Sectionals 2009

We played once again in the Open Sectionals and finished 3rd out of 11 (or 28, if you include Division II). The tournament was once again held at the Citizens Bank Fields at Progin Park in Lancaster, MA, on some turf fields. Last year these fields saved our tournament, as it was raining a bunch and we couldn't have played on grass fields, but this year I am not that thrilled to have played there. I had a general body soreness afterwards and had an achier than usual left knee and right heel, both of which are bothering me a bit this year. The fields are hard, with some pretty solid base at some small distance beneath the turf. The footing was good enough, though there was an occasional slip, but I couldn't even wear one of my pairs of cleats because it would have hurt too much to stop quickly and turn (if indeed I can still do that). I have more sympathy now for baseball players who used to complain about playing on Astroturf.

We once again had our pivotal pool play game early on Saturday against Red Tide, to see who would play up into the semis and who would play down. Last year we came out really flat and got spanked. This year's game was the first round, which was originally 8:30, then 8, then a late email on Friday night moved it to 9 (unbeknownst to a few of our guys who showed up at 7:30 or so). I believe we again went down a couple breaks after having a good chance to go up 2-0, but somewhere along the way we went ahead and won by two. This became the theme of the weekend, as our next game was also a two point victory over some local kids.

Bye, another win, then the premiere matchup against Ironside. We scored on O to go up 1-0, then had a chance for a break, but didn't get it and it was downhill from there. They turned it over several times but we never got a break, then let them get the last four of the game to win 13-5. They were able to throw it really far. I used to hate Sectionals when I was in their shoes, and couldn't imagine getting up to play some old guys, but they played fairly seriously, though they were goofing off when not playing.

This got us a semifinal matchup against Sons of Liberty. I had us as about a 2 1/2 point underdog. The details of the game escape me other than not making two blocks (both were nice plays by the receivers, though one of them required a mistake by me to give him a chance to catch it). We again had our chances, and though there was no pivotal moment that had it gone differently might have given us the win, it again felt winnable, much like a few of our 3-5 point losses at Boston Invite this spring. I guess if we match up against a team of athletic 24 year olds at Masters, we could be in trouble. 15-10.

Final game was for 3rd place against Tufts. We switched our D and O lines that game, giving all of us plenty of opportunities to mock the other line. We got a break on one D point and I just walked off the field as usual, and it wasn't until the point started and I was getting mocked for sitting out did I realize that you stay on the field when you score if you are playing on the D line.

Overall, I felt like we underperformed by about one break for both O and D each game over what we should have done. We won the games we were favored in and lost the ones we were underdogs in. Maybe the only game we covered the spread was against Ironside, though it would have been close (maybe Red Tide, too, which somehow ended up with a higher RRI for the weekend than we did).

Personally, I was disappointed in my play, never really feeling like I had it going, definitely much less than at previous tournaments this year. I don't really evaluate my play based on how many turnovers I have, but on how many turnovers other people have when I'm on the field, and there were too many of those. If I can cut well, then the disc gets moving, other people will be freed up, and we'll score quickly.

Worlds 2008: the play

It was fun. After discussing that we shouldn't play every O point in important games for several reasons, Alex and I did just that (except for him subbing himself out due to turnovers in the finals and me sitting out a stretch in the semis due to an injury). And I think I was called first in the play about 80% of the time.

One factor that allowed for this (for me, at least) was that our tough games were spread out (other than having semis and finals on the same day!; Open played Q's, semis and finals over three days). Monday against Canada, Tues afternoon against Japan, Wed morn against Aussie, and the semis/finals on Friday. The Tues aft/Wed morn combo actually did take a toll on me as I was less effective in the Australia game. The 0 goals/0 assists of course understates my contribution that game, but I was definitely feeling it (14 O points against Japan, 15 against Oz).

Canada really played us to make in-cuts, so I began cutting deep right away more often after our Tuesday game against them. We also switched to ho stack a lot more, in fact playing the entire finals in a ho stack. It wasn't "the" ho stack, since we still didn't employ the Huck N Hope*, but it was "a" ho stack. Still primarily a cutback offense, but the spacing was different. I'm not sure what we will do in the fall.

* - I did throw one not-quite HnH pass in the finals, caught the disc as the first lane cutter, then saw Husak cutting deep and I just chucked it. I meant to put it out to the side and let him run it down, but it hung and he boxed out and made the grab. It was kinda fun, actually, but don't let anyone know.

I'm really a bit at a loss to explain how I was able to keep being effective while others got tired. After being pressed by Dugan a little bit about what I did to keep in shape, I finally confessed that I probably did less training overall than the typical elite Open player does on his off-days. Genetics certainly helps, but it's really got to be in the efficiency. I paid attention occasionally in the Open finals, and the Sockeye cutters were running all the time, fairly hard, too. And it didn't seem to be totally mindless, either, which was the impression I got watching teams like Jam at 2001 ECC (where I commented that every other offense runs a lot more than we did).

Somehow, the "offense of the future" might feature coordinated mayhem. Pro football plays are designed to provide similar looks and starts and then mix it up. Individually, cutters today may give themselves two options and make a hot read, but it's not that hard to pick up from the sideline who the first and second downfield cutters are going to be from the way they set themselves up (or the way the others take themselves out of the way). When not in the play, I often try to mix it up by acting as if I am the primary cutter, but definitely not every time. So perhaps future offenses (at least on set plays) will do this extensively. (We've had endzone plays designed to be similar, and counters on set plays, but those were always the exceptions and were obviously set plays, not anything close to free form.)


Fantasy totals (goals scored and thrown only) for all 11 games: Alex 29, Jim 28, Husak 26, Ewald 24, Coop 22, Dugan 19, Stoddard 19, others.
Fantasy totals for 5 tough games: Husak 22, Jim 20, Ewald 15, Alex 14, Dugan 11, Coop 10, others.
Fantasy totals for 6 non-tough games: Alex 15, Montgomery 12, Coop 12, Stoddard 10, Zaz 10, others.

I threw or caught 8 of 12 O goals against Japan, 6 of 8 against Canada in pool play, 0 of 10 against Oz, 3 of 11 against NZ in semis, and 3 of 10 in finals against Canada. My cell phone rang 30 minutes after the Australia game. It was my wife wondering I was injured and had been taken to the hospital and nobody told her. I knew immediately what she meant, and fessed up to not scoring.

Our endzone O became a parody of hot box O. Our median goal pass length in some games was probably 5 yards. Coop was amazing with those cuts, though, just a head fake and a shoulder shimmy and he was open for that pass all the time, so much that I called out "Coop cut" once (with just a little pause in between words, so it was both "Coop, cut!" and "do the Coop cut") and everyone knew what it meant and would later use the phrase.

Both the O and D performed better in the first halves. For the 5 tough games, the O scored 22/29 (points, not possessions) (76%) in the first half, 29/42 (69%) in the second. D got scored on 22/40 (55%)in 1st half, 25/38 (66%) in 2nd (with the first Canada game being an exception for both teams; O was 18/21 (86%) in 1st half in other four tough games, and D was 22/28 (79%) in 2nd in other games) (although neither is close to significant at the 95% level; even if I exclude the first Canada game as an outlier, only the D ratio is close to significant (p=0.06 using Test of Proportions). I think the "normal" should be between 3/4 and 2/3.

I got hurt early in the 2nd half of the Oz game. I was jumping to make a block, and the receiver ran harder at it and ran into my rib cage, probably with his shoulder. At first I thought I just had the wind knocked out of me, but an hour or two later, it was sorta painful. I was watching the disc immediately prior to the block, but I didn't think the receiver had a real chance at catching it, so I was surprised to get hit. But he eitehr got there more quickly than I thought or he made a reckless bid. I sat out the next game against Germany (17-4; I was thinking about resting that game anyway), then played a limited amount the next day. I did manage to take another shot in the ribs that day, anyway, on an innocuous collision while playing zone D. In our last pool play game (17-10 victory), Dugan (who had injured his ribs earlier in the week, worse than I) laid out and reinjured himself ("if the ribs weren't cracked before, they are now"). He didn't play at all in the semis the next day, and was surprised to find that he could play in the finals after taking drugs and warming up for a long time. On Friday, the day of the semis and finals, it hurt me to jog (it wasn't a cracked rib at all, but the muscle or the cartilage between ribs or some such thing), and sudden, low-gravity turns and accelerations hurt more than just running (there was a little soreness due to bounciness, but mostly it has been confined to muscle exertions). I played, and then on the final point of the first half, I cut to the cone but didn't think there was room for the throw, so I pulled back, but the throw went off anyway, and I had to leave my feet for it. Here is a picture. Of course, I landed solidly on my chest, right where I was injured. I told Alex I planned to sit out the second half unless we needed me, as we were up 9-5 at that point. But then we gave back one break, and then another, so I warmed up again and went back in. We traded the rest of the way until the final point, where the D got their first break since their streak of 5 in a row in the first half and ended the game. But those extra four points I played were hard and not something I wanted to do before the final. The D did a great job early in the game, getting 5 breaks in a row, but then let in 8 in a row prior to that final point.

In the final, they didn't hurt, but they definitely affected my wind, as deep breathing was a little painful and hard to achieve.

Since then, coughing is painful, and sneezing is very painful for about 30 seconds, although in recent days it seems to have improved. I played the summer league tournament the week following Worlds. I didn't have to exert myself too much on Saturday, but it was good to go on Sunday, although I was a bit more hesitant than usual on a few potential layouts. I played softball on Wednesday. Swinging the bat only hurt once out of five swings. Fielding was actually more difficult, as there were at least two that requires sudden reaching with my injured side, and I didn't make the plays as a result.

