We Came, We Saw, We Jobbed...
Don't WE look cheerful?
(Back, l-r) R @ d e r, Lost Cause, Ce-Quil (our wonderful Knoxville replacement!)
(Middle, l-r) Draco, YaShA, Eulogy
(On their knees, bitch! l-r) R a V y N, Heckler (now known as Sucheckler)
Well, the 1999 North American Challenge is over, and needless to say, it was one of the most emotional weekends in the lives of Team Clinton. To think that two of us spent well over a thousand dollars to send a team, only to have the corporate office screw us over like a bunch of North Region has-beens....well let's just say that moving on has been difficult. But a lot of people have been asking us EXACTLY what happened. How is it that the 3rd seed in the North region took dead last in the Big Show? Well this page will explain it all to you.
It all started back in July, when there were a few rifts in The Faculty. These rifts caused Heckler (yours truly) to quit the team. When this happened, nobody wanted to try out for the open position due to certain member son the team who were causing problems. Then Blood Axe told everyone that he wasn't going to be able to g to Texas due to his school schedule, and we were down to 8 players (if the alternate was included). Then Eulogy got VERY sick with mono, and his time off work caused him to be unable to attend as well. This caused Draco to drop out, and then Cool Ice and Doc J decided they weren't going to go if there wasn't a decent shot at a full team. Finally, oDiN was informed by corporate that he wasn't allowed to go to the NAC because he was needed to look after his center in Westland. So this left RaVyN and Raider for the NAC team. Not exactly the big and threatening team that began the year, eh?
Skipping ahead a few weeks, Heckler had a change of heart (did that have anything to do with Charlotte making the NAC?) and decided to come back to the team. Upon THIS happening, Draco and Eulogy and Yasha all decided that they really wanted to go as well, but they didn't have the funds. A "private backer" was found, and all of a sudden the three were able to go. Lost Cause also expressed an interest in going, and we were back up to 7 players again. How hard could it be to find 2 more, right? WRONG...
This is where the story starts to REALLY unfold, as nobody was 100% sure as to what the guidelines were for replacing players. In 1998, DeepFreeze and Conan played on the Mississauga team in the NAC after two of their players were missing, so we thought it would be fine to get Conan and maybe Khaos from London on the team. Both wanted to play and were more than willing to give us a hand. After weeks of trying to contact Paul Milligan and the rest of LQ Corporate (hell, Conan actually DROVE to the corporate office), we were told that we could not use anyone that was from another regional team. This sucked, because we had a HUGE list of people from non advancing teams that wanted to play. So we had to find players that hadn't played on Regional teams. Not TOO hard of a task, right? WRONG...
ToiletDuck from Madison Heights was contacted, but he didn't have the money. Sniper from Grand Rapids was contacted, and he just didn't ahve a way of getting out of work that weekend. We put out a distress call on the newsgroups explaining that we were in dire need of other players! We had an offer from Rockford to use their alternate, which wasn't a biggie since other team's alternates had been used in tournament before. So we had a lead there. Then Jerk from Madison Heights let us know that Red Shift, their regional team alternate, was wanting to play as well. He was no longer on their team and wasn't an alternate, so we didn't see a problem there either. Then Statskeeper Frozen Shade let us know that a player from his center, Mattman, wanted to play with our team and he had not been on the regional team. We didn't see a problem with this, so we told him to fly on out to NRH and we'd use him and Red Shift. So we thought it was settled......boy were WE wrong...
About 1 days before Heckler (yours truly) left for the NAC, we recieved a call from Paul Milligan. Now when I say "we received a call", I mean that my roommate happens to be oDiN, the manager from LQ Westland, and he received a call at our APARTMENT from The Kid himself. oDiN was online at the time and was forced to actually call Big Mouth at his house! Talk about watching a manager shit his pants....anyhooo, Pauly boy just wanted to clear everything up once and for all, regarding the whole "who can play for team clinton" issue. Millie said that the player not only needed to be a non regional participant, but he/she/it/both had to be a member at LQ Clinton. Um....boy was THAT causing a problem, as we had a certain man of the Matt flying to Texas for the SOLE purpose of playing for Team Clinton over this grand weekend of weekends. I muttered, I grumbled, I griped, I tried to e-mail Statskeeper Frozen Shade, but none of this was to any avail. So what did I do? I went to NRH....with a detour in Charlotte of course.....
