After weeks of planning and nights of conditioning, the members of Team Sanchez were ready for Beer Fest to come to fruition. The four kegs were paid for, the teams were ready and the plan was clear. What remained to be seen, however, was who had the most prolific and unquenchable appetites to take home the $175 cash prize and the glory that came with winning the first annual Beer Fest drinking competition.
The winners would have to rack up points in beer pong, flip cup, quarters, team chugging, a grueling relay and finally, a creative writing competition. Beyond displaying more ability in these fields than the other teams, they would also need the constitutions to stomach a truly monstrous amount of beer.
But Beer Fest isn’t just a beer drinking competition. It’s a cultural event. Every weekend of the term, University students flock by the thousands to house parties and bars for the drinks and the company, and Beer Fest is part of this scene. Is it safe or healthy to binge on beer? No. Not by a long shot. It can even be deadly. But thousands of University students do it anyway, and this is the first in a three-part series of stories that attempt to give some insight into partying.
Beer Fest started Saturday while it was still sunny in an unassuming house on East 13th Avenue, and by 3 p.m. was churning with machine-like efficiency. With the Civil War men’s basketball game on the big-screen and Creedence Clearwater Revival on the stereo, ping-pong balls plunked into red cups, quarters clinked into mugs, and beer flowed down throats. Because three different tournaments were happening at once, cheers and groans would erupt with the unexpectedness of bombs on a battlefield, and would do so for many long, wet hours into the night.
The team members were overwhelmingly male, and though more than 60 people showed up throughout the event, only a handful were female. The Hipnecks and The Scallywags were eliminated early, and as the brackets progressed, The Dischargers and The Blank White T’s looked less and less threatening. The teams with the most prowess by the time the finals of quarters, flip cup and beer pong came around were The Beer Popes, Ernie Kent’s Forehead and the hosts, Team Sanchez.
In the finals of quarters, the plucky Beer Popes, who wore Pope hats crudely fashioned from Pabst Blue Ribbon boxes, were up against the dominant and feared Ernie Kent’s Forehead, which had not yet lost a single match. In a best-of-three tournament, the teams split the first two games. In the final match, Ernie Kent’s Forehead jumped into the lead with some clutch shots by EKF player Desmond.
Despite a valiant five-sinks-in-a-row effort by Beer Pope Rob, they were simply no match for Ernie Kent’s Forehead.
“I feel like Rudy,” Beer Pope Rob said. “Yeah he got on the field but he lost.”
“It was just…” he paused, looking sadly at nothing. “We didn’t have it at the time.”
By the semis the flip-cup room floor was slick with spilt beer and shoe dirt, and the Beer Popes had a chance to redeem themselves against Ernie Kent’s Forehead.
In celebration of making it to the flip-cup semi-finals, Beer Pope Timmy said “It’s nice to be such an athlete and be respected by my peers. Don’t do drugs, stay in school.”
He also explained their training regiment as “Steroids, some kind of fish tranquilizer and oatmeal – every morning.”
But again, they were no match. Ernie Kent’s Forehead brutalized them, sweeping the demoralized Beer Popes with two straight flip-cup wins.
“Ernie Kent’s Forehead baby!” shouted team member Joe, “It’s so big and so are we!”
It looked like it was over for The Beer Popes when they lost to The Blank White T’s in the semi-finals of losers bracket Beer Pong, but, as we will see, the day wasn’t over yet.
During a break in the action, Matt of Ernie Kent’s Forehead said that despite his team’s dominance in the events, he was really just playing in the spirit of friendly competition against people who he’s been friends with for years.
“It’s kinda nice to unwind a little bit on the weekends,” he said, “but no one’s taking it too seriously.”
He said that the people playing were, by and large, successful and driven students relaxing after a grueling week of classes and part-time jobs.
“Everyone gets a good laugh,” he said. “We’re just having some fun.”
And that’s why Matt does it. Because school is stressful. Because of the concreteness of his courses at the University. The absurdity of the Beer Fest and weekend parties give him a place to relax. He said he was supposed to work at his job that day and he called in sick to compete – to be young and have fun with his friends. It’s not constructive. It’s not healthy. But for Matt, it’s fun.
Each person on each team paid $10 to enter the event – $5 toward the beer, $5 toward the prize. He said that if he won, his share of the money would go toward books, tuition and rent.
When the finals of beer-pong rolled around, a tie brought the game into three-cup elimination overtime where Ernie Kent’s Forehead beat Team Sanchez by two cups. It all came down to the flip-cup final.
A victory for Team Sanchez would keep them in the running for the prize, and for Ernie Kent’s Forehead, it meant the day.
It was thunderous. No conversations, only yelling. Feet stuck to the dried puddles on the floor, and it stank of man and beer. The first players clinked their cups, slammed them onto the table and started the line chugging and flipping.
Ernie Kent’s Forehead won the first match and both teams were yelling in vowels, smiling, singing, clapping, slapping hands and backs. Team Sanchez won the next game, and they started chanting “San-Chez! San-Chez! San-Chez! San-Chez! San-Chez! WOOOOOOOOOO!”
