Chiro Games

On Friday, we had an assembly showcasing what happened at the 2007 Chiro Games in Port St. Lucie, Florida. It was presented by Dr. Greene-Orndorff, Dr. Irwin, and all of the athletes who participated. There were many trophies given out for the event, and the assembly was highlighted by a video montage of some of the soccer games.
A few weeks ago I wrote that I was going to write a blog on the Chiro Games, but I was not prepared for the physical stress that I would have to endure for that weekend. I ended up not being able to move too much for the week following the games and kept holding off writing about it. I figure now is a good time to tell everyone what happened.

My girlfriend Jaclyn and I drove down to the Chiro Games Wednesday night. We ended up spending most of Thursday in Jacksonville at my parent's house before making the second half of our drive to Port St. Lucie. Even though we were in north Florida, the weather was not too hot so I threw the wet suit on and played some pool basketball to get me pumped up for the weekend.

The drive to the Chiro Games ended up being pretty long because we kept stopping at exits that were falsely claiming that they had Dunkin Donuts. When we finally arrived at the hotel (donutless), we noticed a gigantic Dunkin Donuts truck outside the hotel. Of course when I woke up the next day the truck was gone. The entire D and D's organization was apparently toying with me for the weekend.

The hotel we stayed at was pretty cool (it was the Holiday Inn) and had a swimming pool with a waterfall formation pouring into it. There is a video somewhere of some of our team jumping off this rock into the pool. Maybe I can get my hands on it sometime and show it. Most of the transport was provided for the athletes, as a giant bus would pick us up at the hotel and transport us to the fields. The same bus would also transport us to the downtown section in case anybody wanted to go out and have a good time. The buses kept pretty busy as approximately 860 Chiropractic students from the United States and Canada were in attendance for the weekend.

Our first soccer game was on Friday morning. Dr. Orndorff and her daughter Alexis were even more excited than our team as we practiced in the rain for an hour before the match began. The game was against Canadian Memorial and we outplayed them the first half, despite being tied 1-1. Pretty sure that victory was going to be ours, we sent some of our defenders into their half of the field in hopes to overload their defense and take the lead. Our ploy backfired as our lack of substitutions caused us to get exhausted and not to be able to get our defenders back in time when the other team was attacking. We ended up losing to a team we should have beat 3-1.

While our first game was at 10:00, our second game was at 11:00. Each game was 40 minutes long, but seemed much longer as the afternoon Florida sun began to make things very humid. Our second game was against Palmer, Florida. At this time my hamstring was starting to get incredibly tight, so I decided to try out the free samples of Bio-Freeze that the Chiro Games was distributing. To my surprise, the hamstring loosened up and I was able to move around pretty well during the game. Unfortunately the Palmer team was much faster and stronger than our squad. We ended up getting blown out and leaving the game pretty morally deflated. To make matters worse, I tried to block a shot with my back that ended up bruising my ribs and leaving an imprint of a soccer ball on me for several days.

During our third game (at about 3:00) everyone was sore and exhausted. We ended up playing fantastic soccer but still ended up losing at the very end of the game. Exhaustion, injury, and lack of subs kept killing us the last few minutes of every game and we just about let the other team walk the ball into the goal. To make matters worse, our forward Scott Moore ended up breaking his leg in the game, reducing us to just one sub for the rest of the tournament.

After the game, many of the athletes went out to the town and partied. That night, I spent about 90 minutes helping Jaclyn find some new shoes and collapsed in my bed. My ankle, calf and hamstring were in terrible pain. I didn't think I could walk to the bus tomorrow let alone play another soccer game. Most of our team felt the same way. At the same time the rest of the hotel was like a spring break parody. Everyone was running around the pool partying all night and having a great time. I talked to some of the golfers from the other schools who planned on partying into the late hours of the night and realized I should have played golf too.

Friday's soccer games were merely there to establish what seeds each team would have in the actual tournament on Saturday. Stupidly, we killed ourselves on Friday while several of the other soccer teams forfeited a game that day to stay rested for the tournament. We ended up having a game at 10:00 and I quickly doused myself in Bio-Freeze in preparation. The only problem was that the Bio-Freeze was not working anymore. I think I was becoming immune to it. We played a weak Life West team that we outplayed the first half, but once again gave up several goals in the final minutes of the game simply because we couldn't move anymore.

Jaclyn and I went to the awards ceremony that night. We were the only Sherman students to attend, but it ended up being pretty cool. They had some tables set up on one of the piers overlooking the ocean. In front of the pier was a big section of bleachers filled up by about 300 Chiro Games athletes. We grabbed a t-shirt, listened to a couple of speeches and headed back home.

The entire experience was very good and very bad. Physically I have never endured anything harder in my life. However I met a huge variety of chiropractors from all around the country and tried to represent Sherman as one of the premiere chiropractic schools in the country. I learned a lot about what many of the students are doing in their chiropractic schools and even made some friends on the sweaty bus rides from the fields to the hotel. Next year we are definitely loading up with a bigger roster as well as participating in more events. Hopefully we can make this an annual tradition at Sherman College. I am proud to have been part of our first Chiro Games team in school history.

Here are some pictures I hope you enjoy.

Comments

[JMW]

The people attending the Chiro games were great. Sherman should be proud of their students. Looking forward to next year.