Out of the blue, I've heard the following question asked too many times to not answer it.

"How far away is it to Jupiter?"

Well, we here at the Rugby Road Journal don't often talk about Astronomy, nor was it meant as a Jeopardy question, nor will I pronounce the name of that celestial body in the accent of it's native people, as my oh-so-articulate Canadian cousin on the popular US TV show does, to the annoyance of many.

I'll just answer the question. Jupiter (and the Big Red Spot where teams are Impacting each other so hard as if to Annihilate one another and create a few more little red spots) is on the east coast of Florida, about an hours drive north from our south Florida training centre in Margate, FL, about a 3.5 hour drive from our Head Coach's home in Tampa, where the Generals live, and a 4 hour drive east from the home base of Dave Willsie's #2 ranked USQRA team from Sarasota, the Hoveround Lightning.

Canadians are everywhere!  Seems it's cold up here, although I hadn't noticed, although my car certainly has.  Yesterday was pushing -40? C here with the wind chill factor, and Gigi, my Gas Guzzling Green Goblin of a car refuses to allow her hood up, so I can't even plug her in.  [Don't even go there...]  Now she forces me to sleep on the bus.

Marco Dispaltro, our High Performance Coordinator, is coaching the team with the most CANCON (or 'Canadian Content' for those who aren't radio geeks).  Featured on his #1 seeded team, the South Florida Rattlers, are Canadian co-captain and 3-time World Championship MVP Garett Hickling, a pair of deuces from the Canadian National Team from chilly Edmonton (Allan Chartrand), and windy London (Susan McRae).  Along with the "pumped up" version of the Rattlers, are 2.5 Justin Patterson, who normally plays alongside Garett with the #3 ranked USQRA team, the California Quake, and the keen regular cast of always improving local players. 

This year's edition of the Knock 'n Roll (who came up with that groaner of a name, anyways?) has a larger group of "A" teams than in previous years, and several of the games will be extremely hard fought. The team composition and schedule for the eight teams are on the Calendar page of John Bishop's USQRA site:

Teams involved in this year's edition of the Knock 'n Roll are:

1 - South Florida Rattlers (the pumped up version)
2 - Hoveround Lightning (USQRA #2)
3 - Tampa Generals (USQRA #10)
4 - Qu?bec Impact (CWSA #3)
5 - London Annihilators (made up most of the CWSA #2 ranked team)
6 - Pasadena Texans (USQRA #13)
7 - Shepherd Smash (also coached by a Canadian!)
8 - Chicago Bears (USQRA #18)

For more info on the Rattlers, you can always check out their equipment manager's Official Blurry Picture Site.

In last year's edition, Tampa squeaked by Hoveround by one goal in the final, while Mike Whitehead's Maine team got past the London Annihilators by a similar margin to lock up 3rd place.

The 2004 Edition of the Knock 'n Roll is only half way over, but already has seen a major upset, with Dave Willsie's highly motivated #5 ranked London Annihilator team beating his friends on his USQRA team, the #2 ranked Hoveround Lightning, by a comfortable 8-point margin, 40-32.  Dave is the consummate impact-player, (and the CWSA's Male Athlete of the Year in 2003) and is very proud of his hard-working team of local players from his hometown of London, Ontario.

The Chicago team has four unclassified players, many of them high-pointers.  In fact, there are SEVEN 3.5 listed players at this one 8-team tournament, which is more than I've noticed at similar sized tournaments anywhere!  Hopefully those new Windy-City players will fall in to place where they are expected to be classified, and that no injuries incur at the tournament.

I'm waiting to hear some updates from my Snowbirds, but they should only try to reach me by e-mail at don.lane AT rogers.com.  More later!