We now jump to the fair city of North Richland Hills, whose biggest attractions are smelly air, hot weather, horrible roads, and an LQ team full of cheating bastards. We arrived on the scene on Friday afternoon to determine exactly who was going to be playing for Team Clinton. Statskeeper Frozen Shade came up and introduced himself to me (although I did recognize his voice from the voicemail message he left me) and told me that Bleeds from Mesa was more than willing to play for our team. As I had mentioned earlier, we had a LOT of people willing to step up and play the game. I todl him we needed to wait till Raider, our fearless captain, was on the scene to talk to the head Marshall (wasn't his name Laser Lips? Fag...) and straighten everything out. It was around this time that Red Shift stumbled into the center and asked me when "our" first practice was....I said "our?" and he said "yeah, 'our'....you DO know that i"m on your team, DON'T you?" I swear, if there was any time that I wanted to just scream and shout and beat everyone in sight....this was it. Our fearless leader was currently in his meeting with Tony, the Gay assed Laser Lip (a.k.a. the head marshall), and I had no answers for Mr. Shift. I summoned the fearless leader (Oh captain, my alternate!) and told him that Red Shift was under the impression that he was on our team. I swear, if there was ever a time that Raider looked ready to scream and beat everyone down that was in his path, this was that time....anyhooo, he went back into the deliberation process with "The Head Marshall", and came out frowning. He told us that Mattman and Bleeds were definitely a no-go, but that Red Shift was a possibility, and that it was going to be decided at Saturday's captains meeting. I have no problem with Red Shift, by the way, I was just sick of seeing 23485726 people thrown into the situation! Mattman showed up at the center about an hour late,r not too happy with the fact that he had spent hundreds on coming to Texas to play with us, only to find that he wasn't playing with us. He mentioned this fact to us a few times, and we were more than willing to console the poor lad. But we also had some tune up games to play! We played these games with Red Shift on the team, and we were content for the time being.
Saturday came along, and it was time for the captain's meeting. Raider went in looking confident as ever....after all, we were CLINTON TOWNSHIP! The ONLY tonwship of LQ...uh...yeah. Anyhoo, The captain's meeting came and went...and we found ourselves fucked up the ass once again. None of the 298456 people we had brought to the head marshall were approved by the captains in the meeting. Instead, we were told we could use ONE alternate from another center, because Data was injured (sprained ankle/wrist, remember?) and the rules clearly state that an injured player can be replaced with an alternate. The catch? A generous 40% deduction...one for the missing player, and one for "borrowing another team's alternate"....now find me a spot in the rules where it says that borrowing another team's alternate is grounds for a 20% deduction....I don't see it in there either, but hey, I'm not corpoate, and I'm not biased to Texas, so my opinon doesn't matter. Also, when we mentioned that it was BECAUSE of corporate that oDiN wasn't with us, we got a response similar to "oh well, that's life"....which pissed us off to no end, but hey, we were used to it by now. The bottom line is that we got Ce-Quil from Knoxville, and she is COOl as hell and played some MAD game for us. Well, for ONE game, that is...
Mattman was still lurking around, understandably upset, and managed to get an audience with the Head Homo, er...Marshal, and explained to him that he had flown out to the NAC for the SOLE purpose of playing for Team Clinton. Well this had to be the 9th time that ol Tony had heard this from people, and finally he gave in and allowed Mattman to play for us. But there were two conditions. We had to give Ce-Quil back to Knoxville, and we STILL took a beautiful 40% deduction, even though we were no longer "borrowing an alternate from another team"...but we were sick and tired of audiences with deaf ears, so we took Mattman (much appreciated, we love ya dude!!) and played our hearts out........
And jobbed...
And jobbed some more...
But hey, we won the Zapp! Award for Most Sportsmanlike Team, and went home with a trophy, when 18 of the other 19 teams went home empty handed. So at least we had SOMETHING to show for all the effort!
So that, my friends, is the complete and unedited version of what happened to Team Clinton at the 199 North America Challenge. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't radiant, it wasn't full of skillz, like the Pyro World Tour....but damnit, there's not a group of people I'd rather play with when it comes to the Big Show, and I'm proud to say that I played for Team Clinton in 1999. Next year we WILL do better. Because while we're happy with the Zapp! Award....we're still angry.........we're still full of fury........and next year that fury will be UNLEASHED!!!!!!
Anybody got an alka seltzer?
Email: heckler__@hotmail.com
