One of the first things we needed was a team name. It was very important that our name exude both love of our field (quantum chemistry) and intimidation. Competition was fierce, at one point we had 15 different names to choose from. Eventually the field was narrowed down to two names
1) Frenking's Smooth Operators - Named after our boss and the mathematical functions that act on other functions to produce a number (implying that we would act on the field to produce points)
2) St. Pauli Principle - Combining a soccer team from southern Germany with a well known chemistry principle, the Pauli principle. In basic chemistry, the Pauli principle states that if two electrons are placed in the same orbital, they must be of opposite spins. In its pure mathematical form, the Pauli Principle states that if two electrons are placed in the same space, they must be antisymmetric (ie. Psi ri rj = -Psi rj ri)
After two rounds of voting and dubious claims of voter fraud (just kidding), we finally chose the name St. Pauli Principle.
Once we had the name, we had to create a t-shirt. This was rather straight forward since the St. Pauli team already had a logo of a Pirate and crossbones.
All we had to do was replace the pirate head with our bosses head, add the Pauli Principle to the shirt, and print it, which we did.
Now that the t-shirt and name were set, we started practices. The group is rather large so finding a time that worked for all was very difficult. We started with a few 8am practices, which were nice since we finished practice, then headed to shower, then joined everyone at the Lahnberge for breakfast together. We also tried 5pm after lab and finally 5pm on Sunday. All in all we got in about 6 different practices, its better than none, but still not too great. However, work kept us from practicing more (even though our boss wanted the team to do well, we still had to do work).
The day before the tournament, one of the labmates proposed that we increase team spirit even more by painting our nails with the team symbols. (the Pauli principle). Many of us said, why not. The end product looked like this.
Finally, the day of the tournament arrived. We all arrived bright and early to the field, wearing our brown St. Pauli Principle shirts. Our team played very well and everyone who wanted to play earned a chance to play. I even played about 5 minutes of our third game. Three games and a couple of bratwursts later (its germany, we snack on wurst all the time), we had won or tied enough games to put us into contention for the top team in our group. We only had to win one more game in order to advance to the quarterfinals.
The cheer squad decided to renew our cheers. Cheers of "lets go Pauli, lets go" and "Pauli, Pauli" and our slogan "Psi is not symmetric, neither is this game, St. Pauli Principle, Win! Win! Win!" filled the field. We may not have been the best team, but we were the most enthusiastic.
Our cheers must have worked because we advanced to the next round.
From this point on, the rest of the day became a blur. I spent 25 minutes cheering loudly for the team, then taking a 20 minute break between games. The team advanced all the way to the semifinal and lost by just 1 point to 2nd place team. We eventually played a half-final to earn third place over all, the highest placement the group has ever earned!
Our boss was so proud of us that he volunteered to pay for dinner the following night, an offer that many of us took him up on
Overall, the day was a major highlight of my time in Germany. The research group here is very diverse and international. In the year that that I have worked here, we have had students or post-docs from North America, South America, East Asia, India, Africa, Iraq, and of course countries from all over Europe. In the past the team has had members from Spain, Russia, and Brazil show up to play. This year was no different as 4 continents and 8 different countries were represented. We all joined together to work as a team and advance the team goals. Even those who could not play joined in cheering on the team. I am very grateful that I was able to stay for this historic win and I know that I will treasure the memories for a lifetime.
Here is a link to the photo album containing photos from the day.
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