timmy's blog

My weekend in Sarasota

2009-03-04T19:09:00.002-07:00

Although most everyone knows what went down, I will give my take.

Flew into Tampa late Friday night. Since it seemed I was the only one without other peeps from my team/city/etc, I was fortunate enough to slide into a "Slow White" car. We coeders stick together. After waiting for a bag that never arrived by someone else in the car (first thought: sweet, this guy will never make the team...), we were out of TPA around 11.

The usual nite of barely sleeping/thinking too much. Off to the continental breakfast where of course I ran into several ultimate players. Off to the fields and the usual Sarasota in October whether. Nice and sunny and windy. BUT we played on the other side of the road. Crazy. I did not know that even existed.

Anyway, after the usual throwing around, we get an intro to Coach and then active warmup from a member of the selection committee Mr. Wilmington. Split into 4 teams, then right into our first drill, a version of "Superstriker" if you ever played on Michigan/Sub Zero with me. The difference, there was no need for motivation. The focus and intensity was there from everyone right from the first throw. No need to worry about laziness, b/c if you were lazy, it would stuck out.

Next up, the "stations". 3 conditioning/agility/speed type things along with one stop with the coach to discuss briefly what he wanted to see. First up, a triangle of cones where you say "Stalling One Up" shuffle to the next cone say "Stalling One Up" shuffle to the 3rd cone and say "Stalling One Up" then shuffle back to the first cone say "stalling one up" and then back around the cones in reverse order. Do that twice. Not too bad.

Station 2, the "tennis ball cone drill". A cool agility drill that I feel many more club teams will be doing this summer and fall. It is a bit hard to describe in words, but basically 2 rows of 3 cones ~3 yards apart. 5 small cones have a tennis ball on them. One of the middle ones does not. Bascially, you moved a tennis ball from one cone to one that does not have one. Such that each cone does not have a tennis ball at one point. A lot of shuffling and running backwards. Apparently, I am very bad at putting a tennis ball down on a cone with my left hand while running backwards.

Station 3, talk to coach. He laughs at how I finished 2nd to his team at Mars like 3 years in a row. And then tells me to try and be a cutter and create from downfield. Advice that I tried to follow, but would handle a bunch over the weekend (but I still feel I created downfield :))

Station 4, 70 yard timed sprints. 2 of them. I supposedly ran 8.0. I will take it, but not sure I buy it. THe fastest was something like 7.3ish. Not sure if anyone was THAT fast there, but relatively, there were people there easily half a second faster than me. Gut check, what am I doing here?

After that, I believe we began playing. A couple of games to 3. One of them went longer. My team was pretty darn good, mainly because we got in a comfort zone together very fast. Moved the disc quickly. And well, we had a bunch of talent to. I felt I did alright, it was good for me as I played with the one guy that I had played with before (Mr. Former Teammate). That was definitely part of the reason that I handled a little bit, because he and I play the exact same way. And it was ez to handle and move the disc. And we had plenty of really good cutters, so I just wanted to distribute. I am not sure if we lost any of our 3 games, one of the games was tight, the others we controlled them. A good sign.

After that, lunch.

After sitting with Mr. Other Cross COuntry Runner, we decided that half a panera sandwich was the best call. And I think it was.

Now, during our last game, I got in a bit of collison going for a dump and my ankle rolled a bit. During the warmup after lunch, my ankle was super tender. And here is where doubt creeps in. The worst possible thing, injury during tryouts. So, I run over to the trainer and get a quick tape job. This had to work, I kept telling myself. I have pretty good ankles, so I was hoping to just shake it off. After a couple of 2-[4-(2-methylpropyl)phenyl]propanoic acid's, I went into our first post lunch drill, the triangle of death.

Basically, one thrower runs back and forth getting swing from a stationary thrower and then thrower to in cuts then out cuts. A great drill.

I went first because I wanted to test my ankle and get it out of the way. And I was horrible. Definitely thinking too much about the ankle. Near the end, I did a little better as exhuastion from the drill crept in and I stopped thinking about the ankle.

At the end of my throwing, I remember walking back to the line going "Oh Fu$k" and then remembering that I am a pretty good player. And that this was my chance to play for Team USA. I can take the easy way out and let the injury take over. OR, I can fight through it. Basically, the Ibuprofen kicked in and my ankle felt alright the rest of the day. I am one to really try and make my pain the worst if there is going to be pain. So I tried to always plant on my left ankle, just to test. I wanted to prove to myself it would be ok. Of course, it was not bad. It never swelled up. And tryouts continued on.

After that drill, we did another scrimmage where the rule was you had to throw a pass to the opposite gender. A very ineresting concept. We tweaked what we did on O a bit and well, it did not slow us down. This first team I was on played very well together. Good times. The only time this was ever really was an issue for us was after a huck from a girl to a guy, only the 4 guys were downfield. Basically, "Ummm, ladies, one of you has to get down here"

AFter that scrimmage, some more drills. First, a marking drill with 3 other people. Basically, straight up mark with the thrower trying to hit a stationary target. That target then swings it to the third member of the triangle. The marker moves to that person. Repeat. For a minute. Everyone did it twice. First time, no arms. The wind was getting a bit more difficult, so just as hard for the thrower in some directions.

Second drill was another marking drill, but with cutters moving from the middle to the break side. Pretty typical that every team does. I was marked against Mr. Youngest Guy there. Of course, I am the last person throwing. And of course another group is watching me. Of course, I get point blocked on an invert. So, what is the solution? I nutmeg him on the next attempt. It was completed too. I am not sure if that is Team USA material, but it felt good. And now no one remembered that I was pointblocked!

Then we switched to new teams. This team, although still a lot of good players, did not gel right away. The other team did. They won. We struggled.

Ended up with some sprints.

Then finished off my sandwich (smartest decision of the day). Went home, showered, ate at Carabas, hot-tubbed, watch coach play the piano. Went to bed.

I was tired for sure, but not dead. I felt a little more like college when I played ~80% of the points as opposed to zero/flycoons when I played mainly one side of the frisbee and therefore not nearly as much. I was comforted by my thought that I knew I would be fine physcially and fitness wise on Sunday. Now if I was good enough...

I felt I played pretty well. Saturday was definitely my turnover day. I was 1-4 on deeper throws. 2 horrific backhands, that I needed to throw much better in the wind. Instead the wind carried them out too much. My other turn, I threw it just like I wanted, just too far. I missed Ms. Studd, by about half a yard. I was bummed about that. I did not have an "easy" drops, but missed a disc that was rising over my head on an in cut. I thought I had, but could feel my fingers slip off the disc. And I threw a disc a bit too high to someone and she basically did the same thing that I did on my drop. I was bummed about that turn as I totally made a big pump fake to force the d to guard the deep and hear Ms. Speedy came down the middle perfect. It could have been caught, but I could have thrown a much better throw. Oh well...

