Major League Ultimate. That was the subject line on a recent e-mail that I received.

This should be interesting, after reading it and realizing that I won't be making a million dollars a year anytime soon (at least playing ultimate). I read it again. I am sure most people who read this are familiar w/ Mr. Toad who used to post a couple times on rsd.

His new idea for a tourney this year was to split the country into 4 regions, Northwest, Southwest, Southeast, and my region, Northeast. Within these 4 regions, one captain would be nominated and they would recruit players within in their region. The NE captain is from Pike and that is who e-mailed me. Looking at the list of possible teammates, it is hard not to get excited and interested.

One of the stumbling blocks for me is the fact they do not have a weekend (or a place) set yet. There is still a possibility I would go, but I have a very limited # of weekends this summer.

As I read on, there will be refs. This interested me. I do not think that ultimate should go to refs. I do like the call your own stuff. I do appreciate that everything is dictated by the players. But that is not why I play. That is not what drew me to the sport. The no ref idea is something that I have really grown to appreciate and enjoy, but I am not against refs. Especially, since I have never played in a game with refs.

I would love the opportunity to play ultimate w/ referees. Just call me curious. I feel like I can't really rip the idea of refs without playing in a tourney with them first.

The hope of this tourney is, I think, to spark interest in a Ultimate Frisbee league with $$$ + refs. When the idea was first pitched to me a while back, sub zero was in the same division as Sockeye, Furious, and Truck. I assume it would work where you would play teams in your division all in the same weekend somewhere.

At the very least, I would love the opportunity to play with some other solid players from other good teams. I am a fan of whoring myself out for a weekend occassionally.

But could one weekend really, somehow, generate that much interest and get ultimate to get sponsored and even on ESPN6? Are refs really the only thing missing from ultimate being bigtime? Anytime there is golf on tv and my mom is there, she says "ultimate is much more exciting than this".

I have my doubts that this could lead to pro-ultimate, but playing with the best against the best could be fun.

Well, I don't want to talk about worlds... (Zero will be going but not a full team and maybe some alumni and maybe some friends). Too much damn money. And isn't it the farthest city away from the states?

Back to the fall of 97, my junior year. 2nd year of frisbee. We had a ton of kids out to tryouts that year. We had 2 fields full, which was huge for Michigan at the time. Eventually we make cuts and basically 3 freshman stick, Hales, Graves, and Rook. These guys would help form a solid core over the next couple of years. Also, we picked up a couple of graduates who could throw, Reiks and Bischoff from Fla and Duke respectively. 5 new guys added to a roster of ~13 downfield cutters/defenders.

The fall was mainly practicing. We would finish 2nd in our own tournament to Big Ass OU. Mainly, the Ohio U. college team but they added Geile, Ricky, and Mike V for the finals. That made the game very fun and we lost by 1 or 2 late. We made our first venture to the OU Halloween tourney. That is/was a fun one day tourney. Lots of games and a pretty fun time to hang out around the town. I believe this was J + myself stealing the polaroid pic of our team from the bum downtown. I mean we needed that $5. Cower in the hotel parking lot.

We also took our first RV trip to Knoxville. We had 12 or 13 guys pile into the RV and head down to Knoxville. Good times. If you got a decent drive ahead of you and about 13 guys or so, this is the way to go. You get one hotel room for Saturday nite and everything is good. TV + hearts the whole time. J would not let me drive, so I did plenty of drinking. If I recall, this was the same weekend Wu was assigned #8 b/c Michigan beat PSU 34-8 and also the same weekend as Nebraska "beating" Missouri to stay undefeated. The "kick" game if you will.

As far as playing ultimate there, UT and CLemson were the 2 best teams there. So not a great tourney, but good for us. 2 things stand out: 1. Rook - a rookie throwing a hammer for a goal. Unbelieveable to most of us. And 2. we did lose to Clemson, led by Matty L of Bravo fame, on Saturday. I think it was double gamepoint and Jaegs threw a hammer away against a zone. Somewhat "anti-clutch". Everything else is a blur.