Definitely nothing like the high of previous championships. But then again, our first practice this year was on Sunday after our first game (along with three tournaments and two scrimmages). The overall level of play in the Masters division wasn't as high as at Nationals. I was a little worried that Cruickshank and Al-Bob were going to show up on Friday to play (Al was there and we drank some beers together, but he was spectating). I had written, "We expect Japan and Australia to be real threats, as well as Canada. UK and Germany are also potentially tough. More importantly, we are potentially bad, as witnessed by occasional lackluster performances this year." Japan and Australia both played us tough, but neither even medaled (both got knocked out by a surprising New Zealand team). Germany finished next to last, beating only the Venezuelans. GB finished with a losing record. I don't think any of the teams had a player who (even without our 'young' recruits) we would have been afraid to match up against. Compared to the Masters div at Nationals, at Worlds it was younger but less skilled.

We probably put out an O line at least once that averaged 43 or 44 years of age. Mooney 50, Greff 46, me 43, Coop 41, Alex 41, Bim 44, Simon 43 is the oldest that might have all been out there at once, but even our younger O players were 39 or so. So we were probably giving away 6 years of age per player against the Canadian D line.

I was pretty annoyed at the announcer in our first game against Canada (we played in the "spirit enclosure", a field set off from the others where they had a beer garden, seats, and four hot tubs). He started in right away with insults at both our ability and our spirit, almost before having had a chance to see either. Someone must have said something, because in the finals it wasn't the same. I wasn't bothered as much as some by the pro-Canada slant, as it was in Canada. (This is in contrast to the announcer at Worlds in 2002, who said when we were a point up, "Who wants to see a tie!" No home team there, either.) It's funny the things you hear when you're playing. I can pick out a "let's go, Jimmy P" or any instruction given to me by the sideline but not much else (including the line call).

The fall awaits now.

Nothing to see here, move along

I’d like to apologize to the Masters Division for destroying whatever credibility we may have had. We won the “Easterns Div II” at the Boston Invite this weekend, which means we were 17th of 32. We came in seeded 11th or 12th and expected to finish about there, with a little luck in the top 8, with some bad luck something like 13th. But then again, when your average age is 40, you don’t practice, and you don’t do much training, it doesn’t really matter how good you used to be.

Well, that’s not really true. If we didn’t used to be really good, we would have finished more like 27th than 17th.

It all started out innocently enough. We were in the second tier of 8, seeded 2nd in our pool of 4, with top two crossing over against the bottom two from the top tier. We won our first game against Tombstone 14-12. We were up 2-3 the whole game. I got off a lefty backhand for the gamewinner (lifetime lefty backhand: something like 6/6, 3 GT). In some ways, this was a preview for Worlds, as they will be representing Canada, but they didn’t have a complete squad (one guy filming, one guy sitting, another guy playing with another team most of the time except for a few illegal points which we certainly would have called them on had it made a difference in our advancement), and I don’t know if they were showing us everything. (We withheld our new O and D formations, the bi-angled stack and the ho-stack clam.)

Then, disaster. 2 hour bye, plus we noticed our next opponents lost to Bodhi, 15-5. No problem, that locked up a top two finish for us, no need to get ready for the next game. And at one time (199x), that was true, we would have gone up 2-0 and traded out for a 15-13 victory. We came out flat, and got flatter, and flattened. There was a timeout late in the first half, followed by another break to lose half 8-5, and further degradation in the second half put us at 15-8. While this did lead to some enjoyment at figuring out all the possible tiebreaking scenarios (Bodhi has to lose by less than 14 to guarantee top two, we have to win by 7 unless Tombstone wins in which case we just have to win but if we lose then we want Tombstone to lose, etc.), it wasn’t enough to make up for the poor performance.

Next game started well with a break, but then more blah, going down 8-2. Near the end of the half, a short hospital pass went up to me, I jumped, my defender got his fingers on it a split-second before I did. I started to rip it out, but then let go while everyone anticipated the strip call and stopped. I waved "no call", and he threw the disc to a teammate for a goal while most players looked on. I stuck with my non-call but then asked for a check, mistakenly thinking that I had made a call before retracting it, thus meriting a check, but I gave that up too without realizing that this was what the rules said, too. Most thought it was a strip, one guy told me he thought it wasn't. The second half was a moral victory as we managed to get 9. This sent us down into a crossover game against some Brown alumni plus Chain guys, drastically underseeded at 23rd coming in (they finished 9th, ahead of two 2007 Nationals qualifiers, giving up no more than 10 in any game). We were tired and old, and we lost a few guys in having to relocate fields, and we got beaten deep repeatedly. The closest we came to being in a position to win was having a pass dropped in the upwind end zone that would have made it 9-6.

A scrawny scrub who hardly played wanted me to blog about how bad it was that they were seeded so low. It was a good question. Clearly, going in they were one of the top 16 teams. Zip, AJ, Joel Wootten were the biggest names, plus several other players who played at Nationals last year. But they were a pickup team without any history, and all of the other teams who were in the top half were real club teams (albeit two of us were Masters teams). Should one of them have been bumped to make way for a group of guys who were better but had no way to prove it beforehand? (They proved it afterward, but they were limited to no better than 9th.) A few years ago, another pickup team (Thermonuke) won this tournament, but they had a little more history and a wider cast of characters. On the other hand, these other teams may have worked hard and earned a spot.

btw, I’m a strong proponent of stratification in tournaments. The Women and Mixed divisions at Boston Invite both had an 8 team round robin with no crossover (but also disappointingly no final game). For Open, there wasn’t as clear of a line, certainly not at the #8 spot, and except for Great Britain and Machine, none of the Elite teams had plane flights. With a full set of Nationals teams, a completely split-off Elite div is probably the best, but with less of a field, this way makes sense.

So we lost and got rewarded with an 8:30 game on Sunday. Not surprisingly, at 8:20 we didn’t have a full squad, and I’m sure our opponents were wondering if they were going to get a forfeit. Got a break early, gave it back, traded until we broke to take half 8-6. Gave it back and proceeded to trade to 11-11, scored, then broke three more times to win.

This set up the semis against Colt .45. Our previous matchup against them at White Mountain Open in 2007 helped to launch a blogging career, but there was to be no repeat of that loss. There was again not a lot of ebb and flow to the game; perhaps we got a three goal run once, but otherwise, just single breaks here and there. (Runs always add to the dramatic tension in a game. The only exception is if there is a long streak of no breaks at all, especially if there are some points with multiple turnovers, and you start to wonder who is going to blink first. As an O player, I always felt more pressure in this situation, as your hopes get up when your D gets a turn, only to have them sink away again on the cluster of an offense they run. Repeat.) One of their guys called travel twice on Arnold on non-egregious violations, probably in line with what others were doing, then after the second one, tapped the disc in a little too enthusiastically and knocked it out of his hands. At some point, Arnold told him he didn’t know how to play the game, so for the rest of the game, whenever this kid did something good, he would repeat the line. And I would repeat the line to my team whenever one of his pulls sailed out of bounds halfway up the field. Eh, no hard feelings, it’s just amusing to me now.

After the game, we tried to find an open field to move up our “final” (there was a bye scheduled) but couldn’t, and our opponents (Tombstone again) weren’t all that interested in waiting around to play us again. Their captain came looking for us and said, “We have 12 guys playing still and 3 of them are going to get hurt if they have to play another game.” So I raised my arms in triumph, and he didn’t argue with my proclamation of our victory, so we are claiming that as a forfeit win. We’ll see them again in a few weeks at Worlds.

I stayed around (my wife was still playing) and watched the end of the Open semis (both one-pointers) and most of the Open finals. GOAT-Pony was a multiple-turnover final point. The final turnover came on a long pass than hit the ground before a diving BVH could catch it, and he lay there after for a few seconds, clutching the disc. His opponent came up and tried to rip it out of his hands, but BVH wouldn’t let go, and the opponent started yelling at him, unaware (I hope) that BVH was mildly injured. But even after understanding this, he was still somewhat belligerent, so I screamed at him, “Why don’t you just piss on him?” as that would seem in character.

The finals were exciting. GOAT is my new role model for Huck n Hope. Boston was also unafraid to put it up occasionally on a whim, but not nearly as often. Kids today.

Regionals

Well, I guess we need to buy shirts, shorts, and numbers.

First, the streaks. 12 Regional titles in a row (and 15 of 16), covering about 50 games (can't be bothered to look it up right now). 16 Nationals appearances in a row (and 18 of 19). 14th in a row with a team called "DoG". 24th straight Regionals appearance, 25th straight UPA series appearance.

The tournament went better than expected. As I mentioned on rsd, no one had bought his ticket to Sarasota prior to the tournament. There were three teams of roughly equal caliber (plus two teams that weren't as competitive) and two spots to Nationals. the format was full round robin on Saturday and modified clipped elimination on Sunday (1 plays 2 for 1st, 3 plays 4 to be eliminated, loser and winner play for 2nd spot to Nationals). It's version 5.1.2.A.chi, I think, in the handbook.

First round is at 8:30. We have 38 names on our mailing list, about 35 on the roster, and somewhere between 25 and 30 who are actually playing. We hadn't had anything close to a full team in our prior five tournaments, and as is typical of a Masters team, introductions were done at the beginning of Regionals. People are still strolling in at 8:30, or 9 for that matter (one player was at the Sox game the night before which didn't end until 1), but we still have plenty. We roll over Mt. Crushmore 15-4.

