By: Lenni Ferreira

The sky was clear, the sun was high, and at 11AM (ish) on Saturday August 13th, the Severn River Rugby Beer Olympics began. The competing teams gathered for the opening ceremony which consisted of a lighting of the torch (candle) by a player of Greek decent (yours truly), followed by a group shotgun. Some Olympians were new to shotgunning, some were veterans to the speedy can chug, but in that moment all players were unified by the cold drinks and heavily carbonated belches that followed. The events included beer ping, flip cup, boat races, corn hole, fricket, can jam, and later toss. The teams were made up of five players each.

Competitors came from near and far to demonstrate their drinking and lawn game skills. There were some close contests and some upsets; Team Leisure Drinking and Team Cram Ranch took early leads in the day, while other teams dominated in other ways. Olympian Andie Coutoulakis recounts, “Team JaBooty might not have won their games, but their booties won over the hearts of all of the fans.”

During an intermission of events there was a massive round of musical chairs that came with a prize of two bonus points. Picture this: six plastic chairs, 40+ ruggers... only one winner. It went exactly how you would imagine... multiple people piled on top of each other, hip checks, elbows dropped, broken chairs, and bruised participants. Team Super Smash Bros took the W in musical chairs. Olympian Sammi Bottorf spoke on that turning point for her team, recalling that they “started off a little shaky, but once Luigi won musical chairs, the motivation was clearly there.” The bonus points allowed them to punch their ticket to the flip cup round of playoffs along with five other teams.

From the six teams that entered the flip cup round of playoffs, only three moved on. The top three teams, Leisure Drinking, Cram Ranch, and Azerbaijan, went head to head in a boat race. Team Leisure Drinking was the last team left of women’s players. However, what the women are able to bring to the club in terms of rugby playoff success, they were not able to bring in terms of beer chugging playoff success. As the top seed in the competition, this loss was a huge upset. “It was a shame this round of the playoffs was pure chugging, as we would have dominated in any skill-based game,” remarked Olympian Lenni Ferreira.

Cram Ranch and Azerbaijan continued on to face-off in the finals in elimination flip cup. The match was intense and the crowd was half watching, half running around distracted and tipsy. Some theorize that it was the assless chaps giving Cram Ranch extra movement and an edge over their competitors. Whatever it was, they came out on top, and brought gold medals home to their questionable Ranch. Gold medalist and crammed rancher Parker Hackett reflected upon their win and said, “We came, we saw, we crammed.” Fellow gold medalist John “Gio” Giovanni captured the essence of the moment noting that, “Sometimes, the bad guys win.”

All in all, the Olympics were a huge success. Victoria Zito, women’s social chair and member of the Olympic committee, was simply “glad no one was carried out on a stretcher. That’s a successful beer Olympics to me.” We could not agree more. Fun was had, beer was drank, and all of the Olympians made it home in one piece.

We are grateful that 15s season is around the corner so these ruggers have a place to channel all of this
competitive energy.