I was happy with my o for the most part. I did not think I had terrible decisions, just some bad throws. I played ok on D. I got a foot block and I believe a help deep d. I stopped some in cuts. I helped out on some deep cuts. And I got beat back to the disc a couple of times. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nor did I feel overmatch (and I did not feel like anyone was overmatched by me...).

So my feeling for Saturday was, I presented what I can do. I can be a primary offensive guy. I can also be a secondary option that creates space, is patient, and works the break side/continuation very well. I felt that was what I was doing the best, breaking the mark. Continuation cuts. And keeping the disc moving from side to side. I was able to help the thrower whenever he/she was in trouble. And continually gave my team options. But I never dominated. I think by the end of the day, I was looking to fill the role as #5 or 6 on the field, not necessarily #1. ALthough that attitude did kick in occasionally.

ON Sunday, the weather was not so nice. Definitely the threat of rain. And then it started to rain and it was supposed to be bad. It never got horrible. Good news for us.

The ankle was wrapped again, but no longer a problem. I was bummed that I let myself stress out about it so much when it happened.

Anyway, active warmup. A drill or 2. And then more playing. New teams again. I think I lost both scrimmages on Sunday, but I felt I played much better. One should have been a turn as I tried to throw a forehand, upline, upwind, around a defender. Instead, I hit the defender, but the bounce was caught by a different teammate. One miscommunication defender, where I thought the dump was going upline and well, he didn't. But besides that, I felt I played pretty well.

Oh I forgot a cool defensive cutting drill we did. Both on Saturday and in between scrimmages on Sunday. O and D start in the middle of the field. 2 5 x 5 boxes on the front corner of each endzone. The O could cut to either box. Instead of the cut being either an in cut (to one cone) or a deep cut (to the other cone), there were throwers stationed about 15 yards from each box. So basically, cutting either way would be an in cut. A little confusing to write about, but a ton of fun to watch. Well, maybe not watch me do this, as I did not have the recovery speed of some of the guys. Particularly 2 guys, Mr. I Got Nutmegged by Tim and Mr. Tall and Skinny and Fast. These 2 guys put on a defensive clinic. So much so, that I made sure to watch anytime there were playing defense. I got close twice, never hit the disc, but on both times I was close, the O did not catch the disc. I will take what I can get.

The 2nd scrimmage on Sunday went well too. We lost it, but it was a tight game. We played a 1-3-3 and I was the chase. Great move by me. Remember when you play against a team with really good throws to not be the chase in 1-3-3. I think they threw 40 plus throws. I almost got the last one on a layout. I believe the receiver bobbled it. But it was still fun. I look marking in the zone. FUn stuff.

We ended with a MTF with minis and then another sprinting drill that was also a race with the other half of the men...

All in all, an unbelieveable weekend of frisbee. I was super psyched to be apart of it. Got to play with a ton of fun, awesome frisbee players. SOme that I have wanted to play with for a long time. Others that by the end of the weekend, I wanted a shot to play with.

As for myself, I am happy how I played. I could have turned it over less. I could have gotted more ds. But I did not play terrible. I did not make horrible decisions. I never felt like I got totally burned on d. So yeah, ok.

I definitely went for the angle of good teammate, solid decisions, keep the disc moving, match-up against anyone and not lose the battle (or at least beat him more than he beats me). I was vocal on the line, off the line, on the field, etc. Basically, i was me. There were a lot of alpha dogs/primary cutters/etc. And probably better suited for that than me, but I felt what I can add is someone to create space, keep the disc moving, and play solid team d.

So if they want that out of me, I showed it to them. If not, I completely understand. There are so many teams that they could create out of these 2 weekends. I feel I could add a lot to many of those teams. But there are even more teams that could be created that does not involve me. And I understand that. I have tried out 2 other times for teams. Once with Truck in 97 and I felt that I knew I was going to make it. And Zero in 01. And I felt like I knew I was going to make it.

This is different. I would love to be a part of this team, but am I really one of the best options? I don't know. I think I am. But after this week, there are like 34 other guys who could say that too. This team is going to be awesome.

As far as others, I will not comment specifically, but I would say there is one woman there that NEEDS to be on the team. And really thinking about it, I would definitely choose 2 girls and 1 guy (besides me :)) from this camp. Not to say, that the team would be horrible without those 3. But those 3 left the biggest impression on me from the camp.

We'll find out soon.

SOOOOO that is the frisbee portion of the story, stay reading for how I got back to Brevard.

After we get done playing, I check my cell. My flight has been cancelled. Uh oh. Evenutally get to TPA in enough time to wait in line for 2 and a half hours to see what the deal is. I was flying through ATL and well there was snow. Luckily, Mr. Oldest Guy at the Tryout also had a Delta flight through ATL. So I let him cut and we hung out. When it was our turn (~ 5pm), we find out there is no way to leave TPA until Tuesday.... All flights on Monday are completely booked. Supposedly, every seat is filled.

So we decide, how about flying out of ATL? He can make it to his destination and well I can drive from there. So, he gets an early Mon morning flight and we decide to rent a car. Road trip!

We start to find a rental car. First, $300. We talk them down to $200. Then a quick call to my sister who pricleines a car for $100. Interestingly enough, we got Budget who earlier claimed not to have a rental office in Asheville. But they did. While we are crossing the Ts, I see Ms. Stanford at an adjacent rental car place trying to get a car. SHe was going to Orlando, I ask her to join us, why not? It is not that far out of the way. She excepts the offer. And By 6:30 we are out of the airport.

Unfortunately, Mr. Oldest Guy at Tryouts had left his cell phone in Sarasota, so we drive down there, pick it up and then hit Orlando.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. We both took turns sleeping and hanging out. We were in ATL by 4:30ish.

At this point, I knew Brevard was ~3 hours away. I wanted to get out of ATL before any sort of rush hour. And I knew I would have to take at least one nap break. So I took off and got just short of the SC border. The roads were fine and was excied to be getting back to see my fam, but also I knew I had to work on Monday. I stopped at a Denny's took a quick snooze. And then, got started again. Now the worst part of the trip. Hands down. ON the stretch of I-85 in SC that I drove, I saw no less than 8 accidents. One with a SUV on fire. Another with a semi jack-knifed across all 3 lanes. Another with 2 semis just stopped in the middle of the freeway. And at least 50 cars on the side on the road. Not good times. The roads were slick at times, but man, this was ridiculous. Needless to say, it took over 4 hours to get the last 100 miles... I was home at noon. After hoping to get home ~8:30...