Next up is Tombstone, the #2 seed. They could easily have been the #1 seed, or the #3 seed. They are purported to be a merger of Tombstone, which won Canadian Nationals a couple months ago, and GLUM, which finished 2nd at CanNats and won the NE Region last year, finishing 5th at Nationals, but word is that they are bringing a small squad because of Canadian Thanksgiving. I develop an immediate dislike on the first point for one of their players who mauls me a couple times (not violently, just hackingly) while playing poor defense, then tapping the disc back in quickly and silently. The game is close through the first half, but we pull away. Mooney convinces Alex to withdraw a foul call, thus leading to a discussion after the game of the many, many, many times that Steve has handed the disc to the other team. (Most notable was in pool play at 1996 Worlds, where a pick call on double game point just prior to a huck was somehow overruled by Moons, and we lost right then and there. I know one player who is still livid about that. But this led directly to another story of a double game point call. At pool play at Nationals in 1998, a Condor caught a scoober very close to the line in the end zone. (Two videotapes from cameras right next to each other provided conclusive but contradictory evidence on whether he was in.) Discussion ensued, I saw Mooney saunter over to hand the game away, and I say to him, "Steve, don't say another word." He backs away, the disc eventually goes back, same pass is thrown and is OB, we move it upwind for the win. With the wind as strong as it was and the disc where it was after it was sent back, I'd have to guess that the Condors would still expect to win in excess of 95% of the time.) We stretch it out to a 5 goal win, which gives us a lot of breathing room in the event of a 3 way tie.

Next up is Above and Beyond, the other team that could have been seeded anywhere from 1-3 (their biggest claim is that they made semis at Nats last year and are the only of the three teams who played in the series last year as the same team). It's our second tough game in a row, but at least one of the three had to play back-to-back (given that none of the tough games were in the first round), and even though we were the top seed and thus in line for the favorable schedule, it wasn't really an earned first seed so we sucked it up. Similar pattern to the first game, close for the first half, then we pulled away, this time winning 15-11. A&B may have realized that point differential wasn't going to come into play if they lost, and even if they won, they would still need to win or keep it close against Tombstone in order to finish top two, so perhaps they conceded at some point. I noticed that Arnold and I were rarely on the field at the same time, which was a surprise since he so often covers me. I've come to really enjoy playing against him because it's always a battle, and though it was easier with others on me, I was disappointed.

We then had a bye, followed by a final game against Not Dead Yet, a team which plays in the local club league. I played one point only and was on the field for only about 15 seconds, which was enough for me to make the Man cut and huck the goal.

I had only two turnovers on the day, a drop on a stupid hammer and a breakmark flick to the middle of the field. (The hammer should have been the fourth straight O point goal for us that came off a hammer or blade to me, only two of them from Alex.) I went up well twice. I was embarrassingly bad at jump balls last year and possibly the year before. In my defense, it always seemed that I had to wait an excruciatingly long time for those and thus had to jump flat-footed against a young defender coming in at full speed. I once again found myself playing almost exclusively O points after playing both ways all year. But it seems like we have a fairly deep (though less star-laden, even if the names are the same) roster this year, and the tournaments are long, so I can deal. I think I will play some D points as needed at Nationals, but generally will stick to O.

So, we were set up for two shots at making Nationals. Finals are at 10:45, though we tell everyone 10:30 (but still people saunter in; having a local tournament is great and was definitely an advantage, but players try to maintain a semblance of normal life and so are more likely to skip out on parts of the weekend). And what a difference for the weather. Saturday was hot, probably in the 80s and with a lot of sun, but it's in the 50s with some wetness and more wind than the day before. We pull to start the game and are up 4-2 with several chances to add another. There is an injury after one of their turnovers, and I am called in for O. I expect to be the first cutter, but someone else goes first, unsuccessfully. I fill but the pass is behind me and it goes through my hands. A few passes later, the mark is broken and my guy catches the continuation for the goal. Well, that was an excellent 30 seconds of ultimate. Next point, I throw an open side pass several yards behind the receiver, and we are broken for the tie. I take myself out. At 7-5, receiving for the half, we become embroiled in a hell point. I have one turnover that point, a pass similar to the potential game-ender that Goat would later have in the Open finals, and another pass that was not caught (I think it was mostly a drop, but it wasn't a perfect throw), but I continue to work hard, cutting deep at least twice, and am about to cut to the end zone a third timebut see Mooney streaking that way, so I do a highly effective stand still and act like I'm about to cut, and the thrower hits Steve for the goal.

Somewhere in the first half, I have one of my trademark triple-bobble catches. The field had a lot of bare spots in the middle, and as I cut for a simple dump, I trip. I get a hand on it to keep it alive, maybe the defender hits it once or twice, but by the third or fourth contact I have in under control even though I am still on the ground, and snag it.

At halftime, especially with us receiving, they apparently decide to open up the bench in order to prep for the backdoor game. They score only twice more and we can begin our (dry, unfortunately) celebration.

It was terrific and even a little bit emotional to win with this crew. We have about a dozen of the old DoG plus several others who have been around the block, but also several players for whom this will be their first trip to Nationals, and I'm happy for them, more than I was happy for my 23 year old teammates in previous years (nothing against them personally, just that 23 year olds generally haven't been around the game long enough to truly appreciate it). And though we didn't win by less than 4, I never had the feeling that playing the games was just a formality, as was so often the case in recent years, where our typical chances of making Nationals were well over 99%.

So, one $450 plane ticket later, I am on my way to Sarasota. At some point, Alex and I realized we have to contact Joe Seidler so he can update his Hall of Records. Yeah, addendum!

What happens at Clambake...

Gets blogged about here. But I won’t name any names.

Helluva party. I got there at 9:30 to a raging multi-pronged scene, left a little before 1, figuring that no good could possibly come from me staying any longer, and it was still raging. Favorite moments:

Mullets for charity. Pay $20 (to go to Special Olympics, the targeted beneficiary of the event), get a mullet by a drunk female. The best one was when the haircutter stabbed the haircuttee (the first one, I believe) in the ear and he began bleeding. It brought back the memories of my last head wound, seeing all that blood spurt out. Pretty cool.

Breast shots:
Some woman with a cleavagy shirt nestled a shot of tequila (or some other fine liquor) in her bosom and some willing payer got to drink it. Not sure how much overeagerness was allowed before the shot was ended. This of course led to body shots, and perhaps some other type of shots that can’t be blogged about.

Music:
There was a house band off in another room, plus a DJ that had lots of people on the floor.

Frisbee games:
As I drove in, I could see several sets of illuminated sticks for Cups, which seems to be the game of choice these days. A guy at work described a Frisbee game recently and wondered if it was ultimate. Nope, it was Cups.

Food and beer:
Lots of it, everywhere.

So, the breadth and depth of the party was like nothing I’ve seen at a Frisbee party. No matter where you wandered to, there was something going on, not just a bunch of dudes hanging around a keg swapping stories (although there was that, too).

So, definitely a worthwhile experience. The one eerie part was that it was really far away from everything. While I was driving up, it reminded me of an old movie called "Race with the Devil", where some campers in an RV in the middle of nowhere witness a Satanic human sacrifice, then spend the rest of the movie trying to flee.

So, the ultimate. Saturday was a bit slow. We appeared sluggish all day (or maybe I'm just projecting), and we took all of our games, each a litttle closer than it should have been. We tried working on some of our defenses, but nothing seemed to work especially well. With a full squad (and more of the veterans), perhaps some of our zones and transitions will be a bit more effective.

Sunday had a late start. First round for anyone was at 10, but as people strolled in at 10, there wasn't even a full setup at Frisbee Central. My wife's dumb old team didn't have a program and weren't sure what fields they were supposed to be on, nor was anyone else. So they just sort of wandered over to where they thought they might be and set up, but it looked like it might have been a too-narrow sliver between two other fields (it was 31 yards wide). So they moved to some other field and got started sometime around 11, about the same time as everyone else. The TD had warned that they needed to start on time as games in teh past had been capped at 4, but they just decided to push the whole schedule back, meaning that were we to make the finals, we probably wouldn't get out before dusk. Well, it was a nice day out, so I guess that's ok.

The boy and I then went inside and played some in the gym. They had an indoor track there, and the day before we had done some 55m sprints. He had a pretty good surge every time at the end, I was proud to see. This morning, we went into the batting cage and played some foot baseball and running the bases. He loves to hit the ball in our yard and run around the bases, and seems to understand the basic rules about getting tagged out and having to be on the base and foul balls. Here's a video of him about 3 months ago. His swing has continued to improve. At the beginning of the summer, I would basically have to hit his bat with the pitch in order for him to hit it, but now he does pretty well no matter where the pitch is. I haven't instilled plate discipline yet, which is not something his old man is famous for, either, but if he wants to make it to the pros, he has to learn it.

So, we played against the Pitts brothers in our first round, former teammate Darden and his much older brother James, whom we used to play against 10-15 years ago. They were nice enough to play zone against us the first point and we never looked back.

Our semis were against Harvard, who apparently hadn't entered the fall series. I recognized a few of their guys from Sectionals the previous weekend, but damned if I could tell you which team they were on. Well, I'm guessing either New Noise or Gunslingers, but I wouldn't wager a lot of money either way. So, of course, we immediately get broken to start the game, then again, then again. We finally score to make it 3-1, then come down in zone. From their end zone, they throw a looping forehand to my side. I drift back, leap for my third competitive Callahan goal, and have it bounce out of my hand and get caught. They proceed to score without turning. We continue to trade, clawing back one or two here and there, and eventually tie it at 10 and 11. But we couldn't score again, and couldn't force a turnover, and those Harvard kids get the thrill of their young frisbee lives, second only to making Nationals probably. Well, in our bid, we did promise to "provide plenty of opportunities for opponents to school one-time greats of the game who still delusionally think they're awesome."

In retrospect, we should have done something about getting beat deep so often other than trying harder or hoping it would stop. Afterwards, I mentioned how defenders need to "orbit" around the cutter as soon as he turns upfield after a comeback cut, rather than continuing to chase after and hoping to catch up if it's thrown. But perhaps after the thir or fourth huck would have been more timely. I suppose that's where Dick Brown comes in handy, to throw his handy, storm off the fields, simmer for a few minutes, and eventually tell everyone how to play better.

