Dude from Brookland-Cayce

Palmetto and Mauldin Cup review

Growing Pains

When a hermit crab gets too large for its shell, it searches around for a new one to accomodate its size. It tries on a few different ones and walks around in them until it finally settles on something that feels good and that he can grow into for a while. This season has been the year of the hermit crab for your Walhalla Razorbacks. We've gotten too big for our shell, but we are taking an unusually long time to pick another one to live in. Or maybe it's the year of the high maintenance woman. You know, the one who's getting ready for a date that has too many clothes to choose from. While she's rummaging around in her closet the size of most peoples living rooms looking for the perfect shoes to set off her earrings, Estocrates sits out in his gargantuan truck, his stomach rumbling, honking his horn. Of course, he was ready when he pulled on his shorts and put on his t-shirt at 6:00 a.m. I think we're getting close to picking the perfect ensemble though. It's sort of a Sid Vicious meets Hector "Macho" Camacho motif. Hopefully we can pull it off in time to get to Puerto Nuevo before they lock the doors.

Palmetto Cup 09(April 8th - 11th)

Here's a run-down of the teams that were in it:
(from the State)
"The 16-team field featured Midlands entries host Brookland-Cayce, defending champion Spring Valley, Lexington, Sumter and late-entry Chapin. The out-of-state contingent includes familiar Cup visitor Norman North (Oklahoma), first-time entry Bob Jones (Alabama) and two Tennessee powerhouses – Farragut and Knoxville West.
The rest of the lineup includes Top 10 South Carolina teams from Wando, Eastside, Riverside, North Myrtle Beach, Christ Church, Southside Christian and Walhalla.

John Devlin from "The State" newspaper said in his write up before the tournament: "The 17th annual Palmetto Cup boys soccer tournament, deemed the No. 1 spring boys tournament in the Southeast by Student Sports, opens play Wednesday with eight matches at three sites in the Cayce-West Columbia area. "

The first day Walhalla played host Brookland-Cayce in a match we should have run away with, but instead lost 5-4 at "The Cage," which was the tournaments showcase field. The Bearcats scored all 5 of their goals on set plays and three of those came off throw-in's taken by a kid they referred to as Shao-lin Sam. He had done so many flip throws that at the end of the game he tried to get on the bus with us. I think his brain did a few flips.

The second day we played Farragut High School out of Knoxville Tennessee. This is off their own websight:

"FARRAGUT BOY'S SOCCER 2009 Welcome to the boys Farragut soccer website, home to one of the most successful boys soccer programs in the nation. The boys team have been State champions in 2003, 2004 and 2007. In 2004 they were recognized as the National Champions. The team is coached by Wallie Culbreth (head coach) and Kurt Backstrom (asst coach). Congratulations to the following soccer players who will be representing Farragut for the 2009 season GO ADMIRALS!"

I don't think we had one guy taller than their shortest player. Their center midfielder was 6'5". In fact, he was so tall that Jorge was able to give a graphic description of his belly button after the game. He said it was like a perfect cinnamon roll and that it made him hungry for some of those honey buns they have at Ryans. Most teams in the state would have just layed down in the fetal position and sucked their thumbs at the mere sight of these monsters. Instead, we only lost 1-0 and it should have been a nil-nil draw except in his excitement over a great header by Napoleonito, Cody tried to tussle his Mohawk and unknowingly got a glove full of Dapper Dan which led to him letting a simple ball slide through his finger-tips.

Our next match didn't get any easier when we took on the Barbarians from Alabama's 4th ranked Class 6A Bob Jones High School. We owned the second half of this contest and tied the game up, 2-2, on a classic goal from Alex Cruz with about 10 minutes remaining. But alas, we let down our guard with 30 seconds to go and allowed the game winner in an absolute heart-breaker. Christian Romero, on loan from our might J.V. team scored the first goal for the Razorbacks. We lost our last game to Christ Church 2-o in a match we dominated from start to finish. One thing we can say though: we were the best 0-4 team to ever play in the Palmetto Cup. Comforting I know. That's like saying, "that was the strongest house ever to get blown down in a wind storm." But hey, sometimes you just have to look on the bright side. In all seriousness however, as your Razorbacks slowly made their way off the field after losing to Bob Jones, the Bob Jones crowd gave them a standing ovation. One guy yelled out, "you guys are a bunch fighters!" Yeah, but we sure do hit the canvas a lot. Well, hopefully we can get Mick to "cut us" so we can see out of our left eye, beat Apollo Creed for the state title, and then have enough wits about us to ask Adrian where her hat is.

