#90. A Boot and a Bull (Saturday, July 13, 2023)

What was your best day…of giving it your all physically?

When you’ve lived in one city for as long as I have¹, any excitement from local events tends to just dissipate into the boring fabric of daily life. Each summer, though, I knew I could still highlight two dates in my calendar: (1) Bluesfest, specifically the night(s) the big-name artist performed (P!nk in 2017, #101); and (2) the annual inter-departmental soccer tournament.

And in 2023, those two fell on the same day. With the tournament prize being the Golden Boot² and the big-time Bluesfest performer being Pitbull.

This was the first Golden Boot after a long COVID hiatus, and our department (financial markets) had high hopes. In net, we had our MVP in Adrian Williams, a six-foot-seven former Division III basketball player at Swarthmore and house league goalie during his PhD at Cambridge (where they take house league very seriously).³ And in front of him, we had a set of very strong players:

Colin Skinner: who’d just come back from starting his PhD at Oxford⁴, where he also played house league.
Peter Ackley: our captain, Adrian’s research assistant, former military guy, and leader of the Wednesday after-work basketball games⁵.
Reggie Tsao: new trader on my foreign reserves (#102) team, twenty year finance veteran (mostly in Hong Kong, where recreational soccer was also a big deal).
Jane Feinberg: another research assistant, and the best girl in that tournament by far.
Andrew Eckhart: a junior analyst in debt management, who was basically me seven years earlier (#114)⁶, and would become my best friend after I rejoined that function later in 2023.

The rest of us, including good friends Aaron Brookbank (#109) and Austin Crow, are solid placeholders. I myself am a defender with very tenuous ball-handling abilities, but make up for it with height, a powerful kick, and a maximum-effort style of play (though I was playing at about eighty-percent capacity, having just recovered from a Grade 2 ankle sprain from basketball⁷ in the winter that forced me to work from home for a month).

There’s something about competing sports with and against office colleagues, many of whom you’re working day-to-day with, that brings out an extra level of motivation. And it’s not just me; there’s a definite burning desire to win that permeates both sides across the four matches that we play. Four physical, intense matches played under the summer heat on the Carleton University soccer fields.

We lose our first match to financial stability 3-2. But as we get more in sync, we can feel our team getting stronger by the minute. We beat the domestic and international economics teams 2-1 and 3-1, respectively, setting up a finals rematch against financial stability. At that point we’re all near dehydration and at least somewhat injured⁸, but we know if we just push through the Golden Boot will be ours.

We dominate early and open up a 2-0 lead, led by Colin and a few timely saves by Adrian. In the second half, they cut the lead to one, but then give the goal right back when one of their defenders passes back to their goalie and he completely whiffs. And we ultimately hang on for the 3-1 victory.

From there, we get our photo taken, everyone heads over to the Craft Beer Market in Lansdowne⁹ for post-tournament drinks, and I leave the party early because I’ve got an appointment with Pitbull – and Ludacris, who’s performing right before him – a short bus ride away.

Much of the same descriptors from P!nk’s concert (#101) apply here: minus the rain, the work stress, and the chaotic rush for the buses (a new light rail system has improved things tenfold). With Pitbull spinning all his classics – “Don’t Stop the Party”, “Give Me Everything”, “International Love”, and “Timber”, among others – and bringing the Pitbull energy, for ninety minutes it’s a full-on nightclub atmosphere among this crowd of over thirty thousand screaming fans.

A perfect summer day in my otherwise way-too-familiar hometown.

(NB: The only downside? After four hours running around a soccer field and four hours standing in a field boxed in on all sides, my legs are completely shot and I’m again house-ridden for the next three days.)

About 21 of 26 years starting from the earliest entry on this list.
A literal gold-dyed soccer cleat, over ten years old, which certain (brave) teams have drank beer out of following their victory.
He was especially the MVP, because the second option behind Adrian would’ve been…me. I had done all right as goalie the last tournament in 2018, but was nowhere near his level.
Colin had been part of the same interview day as me nine years earlier. He’d left for Oxford in 2021, and was now back working here while completing his dissertation part-time.
Which would usually stretch on for two hours, were quite competitive, and involved mostly other research assistants who were all ten years younger than me.
Like me back then, he was just out of his Master’s (at Queen’s, though he did get accepted to the same Duke program I did but declined because COVID virtual learning made it not worth the tuition) and leading the modeling work for debt management.
Suffered while going for a rebound against five-foot-two Asher (star of the international economics soccer team) at one of those Wednesday after-work games.
I got major blisters on both toes because I was incorrectly wearing football cleats I bought for flag football a few summers ago. Thankfully, Andrew brought some Polysporin.
This really nice restaurant/mall/movie theater/park complex in downtown, headlined by the stadium where Ottawa’s professional football team, the Redblacks (the much more successful championship-winning successor of the Renegades, #93), play.