben, stated matter of factly, “I can graduate now as all my work is done on the soccer field”. Alas, HBS will truly miss those Hooligans and rest assured that years from now, their legacy will still be remembered.