Of the three "I can't believe I lost to this team"
games this year, this one was the most that the other
team did to earn. Against Gunslingers at Sectionals,
it was equal part us playing badly and them playing
well, and against Colt .45 at WMO, it was mostly about
us plus one of their guys having the game of his life.

At the end of last blog entry, I discussed individual
game RRIs, but misinterpreted their meaning. A game
RRI is a sample, but of both teams. So, if we have a
single game score typical of an Open Nats team, in
reality maybe half of the difference is due to the
other team playing worse than usual. Additionally,
the winner is typically luckier (for instance, a
Harvard guy yesterday bobbled the disc twice into the
end zone and fell down and had the disc land on him
for a goal, oh, and I dropped a Callahan that ended up
being caught and they scored without turning it), so
even if the teams played identically, a second
sampling would probably result in the loser being
closer. So maybe only 1/3 of the difference in RRI
between a team's overall RRI and an individual game
RRI should be attributed to the team.

So, onto Regionals tomorrow. Three go in, two come out. (Plus two other teams.) Big games at 10:30 and 12:30 should reveal where we are. We've played the last two weekends, but against faster but less experienced players, so it will be different against Masters. Paradoxically, it might be more difficult in certain situations to get open, as simple setups just won't work as well.

Ok, gotta run. Good luck to all.

Sectionals 2007

Alex recounted the details of the tournament pretty well over on his blog, so I’ll just recap them here and give more impressions, which is really what all of you want to read.

We started out terribly, losing a grudge match against the Gunslingers, 13-9. There were numerous rookie mistakes that game on all parts, people just a little too anxious to impress and make plays, and not enough of the seamless efficiency we were famous for. As with the rest of the weekend, we played a basic offense with a four-person play and fills. We stayed with man-to-man defense for too long that game when it wasn’t working that well. I didn’t leave that game with a good feeling about things.

Game 2 was similarly unimpressive. We got broken twice (out of four points) against a college zone D in the first half, the lowest point of the weekend and possibly my career.

I missed the third game to attend the Bolton Fair with my wife, son, and parents for about 20 minutes. There was horrible traffic management there. Coming from the east, fairgoers were forced to wait for 30-45 minutes just to park. There were three huge parking lots, but all the cars from the east (which had 75% of the cars) were shunted to the first lot. However, the parking lot traffic directors were inefficient. They would frequently stop traffic to allow a few cars from the other direction to come through, and occasionally stopped traffic for no apparent reason. There were a few cones in the lot intended to direct foot traffic, but no one enforced it and so car access to the lot was frequently restricted as a result. Only once in the 20 or so minutes I stood watching did they do something proactive, waiving about 20 cars ahead to one of the other under-utilized lots. I am reasonably confident that I could have gotten cars parked twice as fast with no more than one accident. So, instead of spending an hour there, I had just enough time to pay admission, stand in line for tickets for my son to go on rides, and watch him ride one thing. The rides were a ripoff, too, generally $3 per person for a typical carnival ride. They did have a lot of other county-fair type activities (including a Frisbee-catching dog!).

Back to the fields for a brief warmup prior to the Red Tide game. In another low point of my career, I did the math incorrectly in evaluating the tiebreak possibilities, at least twice. (It was easy enough to do that as soon as the game ended, I thought about it for two seconds and said, “Hold on, that’s not right” without even running the numbers.) We started out with a gift turnover and break, expanded our lead, and won convincingly to take 1st place in the pool.

Semis on Saturday was another grudge match, this time for us. If you remember correctly, this was the team that sent me to the hospital when we played them at Boston Invite. The offender was pointed out and acknowledged me but never bothered to mutter even a simple “sorry about that”. I know it wasn’t intentional, and I am obviously ok now, but it was a bit reckless, and I did need stitches. I think I made a joke about being entitled to kick him in the groin at some point. Again, we had our chances this game, and it would have been nice to win to get a chance against my old mates and the new kids.

So, impressions. First off, it remains weird playing in a tournament I don’t think I have a chance to win (although some part of me thought it _could_ happen). This was especially so because it was Sectionals, where I hadn’t lost a game since 1991. That was also approximately the last time where I was actually looking forward to Sectionals. That was an interesting year, by the way. I had a foot injury that fall and so didn’t practice or play much. I sat out most of Sectionals except for the game against Titanic. Our team may have beaten Harvard by just 1 goal, in fact, but we made it to the finals. I was warming up by playing football with our opponents, and Gary Lippman felt it necessary to point out how bad we were that year, and that just really pissed me off. In a game to 13, I threw three goals and caught five more. On the bad side, though, I had a critical late turnover on their goal line and we lost by 1. Rats. There were two more scares for the #1 Boston team since then. In maybe 1995, we were close late in the game against Snapple, but they gakked it away as they were wont to do. And we beat Dos Manos by only 1 in 1998 as we were working on our split stack offense the entire game. (Late in the first half, I asked an opponent the score, was told we were losing, and didn’t believe him.) So, Boston #1 continues to have the longest streak of Sectional titles in the country.

It is also weird to take pride in finishing 3rd in the Section and in losing a close game to a team that will not make Nationals (but no pride in losing badly to a team not expected to make the second day of Regionals). But it’s action, isn’t it?

I think I had four blocks on the weekend, five if you count the one where I called a foul on myself, completely surprising the offensive player. The block itself was clean but I was pretty sure I went through his body to get there. He wouldn’t have called anything, either. All but one of these were on handler cuts, and I left my feet on two of them. I was only overmatched once all weekend, by a little squirrelly guy. I had been told he was squirrelly and volunteered to take him, but I thought he was a squirrelly handler. He was instead a squirrelly receiver, so he combined actual running with his squirreling and so had me spinning. Oh, I also took out a pivoter. The lanky opponent had caught a disc near the line and I thought he may have been out, so was thinking about that a little as I jogged downfield with my guy. I think I followed in my guy’s steps, a foot or two outside the pivot foot (but six feet from the thrower’s body), only to be surprised by a rapid pivot back to the forehand side, and I bowled him over. Whoops. I should have been more alert and known that was a possibility. I apologized to the guy on the other team who yelled at me about it, to the thrower, and again later to the thrower, and now to the unwashed masses.

As typical of the past couple years, I felt better later in the weekend than at first. I played basketball last Monday but then nothing again until Saturday, which explains it a bit. I would like to get in one speed workout per week the rest of the season, and will try to break a sweat the day before Regionals. (Goals must be achievable, you know.)

Overall I felt really good, though. I was able to move quickly, went up nicely the one time I had to, got open pretty easily both downfield and near the disc. With another tournament (Clambake) this weekend, I expect to be rarin’ to go at Regionals.

I don’t think I changed my opinion of Sectionals, though, as a result of being “one of those teams we have to play because the UPA says so.” While it would have been nice to play a game against “Boston #1” where they were trying hard, not playing them didn’t significantly alter my Sectionals experience (other than it meant we lost a game we wanted to win). Boston Ultimate blanked the first two teams they played, and even shut out New Noise in the first half on Saturday, I heard. In a Section that has a handful of teams, perhaps it is necessary to the UPA for a team like Boston Ultimate to play, but here, where there were 25 teams total, there were still plenty of opportunities to play good games even without them (and for lower level teams to play someone significantly better). I guess I still don’t see the point of playing a 15-2 game, for either team.

I’m a little disappointed that we don’t have an Open RRI, just a Masters RRI. Oh, heck, let me just figure out an estimate. I looked at all of our games, pro-rated it to a game to 15, and took the RRI of the team that expected to finish with that score against that opponent. For instance, first game was a 13-4 loss to Boston Ultimate. Translate that to 15-4.6. I went to the Score Predictor for BUY and saw that the middle team that would lose 15-4.6 had an RRI of 1974. Repeat for the entire schedule. Average the scores.

Result: Average 2331. Best game was 15-7 against Phoenix at Boston Invite (2656), then 13-12 over Bro White at WMO (2598) and 13-7 over Red Tide at Sectionals (also 2598). A typical low-level Nationals team has an RRI of about that, but I don’t buy that on our best day we would be on an equal footing with them. There is, of course, the problem that each of those games is just a sample and likely not indicative of our true “best” game. Our average is right around the teams that will probably go into Regionals in the 5-9 range. Our worst performances were against Gunslingers at Sectionals (1958) and Boston Ultimate Y at WMO (1974), which puts us at the “didn’t qualify for Regionals” level. It would be kind of interesting to repeat this best-and-worst for other teams, but nah.

Workout this week: did a sprint workout in front of my house tonight. 4x100, 6x50, 8x30, 6x(backpedal fast for 5 seconds and sprint back). Started each rep on the minute, 5 minutes between sets.

Hingham

Alex did the play-by-play over at his blog, so I’ll skimp on some of the details.

Other than summer league, this was my first ultimate endeavor since the end of June at Boston Invite, where I left the field spewing blood. Some people were nice enough to ask me if I was ok now. Thanks. I didn’t play any differently, no lingering effects other than I have to part my hair (as much as I part it) on the other side so as to hide the scar.


The team rocked. I jokingly referred to us as the best team in the history of sports. While we do have two players who last missed the elimination round of Open Nationals in 1991, and that certainly helps, it’s not the answer, as our team generally did about as well regardless of who was in. (See my private blog for what I really think, of course.) I think the answer is that we didn’t have any black holes, at least when they play on our team. Every other team had several players who through either lack of skill or lack of good decision-making were turnover machines.

I definitely changed my defense a lot based on who had the disc. This weekend at least, I generally played honest when a truly good thrower had it and poached off to varying extents when someone else had it. This led to one amusing quip. An opponent underthrew a too-long pass and I intercepted it, and he said, “I didn’t see him,” figuring it was a poach block. What he didn’t realize was that it was my guy he threw to and I knew that he wouldn’t be able to throw it as far as would be necessary. But this also led to some missed assignments deep when the disc quickly transitioned from unskilled to skilled thrower, and I couldn’t make up the ground.

