The SLOC

The Origin

The Deer Friends.
A Tradition Unlike Any Other.

It started with one man and one idea.

Fresh out of St. Lawrence University, Reiley OC watched as his closest friends scattered across the country — Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Boston, Washington D.C., and Charlotte — and decided that adulthood wasn't going to be the thing that pulled the group apart.

So while living in Boston, raising rents on his tenants and ignoring maintenance requests, he put pen to paper and drafted the invitation to the first SLOC. Though it was riddled with spelling errors, grammatical crimes, and incomprehensible sentences, we responded.

What followed was one weekend of golf, an unreasonable amount of good times, and the birth of something none of us could have predicted: a tradition that has now outlasted jobs, apartments, relationships, torn Achilles, GAM knees, and herniated discs.

We are the Deer Friends.

Once a year, we gather to play golf with the intensity of men who have been training for months and the performance of men who absolutely have not. Over the years, we've descended upon Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, Atlantic City, New York City, the Adirondacks, and beyond. We leave every destination slightly worse than we found it, but always leave each other better than we arrived.

What started as an excuse to get together has become something much bigger: a standing commitment to friendship, questionable decision-making, competitive mediocrity, and the belief that no amount of distance, responsibility, or aging joints should get in the way of a great weekend.

This is Deer Friends. And somehow, against all odds, we're still doing it.