Joe Saltalamacchia holds his secret weapon in his left hand. It's a square lump of pink wax, and he's been searching the Internet for it like Indiana Jones. The 17th annual National Toboggan Championships are next weekend at Camden Snow Bowl, and when this stuff is applied to the bottom of his team's toboggan, Saltalamacchia expects the sled to approach scary speeds. This wax looks like the stuff skiers us in the Olympics.

"This is," Saltalamacchia says, tucking the wax back into his coat pocket, "the stuff they use in the Olympics."

Saltalamacchia was the final addition to Team Green Monster, a tobogganing quartet made up of Unity College faculty and staff, and he's also the most competitive. Last year, Team Green Monster finished in 13th place in the four-person division. This year, with Saltalamacchia researching waxes, the team thinks it can finish in the top 10.

"Once we added (Saltalamacchia), it was like adding a linebacker or something," says Mark Tardiff, Unity College's Associate Director of Communications and the founder of Team Green Monster. The National Toboggan Championships have always had a spot reserved on Unity's social calendar. Each year, the college sends nearly two dozen teams to the competition, and the school has won the events spirit award for two years running. When Tardiff decided to enter a faculty team last year, he followed the mantra on many athletes: Go big or go home.

"Basically, I wanted to put together a faculty and staff team, so I thought of some of the biggest people imaginable," Tardiff says.

Team Green Monster is more offensive line than a lean, mean tobogganing machine. Tardiff is 6-foot-4, 330 pounds; Saltalamacchia, Unity's Senior Associate Director of Admissions, is 6-2, 260. Rounding out the team are Steve Nason, the 6-4, 350 pound Director of Residential Life, and John Zavodny, Associate Professor of Environmental Philosophy and the runt of the team at a tiny 6-1, 215. Team Green Monster's dietary supplement is seconds.

"The announcers spent considerable time heckling us as we would approach and as we were leaving," Zavodny says. "This is all over the mic, 'Team Green Monster is not allowed to stand on the ice together.'"

"(Officials) told me he didn't think they ever had a team as heavy as us. And some of the dudes in line are big," Saltalamacchia says.

The National Toboggan Championships are more carnival than contest, a party where a few trophies are handed out at the end.

There are categories for two-, three- and four-person teams, and as of Jan. 27, 261 teams had registered for this year's event, which will be Friday through Sunday. With teams including Wide Sled Panic, out of Baltimore, Chattahoochie Blue Streak of Atlanta, and the Austonauts of Dania, Fla., the Toboggan Championships are truly national.

Unseasonably warm weather last season led to melting ice on the toboggan chute and even more melting ice on the pond racers skid across once they're done their run.

When Team Green Monster hit the pond, the standing water went up like a Las Vegas fountain, and the team looked like it was coming to the end of a log flume ride.

"The first year I was happy to survive the first run," Nason says.

Team Green Monster finished with runs of 9.17 and 9.24 seconds, .16 seconds off the best four-person team's time. With their weight spread on the toboggan like a dart, heaviest at front and even throughout the rest, the biggest challenge is to make sure all four lean back at the same time at the start and stay in the middle of the track.

"That's really the only moment of strategy, when you all lean back," Zavodny says. "We'd probably be better off just hanging on and letting the deal go down however it's going to go down."

Team Green Monster will not, as some teams do, dress up as characters from the "Wizard of Oz" or "Saturday Night Fever." Their uniform is a green sweatshirt. Last year, a campus-wide pledge drive was conducted, Tardiff says, which resulted in the Unity community asking Team Green Monster to not wear spandex.

"The team from Owl's Head, they all dress up as owls," Saltalamacchia said. "They drink a lot of beer."

With more Homer Simpsons than Peyton Mannings, the National Toboggan Championships look to be a nice diversion for anyone wishing to avoid the hoopla of Super Bowl Sunday.

Team Green Monster has advice for any newcomers, tips they say guarantee a faster sled.

"Flypaper on the bottom of your (toboggan) or corn syrup. Some people use peanut butter, extra crunchy is the way to go," Zavodny says.

Saltalamacchia's competitive streak seems to have caught on with the rest of the team.

"More than anything, it's fun," Saltalamacchia says, hopefully looking at the lump of wax. "Would it be nice to win? Heck yeah."