FOB-ulous! The one word that sums up our Festival of the Babes weekend in Seattle. Flavia and I headed north for the big women’s soccer tournament, which brings teams together from Canada and the United States (mostly from the West Coast) for a wacky, sexy soccer tournament. These women know how to have fun!
In addition to sponsoring the soccer tournament, Sweet sponsored a division one team. The Sweet team hailed from San Diego, Seattle and many points in between. Though they’d never played together, they were great. They donned beautiful pink Sweet jerseys with pride and let their feet do the talking. Their fun personalities added so much character to our team. Team captains, Elena and Monique, pulled this phenomenal team together, which included super-scoring Kurty, dribble-master Jillian, goalie extraordinaire Christine, header queen and beer protector Kruser, stray balls to the head Tara, Captain America Sharifah, fabulous baker of the Sweet cake Emily, defensive demon Katie, assist specialist Jess and best dressed Nicole. Flavia and I couldn’t have been more proud as we cheered from the sidelines.
In order to give back to the Seattle community, we collected donations and signed up volunteers for Seattle Scores. Seattle Scores is the only after-school program that uses the world’s most popular sport — soccer — to inspire literacy in elementary school children. They serve 320 youth in the Seattle area. Every day after school their kids are playing soccer and expressing themselves through poetry. Scores kids are on their way to becoming our nation’s World Cup soccer stars and best-selling authors. With FOB, Sweet set it up so the FOB players could donate money, gently used cleats or volunteer their time to Seattle Scores. Many of the players were very interested in what Seattle Scores does for the children in the community. Joey Ashenbrenner of Seattle Scores received tons of names of players who want to volunteer as well as cleats and donations.
The fantastic FOB MC did an amazing job leading women to the Sweet booth. There were so many women at this event. We think we talked to every player and viewer about our Sweet Caribbean Cruise in November 2009. The FOB women loved how Sweet incorporates giving back and volunteering into our marketing and vacations.
Friday, there was an electric buzz at the Loft welcome party as veteran FOB-bers reconnected with old friends and made new ones.
Saturday, the teams arrived in their gay apparel, dressed in cowboy outfits, silly glasses, nacho libre outfits (for the Snatcho Libre team) and the Sweet team in pink jerseys, life vests and sailor hats. As the day progressed and the stakes got higher, the competition grew wilder.
Sweet captain Elena gave a colorful rendition of FOB history, handing over the scantily clad Artemis doll to the Seattle organizers of the 18th FOB. Artemis is presented to the host team each year. Each team had to do their team cheer and I must say, there was a lot of creativity and comedy involved.
Now, it wouldn’t be FOB if there wasn’t another party. Some of ladies had so much fun that the next day was a little rough. But that didn’t stop them from showing up to play at 8 am. The Sweet team was out came out early and continued their winning ways by advancing to the next round.
By the end of the day, it was Sweet vs. Snatcho Libre in division one for the title of FOB 18s division one winners. They had the brilliant idea to play the game with no shoes, no running, only straight legged walking and an oversized blow up soccer ball. In no time, the game became a rugby match, then went downhill from there. So, they decided to determine the winners by having a wrestling match. One person from Sweet, super strong Kruser, and one person from Snatcho Libre. Kruser took the match without breaking a sweat; however, Snatcho Libre won the title in a bull riding contest that night at Cow Girls, putting Sweet proudly in second place.
The fun didn’t stop there. There was another party at Cow Girls. Can you say “Coyote Ugly”? Everyone was in rare form and having a blast with all their new and old friends. I don’t really know that Cow Girls has ever had such an enthusiastic crowd or that many people lined up to ride the mechanical bulls and sin ropa.
All and all, it was a total blast, we met so many amazing, athletic, astonishingly creative, big-hearted women.
Tags: meet Sweet