This was some great old-fashioned training for me, especially Sunday where we had maybe 7-8 guys and I played maybe 80% of the points. I thought I was going to throw up on one hell point in the finals after doing a few extra sprints on about the 8th turnover, but instead I just stopped running and watched from far away as my man caught the goal.

My junk throws, none of which were among my five worst choices of the weekend:

1. Lefty backhand. Tall lefty Rick Kenyon threw me a high backhand and cut to the end zone a few yards away, and I had a narrow time window to throw the disc. The only throw available was a lefty backhand (or maybe a righty air bounce push pass), so I threw it. I had caught the disc with my left hand on top, standing and facing the thrower. It was an odd little throw, high count, I had just been cutting to try to give him something but couldn’t find the right spot and so just stopped about 5 yards away from him, a yard upfield. At 8, he threw it to me as my defender stood, then he cut as my defender came in to mark me. I just instinctively chose this pass, and stand by my choice. This may have been my first lefty throw in ultimate, although I have thrown 10-50 dumps that way in goaltimate. (I might have thrown some back in 1995 at the tournament after dislocating my right index finger. I knew that I practiced them but I think I went back to righty for the tournament (Tuneup). I’ve also thrown a couple two-handed passes.)
   
2. Lefty backhand. Almost identical situation, although not for the goal. I had announced that I was retiring my lefty throws, since I was a perfect 1 for 1 with 1 goal thrown (not “assist”) and had nothing left to prove. But then it came up again, and the parallelism required me to throw it. Other than that, though, I didn’t need to throw this one, and should have probably just passed it up. At the point I decided to throw it, the previous throw probably increased our chances of scoring from 95% to 99%, but this one probably just changed it from 92% to 93%.
   
3. Inside out banking scoober from the forehand side of my body. After the game, I led a discussion as to what my decision-making process was on that one (prompting replies of, “Oh, great, let’s talk about YOU again” and “There was a decision-making process?”). I eventually decided that it reminded me of a goaltimate situation where I caught a leading pass in front of the goal and got a give and go cut in front of me and I had to lead him into the goal (under the arch). This was also similar to my beach throw at Fools 2006, where I caught the disc just outside the goal line and stood there with a backhand grip on the forehand side, looking for a 3 yard little flip pass for the goal but got a 10-15 yard cut instead. Although the catch was contested lightly, I felt that this choice significantly decreased our chances of not scoring compared to looking it off and turning for something else. Again, though I had never thrown it before and might never throw it again, I stand by this choice.

There was something funny about each throw preceding mine. Prior to the scoober, Simon had zipped me a short forehand that I was barely able to stab. That was definitely too hard for how short it was, so I guess I overcompensated on the next one. So, somehow an interesting event can trigger the creative part of my brain. In no case did I go into the point thinking that I was going to do something different; it just happened.

The party was sparsely-attended and ran only from about 9-11:45, while the parties I remember ran until 2 in the morning and were jam-packed. Games on Sunday back then didn’t start until noon, either. At least that’s what I remember.

It was a very long weekend. My wife and son went out of town on Thursday morning to visit her family, and I used the most of the opportunity to do some guy things. 36 holes of golf on Friday in the 90+ degree heat, ultimate all day, more golf on Saturday afternoon after downing a few beers on the sideline (not really a smart idea, really, either one), party, sleeping on a floor, more ultimate on Sunday, and a relaxed post-game celebration. Even now, I am still recovering a bit.

Boston Invite

Well, didn't add another tournament victory to the list, but had fun, nonetheless, plus I'm sporting 7 stitches in my forehead thanks to a collision.

Here are the results.

After a little to-do about format, we were seeded 10th in the lower half of the Elite division, which says something about us (we rock!) and the tournament (less rocking). This meant we had to finish in the top two of our pool in order to have a shot at the A quarters where we were hoping to take a crack at Boston Ultimate (or, as I referred to them this weekend, our farm club, although I think they are all a few years of seasoning away from being ready to play with us).

As compared to our previous Open tournament where we had 11 on Sat and 9 on Sun, this time we had 18 on the roster for Saturday and 14 for Sunday. Except that I forgot that one of them wasn't going to show up for either day (and I had just golfed with him a few days prior), one cancelled for Sunday, and two just didn't show up on Saturday, putting a crimp into my plans to make money on entry fees. And the usual assortment was late, so once again at start time on Saturday we had about 7 or 8. Our first game was against Chuck Wagon, whom we had beaten at WMO. Rough game for me, throwing away a goal on the first point on a dumb throw that had been working for me, got partially point blocked, dropped two less-than-perfect dumps, and almost certainly did something else bad. I had made a comment on George's blog about how anything more than 10 warmup throws was inefficient, so I felt compelled not to do any warmup throws at all. I learned my lesson and threw a handful of throws before our first game Sunday while waiting for my teammates on the line for the first point. Nonetheless, my mastery as a motivator must have been worth a few points as we won 15-12. By now we were up to our full squad for the day (but still missing a bunch of guys who were great players in the '90s).

Our next game was against Phoenix, whom we had played as DoG at this tournament not two years ago in a tight game. We had a tight first half, but then pulled away for a 15-8 win. This, we thought, guaranteed our spot in the pre-quarters (we were mistaken, as HOV was losing to Chuck Wagon, meaning that we were in as long as we lost by no more than 5). However, our hopes for a quarters matchup against Boston Ultimate took a hit as they lost to PoNY. There was still a chance if we lost our last game and BU beat Pike (and of course we won our pre-quarters), but it looked a lot less likely.

Our final pool play game was old-fashioned DoG. We knew we were in and we just cruised. HOV kept getting mad at themselves while we looked past our mistakes since they didn't matter, and found ourselves up and expanding the lead. (I will admit to being confused by other teams discussing point differential but it didn't dawn on me.) I sat out all but a few points in this game in order to have some legs left for the pre-quarters. Final score 15-10 and first place, giving us a matchup against Zebra Muscles.

ZM played a lot better than a team that got shellacked 15-6, 15-4, and 15-2 already (or maybe they were fresh). They didn't make the drops or simple mistakes that some of these other teams had done. Our best chance at winning this game was early, as we went up 4-2 while still squandering a few opportunities. They got a run to take half 8-6 and expanded it to 12-9. At 13-10, we got a turn near their goal line but failed to put in the upwinder, they scored the downwinder and then closed us out 15-11. We tried hard but we weren't that disappointed since it meant we did not have to play at 8:30 in a game we knew we would lose (especially so given that we probably would have had 4 players there on time).

So, we had a 10:30 game against the winner of Colt .45, who had gone winless on Saturday in lower Elite, and the Gunslingers, who had won all their games in the non-Elite section. We still struggled to get a full team there on time. The Gunslingers are a young Boston team, possibly none of whom were born when I started playing (1983). I had a good game, making several blocks (at least three, maybe more) and some good offensive plays while playing every point. We took half 8-6 but couldn't put them away, and found ourselves pulling upwind at double game point. They had a simple throwaway (either a miscommunication or a disc that stuck to the thrower's hand) in their own end. After a disputed line call on a second chance catch, we forced up a stall 9.9 pass into the end zone that found its way into our of our hands for the game-winner.

I have to admit, it's been awhile since I felt so involved with the team's successes, even if it was the B pool quarters. Even in those recent years with DoG where I was still playing almost every O point, I still felt a little bit outside the team. I expressed it once that it almost felt like there were two alternating games going, one when we received and another when we pulled, and they somehow combined the scores of those two games to determine a winner. It really is a different perspective that I had mostly forgotten, to go into a tournament with your normal team thinking that making the quarters would be a good showing, but I guess that's the reality for an awful lot of players out there.

We moved fields, again (we did not play two consecutive rounds on the same field all weekend, George), for our B pool semi against New Noise, who had barely lost to Pike in the pre-quarters the day before (but had also barely made the pre-quarters, winning a one-pointer in their last game). They were similar to Gunslingers but a couple years older and possibly having some ties to Amherst instead of/in addition to Boston. I hadn't done anything other than walk or sit from the end of the previous game until the first point had started and I found myself setting up for a cut to a long backhand from Alex off the walkup. But then I realized that even though the cut was open, there was no way that I was actually going to run that much right then, so I yelled something about how I wasn't going to cut there and instead cut back to the disc. On the next upwind point, they again pulled it out and this time I told one of the other players to get in the same place I had been and to cut deep for Alex's backhand. He tried, but his defender was backing him so much that it was impossible. After a few seconds more, I found myself at the back of the stack so I just cut deep. I saw the throw hooking so I angled toward the cone, only to find that it hadn't hooked nearly as much as I thought. Fortunately for me, the defender (mis)played the disc, not me, and it went over his head to me for the goal.

