Not To Be Trusted With Knives

Longest Game for CF – Update!

July 12, 2011 by Beth

There was a meeting on the weekend for players in the Longest Game of Hockey for CF. With the game less than 50 days away (Ack!), many of the details are starting to come together and the committee wanted to update us on them. I won’t bore you with all the mundane details, but I thought I’d share some of the more exciting stuff!

First off, probably the most common question I get asked is “WHAT?? You are playing for how long??? How will that work??” The game is, in fact, 10 days long. Let that sink in for a minute, because I find that most people are having a hard time believing it. This is going to be one continuous 10-day long game. 10 days. A week and a half. 243 hours. There will be brief breaks to zamboni the ice once ina a while, but other than that, it’s hockey straight through. 24 hours a day for 10 days!

So how does that look for individual player? Well, to figure out the schedule, the organizing committee needed to consider two pertinent facts. First, the Guinness Book of World Records people only allow us to have 20 players per team (i.e., a regular sized hockey team). Second, human beings need to sleep, eat, and take care of other bodily functions to survive. Thus, they came up with a schedule that requires each player to play for 4 hours, then have an 8 hour break. And then repeat for 10 freaking days. Except that two of those 8 hour breaks during the 10 days will only be 4 hours. Thus, in the 243 hours of the game, each player will play for 88 hours. The works out to 8.8 hours per day of playing ((It will actually be a bit more, as all 40 players will play for a bit at the start and the end of the game. Because that would just be too fun to miss! Also, I think it’s a requirement that we all be suited up and present for documentation purposes)). And to make things even more challenging, with this schedule we only end up with 6 skaters and a goalie on each team. Since there are 5 skating positions on a hockey team, this means 5 of the 6 skaters are on the ice, with just one sub on the bench ((To put this in perspective, normally you would have 15 skater plus a goalie – so 5 on the ice and 10 on the bench, and you rotate through, with each player on for about 45 seconds to a minute, then off for double that length of time as the other lines played their shifts)). So basically, when you are out there for your 4 hours, you are physically on the ice and playing 5/6th of that time ((Frankly, that kind of makes me want to puke when I think about it! Solution: stop thinking about it)). But if we were to add even one more skater per side, we wouldn’t be able to get 8 hour breaks and thus there wouldn’t be enough time to get any reasonable amount of sleep in the 10 days! Also, we have to just hope that no one gets injured, because if they do, we aren’t allowed any substitutions, so that player’s team will be short a player and the remaining players’ schedules will have to be adjusted to accomodate!

Right now, the committee is trying to organize who will play on each team – as, at the moment, we have a bunch of players, but we haven’t figured out who is on which side – as well as who wants to play on shifts with whom and who wants to bunk with whom ((We are sharing RVs for sleeping, so they are trying to coordinate that whoever is sharing an RV will be on opposite shifts, so you each get the RV to yourself when you want to sleep))). Once that’s all sorted, they will provide each player with their own specific schedule and I will post mine here so that you all know when I’ll be playing so you can come out to Burnaby 8 Rinks to cheer me on. You *are* coming to cheer me on, right? Extra points if you bring an awesome sign. You are also welcome to come and visit with me during my breaks, as I’ll need someone to entertain me! (I figure I’ll be sleeping every second 8 hour break, mostly at night when I can, though some will be during the day). Also, like I mentioned, schedules could end up getting b0rked if we have any injuries, but I’ll put any updates to my schedule here on the blog.

Other things of note:

• We still need a few more players. We had forty, but a few people got injured, got a new job, etc., so we need a few more. If you or someone you know can play between August 26 and Sept 5, please let us know!
• We also need volunteers. We need people to referee ((You don’t have to be carded or anything – you just need to be able to skate. You don’t even have to skate well – we certainly won’t be by the time we are a few days into this thing!)), people to provide security, people to collect donations and sell prize draw tickets, and people to run errands such as doing laundry and going to get me a coffee. Unlike the players, you don’t have to stay for the whole ten days – even just a few hours would be great. Want to help out? Just check out this page and/or email volunteer@longestgame4cf.com!
• Don’t forget Friday’s fundraiser pub night! There will be tickets at the door – you know you want to! And thanks to those who have already bought tickets from me – you rock!
• Also mark your calendar for Saturday, August 20th at 6 pm ’til late, when we are having our Centre Ice Kick-Off party ((For my tech friends, that’s like a launch party)) at Burnaby 8 Rinks!
• And don’t forget to donate!

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