Mauldin Cup 09 (April 17th and 18th)

What was supposed to be a 12 team blockbuster of a tournament turned into a 5 team dog-and-pony show over the weekend because of having to reschedule the event due to rain. Even though the games were cut to a ridiculous 20 minutes-a-half format, your Razorbacks blitzkrieged the old onion bag for 8 goals in 80 minutes against the first two teams (Greenville Technical High School and Blue Ridge) the opening day, to put themselves in the final on Sunday as the number one team against 3A power Greenville High School. One paper described Walhalla as, "an inflamed hemorrhoid on steroids on the backsides of much bigger schools that just couldn't be scratched" in their write up of the days games. I thought that was a little over-the-top, but we'll take it as a compliment. We need all we can get, especially after coming out Sunday and laying an egg against a Greenville team we should have beaten. The final score...1-0. Anti-climactic...to be sure. Oh well, this week we get to go beat Abbeville and Crescent, infinity to negative 10. Maybe it'll boost our self esteem. Maybe we'll be able to come out of the walk-in closet and be satisfied that we just can't fit into a 2, and that red isn't our most flattering color. Maybe we'll look into the mirror and in the great words of Stewart Smalley be able to look ourselves in the eye and say, "By golly, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and people like me." Then maybe we'll decide on some shoes (maybe some lime green or pink Nike's), strap 'em on, and go enjoy a few quesadillas with the irate man honking his horn outside.

Come out tonight and watch Walhalla vs. the opposite goal at 7:00 P.M. Should be a classic!

j

Walhalla, 1; Walhalla, 0

Walhalla gets K.O.ed by its own shadow



Everyone knows that the only time it is dangerous to shadow box is in a gale force wind storm because if the wind happens to come from the southwest at 21.3 miles per hour it creates the perfect conditions for ones shadow to actually detach itself and deliver an actual blow that has the potential of knocking the shadow's actual self out. Estocrates knew this when Walhalla, which actually rented out Seneca's soccer pitch because of maintenance to its own field, entered into the game with it's own quite formidable shadow Monday night... and it didn't sit well on his stomach. He had seen what is called in scientific terms, "Unexpected-blow-to-the-head-from-a-non-material-object-in-the-general-shape-of-one's-self syndrome" occur one other time in his life. The painful memory lacerated him to the core and has haunted him ever since.

Monday night, the powers-that-be pored lemon juice on the old wound and sent the mighty Estocrates howling like a half-crazed wolf in search of her lost cub into the eerie night while his bewildered players scurried around the pitch trying to recapture the shadow and reconnect it to themselves before the clock struck midnight, dooming them forever to playing soccer without it. At 11:58 Jesse Cortez, who had lost his shadow before on one of his nightly trips to neverland where he ran spy missions for Peter Pan to discover the secret plans of Captain Hook, snagged the purple pig's shadow by the toe and wrestled it into submission while Backi Mestizo, with his nimble little fingers, quickly sewed it back onto the rest of the exhausted team just before midnight.

Estocrates showed up at his house a day later with holes on either side of his forehead that had been crudely sewed shut and the words "Cephus nose branes" scrawled primitively on his noble brow. According to his saintly wife, Laura, "he was noticeably calm and collected. As soon as he walked in the door he gave me a kiss on the cheek and then started cleaning the house and cooking. Oh, and did he cook! It was like Wolfgang Puck had walked through the door! He made Asiago-stuffed dates with Bacon and smoked paprika; Asian noodle salad with shrimp; asparagus, fingerling potatos and goat cheese pizza; baby greens with artisinal cheeses and charcuterie; and to top it all off, for dessert he whipped up some caramel-apple tartlets with cinnamon-rum ice cream. Then later on that night he started craving sushi, which he hates, and reciting haiku that he had composed for me off the top of his head. One was so touching. It went something like this:

April Visions

Hyacinth breeze blows,
Scenting your hair strands yellow.
Undulating grass.

How romantic is that?"

"He then blindfolded himself and proceeded to quote Shakespeare while making a Michealangeloesque sculpture of my face. I'm writing Cephus' name in the next time I vote for president. He could change the world with his cutting edge techniques."