Ugh, but I made it home. I am still really glad I went. And I glad that I road-tripped back home. It definitely had a college feel to it.

Good times.

I am a national champion whore

2008-11-08T18:07:00.002-07:00

This season was a bit different than every other season that I ever played. First of all, it really just lasted 3 days at nationals. I did not try to get in great shape, my weekly workout routing consisted of at least 5.5 miles of biking (to and from work). A couple of 20-30 minutes runs a week. One day of less than stellar pickup frisbee. No track workouts. No speed, plyos, etc. Basically, I would consider myself if good general health. Not in good frisbee shape. But that did not stop me from ending up in Sarasota.

Technically, I guess my season started sometime in late August when I was put on the Flycoons roster. I told them I was not going (no vacation days to use at work until 09) to nationals. Then a couple of weeks later they told me I had to pay my UPA dues by Sectionals. Although I *knew* I was not going, I still paid them. Then I spoke with them after their 2nd place finish at regionals and they wanted me to end up in Sarasota. I laughed, why? A better finish at regionals this year. Better performances at nearly all tourneys. I did not seem like a necessary piece. In fact, it was fairly obvious that they were better off. A little bit of e-mailing on the Monday after regionals. And then riding my bike to work on Tuesday, I decided that I was going.

It has been a bit of a rough transition to western North Carolina. The usual moving stuff. Adjusting to a new place. A house that needs some love. And just normal day to day stuff that all of a sudden a couple of days of frisbee in the sun on the beach seemed like the right thing to do.

So my Thursday started like any normal nationals Thursday. Waking up early. Of course, I was still in Brevard and not in Sarasota. This is how bad of a whore I was, I did not show up to the first day of nationals. As you can tell, I was not the most committed person on the roster. But I went into work early so I could bag out a little early and catch a plane. 2 plane rides, 1 major delay on the plane, renting a car with 2 exhausted kids under 4 and I was finally in Sarasota by 12:30 am on Friday.

Thursday was of course spent watching the score reporter from work. Basically, would I be going down there to play frisbee and try to win. Or would I be going down there to drink and socialize. When I left, the Flycoons had won the first 2 games, basically giving them a very good shot at the power pools. After I did not hear from anyone for a bit, it was obvious they had lost the last game. Luckily, we were not screwed by point diff, but we would be heading up in the power pool 0-1 having to face Shazam and then ACS.

I was picked up at McDonalds so my fam could have our car and hang out on the beach all day and get ready for Halloween. I stepped onto the dew soaked fields and it felt like home. It felt liked I had been playing all year.

The first step was to introduce myself to our team. Although I played with the Flycoons last year, they had been aggressive in the offseason and picked up several people that I did not know. When it was time to play, it was against the defending national champs Shazam Returns. We could stay with these guys for about a half last year and then they would blow by us. They were deeper, more prepared and more focused than us last year. So I was at least interested to see how we would play these guys.

It was tight early. We traded breaks early to about 3s. And then I finally got to go in. I was not sure how much I would be playing, but I knew it would be on d. Which, especially early, would be great. That would be a great way to get back to playing frisbee. My first point I felt like it was going to go one of two ways, either really well or just awful. If it was the latter, I had already told myself to take off my cleats, grab a beer, and begin cheering. If it was the former, well, start trying to take other people's p.t.

We were pulling upwind in the usual cross/upwind that Sarasota offers. I was guarding the dump when a throw upfield was turned over, I spent a couple seconds cherry picking waiting for Will to pick up the disc. Once he did, I took off and the huck went up. Catch just short of the goal and then an easy goal thrown. Ahhhhhh, just like old times.

I forget what the score was, but we eventually took half 8-5ish. And roled from there. I started to play more as we won the game 15-9. This was perfect for me. I was playing d. And going deep, I think getting 2 or 3 deep balls. When we did get the disc on a turn, our o did not take long to convert. So not much throwing in the wind by me. Perfect. I foot blocked a woman for the first time. Check. No turns. A d or 2. A lot of running in the cup of the zone. And made a bad call that the observer upheld. (Pull rolled out of bounds, one of their teammates stopped it by the line and they ran to it. I thought that was illegal. I was of course wrong. And the observer and Shazam both let me know. I apologized and promised not to get in anymore rules arguments the rest of the weekend.)

So we were now 1-1 in our power pool as were the other 3 teams. Basically, we could still anywhere from 1st to 4th (not comforting). But if we won, no matter what we were in the top 2 (that is good). So while some tried to figure out the scenarios, I tried to focus on the fact that if we won, we were in the quarters. Plus, we were playing a team that just won a double game point game. And they were from the cental region. I felt confident.

This game started out 2-2 and then went to 12-2. The game was pretty much over b/c well they seemed to not fully invest this game. Several of their main stays were not on the field and therefore, we just had to get to 15 without embarassing ourselves too much. I tried to play as much as I could in order to get back in the flow of things. We won, 15-3. And won our pool so we would play in the quarters against a team in the pre-quarters. One turn for the day, a less than perfect scoober to Emily on the upwind goalline. Of course, I was reminded about that all day b/c I was the only willing to try anything upside-down...

I did not stick around for too long as it was Halloween and wanted to try and get my kids to trick or treat. Unfortunately, naps got in the way. We would trick or treat at the flycoons castle, but that was about it. We were all still tired from the previous day travels. After a dip in the hot tub, I went to bed.

Saturday morning quarters. Against Slow White. They looked different from last year. Younger and less experienced. It was windy, so I considered that a good thing.

And really, this game was the same as the first 2. Our O a little shaky at start, but always holding serve. The d taking a couple of points to really get going. It was either 3s or 4s. But the half ended 8-4. We were sparked by a huge d by Kat near our goalline (then it was not until after the game I found out she used to play on Slow White. It pays to know your teammates). From there we marched on, I think the final was 15-6. It was a cool feeling to be going to the semis. Although it was not a cool feeling to feel like my throws were a bit lacking. As opposed to Friday, I was around the disc more on Saturday. Whether this was a conscious decision to play me with less handlers or not, it involved less handlers. And well, 2 turns in this game. Both on high stalls which I misread what the dump was doing and then tried to get creative to avoid the stall (a hammer that got lost in the wind and a huck that was too short). Both times it was obvious that I had not played much with the handlers I was in with. Hopefully, that was not going to be exposed.

On the bright side, our O was playing very well. IN the 3 games I played as a flycoon, they had only been broken once. Finished out games strong and made good decisions. Our d was able to generate turns with both zone and man. And also we were able to convert fairly clean. All good things going into semis. My experience with coed is fairly limited, but I felt that really we could win. And really, it appeared there was no reason not too. The team seemed to be playing well. Everyone seemed to enjoy their role (I mean, I had not played all year, and there did not seem to be any major complaints. Or at least not obvious ones). But I guess, when you are always winning, things are easy. I am not sure we were every behind in any of these games.

