Multiple Team Away Tournament Wrap

This time around we're wrapping up playing for multiple teams in a tournament in a different country! How does playing far away from home make some things easier, but also adds stress? What have I learned to help reduce that stress and just make it a fun getaway? How different is it playing for multiple teams when both teams play multiple times a day? All that and Uncrustables talk. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_1: 0:11

Hey, everybody, and welcome to this edition of The Beer Leaguer Podcast. This is all about playing in an away tournament, but a little bit different than some of the previous times I've talked about playing in tournaments that are out of town, playing ones that are out of the country, and kind of a bigger deal, playing on multiple teams. So just this last weekend, from what I'm recording this, I was part of a couple people that played on multiple teams in what is essentially the championships of our fall beer league. And they take place up right near Toronto, Canada. And I'm coming from Ohio and the United States. So you know, a couple hour drive, about a five hour-ish drive to get up there. So not insanely far and not anything to fly to, but totally drivable, but far enough, far enough away that it's not close. So if anybody was following me on social media, I made some TikToks on the way up, and was talking about being super paranoid about forgetting deer. That's something I worry about when I play regular beer league games, but even more so being that far away. Because if I forget something that's not easily replaceable, you're kind of screwed up there. There's not anybody to call to come drop something off. There's no way to get something to you. And I'm not going up super early where I can get something shipped up there or anything like that. So you're kind of out of luck. So if you forget something like jerseys, and if they're being very strict about that, you're kind of screwed. And not just you're kind of screwed, but you kind of screw your team because then you're not able to play. So I was talking about that in a couple videos that I did. Like I said, like on TikTok and stuff. And that's a big thing that I do for myself as I've done a couple of these things, is I check my hockey bag so many times. My regular luggage, whatever, if I forget to bring like socks or I run out of t-shirts or something, you know, I can do laundry or I could buy a new one, who cares? But you know, if I forget hockey stuff, that sucks. So you know, I do my normal check when I pack my bag. I do my check when I throw everything in the back of my truck. And I did a check before I crossed the border, kind of double checked everything, you know, real quickly. And then again, the first time I stopped over the border, I checked my bag again and, you know, tried to make sure like, okay, is everything that I can think of that I thought I might need in there. And for me, that's probably the most nerve wracking thing on a drive up there and going to any kind of tournament is just so paranoid that I'm going to forget something. And like I said, forget something that is not easily replaceable, you know, because if I forget, you know, like socks or something like that, fine. I can go buy hockey socks. Not a big deal. You know, but if you forget your gloves or something, yeah, I could go buy a new set of gloves. But man, that's that's an expensive thing to forget. And then, you know, if you're going to go try and find, like, used gloves somewhere, I don't know places, you know, so then you're scrambling around or try and find like a place that has used gear and find ones that fit and all that. And yeah, don't don't don't want to deal with that. So that is something that I always do. And I have started the last couple of times I've gone to away tournaments is having a checklist of all of my essential hockey stuff and kind of stuff around that. That I want to make sure I bring with me to have. And I'm not big checklist for packing kind of guy. But for these, it definitely gives me peace of mind. So that's something I would 100 percent recommend that people do. Now, as far as the actual hockey up there. You know, I mean, it's always good hockey. Like I said, it's essentially the championships from all the different cities that the league that I play in are up there. So there's usually five or six cities represented, mostly US cities, a couple of Canadian cities do have some teams that come over there for games. You know, so it's good competition. You know, it's a lot of fun, the games. But that's that's not what you want to hear about. You don't want to hear about that. You want to hear about what it was like playing on multiple teams. So the set up for this was like I said, there were four of us that played on two teams up there. And the way they do it is you have one game on Friday, two games on Saturday. And if you make the playoffs, one playoff game and championship game, those would be on Sunday. Spoiler alert, we did not play Sunday. So after the two games on Friday, playing that, not bad. The