Welcome to the World Pond Hockey Championships, The Tournament You Aren't Supposed to Win

At 1 a.m, a middle-aged man burst into our rented RV like the Kool Aid Man, if the Kool Aid Man wore Under Armour and was Canadian. As was typical of people in Plaster Rock, New Brunswick during the World Pond Hockey Championships, two things were readily apparent: the man was not sober, and he was friendly.

This was the second time in two days a stranger came into our RV unannounced and not exactly invited, although this one, at least, could stand on his own power and string together three consecutive words. He smiled, greeted us warmly, and we reciprocated. He asked if we had any booze. I munched on hummus and pita chips, because I had foolishly skipped dinner to nurse the giant bruise forming on my ass after a day spent falling on it.

"I just told my buddy I'd go say hi to the people in that RV if the door was open," the man said by way of insufficient explanation, since the door wasn't open until he opened it. "So, hiya!"

As is customary at the tournament, we offered him a beer. He at first declined, which was not at all customary, but eventually relented. We exchanged hometown information. We're from New York City, he was a local. He excitedly told us how much he enjoys the out-of-towners gracing his area during Pond Hockey, which was celebrating its 15th year. The out-of-towners, he said, came for the right reasons.

The man asked us our record so far. One win and two losses, we said. "Good," he replied, before asking, "Have you ever played on Sunday?"

Sunday, the last day of the tournament, is when the group stage winners play for the title. It is, in short, when the good teams play. We have never played on Sunday.

"Good," he repeated. "Don't play on Sunday."

He made it to Sunday once. The people who play on Sunday aren't like us, he said. No, he shook his head solemnly, those guys come to Plaster Rock for the wrong reasons.

Then, with no regard for the solemnity of the moment, the RV door once again whipped open. A mustachioed man appeared, yelling, "What are you doing, numbnuts?"

The mustachioed man urged his friend to get on with it so they could go. He didn't say he was cold, since Canadians are genetically incapable of admitting to being cold, but that's what he was getting at. Our guest asked for two more minutes, his friend countered with one, and they sensibly settled on one and a half. This whole time, the door was wide open, I am not Canadian and was definitely cold, and my teammates shifted their focus back to watching Goon on DVD.

"But you guys," our visitor said gleefully, "you guys came here for the right reasons. I can tell—" he gestured towards the empty bag of Chips Ahoy "—and this guy—" he thrusts a thumb in my direction "—hasn't stopped eating since I got here!"

I nodded in agreement, as one does with a mouthful of hummus.

"I don't know if I told you guys this," he repeated, "but don't play on Sunday." I couldn't tell if he was deadpanning or legitimately forgot that he told us this 30 seconds prior. Either way, he closed the RV door, and headed off into the freezing Canadian night.

The very idea of a competitive pond hockey tournament is somewhat of an oxymoron. Pond hockey, almost by definition, is noncompetitive tomfoolery, the sport's equivalent of backyard football or pickup hoops. It's meant to be a simulacrum of real competition, where the only loser is the person who actually takes it seriously. The proper way to win is accidentally, with a casual, effortless superiority.

The World Pond Hockey Championship was never intended to be a hardcore competitive tournament. Founded in 2002, the tournament raises funds for the Tobique River Valley, population 5,800, which built a new indoor rink with the help from the proceeds—a total of $250,000 that has gone towards its construction. The rink has been great for the area, but families are moving away from the valley. Pretty much everyone living there works at the lumber mill, and jobs are scarce. Many are moving west to seek work on the oil fields. The local youth team had to combine with the team from next town over to have enough players.

The games themselves are held on Roulston Lake, just a few hundred feet from the new rink. With the help of tournament sponsors—most prominently and fittingly given the constant imbibing, Budweiser and Fireball—the organizers measure off a dozen pond hockey rinks across the lake, along with a beer tent hosting nightly events.

The first pond hockey tournament had 40 teams, mostly from eastern Canada and Maine. This year, some 120 teams from across the United States and Canada converged on Plaster Rock for the 15th edition.

With the explosion of popularity has come a divergence of purpose. The tournament's website makes clear the event is not necessarily about winning and losing.

