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LSST E-News

LSST E-News

October 2012  •  Volume 5 Number 2

Sports: AHM Soccer Title Goes Down to the Wire

Tough, and colorful, competitors at the LSST AHM 2012 soccer tournament. (Image Credit: Sidney Wolff)

When the highly paid soccer players of the LSST project and science collaborations landed in Tucson on the Sunday before the 2012 LSST All Hand Meeting (AHM) tournament began, they realized they would be earning their paychecks that week: with the temperature at 107° Fahrenheit at 6pm, they knew this would be a severe test of their stamina, hydration capacity and ability not to stay up late in the hotel bar every night.

First to fall foul of the conditions were the tournament newcomers, the University of Washington Purple Menace, who succumbed to a crushing 12-2 defeat on day one at the hands of reigning champions the NorCal Earthquakes. Arizona in August was always going to be difficult for the Northwesterners – but they would be back. The second match of the first day saw a revamped red team, this year playing under the enigmatic name “TBD.” While Tucson Thunder tried to figure out this three letter acronym, Francisco Delgado’s team busied themselves knocking in the goals and announcing themselves as serious competitors for the title with a 5-3 victory.

In a highly anticipated matchup with NorCal on day two – one that proved to be decisive in the final standings – TBD maintained their momentum by building a 3-0 halftime lead. A halfway line shot by NorCal broke the scoring drought, and a furious comeback ended in a 4-4 tie. Referee Andy Connolly had to be escorted from the field under heavy security after blowing the final whistle just after Jim Bosch unleashed a guaranteed shot toward an empty net. After much debate about how preferable it would have been to have a basketball-style rule that would have allowed shots already in the air, the goal was ultimately disallowed. Purple Menace then proved that their first day’s result was an anomaly caused by full enjoyment of the banquet free drink tickets, with a 5-3 victory over the Tucson Thunder.

Tucson Thunder players Jeff Kantor and Chuck Claver (in red) smoothly encourage the puncture-proof ball toward the goal. (Image Credit: Sidney Wolff)

The monsoon side of Tucson summer weather made its presence known the night before day three, leaving the pitch uncharacteristically soft and wet. Play went on as scheduled, however, and there were no reports of any teams using this as an excuse for poor performance. In the first game, after a strong start including 2 early goals by Michael Wood-Vasey, the Purple Menace failed to frighten TBD and fell by a 7-3 score. In the final match of the tournament, NorCal might have been overconfident, needing a win by any margin to repeat as champions. But they had never beaten the Thunder, and repeated tie scores in the opening frame threatened to derail their title defense. Cloudy conditions helped minimize Tucson's home-climate advantage, allowing NorCal to speed away in the second half for a final score of 9-6.

Celebrated sports photographer Sidney Wolff caught some of the day three action on film, with a number of shots that captured the incredible competitiveness and intensity of the event, and also generally made virtually all the players appear significantly more graceful than they actually were.

The NorCal Earthquakes (in blue) played without fault on their way to being named champions of the 2012 tournament. (Image Credit: Sidney Wolff)

After much deliberation, NorCal were declared tournament champions, ahead of TBD, on the fourth tiebreaker (overall goal difference). They were aided by retaining the core of their 2010 side, along with the addition of transfers Klaus Honscheid, Andy Rasmussen, and Josh Bloom, the latter two being the only NorCal players to actually work in California. (The postdocs from UC Berkeley chose to play for TBD instead and nearly tipped the scales).

Big thanks to Jeff Kantor for organizing and providing steady leadership of the league. He even solved the problem of last year’s multiple punctured soccer balls, by bringing in indestructible blue plastic ones from the One World Futbol Project. That the new balls really were puncture proof turned out to be absolutely necessary, given the number of shots that ended up being saved by cacti.

Article written by Phil Marshall and Eric Gawiser

 

LSST is a public-private partnership. Funding for design and development activity comes from the National Science Foundation, private donations, grants to universities, and in-kind support at Department of Energy laboratories and other LSSTC Institutional Members:

Adler Planetarium; Argonne National Laboratory; Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL); California Institute of Technology; Carnegie Mellon University; Chile; Cornell University; Drexel University; Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; George Mason University; Google, Inc.; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Institut de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules (IN2P3); Johns Hopkins University; Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) – Stanford University; Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, Inc.; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL); Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL); National Optical Astronomy Observatory; National Radio Astronomy Observatory; Princeton University; Purdue University; Research Corporation for Science Advancement; Rutgers University; SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Space Telescope Science Institute; Texas A & M University; The Pennsylvania State University; The University of Arizona; University of California at Davis; University of California at Irvine; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; University of Michigan; University of Pennsylvania; University of Pittsburgh; University of Washington; Vanderbilt University

LSST E-News Team:

  • Suzanne Jacoby (Editor-in-Chief)
  • Anna Spitz (Writer at Large)
  • Robert McKercher (Staff Writer)
  • Mark Newhouse (Design & Production: Web)
  • Emily Acosta (Design & Production: PDF/Print)
  • Sidney Wolff (Editorial Consultant)
  • Additional contributors as noted

LSST E-News is a free email publication of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Project. It is for informational purposes only, and the information is subject to change without notice.

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