So, we were pretty pumped for the college season. So much so, some of us shaved our heads for the first indoor practice. Of course, my parents visited the next day. My mom was psyched.

We would win our indoor tourney, all Great Lakes teams as well as a AA club team.

2nd in the all nite Cleveland Indoor (mainly club, all co-ed tourney) in which I sprained my ankle before the tourney and threw a scoober to Karl for the game. Unfortunately, there was a wall in the way. The drive home from Cleveland to Ann Arbor at 6 am is usually a good time, but this one was very fun.

Then we ventured outdoors, losing to ND in the quarters of Artic Vogue, a cold tourney in Cincinnati. Half club/half college tourney.

Over spring break, we played at mudbowl, again another RV trip. I remember losing to a Dave Beller club team in quarters. And playing a bunch of bad college teams on Saturday. Getting the RV stuck in the mud somewhere in Birmingham.

Finishing 2nd to Iowa (we lost to them twice) in the mudbowl of Whitesmoke. Saturday started out with about a foot or 2 of snow on the ground. Everyone showing up right before gametime and playing a game that resembled ultimate. Rook was "not in condition" to play. By the end of the day, it was a mud pit. This meant only one thing, you tried to make everyone layout. I think we killed the fields next to Stepan Center. Sunday, we avenged our early season loss to ND in the semis, but lost to Iowa in the finals.

Oh yeah, wasn't this when Andrew Feller officially started to not play with us? Some excuse about a girl or something.

Next tourney was Clemson. This was the biggest tourney we had every attended. Back in the day, this tourney was huge. Not Easterns (or Centex) huge, but still CUT, Madison, Colorado, UCSD, etc... were there. But I can't remember a single ultimate related thing. This tournament is a complete blur, I will take the 5th on this one. We did steal the keg from the party. And by we, I mean other people. Apparently, they got chased in the woods for a very long time. This weekend is summarized for me by "I just puked, so I am solid". That is all. I do remember that we played Clemson and lost to them first game on Sunday.

After Clemson was Sectionals. We still weren't very good, but the Michigan section was extremely bad. I recall doing sprints for every point we were scored on. There is a picture out there of Pfil with a slightly gratuitous bid. I really wish I could find that picture. That would be a fun one to post.

Now, after sectionals, we weren't stupid. We did not think we were definitely going to make nationals, but we thought we had a chance. Iowa was obviously better than us. Plus CUT and Colorado. Oberlin was always good. Madison, Ohio, ND, Winona... But regionals were in Ann Arbor that year. We thought that might help us out.

Regionals is a little better in my memory, but the weekend was pretty crazy. That will be my next post.

3 time winter league champs! That is up there with 5 time Michigan College Sectional Champions.

We pulled it out either 10-8 or 11-9. Not sure which, but we did win 2. I think 11-9

We started on O, after a deep turn, I point blocked John John near our goalline and then caught the goal. We then had a chance to go up 2-0, but a throw to me hit the 18 foot mark on the wall. They tie it up.

Not sure what next, no turns to 3-3. We then went on a 2-0 run, to go 5-3. But they answered to tie it back up at 6s. There was a 2 or 3 hell points in there, in those points there were 3 hammers that hit a very small wire that runs across the width of the gym. Pretty amazing, since that has happened all of 2 times the rest of the year + the indoor tourney (at least that I have seen). Oh and Enge managing to beat someone deep. Still amazing after all those years.

Their strategy of hitting the wall and wire and ceiling was not working well.

We again take a 2 goal lead after a long o point, but we still win it after my 2nd point block of the day.

But if there is one thing that I have learned about team Rocket, is they do not quit. Severt threw a low invert for a goal and made a nice grab deep. Next thing you know, we are tied at 9s (maybe 8s)....

Hmmm, I forget how we scored our last O point. I am sure it was nice.

Our next point, which became the last point, saw them take a while to work it up near their goalline. I believe a poach d, a couple throws and I hit Robin deep for the game. And the song "We [still] Are the Champions" plays. A great way to start March Madness.

