Masters, day 2

Well, we beat everyone at the tournament, and we had fewer losses than every other team, so in one sense, we were the winners.

But in another, more accurate sense, NY was the winner. We just didn't force any turnovers, made a few ourselves, and lost 15-9 in the finals. It was again very hot, and we had few subs (1-2 in the semis, 4-5 in the finals) although we had some cloud cover toward the end.

It was great conditioning, and good working on some throwing skills (and swing thoughts!), but not good for developing good cutting or defending habits. Good defense requires a lot of work. Good offense does, too, but if you're playing against bad defense, you really don't have to work hard either physically or mentally to get open. I made some very lazy cuts knowing that I would get open anyway and that I wouldn't have gotten open doing the same thing in the fall.

My decision-making was occasionally lazy, too. Part of that was due to a fear of Mooney. Even though he's 47 and long retired, it takes a brave man to look him off even if he's not really open, and I only had the guts to do it once.

The "stay low" swing thought was a mixed bag. My forehands were still turning over a little bit (except for one which stayed flat and out of bounds and another into the wind which floated) but had decent length on them. Alex said that I still wasn't getting low. I only threw a couple backhands but those went well. It wasn't a problem for me to take the time to have a swing thought. There was one time where I didn't, and threw the disc from a fairly upright position, and the disc did indeed turn over more, but I had to get the disc there fast and as a result there was a lot of margin of error on the throw (which got there for the goal).

Our field sense was good as a team, and we didn't have any players (unlike the other teams) where you questioned their disc skills. We even ran a spread O (although it was called the "Swedish," it looked suspiciously like the "brown" O we have run on DoG for the last 5 years some of the time).

My body is nearly recovered after lots of leg twitching. I felt my calves twinge a couple times during play, but never actually cramped then (only while sitting at home on the couch).