There was no talk about the prize money at this time, only shouts on the game, drinks, and hand slaps across the table. They rolled down the line of drinkers, some looking pained, some steeled, and on the last cup Team Sanchez member Jason beat out Ernie Kent’s Forehead member Matt.
“It was a good day,” said Jason. “We played hardball, so did the other team.”
At the table in the next room, the team-chug competition was already underway. In it, each member of a team lines up along the ping-pong table and each player guzzles down a full red cup one by one, and whichever team finishes its beer first wins. In the first two rounds the Beer Popes hammered through the Blank White T’s and the Scallywags, eliminating them from the tournament.
Team Sanchez then beat Ernie Kent’s Forehead, despite some argument that Team Sanchez member Joe had actually spilt most of his beer down the front of his shirt, and the final set Team Sanchez against The Beer Popes.
It was about 8:30 p.m. and the crowd had thinned to about 30 people; it had been six long hours of marathon drinking. In an adjacent bedroom, a group of people were singing and playing guitars and hand drums, and on the living room couch Beer Pope Justin was slumped over, his Pope hat covering his half-shut eyes.
But then suddenly he jumped up, threw off his hat and his team members materialized around him.
“We’re ready!” one of them shouted.
The red cups were quickly filled and the match began. It was neck and neck to the finish, and it came down to Beer Pope Timmy and Team Sanchez Jason, who won by a gulp.
With this victory, Team Sanchez tied for first with Ernie Kent’s Forehead and The Beer Popes secured third with the relay race and the creative writing competition remaining.
Outside, cold but not yet shivering in his Team Sanchez blue jersey and red short-shorts, team member Jason was surprisingly well composed for the amount of beer he’d drank. He said he’d been drinking water and eating bread all night.
After a couple guys wrestled in the foyer, another was urinating between two pickup trucks parked out front and a member of Ernie Kent’s Forehead came out and offered to split the money and Jason agreed. Jason said that every team mem
ber put up $10 to play, and the prize money would be whatever was left after the kegs were paid for, but he didn’t know how much that was. No one had counted it yet.
When asked what he planned to do with his share, Jason said “squander it.”
He said the next two rounds, the relay race and the creative writing competition, were no longer happening. But it didn’t really matter, at least, not to him. He instead spoke about the two years he’d spent living in that house on East 13th Avenue, and how important the time had been in shaping him. He spoke about the friendships he’d made and the memories he’ll keep. He spoke about his family and the weight that history can have on a person; if his full name were printed here, he said, his family would be furious.
He also said part of the attraction was winning in front of everyone else and that one of the people in attendance promised to help him get an internship with his family’s company if he won.
But despite all that, he said it was really just a chance to have fun with his friends, to be in a place and time that for him were special.
He said he’d been to parties for as many years as he’s been in Eugene, but hadn’t been anywhere where the people were as friendly and respectful as they were at his house.
“Yeah, we’ll wrestle, but there’s never been a fight here,” Jason said. “There’s been disagreements, but there’s never been a fight.”
After he said this, cheering came from inside and he went in to investigate. He found that the beer-pong and flip-cup tables had been moved and in the 30 feet from the end of the living room to the end of the dining room an alley had been barred off with yellow caution tape.
They’d decided to try the relay.
After some deliberation Ernie Kent’s Forehead decided that they would bow out and Team Sanchez captain Ryan yelled “Yo! We’re doin it anyway! For a victory lap!”
It proved difficult to organize, but after some time Team Sanchez was ready.
At the far end of the alley, team captain Ryan placed his forehead on a wooden stick and spun around 10 times. He then stumbled down the alley to the other end where a teammate was holding a beer bong, a funnel attached to plastic tubing that allows a person to down a full beer in a matter of seconds. Ryan grabbed the tube, brought it to his mouth, and as the beer started flowing he fell over backwards, keeping the tube in his mouth, and then spilling the foam on the floor next to him.
Team member Ian then crab-walked backward down the alley toward a keg-stand. When he arrived, he placed his hands on the rim of the keg and put the spout in his mouth. Team member Orion lifted up Ian’s legs so that he was up off the ground, his head leaning downward toward the spout as he chugged to a count of 10 straight from the source.
Ian then stood and took Orion’s legs to walk him like a wheel barrow into the dining room where five cups of beer stood waiting. Halfway through the wheelbarrow walk Orion stopped to slurp from a puddle of beer on the floor that had spilled from the beer bong, then continued to the far end of the room and the five red cups.
Then Orion began to chug them, one by one. The first couple went down easily, but after the third his eyes were watering and he grimaced at the strain. He chugged another. The tendons in his neck tensed. He looked sick, and he still had another beer to go. The crowd was screaming “Go! Go!” and he steadied himself. He took the last cup in his hand and gulped. And gulped. And gulped. And he turned it over empty to a maelstrom of cheers.
After a few minutes while he composed himself, Orion said “My throat’s raw, and I’m a little dizzy, and I think I fell over once. But it’s a good victory.”
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