We get to play ACS in the semis, which is good b/c we crushed them yesterday. Of course, they would be playing all their stars more so we had the usual this is a good team they will be better speech.

And well, they were. 4-4. I think we played 3 out of the 4 points in zone and that did not work. Eventually, switching out of it into person. We got them. I don't remember anything particularly awesome about anyone's play, just a lot of pressure. I do remember being in one point where it seemed like they made a lot of passes and did not go anywhere before we forced a turn. And then scored. So it was pretty cool. I don't think I got a d or scored or assisted. I do remember a high stall invert to Scott that everyone seemed to like, so I will mention that. So yeah, we take half 8-4.

The 2nd half, we appeared to be more tired. Our legs were spent a little on O and D. And #25 on their team definitely stepped up his game deep. And more some reason we challenged him a bit going deep. Not the smartest of decisions. They brought it back to 12-10. Our d could not convert. And our O had played a couple of longs points (although they were only broken once or twice in the 2nd half).

So I play my first, and only, O point of the tourney. And we have to receive going upwind. We turn it early, but they turn it right back. I was a cutter and found myself trapped on the wrong side of the field. Meaning their were cutters that I could not get around to start my cut. After a timeout by Markie, I felt like I could get more involved. I get a comeback cut and we are eventually off to races, particularly me, Markie, and Daph. Working the disc around. Mark over throws an invert to me, but it is perfect to Emily. 13-10. And they seem spent. Our next d point, we had some chances, but Pbbbbt. We score on O, much easier this time. 14-11. Last d point, I am in guarding Seiler. And they just look nervous and not confident. More example, I pretty much was letting Seiler have the disc on the first cut, but they did not throw it until he was even with the disc. They play around with the disc and march backward from the brick (ugh that's right we pulled it out of bounds on gamepoint, with them going upwind. Luckily, it did not hurt us). Something happened, quick turn, quick score. Game over. 15-11.

So yeah, we are in the finals against Shazam. Right in the middle of the day (you know when everyone will complain that the open was early and the coed was at lunch. I used to complain about it too, but once you play in the game, you don't care).

Team meeting at 9 and then lights out.

Get there early watch Jam over Ironside. Warm-up and play the finals.

Sloppy the whole first half, as you can appreciate if you watched. The wind was bad, but not awful. I have played in worse Sarasota winds. But I guess the nerves. We try zone and person early with little success. My first D point, we have a chance to convert, but I miss Emily deep on a really shitty forehand deep. (turnover #4 on the weekend) At 4s or 5s, we get the only break of the first half (I think there was only one break, at least that is all I remember). It was not pretty. I believe 17 turns. I had a drop (turn #5). A punt (turn #6). And I feel like another one... At least one injury sub, maybe 2. I was happy with my d, but obviously less than impressed with my o. We start to struggle with the disc near their endzone, not good. After a turn, I just punt it. For no better reason but to give us room. The call timeout right after the punt though. Luckily, they were as dead as us. In the end, our only break of the first half comes on a high stall up the line pass that was macced then greatested and then laid out to catch the goal. So ugly point, but a pretty fun way to score it. Kind of sums of the point quite nicely.

So we take half 8-7 and we will be receiving. Our focus on halftime, trying to play offense better... We are a team that needs the handlers early and often. I felt we were too stagnant behind the disc. It started in the ACS 2nd half and kind of continued into this game. If we were going to win, the handlers had to wake up and get the disc. Instead of throwing upfield and walking to get the disc at count 5, we had to throw the disc and get into position then. The windier it is, the earlier you have to get into position. We were not doing that.

And the 2nd half was a little better. We moved the disc faster and more effectively (I think). I will not try to argue that this half was pristine, but it was much better for us at least. We were able to mix up our zone and person pretty effectively, I think. At least enough to throw them off guard a bit. In the end, I think our depth wore on them. We were really a deep team both men and women. Fast forward, they turn it over on a dump. One throw. Goal. Game. 15-11 we win!

It feels great. I will say it does feel a bit weird since I did not really work terribly hard this year. BUT, everyone on the team went out of their way to include me and that felt great. I really felt like a full member of the team. And really motivated me the whole weekend. I could never shake that feeling that I was stealing p.t. from someone. But I usually feel that anyway and no individual that way. In fact, many people told me that I was playing well. That feels good. And definitely made it feel more rewarding. There was no bitterness and well, they had every reason to be. We were all there to win. I guess I was a bigger part of that then I expected. I am so glad I went and well, it makes me want to get in frisbee shape again so I can play better.

So, why did we win?

Our O was awesome. No 3 point runs. Only broken 4 (maybe 5) times through 5 games. Not bad, especially for co-ed... It definitely allows your whole team to fire up if your offense is scoring. If you can't get the d on the field, you can't win. Part of that reason is most teams use a smaller rotation on o (we were about 11 or 12), so that means the bulk of your players play on defense. If you offense is struggling, a lot of players are on the sideline not playing for awhile. So when they do score, all of them want to play, but they can't. SO you have to play your "best" players. Except they are not as good, because they are cold... And then resentment sets in. And that is when you have p.t. issues. Our offense helped us avoid this.

The ability to create turns with both zone and person. We could change up the d pretty well on teams (really only ACS on Saturday was our zone ineffective). Being able to have multiple defenses that create turns is good on so many levels. I felt the other teams could never predict what we were doing. Besides always forcing home. And that is good.

Depth. We could use at least 16 men without losing much. ANd that was impressive. The flycoon heads did a great job of getting more quality on the team. And everyone was in for it. I loved it. Many handlers. Many cutter defenders. Basically, there was a good chance the person guarding you was somewhat fresh. And motivated to get d so they could get more pt. That is a good feeling to have in your teammates. The trust that if you can't get it done, there are 3 or 4 guys that can do just as well if not better.

So yeah, it was a fun year. And by year, I mean 3 days... Seriously, it was a great time, as Sarasota always is. I am glad that they did not take me off the roster and kept bugging me when I said I was not going. Frisbee is fun. And if you are keeping score, you might as well score more points than the other team....

The Hodag Influence

2008-05-21T20:51:00.004-06:00

It seemed like quite a performance by the Hodags at nationals. I, of course, was not there and only watching online, refreshing occasionally at work. Although I am a Michigan grad and was hoping they would at least hold seed, I must admit to rooting for Wisco as much as Michigan. First, I am a pretty lame alumnus of Michigan, I have not even seen magnUM play since 03 at Mardi Gras. I have never donated any $$$ to the program. Nor could I identify anyone on their team if I saw them without any sort of Michigan stuff.

