It was a bad year for the Renegades Halloween party as, weirdly, every single one of us came as The Lady in the Lake from The Haunting of Bly House. At first it seemed like a coincidence when I showed up at Kvalheim's and he was in basically the exact same costume as I was-- but once four or five of us had filtered in wearing almost identical wet dresses and faceless masks it got less funny. Everyone was pretty pissed about it, frankly.

Nearly twenty guys plus management all really tried hard on their costumes, but now none of us stood out as we all shuffled around the patio dripping water and trying to pretend it wasn't happening. I wish I could say someone lifted the mood and we all enjoyed ourselves, but I think it put a damper on the whole affair. At one point coach tried to get cute by pulling their wet, black wig back into a pony tail, but it just looked stupid. They didn't even look like the Lady in the Lake any more. Deep down I was happy when they did it, because at least one of us looked like shit for a second instead of all looking great and identical.

We spent some time talking about how cool it was when she grabbed the one guys throat, and that was kinda fun. We all took turns grabbing each others throats, but it lost it's luster after five or six times. When I got to go at 16th nobody was even clapping for me. We were all just going through the motions. Overall it was a big bummer, but sometimes when you experience major emotional downturns as a group, you can all come out stronger. I hope this is one of those times, or the playoffs are going to suck.