"Participation in the World Pond Hockey event is not a 'win at all costs' environment. The beauty of the format is that it seems to meet the needs of players at a variety of competitive levels. It is more about camaraderie, trading stories and hockey jerseys."

My team, the Salone Rangers, was at the lower end of the competitive level. About two weeks before the tournament, I met up with a friend, Dave LaMattina, who was heading up to Plaster Rock for the seventh consecutive year. He needed another skater. I informed him I had skated maybe 10 times in my life, but he said it was more important to be the kind of guy they could spend four days in an RV with than to be a good hockey player. Daniel Segal, a 27-year-old working for a beverage startup, rounded out the Rangers' roster, and was the team's best hockey talent. Drew Haffey, Dave's lifelong friend, sported a hefty goatee and shaved head and served the invaluable role of team cook.

For our first game, we played a team in Mighty Ducks jerseys—the movie, not the team—which obviously made them instantly cooler than us. As if this wasn't enough, their first player made an entrance a minute before puck drop, wearing his skates, towed across the ice by his dog like the world's laziest iditarod participant. We greeted them with pregame Bud heavies, which we ceremonially downed while warmly comparing logos and jersey designs.

Conditions could not have been more fitting for pond hockey. The temperature dropped to around 25, tiny flurries whirled around in the light wind. Pond hockey games are 4-on-4, but we only had three skaters, so the Ducks agreed to play three-on-three. Every deke, saucer pass, and spin move received a chorus of compliments, regardless of which team benefitted. We lost 21-5; not exactly a rare pond hockey score, given that there are no goalies.

Our first three games followed this familiar pattern, prioritizing congeniality over competitive flare. But, as the Under Armor Guy foretold, our fourth opponents broke the stretch, wearing matching black, pro-style helmets, without a visor or mask, running pre-set plays and a left wing trap.

Allow me to be unequivocal on one point: I fucking suck at hockey. I can't turn counterclockwise with fluidity, cannot stop, and have yet to master the important skate-and-dribble-simultaneously maneuver. The previous teams quickly noted this and treated me accordingly. If I received a pass, they gave me a few feet of space so I could handle the puck without allowing me to advance. They didn't feel the need to poke check the puck away from me, since it was pretty obvious I would lose it on my own soon enough. They allowed me to still have fun, because it's pond hockey, and that's the whole point.

But the helmet guys extended no such kindness. They identified me as the weak link and swarmed any time I got the puck. Their workmanlike efficacy and pre-conceived strategy was incongruous with the setting: a bunch of grown men skating around on a frozen lake in Middle Of Nowhere, Canada. I tried my best not to get angry with them, or myself, while not being sure who deserved the brunt of the frustration that was bubbling up anyway.

After one of my regular falls to the ice, I caught a compassionate glance from the official scorekeeper, who was overseeing her third Salone Rangers game of the weekend. She appeared to pity me, but I think she also wondered why I even bothered, why I was there, perhaps in much the same way I wondered why the helmeted guys were there.

Dave had a conversation with a local our first night in Plaster Rock. The man, slight and with an incomplete mustache, said he used to live in a big city, but didn't like it. It was loud. He spoke of his distaste for drugs and clubs. Here, he said, it's about mud and friends, bonfires and trucks.

As we left the rink one night while a men's league game got underway, Dan, who lives in Brooklyn, wondered about the lifestyle up here, among the town's 1,100 people; about the routine of Friday night men's league games and a season entry that costs about the same as two days of stick time at a New York City rink. The stressors they faced were probably no less potent or pressing than those in the city, but at least for the moment, it seemed like maybe the people in Plaster Rock had better ways to cope with them: the quiet, the distance, the pond freezing over in the winter, where the kids could safely skate on 18 inches of ice until their feet ached and the pink evening turned to night.

Every time we stepped on the ice, I felt like the pond hockey equivalent of the the man who had left the big city, seeking a simpler life. Even with no pond hockey experience, nostalgia creeps into you anyways. I've listened to the greatest players in history wax poetic about pond hockey's purity, that the frozen lake in the backyard holds the roots of every superstar's love of the game. It's cheesy, but the second I took my first few glides onto the ice, I got it. The cold air filled my lungs, the subtle crunch of skates echoed above all else, and that's all there was. I just wanted to glide around and pretend, for a little while, that I could play hockey.