The Hodags on the other hand I have at least played against or played with over the past couple of years. And really, the last college ultimate player that I have any influence (Shaner, by way of captaining) over played his last game. Before I gush about him, I will gush about the hodags in general. The worst part is, I do not even feel dirty about rooting for them. I used to hate Madison.

First off, they were one of the biggest reasons that Sub Zero became relevant again. After 02, we were in an odd place. Losing most of what people knew as Sub Zero. 03 was definitely rebuilding, we still had plenty of talent, but we went with a pretty stern, you have to commit to us rule. And we tried to focus on getting good, local talent (not just talent living in the area for the fall), but if you were from the Twin City area, we really wanted you.

And for the most part it worked, we had an ok season has we picked up some local kids who would become essential players over the next couple of years (Q from Winona then Madison, Naz from Cloud, Schmzelzeze from Olaf, and Rupp from CUT). Not only were these good players, but they wanted to stay around MInneapolis. Eventually, our inexperience caught up to us and we finished dead last at nationals (although I would try to argue it was not that bad, b/c we lost out on prequarters by a 2 point point diff. But we did finish dead last).

03 also saw us lose control of the region. Truck surpassed us and at times made us look silly throughout the summer and fall. Luckily, everyone was pretty much committed to growing the local talent. We retained most of the team from 03, plus we added a couple more young guns to the mix (Shaner who took the winona/madison route, Berkseth from Olaf, Jeremy from Minny). The well was not dry, but the experience was raw. Many of the guys that we were picking were not from primetime college programs. The big game experience in most central region ultimate is not the same experience that we needed in order to put Zero back to relevance on the national stage. We were in effect teaching everyone how to play solid ultimate, not just for a game or a half. But for a full weekend. Learning how to win the close games. And learning how to be efficient. It was a bit frustrating at times to try and focus on what we needed to do to get better.

Truck was still the regional best, although we played them better. But we were getting more concerned about Madison. After winning in 03, the 03 club Madison team did the best out of the 3 central region teams (please no jokes). Throw into the fact that many of our team never beat the Hodags in college. You can call it arrogance, but it can also be seen as an expectation to win. If you play frisbee at Madison, you expect to win. That cannot be said for a lot of the college frisbee in Minnesota. Core contributors of our team had never beaten the Hodags.

And in 04, the Madison club had a bit of an attitude about them. To me, it seemed that they were playing not only to do well in the fall, but in a way to say, hey we only need Hodags. They knew how to win in college and it seemed like they may have the potential to win some games in the fall. Combining not only their college talent, but keeping some of the more recent alums around, they were a scrappy club team that knew how to play together. And at sectionals, we would split 2 games with them, both going to double game point. They would pull out the finals, making a run late in the game, I believe.

2 weeks later, we would have to beat that at regionals. We lost a close game to Truck in the finals and they had beaten Chicago in the backdoor. But we were too much for them. After being close early, we had a good run, sparked by a trap line/no dump late defense that really took advantage of their inexperience downfield. We took 2nd and they ended up losing the backdoor to Chicago.

And on that day, the seeds were planted for the top Hodags to come play for Sub Zero. Sitting on the sidelines, some of discussed what would ever happen if we were able to cherry pick a couple of Madison guys. Or would a 50/50 combo of Zero + Madison could ever work. I do not remember who threw it out there, but the couple of us there talking about all were interested in it. If we got the right guys, it could work. They needed the experience that we had and the somewhat stability a slightly big city can create. We needed their constant influx of talent, much of which was rooted in the Midwest.

If Madison beats us at regionals, who knows what would have happened. Definitely no combo. It would have fueled the all we need are Hodags attitude. And eventually we may have lost Q + Shaner. Not only did we beat them, but for the first time in a while, we pulled away from them. We won by 5 or so. Not a blowout, but enough to be seen as convincing. That was a huge mental thing for us.

The best part is, the guys who we ended up taking in 05 + 06 (and from all accounts 07) did it with a full commitment. Their was no ego playing. No demand for everything. They proved to us not only were they great players, but also great teammates. From day one, we were a team, they came from a successful program and we were building a different successful program and they meshed perfectly. Madison is 4 hours away from Minneapolis and they were there more than I ever imagined. These guys want to play ultimate and they want to play well. They want to win. They want to make everyone better. Of course they have a lot of talent, but just as important they have the right attitude. It does help to have a huge university, but they know how to utilize that atmosphere. It is pretty sick.

And this brings back to my original reason for posting, Shane. Even though he did not start there, I find it hard to imagine those guys without him. And yet, you get the feeling if you took Shane away, that would still be great. That is amazing to me.

When we took him, he was a raw athlete with the throwing skills of Leo, my 19 month old (seriously, he has a sweet flick, as good as Shane's in 04). There were 2 reasons that we took Shane, basically the 2 things we told everyone who tried out for Sub Zero.

#1 - play defense. Shane was not the smartest defender, rarely anyone who has been playing for ultimate for less than 2 years is. But 1-on-1, he was amazing. This guy dominated all the tryouts and a lot of the returners. Who earned the nickname Horse at the beginning because of his build and his speed. Most ds in tryouts were made by him. Many were scared to match up with him (and not for risk of injury).

#2 - be a good teammate. He not only was supportive and encouraging to all the Zero guys and tryouts, but he was a sponge. He wanted to learn. He took responsibility for his mistakes (not sulking after a turn, rather realizing and learning from the turn or break or whatever just happened). Many people had more offense skill than he did, but you could just see him learn so much throughout the tryout process. Lastly, he earned all the pt he got. Initially, we thought he would barely play. By the end of the year, he was playing huge points in big games for us (well, as big of games as the 13th place team at nationals can play in).

And Shane turned out to be one of my favorite teammates ever. It is great to see that he is the prime time player that we hoped he would be.

And from every account you read of the hodags, you see these two things mentioned about them. They play great defense and they are a great team. Obviously, they were this way before Shane got there, but he just added to it. That is why he and so many of those other outstanding athletes work. If you believe in your team, you will succeed. (And yes, it helps to have athletes and throwers, belief is not enough). But thinking about what I love about ultimate is focusing on a common goal and (Assuming your goal is to win) working your butts off to achieve it. It feels good to invest so much into something that pays 0, takes way too much time and energy, but knowing that everyone else is doing it too. Not only that, but everyone wants to do it.

Much like Shane, It is insanely stupid, but so much fun.

p.s. thanks to everyone who responded or e-mail. I will be in the atlantic coast region this summer

A question.

