WMO 2008

Short story: see last year. Replace "Colt .45" with "Dartmouth Alum" (or Die Nasty, I think they were called), throw in a couple more 1-pointers, and you'll be all set.

The most remarkable thing of the weekend was that there was one point in the first or second game where all seven players were wearing the same shirt. I can't ever recall that at a spring tournament, and there were probably whole years where it didn't happen except at Nationals.

Saturday, we had 13 players (one bailed last minute with a "tweaked back"). Not too hot, sometimes cloudy, occasional wind (in one of the games, there was a string of 4-5 points in a row where the wind picked up when we were receiving and died down when we were pulling). We debuted the horizontal stack, and ended up using it fairly often over the weekend. It worked best for us when the downfield cutters got off quick passes in succession. The only long pass the handler stack completed to a cutter was a quail forehand I threw that bounced off the chest of the defender. But it was kinda fun running back and forth a few yards at a time until something opened up.

We had the desired first round bye, which let most people drive up Saturday morning. I was shocked when I got there 10 minutes before game time that we actually had more than enough to play.

We lost our second game to Phoenix, 14-13 or 15-14. We had so many opportunities to score in that game but turned too many of them. We received at double game point, Alex hucked to me, it hung a little and my defender made a good but not great play to knock it over (I should have boxed him out better). They hucked it back, caught it, and then we didn't get enough people back to play defense and they scored it. Overall we did poorly that game on huck defense. Phoenix went on to win all their games until losing in the semis to Bodhi, a new Amherst/Boston team that started off in the B bracket.

Next game was to avoid the 9 am pre-quarter round. We sat around in between games and skipped the hot box warmup, so I asked prior to the opening pull whether we would go down 3, 4, or 5 before waking up. Strangely, though, it was us that started off well, leading 2-0 (at which point I quipped, "time to trade out until the cap"). But then they woke up and went up two breaks and received to start the second half. I vaguely remember some zone or junk D as we made our own run to start the second half with several breaks, and we traded out to win 13-10. This guaranteed us at least 2nd place and thus a first-round bye, provided we could beat Colt 45. They came in seeded 2nd in the pool (us first), but were missing Match and some others and had gone winless. It was a pretty low-key game, and though it appeared losable somewhere along the line, we held on for a 13-10 win.

For Sunday's play, we were down to 10, as three had other things to do (including, get this, a "Soberfest"). Two who were supposed to come for Sunday only bailed. Then two were late, and one stupid idiot pulled up lame because he drank too much beer (not that there's anything wrong with that) and not enough water. We went up a break and had chances for another, but pissed it away and once more went down two breaks, pulling, at half. This time our run didn't start until 12-10, but we tied it up just in time for the hard cap, double game point. We got a block just outside our end zone, and immediately called time out, which we had agreed among ourselves that we had. No, no, no, says the other team. "I'm a captain, and I agreed with one of your guys that there were no time outs this point." "Well, I'm a captain and I did not agree to any such thing, so you can't use that argument." They tried to invoke the Captain's Clause, but again I insisted that none of our captains had agreed to that, so barring any such agreement, we should play by the UPA rules (which I was beginning to doubt that I knew correctly; I sure hope I am correct, or else I truly made an ass out of myself after the game, instead of just sorta). Eventually, they generously let us keep the disc with a stall count of 3. After a few seconds, I cut for the dump, but kinda cut away since there was a lot of space there, and the thrower threw it straight back, and my defender laid out for the game-ending Callahan. I was still mad enough about the time out that I got my rulebook out, then walked over to the frisbee central to make sure there weren't any tournament-specific rules about timeouts in the cap, then came back and handed the rulebook to the other captain and said, "Here, read this."

We then had a consolation game against Red Tide. This one yet again went to double-game point, us receiving. We turned it twice, but so did they, and we finally scored on a DGP possession (our first goal in five chances). I did a little fist-pump after throwing the game-winner, just as a little reminder that we could still win a close game (I guess we did okay on this score at Nationals last year, but against Open teams, we have had a lot of one-pointers with mostly bad results).

Although there were lulls for sure, I felt pretty good, easily my best "first tournament of the year" in at least five years. My D on handlers was pretty good, not so good on zone D, okay on receivers. No real terrible decisions on throws (not to say perfect execution, but some good long throws), always something that can be troubling after a layoff.

We were discussing how strange it was that we were able to do well with our advanced age. Only 4 of 13 were under 40. I figured even with only 10 people there Sunday, we still had the most years of life of any team there. And we were even missing 20 of our teammates.