They took half, but we broke twice to start the second half. I believe that we kept trading after that. At 12-12, again going upwind, they turned it about 20 yards outside the endzone. Alex walked it up, and I cut for his hammer after making sure that the stack got away from that space. He had overthrown me in almost the identical situation the previous game, so maybe he overcompensated by hanging this one a bit. It hung long enough for a poacher to come over and clobber me in the head sometime after the disc had been tipped away. I yelled "Jesus Christ" at his carelessness and started to play defense only to see blood spurting from my head. I rotated my body to try to avoid getting blood on my shirt and lay down. I popped up again to yell at the sideline, "I'm bleeding here! Pretty bad. Someone get me something. Call for help." Someone got a towel, and the trainer came fairly quickly, so I realized I wasn't going to bleed to death. But I still needed immediate treatment and got taken away in a cart so he could clean me up a little. He drove me back to frisbee central, cleaned the wound and put some bandaids on, and told me I really needed to get stitches in the next hour or so to reduce the risk of an ugly scar. So I got them to call for a cart so I could talk to my wife. I waited, we drove over, I tried interrupting their game by calling "Injury time out" (strictly speaking, it would have been) after yet another turnover (I said, "I hope this isn't a hell point," and got the reply "It already is"), but yet they continued. After another turnover, I caught my wife's attention and yelled, "My head is cut, I'm ok, I'm going to Emerson Hospital to get it stitched", at which point the girl she was defending cut. It was incomplete, and by now several people on the field knew they might want to stop play, so they motioned to the thrower to call timeout (someone on the side even said, "yeah, we haven't used any yet"), so of course the thrower decided to keep playing. This time, however, the pass was caught for a goal and I got to repeat the information, adding that my head didn't hurt and it definitely wasn't a concussion and of course I was fine to drive. So, back into the cart to be driven across the grounds to my field, expecting the game to be over but finding that it was only 13-13. As I later found out, we traded yet again, but then turned it over twice on double-game point to lose 15-14. Once again, it was a bittersweet defeat, as the team was already pretty spent and another game might have started to see my teammates dropping like the elderly during a heat wave.

So, off to the hospital for the first time ever in 25 years of ultimate (one other time at practice I got hurt, stopped playing, and went to the doctor the next day). I gave my name at the desk, sat in the waiting room for a bit, talked to someone at the desk finally, got shunted off to another room, waited, talked to another person, and then was told to wait some more. At some point I debated acting delirious in order to be seen more quickly. I was disappointed in the wait because I had chosen the hospital in the more affluent area, figuring there would be fewer Sunday afternoon trauma cases to delay me, but it still took me about 2:30 before I finally got out of there. Anyway, at this point I decided to go clean myself up a little and finally looked in the mirror to see dried blood all over my face and even in my ear. Sweet. My wife and the boy finally show up as I'm being shown to my room (where I waited another 30 minutes). Finally, more cleaning, some anesthetic, and I get stitched up and released.

Overall, we ended up where we were seeded, just about. I think we would have had a better chance in the games we lost had they been earlier in the day, but that's part of the nature of ultimate tournaments. I don't really know what to make of our team's chances this year. I would really like them if only everyone were 38 again.

Anyway, I had a good time, and am surprisingly not sore right now. I need a couple more tournaments like this between now and September to go along with the other things I'm doing and I'll be raring to go.

White Mountain Open

WMO was good overall. It was disheartening to lose the quarterfinals after being up 12-9 and 14-12 in a game to 15, and against a team that is probably about an 8th-10th place at Regionals quality. No doubt about that feeling.

But considering our limited roster, it was a big success. 11 on Saturday, 9 on Sunday, including my wife, whose team bailed on Saturday morning. It was hardly a Murderers' Row, as few of the vintage DoG were there, although on average the team was much younger and probably more mobile than our full team.

In our first game, we beat Bro White, the male half of last year's Mixed finalists Slow White (minus a couple guys trying out for the new team or otherwise absent). Bro White would later give fairly close games to both halves ofBoston Ultimate. Overall it was probably our best game of the weekend for efficient offense and getting turns.The next two games also went pretty well. We handled Koob, the final remnants of the team that made (Masters) Nats in '05 and lost the game to go in '06, and also beat Chuck Wagon (formerly Log, ofBurlington) decently, although the final difference was but two. (They finished about 6th at Regionals last year). Last game was against half of Boston Ultimate. I had already conceded the game and the day, as we were going to get another shot at the other half, we had 9.5 (one had left, one was hobbling), and we were 98% certain of getting a 1st round bye (Bro White would have had to beat Boston Ultimate; I'll leave the Bayesian statistics to the reader, but I estimate that going in BU was a 13-7.5 favorite, final score was 13-10; ok, my Pythagorean estimator predicts somewhere between 74% and 96%). We had real matchup problems, regardless, both in height and speed, leading to lots of easy long goals for them. But I didn't really care, and I can't say I played too hard or got up too much for the game since it was our fourth in a row and we were old.

We were probably a four-goal favorite for Sunday's quarterfinal, even allowing for our small numbers (as mentioned above, lost four and added two). It started out looking like we'd beat the spread, but we let them back in it. We put on a zone and got two breaks and a chance at a third. We built up a lead to 12-9, made it to 14-12, then kept turning it and allowing goals.Our problems that game and on the weekend were mostly throwing execution and choice. Only against Boston Ultimate were they related to age and slow footspeed. Another problem on Sunday was the lack of handlers. As a result, two of us who normally are receivers ended up spending a lot of time near the disc instead of being freed up to cut downfield.

We didn't have a lot of spare time to hang out, often one of the best times of tournaments with old people. Two of our first three games went well into the cap, maybe even to the next round.

In the Bro White game, we went up 7-4, then they came back. Late in the game, I think the point prior to double game, they threw a high hammer, I went after it, I was decently positioned to make a play at it but their guy jumped back into where I was headed, not where the disc was going, but he went mostly up and I was going forward and so I bumped into his back and he called foul. I asked him at least twice if he was sure that he had a play on it and he didn't just misread it, but he insisted on the call, so I let him have it uncontested, and they scored. At double game point, we turned it, and someone threw a medium-range forehand into the endzone, I came off my guy, jumped, and knocked the disc away cleanly, but contacted the receiver on the body afterwards, not hard but not light, either. Foul call, I laugh and say for the first time in my life, "But I got the disc first." Everyone sitting around says no foul, but I just ask the guy to send it back. I had almost decided to give it to him, too, but then I saw Alex walk up (actually he was probably just trying to see what was happening rather than to influence me) and decided to stick with the contest, feeling that had there been an observer there, especially one named Mike G, it would not have been called a foul. It goes back, a couple passes later one of their guys drops a pass while on the goal line, we work it down for the win and the clear path to a 9 am pre-quarters bye. I felt that between the two plays, there was about 1 foul, probably about 0.4 on each one, so I don't feel bad about sending the second one back. Had the first not happened, or had it not been double game point, I probably would have just given up the second one, too.

New pick rule is stupid (but not the people who came up with it!) but I insisted on it being applied about 4 or 5 times (all in our favor), and let two slide (1 for, 1 against). Maybe 1 or 2 of those times, it was probably a good outcome that the play stood, but the other ones it probably should have gone back. Part of the reason for the pick rule is for safety, yet this encourages players not only to continue but to initiate movement. (The times it was a "good outcome" were when the throw was almost coincidental with the call and no one had time to react.)

Alex covered the tournament on his blog, although for some reason it's more Alex-centric.

Big Ego Ultimate lifetime: 17-6, 2 tournament victories, 1 runnerup, 1 "other". Next meeting: Masters Easterns, June 2-3.

Fools, again

Wow, I just finished reading last year's Fools report, and I realized I hardly need to type anything in for this year, even down to the comments. In fact, I'll comment on that article first:
1. It appears that this is the first use of the phrase "huck and hope" (although it wasn't capitalized or TMed yet).
2. "This is our year"
3. "I wouldn't want to win any tournament that this team could win."
4. Funny stories on the sideline and in the beer tent still abound.

I suppose I can add some comments about this year, too.

Day 1 was about the same as the previous years, with one notable exception being that I was mentally prepared for it and so did not get depressed at not being able to run.

We were really bad throwing deep all weekend, such that once again the Indefensible would have been a terrific defensive strategy.

No warmup again this year other than before the quarters.

I was excited when I got to the fields Sunday and saw that games were to 9 with a 50 minute cap. I was going to have to leave no later than 4, which would have been sometime during the final, so I probably would have had to tank us in the semis so as not to have to miss a game, but this enabled me to be around for everything. Plus, games to 9 are short and might favor an old team. I got moving around, actually ran some lengths before the game, and broke more of a sweat then than I had all day Friday. Alas, we made a few too many turnovers and let the game drift away.

Got screwed over by the airline on the trip back, getting bumped from our flight despite being frequent flyer members and checking in nearly two hours before our flight. They couldn't put us on the next flight either and we had to wait until 2 pm the next day. Also had a two hour delay on the outbound flight, and they left our carseat at the Dulles Airport and so had to give us a loaner in Boston. I remarked to my wife that the Man really took it to us this weekend, and the only thing we got to stick to the Man was sneaking into the hotel pool after they declared it closed from 10-3 because state law required a lifeguard in their 4' deep pool. But then I managed to make a slightly longer list of sticking it to the man: 18 year old got to drink beer, we sped, I took a banana from the hotel buffet, I fed the boy a couple of pieces of fruit from the buffet. But I think the Man beat us overall.

I can't believe that the pick rule is as it was being played. If a pick happens, 12 players stop playing, but the thrower and a cutter don't, the thrower can huck it to the cutter for a goal, and it stands because it doesn't "affect the play". I can see that if the call is nearly coincidental with the throw, then the pass should stand, but there ought to be a limit of something like 2 seconds after which it goes back. There is nothing in the rules that says that the thrower has to (or even ought to) acknowledge the call, so he should examine whether something is wide open prior to acknowledging it, per the rules, some will probably say. Since the pick is intended to reduce the risk of injury, writing the rules to demand that players play on after a pick call is made seems counterproductive.

I didn't break anything, although there was a point I wanted to take something made of wood and beat it against the ground repeatedly. Unfortunately, none of the Canadians' mallets were available. Oh, yeah, I beat the Canadians in a bocce-off for the flip one game. I warned them that I was Italian, but they didn't listen.

Regionals -- DoG

DoG earns 3 seed at Nationals; asses kicked; names not taken.

15-0. 15-6. 15-5. 15-5. No breaks. 2 turnovers in the finals. Huck-N-Hope, meet Plug-N-Play.