2008-05-09T18:10:00.002-06:00

Hello, I have been distracted from thinking about frisbee. And really, I am not thinking about frisbee that much right now as getting a full time job has been my highest priority.

Well, that may have worked out, but I am inquiring opinions from like-minded individuals (frisbee players) about 2 different areas.

If you have any thoughts, knowledge, experience, about the cities below (not so much ultimate related I have that under control, but more area related, culture, activities, neighborhoods, housing, politics, etc).

Here are the cities/areas I would like to gain knowledge about:

Brevard, NC (~30 miles west of asheville, nc)

Albany, NY

Please share in the comments or you can drop me an e-mail (timmy930 at gmail).

Thanks!

set plays vol. 1

2008-02-07T20:25:00.000-07:00

The one thing I really learned with BAT was how helpful and easy set plays could be. If everyone is on the exact same page and looking for the exact same thing, scoring can be ez.

Our main set play for a middle stack - Goldencut or Golden

The usual 5 guys set-up in a middle stack. Someone catches a pull and centers it to the thrower that initiates the play. There is a slight delay in the play, you wait for the d to get down and set the mark. Once the thrower has it and the marker is set, the guy in the front of the stack cuts break mark (assuming the stack is in the middle, this guy runs parallel to the goalline for ~5 yards, enough to get the defender away from the stack in fear of a pick). This cutter best sets up this play if he also calls for the disc on the break side. Once the cutter is away from the stack, he takes off deep. The obvious thing here is to try and get your person to overplay and hit them going deep. Next, you have to read the defenders. If the last back defender is even/not paying attention to the guy last in the stack, this should be a goal. The guy in the last position of the stack just needs to start coming in to draw the defense even more.

If the last back defender is more aware, he might be inclined to help out deep. If that occurs or as it is happening, the guy last in the stack should be cutting in to the open side. Again, the cutter probably should not wait for the switch, rather try to force the situation with the last back defender. Cut before the 2 defenders have a chance to switch usually allowed either a wide open deep or a wide open under on the open side.

If the under cut gets it, then you have a cutter going deep that might be covered one on one. And possibly with an open thrower.

Also, if this play works once or twice early, you can improvise later and just have the guy not cut deep and look for a throw on the breakmark side. There are many things you can do with this, but the standard is described above and worked for a long time with both Truck and magnUM. And easily the play that I called the most while in Michigan.

"San Diego"

This play was for when we got the disc after a turn on the sideline. I have seen many teams run this, not just San Diego. First, there is a ho stack of 4 on the same plane as the disc. You could say there are 4 handlers spread across the width of the field. The 3 "cutters" are in an angled stack (~45 degrees) and the first cutter is ~10-15 yards on that diagonal from the thrower.

As the disc is being checked in, the first cutter goes deep. After a second or so, the cutter should look to make eye contact with the thrower. The thrower has a couple options. #1 Throw it. Obvious. #2 Not throw it. Also obvious. In both of these options, the cutter still runs deep. #3 Pump fake. If the thrower pump fakes, the cutter stops and comes underneath for the disc. {This is very powerful and something I always tried to teach teams I captained. If someone is cutting deep and you want them to come under, pump fakes. It works more often then you might think. Especially if you have a good thrower who really sells the big pump gake}

Now, as the first cutter is going (See the 3 options above), the second cutter in the stack (middle position of the starting diagonal stack), waits about a second and then takes off deep. His main role is continuation for the next pass. Although a player experienced in this set will realize that often times this guy is open deep. But for now, he is looking for a deep cut, but mainly looking for continuation (more on this in a second).

Right after the second cutter busts deep, the last cutter in the diagonal stack busts toward the discs (basically down the same diagonal line toward the thrower). Basically, he is looking for an invert from the thrower. This is open a lot of the time. The first cutter (the guy who started the cutting) must lookout for the third cutter when the first cutter is doing his comeback.

Almost all the time, one of these 2 guys (either the first or last cutter) are open. Once they get the disc, the middle cutter is now the continuation cut and should have plenty of field to work with. THe cutter who did not get the disc on the under should be thinking about a scoring cut or another continuation (bascially busting ass downfield).

Most of the time that the downfield guys were not open, it was due to poaching from the ho stack. That is fine. It sucks not to get an easy 1 or 2 passes downfield, but you will be able to get the disc off the line, which is just as important. And then you can get into your offense without being trapped on the line. Good times.

That is all for now, there are a couple other plays I may talk about later. These were the 2 main plays we ran back in Michigan and they worked pretty well. I hope you find it enjoyable.

Offense 2 - Primary & Secondary

2008-02-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

Soon after my first year in college ultimate, I tried out with Big Ass Truck which at the time (and still is) a mixture of AA, Lansing, and Detroit area. With occasional help from the western side of the state. When we (Karl + I) made it, it was largely Lansing + Detroit area, but soon the center of the team would move to AA.

Anyway, the offense we played was fairly simple. 3 handlers - with dump and swing mentality. Go from side to side. Once you swung the disc, you look upfield. I really don't remember much of what the downfield cutters were suppose to do. I do know we assigned Primary + Secondary. Basically, the priority of cutters downfield, man/buddy, #1/#2, etc. If you were primary, you were cutting on a dead disc after we got the turn. And if we received the pull, catch pull - center - primary - secondary was the role.

I do not remember if we discussed what the other 2 cutters were supposed to do. I don't remember the role after the sequence played out.

For college, we did not have much structure and we loss our main strategician b/c he was out of inelgibility. So, that responsibility fell to me and Karl since we played on truck and also I was co-captain that college season. What I am trying to say is we ran the same offense for the college season that we did during the fall with Truck.

What this offense did was attempt to play to our strengths. Risky throws. And few cut downfield so people would stay out of the way of our main offensive threats (not major offensive threats competitively, rather the main threats on our teams).

The majority of the hucking/risky throws came from the handlers even though they were rarely in position of gaining yardage. And the bulk of the yardage was the primary/secondary.

Initially with truck, it was great b/c we had more deep throwers and thus more opportunities to cut deep as a primary/secondary cutter. And that was my world the first year that I played, all hard/deep/break throws were made from the handler position. I focused mainly on being a cutter and gaining yardage/scoring goals.

It was not until Tune-up (97) that I realized the importance of this primary cutter (or really any cutter downfield) to be able to be an extension of the handlers. Meaning, throw deep, throw riskier throws (not just dumps and open downfield throws). We played against teams that had cutters who could do this. I remember watching this and trying to guard against this and thinking this was just amazing. It was unbelieveable that guys who were responsible for going deep and for gaining yardage could also turn around and throw it 40+ yards. Or break the mark, creatively, on the goalline. I remember getting back to AA and that week at college tryouts to really start looking to put it deep.

