PSP Chicago 2007

PSP Chicago

All right I've been meaning to write a review of each PSP event I attend this year and just have been too lazy to do so. Better late than never, right? Here's a recap/review/reminisce of my 7 days in Chicago/Bolingbrook/Joliet for the third PSP event.

Tuesday - I fly into O'Hare Airport and get picked up by Amos in probably one of the worst looking minivans I've ever seen. No offense Amos but holy hell, that's the kind of vehicle that people drive in the former Eastern Bloc. Already in the minivan of doom are Drew and Dexter (most of the people I will be talking about are fellow refs unless designated otherwise) and they look as surprised as I am that we're driving on a major highway in this thing. We head out to Bolingbrook and check out the venue, which seems pretty nice. The field that Amos and I are going to be on is the furthest from the Boneyard/Logistics tent; lame. We find out who is going to be on our field with us and it's the same five guys plus five others we've never reffed with, super. We get our wristbands, meet up with some more refs, go eat at Golden Corral and then go to the hotel in Joliet, where Pig Pen has been waiting this whole time. Diaz and Chris come in late, which means the gangs all here.

Wednesday - Friday - First day of the event till Friday, I'll be reffing nothing but Open division, thank God. Nothing against anybody or any team that plays D2 or D3 Xball but when you get to stick to one format for the course of an event things become slightly easier. You figure out who's who and what bunkers they play and where to stand to get the best angle to watch them. You also get to deal with same bullshit day in and day out. Like Ore from Speed trying to play on/cheat every chance he gets. PGP from Jax Warriors bitching and complaining about calls that were never there. Riptide screaming about we're trying to screw them over despite the fact they're winning a game for a change. Gridlock showing no consistency and finally watching Aftermath, Impact and Avalanche walk right through teams giving us much needed breaks before we have to run the next match. The coolest thing to happen was when the Domino's Pizza promo blimp crash landed on our field during the middle of a game. Doesn't really get much better than that. That's pretty much prelims wrapped in a nutshell and this lasts for two and a half days.

Friday night - Usually I try not to stay up too late and get a decent amount of sleep so I don't crash halfway through the day but Friday night always seems to be the one where we all start acting goofy. Pig Pen, Amos and I were talking about the night before MAO at Jack-in-the-Box when we were teasing/scaring Marcus about messing with teams before/during a match. One involved admitting to binging on drugs the night before then seeing imaginary bees all over the field and radioing anybody for help to fend off said bees. The other involved calling penalties on players from other sports such as traveling, double dribble, pass interference, clipping and signaling "touchdown" everytime the flag was hanged on the startbox. This may not sound funny but when you're exhausted, often accused of not knowing what you're doing and somehow still awake, it's down right hysterical. We go on about this for almost two hours and then finally fall asleep.

Saturday - Just like at MAO, it rained, but not as heavily, and did so for the entire day. However, unlike MAO, the tempreature dropped a bit and got a tad chilly. Thankfully, I only had to ref 6 matches that day and was done before 4PM, not too bad. One of the matches was Aftermath vs Avalanche and we had to run this match on a different field because our scoreboard decided to crap out on us at the end of a previous match (hurrah PSP). The other field happened to be Pig Pen's field and I have no idea how any team played on that field the entire week. It was unlevel to boot and if you were a dorito corner player, sucks for you as you had to run uphill. Anyways, near the end of the first half I throw a major for a player having a nice big hit on this inside of his hopper right next to his face. When the half had ended, Ed Poorman came over and had a word with me about it subtly accusing me of being biased and how we're screwing them over. Sorry if you think that Ed but I don't know how you could considering how one team has served three more penalties than your team and you're still hung up over a call that wasn't there to be made. Whatever...

Sunday - We get to head over to the NXL field to ref finals over there with the grandstand seating. Cool, right? Not really as it is still pretty wet and if anybody actually paid the $15 to watch the games on that field are more than likely going to show up for the NXL All-Star games, which by the way pretty much mean nothing. Well, except respect but who cares about respect it's all about the money, right? So we ref D3, D2 and Open concession and finals and everything goes relatively smoothly. Teams win, teams lose, no big controversy, no bad attitudes, no shit from the crowd, the games are played and the day comes to end. One more PSP event gone and done.

Monday - Get all my stuff packed and head for the airport and wished everyone else a safe trip home, hope to see you at the next event, etc. Wait for my plane, get delayed and fly home to finally get some sleep.

Well, that's that and probably what you weren't expecting but if I were to type up every little thing, it would have been pretty damn long and I doubt you would have read the entire thing.