I have to admit that I hadn't bought my plane ticket to Nationals yet, because I have three of us (plus my parents, who are coming down to see their grandson and ohbytheway his dad) to purchase for, but I was reasonably sure we'd make it. Althought it's not as distinct as the women's (there were probably only a literal handful of games in the entire women's bracket that were closer than 15-10), the teams were stratified in playing ability and most games weren't really in doubt. That's the one area that Mixed is preferable to Open or Women's, in that there is real excitement and doubt about who is going to win. It's a better sporting event where the underdog has a fighting chance. Baseball is the best at this (suck it, Yankees fans, by the way), but ultimate would have to go to games to 3 to achieve the same level of parity.

So, Regionals. I skipped the first game to hang out with my incredibly sweet although worthy of being slapped around (although of course I wouldn't do that) boy while my wife played. Somehow we won 15-0 without me. Then 15-6 against Montreal, about what the point spread said. O turned it a couple times, D played their technological advances, we won. There was one rules discussion that thankfully kept Fortch occupied for about 45 minutes looking through the rule book (although I think most of that was him looking for his own name), but otherwise it went according to seed. I applaud those guys and wished I still loved the game like they do. They've been shafted a few times at Easterns with their seeding, but still they play and win some and lose some and play. I didn't see the one guy with the long curly hair, but those guys gave it and didn't roll just because we're "DoG". O Canada!

Semis were against PoNY. They seemed to fear us. We played well, but they cooperated even more and we won 15-5. The skinny kid played some good D against me, just like the muscular kid who I didn't see today did this spring, but overall they seemed content to give us the game.

Finals were today, DoG vs Metal, "Boston" vs "Cambridge." For awhile, it looked like the famed semifinal of 2002. In the first half, Metal had three turnovers, all of them on missed or defended hucks, and found themselves down three breaks, since DoG had none. The D is starting to get their shit together on offense. Guys who were hesitant before are now starting to figure out when they should cut. We had a few long passes, no forced stalll 9 throws, and we converted. For the last few months, these guys have been bringing it on defense, generating turnovers, but the scorebook hasn't reflected it since they've sucked on O. Now, it's beginning to work. Personally, I hate them all (yes, I'm talking to you), but I am glad to have them as teammates, and if you want to keep me on the sideline by scoring, may your god bless you. You still can't cover me, but rock on.

So, finals. First point was a classic Huck-n-Hope. It went off, I said, "Sweet, turnover." But Ryan tracked it down, an amazing run at the disc, goal. We answered, although they played tough D and it took us about a dozen passes. Them, swing, swing, huck, great catch for a goal. We answered, a little more slowly, but more surely (I love the huck, don't get me wrong, but we're just not as good at putting it as these other teams so we have to be more careful). One of these next points, the huck was a little too far for Ryan's fast little legs (although again I was amazed that he was able to get there; too bad he and his buddies forsook us for Metal this spring), and we worked it down, break. I can't remember the timing, but the rest of the first half featured good O and two more missed long throws from Metal (I think Zip got one 50/50 throw and Pallaver got another). No more turns, 8-5. At some point in the second half, they gave up and decided to wait for the 2/3 game, but we took it to them with our variety of D's and intensity. This clearly was not the same team that went on to destroy GOAT in the game to go. Listless in one, a little fearful and unsure, transformed into confident and skillful the next. If you want to use this as bulletin board material, be my guest, but since this is my last year in Open (I think, for the third straight year), be my guest. I just want to play good ultimate against good opponents.

So, I think this puts us as the 3 seed. Furious/Sockeye are 1/2, and anyone who votes otherwise should have his license revoked. But 3? JAM lost at Regionals. Ring and Condors would be considerations, but they went oh-fer on Day 1 at Nationals last yaer. We beat Bravo in quarters last year and nothing has distinguished us from them this year. NW 3 and 4 are tough, I know, but they're unproven. I see it F/S 1/2, DoG 3, Revolver/Rhino/Bravo 4/5/6 (in some order), Subzero/Chain 7/8, other teams 9-16. (Oh, another point about seedings is tht you're really only qualified to argue about teams at your level. #1 should have no real opinion about #12 v #13.) On the one hand, we don't deserve the #3 seed, but otoh, we don't deserve it less than any other team.

So, a few words about Plug-N-Play. Historically, our team has had positions built around the players occupying them. I said once, way back, that our O positions were not called man and buddy but were Cork, Jim, Moons, Alex, etc., since they were tailored to each's talents and interests. Now, we have more redundancy and can afford to sit out our O guys for 1/4 of the points or to have a few Bozos out there who can handle the key D positions. Zip may be our best player, but I don't think he's indispensable in a way that half a dozen guys were 10 years ago.

So, you read it here first, DoG '06 upset champions. The retiring Parinella and de Frondeville cry while they leave their cleats at the field, saying that this was one of their seven best championships, and surely among the three least expected. We attempt to take all the glory despite the obviously contrasting stats, which we will squelch, and no one will say anything just to make sure we don't come back next year.

This is the Word of DoG.

Boston Invite 2006

Alex covered a lot of the details here and here. I’m unaware of any other bloggers who played in the Elite Open division. Perhaps one of the Clapham fellows blogs (the other Hims had one briefly, I recall, but I don’t know if he is on Clapham or if it’s still going).

George commented on the tournament, too. I suggested to him that he ought to handle the “is this going to be on your blog?” questioners by writing “some annoying low-level player asked me” as I did once. I also told him that the low point of the tournament was when a UPA official walking by our game more or less screamed “Cheater!” after what looked to everyone 40 yards away to be a bad call by one of our players. In fairness, this person wasn’t wearing a hat at the time.

Overall, our O played pretty well. Our D played very good defense but struggled to move the disc. But enough about the D.

The team struggled with keeping intensity up in the face of a four goal lead. From a results viewpoint, this shows up more with the O, since the D might play well and still get scored on three or four points in a row, while if the O doesn’t play well, you’ll notice it on the scoreboard. Despite what your goals and expectations are, the cold facts say that elite offenses against elite defenses still get broken 3-4 times a game (or 1/3 or ¼ of the time). It’s impossible to tell with any degree of certainty whether an offense or defense is playing within their expectations (and therefore whether you expect the next point to follow the pattern of the game or the established pattern) based just on the outcome of the last few points.

Anyway, the team got into lulls now and then. Other than possibly a 1-0 deficit, it was only against Metal in the crossover game that we found ourselves down, getting outbroken 3-1 to lose half 8-5. But I think we outbroke them 4-0 in the second half to win 15-13. I am fairly certain (we kept playing time and therefore O/D stats for most but not all of the games) that the O went break-free for one half in each of our games. As Al pointed out, we didn’t have a turnover in the semis until game point (14-8), whereupon we wilted. I think we only had one break in the finals, a point that I am shocked that Alex did not blog about. The subber had called two handlers and four receivers and had to choose either Alex or me for the 3rd handler spot, and I got the nod, as Alex rolls his eyes in disgust, I raise my arms in triumph, and Tom giggles at the interplay. I stoke the fire by yelling to them from the line, “And I’m handling in the zone” even though I wasn’t. All goes well until I have the disc on the line near the end zone, don’t see any cuts far or near, and underthrow a desperation hammer to the back of the end zone.

Turnovers: I’ll recount the ones I was involved in, since there were so few, uncharacteristically. The only other one on Sunday was the first point in the first game. I was coming back to the disc on the line and didn’t have great footing, allowing Ringo to come by and get the block on Alex’s throw, a real “Dear Diary” moment for him (he never gloated about it, to his credit, even after we goaded him on the sideline later, while he was trying to invoke the concept of jury nullification in response to getting fouled on the mark by historical DoG). I believe that this was the only incompletion thrown to me all weekend (oh, scratch that, there was a turfed 8 yard stall 9 forehand in the Subzero game). This measure probably is the one that tracks most closely with my internal assessment of how I played. To some extent, I feel that my own turnovers are the roll of a die, as sometimes a good choice and decent execution can still result in a turnover or I won’t get a great cut, but when I’m in the zone as a cutter, I’m providing so much margin that even errant passes will be caught.

Throws: I led Alex on a zone pass and he cowered and dropped it even though he was at least a step away from possibly being clobbered, and I threw a mid-range forehand to BVH that he just couldn’t get to. The latter would have benefited from an extra half-second to assess the situation, or from a little more anticipation of the throw, since I didn’t fully expect to throw it since it wasn’t a strict power position (I was coming back to the disc). I had a 15 yard forehand throwaway immediately after a foul in which I found myself bantering with a guy on the sideline who didn’t hear the original foul call and thought I was calling it late. There was one other pass that went by the intended receiver but was caught, and another that the receiver had to make a good adjustment on.

I felt very good out there. My defense started out as pretty good but got gradually worse over the weekend as fatigue set in. Except for the heat, Saturday felt like Day 1 at Nationals, and our O line was pretty short. I’m trying to get used mentally to the idea of sitting out more than a token number of O points, but as we were down to 8 by Sunday afternoon, this wasn’t the weekend to put it into practice. The only point that someone could accuse me of dogging it was after I had just spent 20 seconds sprinting up and down unsuccessfully trying to get us a goal and my legs were a little rubbery. It was a little difficult to get out of bed on Sunday, and I’m generally sore and tired today, but I could play if it were Day 3 of a tournament.

I got new cleats this week, the MF890 from New Balance. I felt faster and more sure-footed in them over my Gaia’s from last year, enough so that I’m thinking of ordering another pair to practice in (thus bringing my total pairs of cleats owned to about 10). I have problems with my little toe being scrunched by most cleats, but even the standard widths for NB are wider than many cleats, so I ordered the D widths and they fit just fine. The 2E’s probably would have fit as well and would allow me to wear thicker socks more comfortably.

Tournament victory #103, for those counting at home. Without knowing what’s #34 or #36, I’ll rank this one as the 35th best.

Death or Glory Captures Easterns; Defense Allegedly Played

That was the title of a post back in 1994, with the full text at the bottom of this blog. But it's just as relevant today, as Big Ego Ultimate won the Masters Easterns division this weekend, beating Above & Beyond (NY) in the finals, 15-10.