Playing against inferior opponents, you get in a turnover war. Or the couple throwers we had were too good for them, that cutting was easy. It was not until this tune-up that defenses could play and were used to playing against good cutters and throwers. Teams very early on realized I was a much bigger danger going deep then coming back to the disc b/c I probably had a completion %age in the 70s or 80s. Many teams would aggressively back me (or our other excellent deep cutters) allow the 10-15 yard gain and wait for the ensuing turn.

(Which against Z one year resulted in me getting point blocked twice in one possession of the disc. Good times.)

Or the other strategy was aggressive, close fronting with a much more aggressive mark then I ever saw on the thrower. Basically controlling the huck at the marking level and controlling the comeback cuts at the cutting level. This strategy was not so much at tune-up as Nationals that year. But it would stick with me and is basically the d philosophy that I believe in today. But that is another story.

Both of these strategies are good, but if you can put the disc in the hands of another excellent thrower downfield (not just in your handlers like our college team or even Truck), the defense will be on the heels. Incidentally, i think this is the biggest change in the game over the past 10 years, the ability of more versatile cutters, cutters that can make you look bad going deep and can make you look bad with your throws. It seemed like in 97, teams had 2 or so guys who could do this role. Now, it seems like every team at nationals has several guys who fill this role. And you have to play more honest defense on everyone.

From then on, anytime I thought about offense I thought about 2 key points. First, you want at least one cutter (preferably all 4) that can make a difference cutting or throwing deep. Of course, this seems obvious, but at the time I started playing, it seemed that only handlers threw the breaks and the hucks. And the cutters gained yardage and cut deep. From Tune-up on, I tried to become more of a deep throwing threat not so I could handle, but so I could punish people for playing behind me and waiting for me to dump it. If I could get the disc, turn and jack it for a goal, well, I would become much more dangerous.

If you center the disc to someone who is a deep throwing threat who then throws to someone for 15 or yards and that person is a deep throwing threat, well then, you got something. You shortened the field and still have the ability to score on one pass. And hopefully, your next cutter will be able to do that score on that next pass. Or sell it well enough that he gets another 15+ yards. 2 throws, at least half the field. What a revolutionary concept.

The second thing that stuck with me is that handlers do not have to be excellent deep throwers. If you can move the disc from side to side (who cares where the mark is), then you could get the disc to your one or two better cutters when they came underneath. And it seems to me that it is an easier bomb when you get the disc coming back or on a swing. As opposed to getting a dump and looking for the huck (again, something that is pretty obvious).

I really won't go into the weaknesses, but we never did talk about cutter 3 or 4. And both of these teams really did not have the cutters who could put it deep. Although we tried on the college team, it took a while to sink in.

Offense 1 - Horse & Buggy

2008-01-23T21:04:00.000-07:00

Hi. So what I am attempting to do is describe the offenses that I have run over my career. Although the first o's I ran would be a more convential 3 handlers, 1 or 2 middles, and 2 or 3 deeps. Standard pickup type stuff, but we never really discuss these o's so yeah, I won't count them.

The first time I really had an offense described to me was in the winter of 97 when we came back from Xmas break. Our college team (along with a bunch of local club players) convened in Oosterbahn Fieldhouse for our first practice of the semester. I started playing in July of 96 (summer after my frosh year) in South Bend. Came back to AA and started going to club practices.

We were really young and so most of the fall was spent with the basics. What I am trying to say is we were not throwers. So the "horse & buggy" is a 2-5 offense set with the stack in the middle of the field. We would catch the pull, center it, and then work it up one side as much as possible.

We really only had 2 throwers, Brian Lane a med student from the Yale B team and Jon Bakija a grad student who was a precision thrower. After that, not many people could handle. Mike "national champ" Jaeger handled and so did Wu, but they would be much better if they could have been cutters with the rest of us. But they had the unique ability to throw both forehands and backhands well.

Anyway, what did the 5 of us do. Well, the cutters basically did the stanford O. We waited our turn and cut from the back of the stack. If we got the disc, we usually looked back right away to a dump (although I think we called it "cag" for some reason). We were not really good at continuation from cutter to cutter.

There was not much swinging of the disc from side to side. Part of the reason was only 2 handlers and no other "short fills". The main reason was we hucked it a lot. Probably the reason Jon and Brian enjoyed it so much.

So what did I learn from this?

- Reading the disc, we hucked it a lot.

- How to read teammates' cuts and when to cut out of turn. Being that we *only* cut from the back, teams figured this out. I feel I learned about positioning of the defense. Not just my man, but especially the d behind me. Any and all fronting was met with a quick cut deep, especially if I was not in the back of the stack. I was definitely the first one on the team to cut out of turn, but I feel I did it appropriately. Meaning, I only cut deep when that space was open and my guy was fronting me in the front of the stack. Also, taking a completely different lane for cutting.

To get more specific, we really only cut in/out from the back of the stack on the open side. It was probably Sectionals by the time I learned, holy cow there is no one on the break side. So you can easily drift over there, separate from the stack, and then go deep. When the timing would work, the back of the stack cutter is going in and you are going out. Thus, the back of the stack is in transition and the endzone can be a little more open. It helped to have throwers that always looked deep too.

- If someone plays even with you (not fronting not backing), it is better to go deep then to cut underneath. I felt that most defenders are focused on stopping the under or at the very least you can get them to bite on the under fake and then go deep. Any team that I have been in charge of, I try to get this point across, go deep (or at least try to go deep) if your defender is even. The under cut is pretty useless and especially in college much riskier then the deep (reasoning- when you turn it over, it is a good punt).

Basically, it was a good offense to be on a decent team. We liked to play defense and we liked to huck. Most of the other guys took care of the ds, I tried to take care of the scoring. It is good to "grow up" as an ultimate player on a less strict/regimented offense. It makes you figure things out and allows for a bit more creativity as a younger player. Although I would have loved to play on a team that was nationals caliber right from my first year playing college ultimate, but I think it allowed me to get better as a player earlier. And I had fun with that.

What is up with Mixed?

2007-11-03T22:39:00.000-06:00

Things that were different to me:

- Pace of the game -> it is slower than club that is for sure. I think this should be fairly obvious, but more noticeable to me when you throw the open game nearby. I don't feel that you have to work as hard on O or D (Note: this does not mean it is always easier, there were plenty of times where I was covered or my man burned me, etc. Many people who could play in the open game @ natties, but not every guy on the field could.) It seemed before the point when the matchup became obvious, I would know how difficult it would be. If I was matched up against the "more known" players, it was a bit more difficult than if I did not recognize/know my opponent. This is true in open, for example more difficult to guard Chase on Sockeye than say #56 or something like that. BUT, the "7th" guy in open is better/more of a threat than say the #4 guy in coed. At least, that is my opinion.