games were separated by about an hour. So, you know, I didn't even change out of my undergarments. Just, you know, put on some shorts and a t-shirt and kind of, you know, walk around half hockey dressed, went into the other locker room for the game. Guys were already getting in there. And, you know, no big deal, no big deal at all for that. Now, on Saturday, we had our games were back to back, both games. So we had back to back games in the morning, like a two and a half hour break and then back to back games. For that instance between games, I definitely did shower and like kind of completely change and try and lay my gear out to dry between games. That weekend was, it was an extremely hot weekend, but of course, that Saturday was overcast and a little rainy all day. So not good for airing gear out. The next day, Sunday, it was in the 90s, 90s Fahrenheit, super hot, super sunny, would have been perfect for putting your gear out, would have dried in an hour, if that, this was not that. I had gear laying out, had my truck bed open, gear laying out in there, spread out, trying to air it out as best as I could between those kind of game sessions. And it did okay. Didn't air out great. That's where I think having a change of kind of the undergarments was a big key. You know, I wore, because they were back to back, it was very easy to wear the same stuff for game one and game two. Like I said, completely shower and change, put on new under stuff then for games three and four. And I think that made a huge difference for how not gross the gear felt. Because my pads were still definitely kind of wet, but with completely different kind of under stuff on, you didn't really notice it. And so that was a big help. That's a big tip I would give, is if you have time between games, definitely if you can have different stuff to wear underneath. For the Friday games, like I said, there was only like an hour between games, which isn't that long, so I wasn't going to shower and change and everything between them. And I don't think it mattered, because that's kind of how long I'd be there anyways in the locker room then. But having a couple hours between games, that was definitely a big, big, big plus to have that stuff. But doing that also meant having an extra change of street clothes to have, to wear so I could wear something between games and then have something that was a little bit more, well, stuff that was very clean and hadn't been worn before after games to go out. So I didn't have to worry about going back to where I was staying and having to take another shower and doing all that. Just showered the rink and I can go. But that was kind of the thing of planning that out between games. Clothing, that is something that I am glad that I did. It made a big difference, and I think it made it a lot less of a headache to deal with that stuff is, you know, just playing that stuff out. The other another big thing that I noticed that I surprisingly to myself thought of and worked out really well was eating between games. Our early games were not that early in the morning. I think the first one was level 45, and then like 115, I think, was the next one. Something like that. And then the next two games were at like 430 and 6. Something along those lines. Those are pretty close to what it was. And I didn't want to not eat between games, but I also didn't want to eat a lot between games because there wasn't a lot of time there, and I didn't want to be rushed to trying to get food or something and find somewhere to eat or eat some kind of rank food that I have to quickly go back and play. So to me, what I thought was a genius idea and turned out to be a really such good idea was I had Uncrustables, which I have not eaten in forever and I don't know why. I should be eating those way more often. They are great. So that was my big between games meal was I had a couple of Uncrustables. So yeah, I was sitting in the kind of rain in the back of my truck, eating Uncrustables and drinking Gatorades and Powerades and stuff. For like an hour, which normal context sounds weird. But actually, when you looked around the parking lot, a lot of people are doing similar things. A lot of people kind of tailgate all day Saturday. Teams have a little set up. Some people get crazy and bring the big camping tent stuff. Some people have RVs. A lot of people are just hanging out the back of the car or their SUV or whatever, and trying to dry stuff out while also having food and things. But that was, I think, a big key for me was figuring out how to eat between games, because if I hadn't done that, I would have been famished. I don't know how good I would have all been able to play in the last two games, because I would have been so hungry between games. So that was a big key was thinking of Uncrustables. So there you go. That's the key takeaway from this podcast, this episode. Uncrustables are the key to good hockey. Let me take a quick moment to invite you to head over to thebeerleaguer.com, where you can check out previous podcast episodes, keep up with all the goofy and sometimes informative