Of course, it dumped a foot of snow on us soon after. That's good, it was too early to get exciting for outdoor frisbee.

For those of you who do not know, Muffin is an asshole, but the rest of the Hodags aren't. Seriously, Hector you need to tell your boys how to use (or not use) rsd.

The tourney started yesterday. I love it, nothing beats the NIT. Go Blue! #1 seed baby.

Conversation I just had at work-
Me: "Man, I thought this reaction was faster"
Labmate: "Which bottle did you use?"
Me (pointing to bottle that I used): "This one."
Labmate: "Oh, that one does not work so well."
Me: "What do you mean it does not work so well? How do you know?"
Labmate: "I used it last week, my reaction did not work. I should have thrown it out." --Incidentally, it is 1 am and I am kind of bitter about this--

Currently, I am pittsnogled.

First, to those of you interested in Sub Zero tryouts, please contact me at tmurray at chem dot umn dot edu. Tryouts start the first weekend of May.

Second, Wanna Buy A Duck squeaked our semi finals last week in a 11-10 victory of a Flaming Moe sort of team. We started out down 0-2 w/ them scoring easily on the first point and then RG throwing is usual forehand into the track on our first O point. After that, we tied it back up at 2s. And eventually gained the lead at 6-4 after a couple of goals by our gals, my 3rd footblock of the season, and laser lefty break by CY. From there, Dave Klink of the opposition put on a second effort clinic has he made a couple of grabs near the sidelines and in the endzone to help keep his team alive. I expect a long post on rsd about the pros and cons of second effort catches soon.

I believe they tied it up at 6s, but our d would return to space it back open to 10-8. Forcing a couple of hammers to space. And by space, I mean empty space. We had a couple of chances to end the game there at win 11-8. And bad backhand into the endzone and a drop by me near the sideline allowed them to stay in the game at 10-9. I will blame the drop on me trying to stay upright rather than falling down on the ground. At 10-9, we would huck it away and they would march it down to tie it up at 10s. This would be the last point, although the other game had stopped roughly 10 minutes before that. But we kept playing. We receive and again turn one over near the goalline. This time we are able to shut them down and a RG break mark forehand to myself ends the game 11-10 and keeps our hope alive for a 3-peat. I am not sure what to compare that to, maybe a title run in the NBDL?

Next week, our game is against Rocket, the wily vets that we often face in this game. Because this will be a tough game in a tough guy place, it is no longer a game. It is a tilt. In case you did not know, whenever a game is big and more than a game, it becomes a tilt. Just list to ESPN, sports radio, or anything else. I hope you understand. Incidentally, nice choke by casual backhand. A couple of their best players did not even show. Scared under pressure...

Third, Lucinda Williams in concert = very cool. She is doing an acoustic tour and that was a good time. I just found out she wrote the song Passionate Kisses and I no longer feel embarrassed to like that song.

Fourth, politics alert. Minnesota caucus tonite, I am going and I hope to support this guy. Anyone who lives in Minneapolis please check this site out.

This Friday will be huge on the pathway to a winter league championship, the semifinals. Coming in as the 2 seed, we pulled out a squeaker last week against sparkly pick-up team. I feel it was fairly decisive, but not quite sure. I stopped paying attention after I rolled my ankle a bit near the end of the game. Stupid old running shoes.

I showed rust as I have not played in awhile, electing instead to hang out with LT the past couple of Fridays. My first throw was a backhand about 5 yards too short to t-dub. After that, everything was ok. Until my ankle rolled. But I am an ultimate player, I would go back into the game.

Anywho, we play one of the Flaming Moe teams. I think we beat them one of the times I was not there, but not sure. So it should be a heated battle.

The other semis has the other team from Northfield alumni vs. a well decorated veteran minneapolis team. Everyone wants to rematch of us and other alumni team in the finals, but I would never look past an opponent.

(Incidentally, gametime is at 9 pm for those of you 6'2 or higher).