D&P Gains Street Cred, Offensive Cred Still Lacking

(NEW HAVEN, CT) Discipline & Punish took the field Sunday against Biohazards looking to rebound from an opening day loss at the hands of Shoots & Leaves. While technically once earning no points toward their campaign total, the team did earn valuable street cred through the actions of goalkeeper John Hartley, which in the end I think we can all agree is more important.

In the 25th minute of the then 1-0 game, a Biohazard player burst through on goal. Hartley rushed out and bent to scoop up the ball when the Biohazard striker smashed into him. The collision broke Hartley's nose, but the D&P goalie not only prevented a second Biohazard score, but stayed in the game and subsequently produced a number excellent saves.

“John's toughness really impressed me,” stated D&P midfielder Matt Higbee. “I don't really know John that well, and when I saw him standing between the pipes in that flaming pink shirt, I had some doubts. He answered those pretty immediately with the broken nose thing...and fighting that bear (right) to at least a draw.”

Defender Jensen Sass agreed. “I like to think of myself as the toughest hombre on the back line, and think that most opponents would agree. But John, wow. I usually have to make a terrifying flying tackle before forwards show me proper respect. John just looks at them and they quiver. I think it's the goatee. That or they saw the weird warm up where he drew that line across Chapel St. and was jumping out and crushing any SUVs that tried to pass into crumpled heaps. Beating down that posse of Crips couldn't have hurt either.”

Despite the strong defensive effort, D&P found no more joy in the offensive end than they had their first game. A combination of dubious passing and elevation intensive shooting doomed them to their second goalless defeat.

While one might expect that it would have been the defensive unit unhappy with their offensive counterparts, a source close to D&P Illustrated claims that this was not the case. “The defense was pretty understanding,” the source said, “we were just like 'let's go get'em next week.' We did get a little mad, though, when we overheard some people up front blaming us. They couldn't even score but you hear Liz (pictured left) say things like 'Oh we tried but it's so hard to control a long goal kick with the ground still shaking wildly from the force of John's run up blah blah blah.' You didn't hear that kind of complaining on my German handball team.”

Ultimately, however, the team left with the feeling that they had improved on their opening week performance and could soon be experiencing victory on the pitch. “We don't have a game next week, but I'm completely confident we can get on track the week after that. The break will give us time to rest up, work on some strategy, and let the Yale facilities folk fix the goalposts that John accidentally twisted into little aluminum horseshoes.”

Asked about the sensation he caused in his first appearance, Hartley appeared baffled. “I was just trying to help out the team,” he said. “And, you know, keep Dana from getting pissed at me. I'm terrified of her.”

Discipline and Punish Opens According to Plan

(NEW HAVEN, CT) – The recently formed Sociology soccer team, Discipline & Punish, opened its season Sunday with a 0-6 defeat to Forestry team Shoots and Leaves. Post-game morale remained high in the D&P camp, however, with multiple team members assuring D&P Illustrated that the game had gone precisely according to the pre-game plan drawn up by captain Tim Malacarne.

“Tim isn't very good at coaching soccer,” said an anonymous source only willing to be identified as 'Taylan' for fear of retribution, “so he decided that we needed research committees to determine how to win the championship...sadly he isn't very good at organizing research committees either, so he just told us to break up by centers and go find how to win.”

According to team member Luis de la Calle, it was the Center for Cultural Sociology that made the initial breakthrough. “Stefan, Andy, Joe and David went to Blockbuster to see if they could rent copies of all the matches from the last World Cup and maybe the 1974 Dutch national team. Blockbuster didn't have them though, so they ended up renting The Mighty Ducks, The Mighty Ducks 2, The Bad News Bears, The Big Green, Dodgeball, Angels in the Outfield, Kicking and Screaming, Little Giants, Cool Runnings, Air Bud and Bad Boys 2, which I think they thought was about the 1980's Detroit Pistons.”

After initial efforts to find a hyper-talented, soccer playing Golden Retriever failed, the team was at an impasse. Suddenly Stefan jumped up and exclaimed that not being CCR clearly what was needed was a hermeneutic interpretation of the semiotic codes likely to bring victory. After a long night and a reported fourteen bags of Doritos and other assorted chips, the team had an answer. Spokesperson Joe Klett explains to D&PI: “It quickly became obvious to use that all of these sporting events were organized along similar pairings of the sacred and the profane. If you want to win you have to be on the right side of that. Therefore to start out you have: sacred:profane :: disorganized:organized :: initial loser:initial winner :: ragtag bunch with little more than hopes and dreams:unstoppable empire bent on yet another title :: no uniforms:nice uniforms :: sportsmanlike:unsportsmanlike :: ultimate winner:ultimate loser. Things seem pretty clear to me.”

Malacarne was immediately impressed with the work and its large number of authoritative colons. He called CIQLE team coordinator Liz Roberto and asked her to drop the statistical formation analysis of the effectiveness of a 4-3-3 vs. a 4-4-2 against teams with weak wingbacks that they had been working on in order to focus on what the CCS group had come up with. Soon enough, the CIQLE team had confirmed their teammates findings. “It was true,” says Anette Fasang. “We ran the numbers and it turns out that in their data set there was a near 0% chance of a team both winning its first game and the title. Also, winning the first game by a large margin seemed to cause teams to become 78% more likely to fall for late game trick plays when attempting to hold off plucky underdogs.”

“The only course of action was clear,” says Fasang's husband and D&P midfielder Jan Wilken, “we had to lose the battle to win the war.” And lose they did.

In an impressive showing of bad soccer, D&P managed to neither trouble the opposing goalkeeper nor keep their opponents away from their own. The biggest problem they faced, it turned out, was putting on a convincing performance in order that Shoots & Leaves wouldn't sense their plan.

“This one time,” recalls goalie David Pontoppidan, “Stephan didn't even run back with their striker, and I was thinking to myself 'Come on man, they're going to see right through that.' But they didn't and shot it right past me, happy as can be as they fell into our trap.”

Unable to hide her obvious class, Julia Cordero was forced to fake a foot injury in order to keep her off the pitch and prevent her from turning the tide of the game against D&P's strategic interests.

Three blemishes on the D&P's impressive team effort were forward Marie Bragg, midfielder Chelsea Rhodes and defender Jensen Sass. While their teammates held to the gameplan admirably whatever the circumstances, Bragg, Rhodes and Sass felt it necessary to go in search of personal glory with tactics like “winning the ball back,” “breaking up counterattacks,” and “advancing toward the opponents' end of the field.”

Team members were understandably upset by the actions of these primadonnas, but Dana Asbury says she speaks for the group in that she believes things will improve. “I'm not worried, she says. “I'm sure everything will work itself out as soon as we [the ethnography workshop] finish up our search for a crusty, over-the-hill coach on a quest for personal redemption.”