social media posts, and contact the show. There's an easy to use contact form, a button to leave voicemails, and a newsletter sign up. All of us here would love to hear your thoughts on this episode or ideas for future ones. Now back to the show. Another big thing from going to this weekend of games, and it's been brought up on the shows a lot, and I will reiterate it once again. One of the most fun, maybe the most fun parts of going to something like this in a way tournament, was getting to hang out with everybody. So the team that I captained, we had a Friday night get together and a Saturday night get together. Nothing crazy, nothing big. Some people had family, some people brought family, some people came by themselves to this type of thing. And it's just going out to eat somewhere. I know it wasn't any crazy big parties. I know some people do that where they go out partying all night. We are not that kind of a team. We don't do that kind of stuff. So it was just, you know, it was going out to a, I guess you'd call it like a family restaurant, a sports bar kind of place, to give like an equivalent of where we went to for Americans. It would be, I guess, like an Applebee's or a TGI Fridays kind of a vibe sort of place. So a family place, but a place that you can, you know, also kind of, you know, they had TVs, they had games and stuff going on, and you can hang out there and not be kicked out right away when you're done eating. So we went to places like that both nights, Friday night, Saturday night, like I said. And it was great. Like, that's always the fun stuff. Friday, we played really well. We won. Saturday, we lost both games, which sucked. But it was made a lot more fun because we got to hang out, you know, and you're hanging out with people. They're outside of the regular environment. So people are, you know, they act a little bit more relaxed, a little bit different, I think, than they do in the day-to-day because, you know, it was a Saturday night. People didn't have to get up and get to work the next day. All anybody was thinking of on that Saturday was, when are they leaving? When are they starting to drive home on Sunday? That's all that was kind of thought about. There wasn't any sort of other stuff going on, which was really nice. And, you know, leads to a good time. Like I said, both nights were really fun. And I know we've talked about it a ton on these episodes, but I think it is still a key to get out and do stuff like that. Get out away from the rink and do some fun stuff with your team when you can. Because there are, you know, stupid jokes and inside jokes and that kind of stuff that get said that carry over. And that's part of the fun of beer league hockey. You know, getting to have fun, stupid stuff like that, that you get to do with people. And bring up stupid jokes and things that people have said and things like that for the next however many months. And it goes on to get to do it again. For me personally, doing this two team thing, I was very, very happy that I stayed in a place that easy access to a washer and dryer. So I was able to wash kind of like I said, I switched undergarments and stuff. I didn't have to bring a whole bunch of sets of things like that. I just brought two sets. So I was able to wear one full set on Friday, wash them, and have two sets on Saturday. And if we had played Sunday, I could have had two sets if I needed to, ready to go. That was a big deal for me to be able to wash that stuff, enough to worry about it. And then also kind of dumb things, like I said, if I wanted to change between games and have walk around clothes in, I didn't have to pack a ton of clothes to be able to have all sorts of clean clothes with me. That was purposely done. That's part of the reason I like staying at like Airbnbs or Verbos more so than hotels usually, because generally it's pretty easy to find one that has a washer and dryer in the unit, so you don't have to run down and be in like the basement of a hotel doing laundry and either being paranoid that somebody might take your stuff or you're going to forget it or something like that, or having to sit there and wait for laundry to get done, because that's not fun. And I was able to do laundry while I slept. Overnight, I had stuff drying. It was great. So that was something I would really think about. And like I said, for the undergarment stuff, under the hockey equipment, that was great. But then also having extra clothes, not having to worry about, hey, I think I want to have a change between games, but I don't know, do I pack enough shorts? Do I have enough clean underwear to wear between everything? Or do I have to put on underwear that I wore this morning? You know, you have to worry about that. You also then don't have to have a giant suitcase just for a couple of day trip. So that is definitely a highly recommended thing. Again, something else I know we've brought up on these episodes before for OA tournaments, but I can't stress enough how handy that was to have that, especially for a multiple team tournament like this, because I didn't have to