Per Tarr's request on George's blog, I'll rank this one as only about #70 out of 102 tournament victories, because we lost two pool play games and because it rained like a mother on Saturday.

Alex is working on a more detailed post which he won't publish until he sees something out of me, in order to generate a few extra hits for his blog due to being higher on ultimatetalk, so I need to get this out quickly and won't touch on most of the things that happened. So, some random thoughts:

• I think I was the median for the age for players who played for us this weekend, so even for Masters, we were an old team.
  
• Playing against Pittsburgh, Bim tried to throw a backhand, got hacked pretty good and couldn't get the throw off, stutter-stepped and then threw the pass anyway, calling a foul at some point. A guy off the mark called a travel on the stutter-step, even as he heard the foul call. John Bar starts to go ballistic about it. Before it could get out of hand, I interject that it's a legitimate call but also a pussy call, and this resolved the situation for everyone except for the guy who thought I called him a pussy (I didn't; love the sinner, hate the sin).
  
• I had a sweet 10 yard beach throw that should have been the backbreaker in that Pittsburgh game, but John Bar (of all people!) didn't expect it and couldn't get to it, they went down and scored, scored again, etc., until finally we turned it at double game point and lost (but not by so much that we had to play the pre-semis). This ties to two blog entries. Besides the obvious one about junk throws, I never would have been in position to throw the pass if not for the post about the Cut of Death. I cut up the line for a leading pass, but decided to catch it early and ward off any potential crippling injuries instead of milking it into the end zone, as I normally would have done. Speaking of junk throws, I threw a pass from my knees on Saturday at practice, after the briefest of hesitations. It was the right thing to do there.
  
• I was surprised to discover that Tiina Booth has been a devoted blog-reader, and so took the opportunity to discuss the concept of junk throws. As you all should know, she coaches Amherst High and has a book on coaching ultimate coming out soon. We discussed the difficulties of allowing "junk throws", which should really be in a player's repertoire if he wants to be great. But kids (and adults?) will throw art at every opportunity if allowed to. She felt that this latter fact was so important and came up so much more frequently that she had to institute the "no high backhand" rule, and they were thinking of making "no style" the theme of this summer's NUTC camps. I think she agreed that there are times that a high backhand or a push pass or whatever is indeed the best throw, but I didn't get a chance to pin her down on under what specific circumstances are needed(or how precocious a player had to be) in order for it to be allowable.
  
• I was somewhat surprised that we were able to play with all that rain, but if anything the fields were a little hard. I shudder to think of what they'll be like later in the season after a month without rain.
  
• I was happy to escape without a fatigue-related injury. I ran a little too hard at morning DoG practice on Saturday and went into my afternoon games already tired, then played all 25 points in our opening game on Sunday (we had 7-9 players), then had semis and finals. But I'm ok, thanks.
  

That's it.

Article:
Death or Glory withstood their first challenges of the spring in
returning the Easterns' championship to Boston for the first time
since 1983. The boys of big ego ultimate edged out Ring of Fire 19-17
in a spirited final. DOG (formerly Death and Glory) (formerly Earth
Atomizer) brought out a zone in running off four goals in a row to
pull away in the second half against the hard-running Carolinians.
This was the fifth tournament victory in five tries this spring for
Corky and the Tea Party.

"Why don't you guys play any defense?" In ending New York's 10 year
victory streak at this tournament, the "Scourge of the East" seemingly
walked on both sides of the disc, playing a shifting-a-lot-tempt-them
-into-throwing-it-away defense and a one-dump-sometimes-two-only-one
-guy-cutting-be-patient-except-when-you're-hucking offense. Boston
also struggled against a tough Rage (Philadelphia) team in the
semifinals before a heavily partisan Pennsylvanian crowd. Rage played
strong throughout the whole game, and had the disc at 17 all, but
couldn't capitalize and fell by two, 19-17.


This tournament, perhaps, marks the end of an era. Five Mid-Atlantic
teams qualified for the quarterfinals, three for the semis, in a
tournament that has been dominated by Northeast teams for the last
decade. The NY, NY based We Smoke Weed squad seemed disillusioned,
losing to Ottawa in pool play before being completely overmatched by
DOG, 15-8, in their earliest exit from a tournament since, well, ever.
Additionally, only DOG from the three Big Brother spinoff teams
managed to qualify for the quarterfinals. Whether the winds of change
will blow into Lexington, Kentucky, this fall remains to be seen.

New Jersey invite

I was waiting for Alex to post first so that mine would appear at the top of ultimatetalk, but he needs the hits more than I, so I’ll get started.

DoG won the NJ Invite this weekend, besting the hosts 17-16 in the final. Alex and I drove down together, just like the old days, except that his two kids accompanied us as far as his parents’ house in Westchester County, and in addition to ultimate, we discussed potty-training, child sleep patterns, and the like.

On the various fronts:
1. I was reasonably satisfied with my performance. Many deep cuts, some of them thrown to me. Couldn’t get to two of them despite sprawlout bids, caught the others, most of them flat-footed. Melvin pointed out last year that I catch more hucks while on the ground than anyone else, perhaps trying to insult me, but unwittingly complimenting me on my fine reads. No embarrassing moments that might lead me to question whether I should still be playing. Devastating popping/clambusting against Pike. More than held my own against Hoagie Haven. And, most importantly, a devastating payback against one of the Pike guys.
Trey from the sideline: Hey, who's got Parimello?
Me: That's Parinella.
[passage of time]
Me: Nice game, Troy.
2. Best performance from a class of tryouts since ever. Usually at the first spring tournament, half of the tryouts are of such quality that I can comfortably forgo learning their names without fear of later embarrassment. Not so this time.
3. Introduced "Rules Corner" in which I discuss an arcane rule that I do not want to see anyone on my team calling but that we should be prepared to have called against us. (Gotta be ready for Bravo, after all.) Forch preempts me by making such a call himself. Someone directly to the right of the person directly to the left of me screams out, "Pussy call!"
4. Questioned the cult status of Hoagie Haven. Sure, it was good, but didn't appear to be worthy of the "if you’re anywhere near Princeton, you gotta stop here" name. I’m sure the Anchorman crowd is going to respond that I once again do not know what I’m talking about, but I just have to learn to live with their innocence.
5. Very interesting tiebreaker possibilities going into the final games on Sunday. It was a 7 team round robin with 4 games on Saturday. After the first round on Sunday, the top four teams were done with each other so all tie-breakers had been worked out. DoG had lost to Pike, Pike had lost to Twisted Metal, TM had lost to DoG and Potomac, and Potomac had lost to DoG and Pike. Each had one game left (over two rounds) against one of the bottom three teams. The finals would be DoG v Pike, unless DoG won, Pike lost, Twisted won, and Potomac lost, in which case it would be DoG v Twisted. The Potomac game was scheduled for the third round, which is when the finals were also tentatively scheduled for, assuming that Potomac wasn’t going to be in the finals. They couldn’t, as it turned out, but if they lost they wouldn’t have been included in the tiebreaker, which could have changed the way the criteria played out. DoG was in the Bnogo-like position of it being in our best interests to lose our last game, since our big point differential victories against TM and Potomac would have guaranteed their elimination. But we won, and Pike won, setting up the earlier final.
6. We lucked out on the weather. It poured all weekend in New England, but Saturday in NJ was 70 and sunny, and Sunday was in the 60s and overcast but dry. I packed expecting to be miserable in the rain, and so had to settle for being grumpy that it wasn’t the bad weather that I packed for. It’s tough being a curmudgeon.

1999 Worlds

You know what, 1999 Worlds was pretty freakin’ sweet, too.

Mooney, Seeger, Greff, Lenny, John Bar, Cork, Coop, Bim, Jeff Brown, Cameros. That’s a pretty good lineup, I’d say. But they were all sitting at home for this tournament. Instead, we took 8 DoG guys, 5 young Snapple tryouts who had already decided to bail on us, a Japanese import, and two college guys, one of whom hadn’t even qualified for College Regionals.

And we won it all. Even though we were seeded first, I think, quarterfinals was a reasonable goal, in my opinion, because of the above list. Hell, the main reason I attended was to golf (the tournament was in St. Andrews, and Jordan and I played the Old Course and Carnoustie). But we played well enough early on, and better as the week progressed, finishing undefeated in pool play.

In the quarters we played Ring, the first of three straight games on the stadium field. The opening pull hit and rolled out the back of the endzone. As Alex went to walk it up, he was told that he had to play it from the back line, which was the rule for the tournament but which hadn't come up all week. That was a quick break, but we got it back and won it, 15-12, setting up a semis match with the Condors. We had beaten the Condors by 1 and 2 the previous year at Nationals, and would beat them again by 5 later that fall, but they had to rate as the favorites in this game, despite missing their captain Steve Dugan to a broken arm.

But we just smoked them, playing without a care or any sign of fear or anything but pure joy. Our receiver corps of me, Forch, Safdie, Doug, and Taka just shredded them. Corey Sanford covered me a lot, and said proudly afterward, "I just didn't want you to beat me deep. I don't care what else you did." Thanks, Corey, that helped me get off 4 or 5 hucks for scores, plus there were the 3 or 4 other goals I was involved in. But none of them were long catches, congrats. After Jordan threw a no-reason scoober for the final margin in the 15-10 win, we were ecstatic.

The finals the next day was a little less precise due to some rain and that extra fatigue, but we played well enough to beat the Finnish team Liquidisc, 20-18, and revel in our joy. Except for a few summer tournaments, this was the tournament that stands far above the rest for accomplishment with what we had and what we expected. If you can just ignore who isn't there and who the other team does have, believe in yourselves and play the game you can, you can accomplish far more than what you may have thought possible.