To be sure, Estocrates is a revitalized human being. He now sees the loss to his own shadow as a positive molecule in the cosmic array of events shaping his hogs. Tonight, we will go on the road to Columbia where we play our first match of the Palmetto Cup. And as always, we will have all our senses open and ready to recieve more clues in our search for the key to all that exists. Wish us luck.

j

Walhalla, 0; Emerald, 2

Estocrates considers lobotomies for several of his players

The idea of brain surgery as a means of improving mental health got started around 1890, when Friederich Golz, a German researcher, removed portions of his dogs’ temporal lobes, and found them to be calmer, less aggressive. It was swiftly followed by Gottlieb Burkhardt, the head of a Swiss mental institution, who attempted similar surgeries on six of his schizophrenic patients. Some were indeed calmer. Two died.
One would think that that would be the end of the idea. But in 1935, Carlyle Jacobsen of Yale University tried frontal and prefrontal lobotomies on chimps, and found them to be calmer afterwards. But it took a certain Antonio Egaz Moniz of the University of Lisbon Medical School to really put lobotomy on the map. He found that cutting the nerves that run from the frontal cortex to the thalamus in psychotic patients who suffered from repetitive thoughts (like: I have the ball...must dribble now...) “short-circuited” the problem. Together with his colleague Almeida Lima, he devised a technique involving drilling two small holes on either side of the forehead, inserting a special surgical knife, and severing the prefrontal cortex from the rest of the brain. He called it leukotomy, but it would come to be known as lobotomy.
Some of his patients became calmer, some did not. Moniz advised extreme caution in using lobotomy, and felt it should only be used in cases where everything else had been tried. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on lobotomy in 1949. He retired early after a former patient paralyzed him by shooting him in the back.

After losing to Emerald's J.V. football team, which substituted for their soccer team, which had been suspended on allegations of rampant steroid use, 2 - 0 on Monday night, Estocrates did what any good coach would do: he stayed up all night googling medical procedures that could help reverse group psychotic behavior. After all, he had tried everything in his huge bag of tricks to get his team to play the unselfish brand of soccer they are capable of playing on a consistent basis. The conclusion he finally came to after way to many colloidal silver, acai berry shakes was that what the team was suffering from must be due to an over-active frontal cortex, and that lobotomizing them would be the only option left that could bring them not only the coveted state title, but help them reach the ultimate goal of finding and capturing the key to all that exists.

Finding a good out-patient lobotomist was no easy task, but Tuesday, while hunting ginseng root in the Elicott's Rock area near the Chatooga river, Estocrates came upon an old mountain man sitting cross-legged on an enormous rock. The man introduced himself as Cephus. "I know wha yer here bosse," he said, exposing a wise, toothless grin. "Yer cawt twixt a rock n' a hard plice. Ah think ah may be able ta hep yuns out. Does the word 'lobotomy' rang eny bayells?"

"How is it you know such a thing?"

"Ah'll aks da queshtiuns 'round here bosse? Be here wit dem boweez 'round midnaght tanaght and ah'll git her done fer yuns. Allz ah waunt fer tride is some a dem hot to-malees Miss Veevaldo makes. An ah wan 'em fraysh, hear! Ah love me sum to-malees."

And with that he disappeared into the dense foliage. As coach drove down the mountain, back to civilization, he pondered what he had just seen and heard. Then, as his eye caught some of the ginseng root he had found just peaking out of the old burlap sack he always used to carry it in, he had an epiphany. "Ginseng," he said quietly to himself as if it was a secret no one could know. Then louder, "Ginseng. Ginseng! That's it. They're suffering from a Ginseng deficiency which has caused they're eyes to go directly down to the ground when they receive the ball, which then eliminates all options but dribbling wildly like a headless chicken right into the teeth of opposing defenses, which subsequently gums up the whole works and makes us look like a bunch of idiots. Man, I can't believe I was thinking about giving half the team lobotomies when I've got Ginseng!"

Was Cephus real, or a figment of Estocrates fertile subconscious which had obviously been over-saturated with colloidal silver and a case of googlitis? We'll never know now, since the great coach came to his senses and found the solution to getting us back on the journey to discover the key to all that exists which coincides somehow with the state title. Now to figure out how to market his new Ginseng shakes so we can raise money for our new team plane which we will use next year for all away games.

Come to Pendleton Friday to see if Ginseng really is the answer as your purple pigs of Walhalla get back to what they do best: melting people's faces with their mind-blowing brand of soccer.