Before the mixed competition starts again in October, our mixed team had the chance to put its strength to the test at the Hot Shots Mixed Tournament. Unfortunately enough, this tournament coincided with the Agents’ kick off party, but we found seven heroes who were willing to skip such a festivity in order to defend the Agents’ honour in far-off Nijmegen. The consequence was

that the Agents playing in the tournament were determined not only to win, but also to have more fun than those drinking free beer in the park. And though they did not succeed in the first part, you can rest assured that the second part was more than fulfilled..

Although the tournament only started at 12.00, the remote location of Nijmegen entailed that it was nevertheless quite an early start for a Saturday morning. Especially for Veerle, as she misread her email and turned up at the meeting point way ahead of time. But as the (intranslatable) Dutch proverb says, better too early than too late, and indeed, trouble started when Ayra rang: “I didn’t actually oversleep, but I’m standing with my bike now, and I’m still drunk, and I don’t have my keys anywhere..” Luckily Ayra’s boyfriend was equally intoxicated, but slightly less sluggish and soon Ayra was wavering on her way. In the meantime, we entertained ourselves by picking long blonde hairs of Robin’s sweater, which he claimed belonged to his golden retriever. We all believed him, of course, as Robin is not the kind of guy who would make things up (like, for instance, that his girlfriend only has one eye – he would never do that..) Eventually we were all settled in the car and on the way to Nijmegen. Nobody had to puke on the way, surprisingly, although the complaints, according to the drivers, were unbearable.

We turned up just in time for our first match, which was against a new team called Jungle Speed. When we entered the field our opponents were still instructing team mates on how to hold a stick, so our hopes of winning this match were high. And indeed, we soon proved to be the stronger team, finally achieving a 4-0 win over the newcomers. Our second opponent was slightly more practised, as they were the defending champions of the tournament. However, by that time we were on a roll and this second opponent too, was won over with 4-3 to us. The third match of the day, and the last one in the group phase, was against Floorball Devils Lelystad 2. We did not start this game really focused, but eventually we managed to enforce a win, with a score of 2-1.

Although we thereby qualified as the leaders in our group, our performance was not completely flawless. Kemal for example, sometimes got confused, thinking he was in the football field and heading the ball out of the field. Luckily Robin did not lose his head, and scored a really beautiful goal soon afterwards. The only thing keeping it from being perfect was that he scored it in our own goal…

While we waited for the play-offs to start, we enjoyed the delicious cake brought by Kemal. Not only had he decided to skip his religious obligations for this day, he had even forced his poor sister to be accessory. She does bake good cakes though. When Ayra had nurtured her war wound – a nearly-broken hip sustained in a previous match – we were all set to play on and win the tournament.

In the leader group we were bound to meet some stronger opposition. And indeed, our next  opponents clearly showed some better skills than we had seen so far. This was reflected in the final score of 7-1. After this we met Floorball Devils Lelystad 2 again. This time we could not cope with the skills one of the Agents (a certain Jockum L.) had apparently been transferring to his girlfriend, who plays in this team. She played a star role in our defeat, scoring the greater part of Lelystad’s goals, and thereby ensuring that they, instead of us, won second place in the tournament. The final score has been suppressed in our minds by the traumatic experience. Luckily, we managed to recover from the shock in time for our match against the Dream Team, in which we showed that our place in the winner’s group was not undeserved.

Eventually we thus ended up with a third place, which is not at all bad, but we still felt that second place had been in our reach. We decided to drown our disappointment at the barbeque organised by the Hot Shots in a nearby café, and we were soon approached by Stick2It, who were curious to meddle with people from strange and exotic Amsterdam. I’m afraid we truly lived up to their stereotype of Amsterdamians being loud, extrovert and slightly under influence. Robin tried to save the day by giving a sexy pole dance show, but I doubt whether he managed to improve our reputation very much. At the end of the night, we left the other participants slightly browbeat, but undoubtedly extremely jealous of our cheerful, happy and sociable crowd.