pack nearly as much stuff. But same token, I did have extra gloves with me. I do have multiple pairs of gloves. So I did bring two pairs of gloves and use them both on Friday. On Saturday, I had them. I stayed with just the one pair. I didn't really need to switch. I could have. I just didn't. But that was nice. So I didn't. That's to me the piece of gear that when it is wet is the grossest, is putting on wet gloves and having to wear those. And I hate doing that. That's why I have a boot dryer that I usually dry my stuff with. But I had nowhere to dry it, you know, kind of between games like that, because there's no time between games. So I just had the multiple pairs of gloves, which worked out really nice. It is a handy thing to have if you have that available. You know, one is my regular set of gloves. One is a set that used to be my gloves that I wore, that the palms are pretty destroyed on, but they're still usable. And I just brought those. So that was a smart move, I think, on my part. And I would recommend if you're in a similar situation and you have the ability to do something like that. One thing that did happen to me, and this is a very specific thing, but I'm going to talk about it, was I didn't have a good hockey bag to take up there, and it sucked. The two hockey bags that I have, one is a Pacific Rink bag, and I loved it. I've done reviews of it on the YouTube channel. But it has finally, the last things have broken on it. The straps are completely broken off, all over the place. It's only a backpack bag at this point, which I like the backpack ability, but it is not the most practical for having to carry stuff around always. So that was not great. That's the bag I wound up using, because the other bag that I normally have been using is a Mammoth hockey bag. It's a very old Mammoth hockey bag from their original Kickstarter. And while the straps and stuff are holding up okay, it has one of those like lid in the lid of the bag. It's got like a dry zipper pouch thing. That, the sides and everything of that, all the stitching, completely has come undone. So nothing can go in there, because it will just fall right out as soon as the bag is slightly tipped. So it's, you know, and that's kind of, for me, that's kind of needed for storage, because the bag doesn't fit everything great otherwise. So it's also has stitching on the bag is starting to go, and I was just scared if I tucked it up there, that it was just going to completely come apart and be completely useless. So that was not good. That made all this a little bit rough, that I didn't have a good bag to be able to carry around stuff. You know, doesn't matter what I'm driving around the stuff, but having to carry stuff in and out from locker rooms multiple times, and not be able to really trust what's in the bag and have any kind of balanced stuff. I wanted to also not just have my hockey bag, but also having a backpack that had some stuff in it, because I was scared of stuff falling out of the bag and things not being able to hold up right. So that was a big inconvenience for me personally for this. So that is something I would recommend if you're going to one of these things, going to some kind of tournaments and stuff like that, especially if you're going far away. And super, super, especially if you are doing something like flying, so your bag is getting thrown around, really kind of do a check to make sure everything, you know, all the seams and everything are good, everything that you can kind of tuck away in the bag, tuck away in the bags, there's not like straps and everything flopping around. If you are flying with a bag, I would recommend to kind of tightening down all the straps, you know, kind of tightening them down to the point where you probably can't carry it that way, but they're less likely to have anything, you know, snap or get caught on something. And then when you pick the bag up, you can always like loosen them up and lengthen them out and carry it around as you normally would. But that that made things extra difficult for me and really pushed home the fact that I need to get a new hockey bag sooner rather than later. Now, as far as anything that I did off the ice to get ready for playing, you know, six games in two days, I didn't really do anything special. I'm definitely not someone that is, you know, in amazing shape that had no problem doing that. I got tired. I definitely got tired at the end. I got very tired in the sixth game. Before that, I was feeling pretty all right. But I wasn't completely toast, which was good. And I think the things that I credit it with is, one, I made sure I stayed hydrated the whole time. Like I said, a lot of Gatorades, Powerades. I almost said all sport. That's not a thing. And it hasn't been a thing for a long time, really. You know, I had like liquid IV stuff. I had bio steels, all that kind of stuff. I was always drinking things like that those two days. And also on like the Wednesday and Thursday leading up, I was making sure I was super hydrated because, you know, the whole thing of drinking, you know, drinking stuff today hydrates you for tomorrow, not for today. So you can't really hydrate yourself necessarily for something you're about to do. You have to have done it kind of the day before. So I had really that week been trying to make sure I had been drinking tons and tons of water, I can normally do, but really making sure that I was and also drinking a lot more of those kind of things, you know, a lot more of those kind of not just sport drinks, but other things. You know, like I said, liquid IVs and stuff, things like that, that, you know, make sure I'm staying fully hydrated. I think that made a big difference. I was also making sure that I got plenty of sleep the couple of days before, so I wasn't being tired. And for me, that also included, I guess the tournament started on Friday afternoon. I get up there on Thursday. I always get up the day early because I want to get like a full night's sleep where I'm staying and be able to, you know, wake up at a regular time or even sleep in a little bit and not have to rush. I have done the drive up Friday for a Friday tournament. And the whole time, I am so racked with nerves about, like I said previously, make sure I have everything but also, hey, you know, we're crossing a border here. Is that going to be okay? Is there going to be delays for any reason? It's a Friday. Maybe people are taking long weekends and going and doing things and stuff like that. And, you know, if there is like a long delay for some reason there, or if I get chosen to get pulled over and they go, you know, I want to go through all my stuff, you know, that can take a long time. And anything like that, and if you're going, you know, Friday morning and you're hoping to be there, hey, our first game's at, you know, four o'clock, and you're leaving, you know, seven, eight o'clock, you're crossing the border at like noon-ish or something. And if something takes a little while, all of a sudden it's one, two o'clock. And instead of having that, you know, an hour or two buffer, you have a, you know, ten-minute buffer, if that. Or you leave super early in the morning, so you have to get up at four a.m. and leave, which, that sounds awful. That sounds just terrible to have to do that. Yeah, so I always leave the day before and get up there and spend the night, if not all the way where I'm gonna be playing at, at least close. So that way, I don't have a long drive. I always try and make sure I cross the border the day before is the big thing. The goalie on one of the teams actually didn't play Friday, he just played Saturday, and he actually had that where he left super late Friday night to get up there for the game Saturday. He left super late Friday night, kind of got stopped at the border because they're like, what are you talking about going to a hockey tournament? It's like whatever, three in the morning or something like that. And so he had some hassle there, and then he had trouble getting into his hotel because it was the middle of the night. They're never really properly staffed in the middle of the night for stuff. And so he had all kinds of trouble, didn't get to bed until really early in the morning, didn't get good sleep, obviously, because of all that. And then had to come, wake up and show up and play hockey. And it sounded awful. That just sounded terrible. And that's what I try and avoid. That would be the big universal piece of advice I would give to you, is if you can avoid something like that, avoid it, get to these things early. Unless they are super close, we'll get to them early. You never know. Like I said, in this case, there was a border crossing, which is always kind of a crapshoot with things. You never really know if there's going to be construction or accidents on the freeway and stuff like that. You can do your best guess, using whatever direction program you use can give you a general idea. But that stuff can happen. So I highly recommend going up as early as you can for things like this to just avoid these types of issues. I also this year took the extra step of planning to stay over Sunday night as well. So I didn't have to worry about, hey, if we play on Sunday, if we play two games on Sunday, I have to check out of where I'm at, have all my stuff in the back of the truck, have no place to go afterwards. So then it's, okay, we've played hockey. I'm now tired from that. Everything's done on my truck, and now I have a couple hour drive home. I've done that. That's not super fun either. So I actually was able to this year, take off, not have to worry about getting home until Monday, stayed over Sunday night, worked great. Way less stress, way less stress. That was a big thing for me this year, is not why I'd have to worry about anything that's not hockey related. Because I go up by myself, I don't have anybody else going, so I have to do all the driving and everything. And that makes a big difference. That did mean I wasn't able to drive other people, but also playing multiple teams, that would have been weird, because then they would have had to go to all the extra games and stuff, if they wanted to. But, you know, so that's a little bit of a downside of it, but the upside was very, very stress-free for a lot of these things. And, you know, when I came home and I got home, there was no exhaustion of, you know, okay, I just did this like marathon drive to get home, because then, you know, sometimes you do these things, and you get home late, and then you're super tired because it's super late, and you've driven a whole bunch, and then you don't sleep. No, I had none of that. So that was all about reducing the stress on that, and, you know, not making it, making it so when I came home, I was good. There wasn't any issues of anything. I didn't have any, you know, I wasn't going to bed at three in the morning and having to get up for work or something like that. There was none of that going on. So I would recommend if you're doing things like this, you know, try and make it as stress free as you can, because these are supposed to be fun. You know, I know people that try and minimize, like, the amount of time to take off work and stuff like that, and they will leave super early on a Friday, you know, for like these tournaments, like super early on a Friday, have all sorts of, you know, stuff, you know, they get up there to make games, but they're like fried already, you know, and don't really have fun playing because they're fried. And then, you know, they can't get to bed Friday night, so then they don't get good sleep, so then they're not good on Saturday. And, you know, you have multiple games, usually. One game Friday, two games Saturday seems to be pretty standard for tournaments. You know, then they're kind of fried all day Saturday, too, from that, from not sleeping good, and then frustrated because they didn't play good. And then that's no fun. And then they have to, if, you know, play or you don't play Sunday, you have to get up and drive home. And if you have, you know, a little bit longer drive, that can be tiring. And then you get home and you're completely exhausted and mentally burned out. And you have to try and get to sleep because you have work on Monday. And that is what I wanted to avoid. And I think you did a good job of it. And I would recommend planning to avoid that kind of stuff. So it's worth taking an extra day or two of work off if you're able to for stuff like that or planning it. So you don't wind up completely fried and throwing your whole week then into a mess because you want to go play hockey. I think that's everything I have to kind of wrap up how the whole weekend went. Hopefully, there were some useful nuggets in there for everybody. I think some big key takeaways from me are, one, Uncrustables. Why aren't you eating them? Or if you are, good job. And why haven't you been telling the rest of us that we should still be eating them as adults because they're amazing? Two, just really try and plan out the day better. You know, this isn't like just going to play hockey. You know, this isn't your really game that's, you know, 15 minutes away from your house. And, you know, the Tuesday night doing something like this, try and plan out and think out the days a little bit better to avoid stress and be able to think of stuff like, do I have enough clothes? I need to bring extra hockey stuff. You know, what am I going to do with my hockey stuff? Is it going to be stuck on the back of? I was going to be stuck in the back of my car for a super long drive in the hot sun, and is it going to be disgusting in there? One of the bonuses of me having a truck is, yes, when I opened my bag up when I got home, it was awful. It was awful. But I didn't notice it while driving because it's in the back of the truck. It's in the truck bed. So, you know, I couldn't tell. Stuff like that, really try and think of how all that's going to work. So, that way, you don't have to worry about it when you're doing this. You can just enjoy playing, getting to hang out with everybody. And again, a point, one of the reiterating points that I bring up all the time, do fun stuff outside of just hockey. You know, I've come on here a couple of times, you know, with other people and stuff too and talked about some of these other tournaments. That is one of the great things that those BLPA guys do with their tournaments, is they really emphasize the off-ice stuff. You know, so people do hang out and do do other things besides just, you know, sit in a hotel room, go play hockey, go back to the hotel room. You know, all that can be kind of fun. You're missing out on a lot of good stuff if you do that. So don't just do that. Have fun. You know, this is like a vacation. Should be good times for you. I hope this gave hopefully a little bit of helpful advice to you. If it did, let me know. I'd love to hear about it. I'd love to hear some of your tournament experiences. And if you have tips or things that you'd like to share with me or with the audience, everybody else out there of things that make it a little bit easier, make it more fun, stuff like that. I would love to hear about it. All right. Thanks a lot for listening, everybody. Catch you in the next one.