- Isolating -> On D, it is much more isolating guarding your person downfield. In the open, you make a mistake or take a risk and jump something on defense. You, most likely, have someone else there to back you up. In mixed, you can't really overpursue or be too aggressive on the under, because you are the last man back a lot of the times. Really the only man back. And the ez score is not really worth it. Guarding the tall dude Mahoney as the only guy downfield is a lot of fun. Also, there is more of starting a man as a "handler" and taking off deep in terms of an iso cut. Again, no men to help out behind you, so if your person beats you early or you let it go for a couple steps, well it will be sent. It definitely makes you think about the position you are guarding the other man.

- Many Weird Throws -> maybe close to huck n hope, but definitely zany throws are encouraged. Part of this has to do with more 1-on-1 matchups downfield, so if you have an angle you just need to throw. Lord knows, I forced a couple deep shots to James when he was iso'd and had a good matchup. Knowing there is no last back to help out, makes it a bit more comforting as a thrower. So "less normal" throws are very effective and can be used for good. By less normal, I mean like anverts or crazy hammers or dying ducks to the breakside, etc. A strategy decision for sure that might getting d'd up more in open due to more guys on the field.

- College-ish -> the game reminds me of playing college, mainly b/c the O is not as efficient. There have been some good college O teams and not really good mixed ones as well. But there was not a team all year that I thought they would not give us the disc with a bit of pressure. Never did I feel, or crap we are down by XX, how the hell are we coming back. Again, not to seem like I am completely slamming coed, I mean Slow White played great to maintain a lead in the 2nd half against us. Tandem was effective, until the rain came. Shazam always maintain their huge leads. But, we still got the disc from them and could not convert. At times, it did not feel if we were going to get the d, but will we be able to score when we get it. Make sense? No real team that I would consider an automatic scoring machine.

- Women -> I feel there is a differernce in throwing the disc to a tightly covered man vs. tightly covered woman. I am more likely to throw to a man that is closely covered on an under then I am to throw to a woman that is tightly covered. I feel this was killing me earlier in the year and adjusted. On that note, women get much more open than men do on unders. So I still feel I throw to them. Also, the best teams utilize their women much more than the not as best teams do. Let's draw the line at 9th. Everyone above really good. Everyone below just good. We played most of the top 8 teams this year (dnp Barrio and Amp). The 6 teams we played had significant contribution from multiple women. Tandem used their women the least, probably, but they got a lot of the shorter women who was a cutter. The couple of teams we played below, our women kind of had free reign. Maybe not so much on O (but our women did score more goals in those games), but really on d it was obvious. Not that we just shut their women down, it was more of a lot more poaching/looking for ways to get involved in d.

- Zone -> this is where I thought of the gender difference the most. For example, I played deep d quite a bit. And I really pushed the yardage gap between myself and a woman deep. I would say 30 + yards at times. I do not think I got beat by a woman deep, but found I got beat if I played to deep on a woman and a man slid in between myself and the short deep or wing. In an attempt to stop this, I tried to always adjust to where the deep man was and kind of let the thrower think about putting something deep/crazy/bladey to the woman. (Whereas as an "open deep deep" I would only really account for the wind and most likely throw as a "coed deep deep" I searched for the deep men on the opposing team and relied on the sidelines to keep track of the deep women). I am sure this is not rocket science to everyone and most people who are confident to play deep deep would do this, but I was definitely reading to facial expressions/looks of the thrower a bit more. I felt I could tell if the throwers were confident enough in their woman receiver a couple of throws into the zone point. I got a d late in the tandem game in zone on the above mentioned shorter woman who was an excellent cutter. I mean, I am close to a foot taller than her. But I could tell that this team was willing to put a lot of stuff to her, so I was a little more cautious in terms of where she was. In our later games, I was not so worried. Also, when I was popping or handling in the zone o, I looked to attack where the woman was upfield (most teams had a woman as wing). Basically, I searched for the man guarded by woman match-up. And I tried not to throw to a woman on the sideline as much. Most coed zones invovled a man marking and looking to trap (see below comment on marking).

- Marking -> definitely teams look to get ds and really get excited when women have the disc near the trap sideline (including our team). It kind of makes sense, because many teams don't have 3 experienced throwing women on the field. That is fine. I would try to get our team to press the men on the trap sideline more. This is a big reason for Shazam's success (I think). I feel they pressured the men as much as the women. A constant pressure no matter who had the disc. Whereas all other teams, I did not ever get the feeling of this huge pressure from the opposing team's defense. Now, I have motivated all coed teams to improve their man on man defense... Seriously though, if all 7 people all playing hard defense, I think you can force things a bit more.

Coke, Pepto Bismo, 9th Place, and I hate dwarves

2007-11-01T22:14:00.000-06:00

Well, the start of my nationals journey began the Sunday before. That is the morning I woke up and T was sick. Not like ugh I have a cold sick. Like ummm sick sick.

Eventually she felt better, Monday came and went and she was feeling better. More importantly, I was feeling ok. That turned for the worse ~1 am. That is when I visited the bathroom for an hour or so. Couple that with the fact that our oldest daughter also got sick. So I was sick on the couch trying to sleep. And T had to stay up all nite with LT, so she was not really able to recover. Couple that with the fact we were driving to Spokane (4 h) that nite.

Luckily, I was feeling a bit better by the evening. We drove. Stayed in a hotel and woke up early to fly to Tampa. The flight was not too bad. The kids behaved. And I was not sick. Although I did not eat much. We eventually got to Sarasota. Publix was closed by the time we got there. Which would make the morning even earlier, great.

Thursday, we woke up early and got the kids got up early. They were not happy, but that was the way it had to be. Stopped by Publix and then McDonald's. I felt hungry for the first time since Monday. I was psyched. I pulled into the Polo Fields. And then I started to focus on one thing. The port-a-pottie. That is never a good sign to start nationals.

As the team was warming up, I was in there (port-a-thingy) or on a jog up until gametime. Evenutally, 9:30 came and we had to play Black Molly first. I did not know anything about this team. I was struggling to continue on long points early (I learned this on the very first point as we turned it over twice. And by we, I mean Markie). We score it. Trade points for a bit, but then take half 8-4. The O worked well, especially James deep. I don't recall much more than that. They made a little run, but the O corrected the ship. And the d was able to get a couple breaks back. Final something like 15-11ish. I played only O, threw a goal or two. And caught at least one goal deep. But still, I did not feel great. And no signs of improvement. At this point, I felt like drinking a coke. That helped a bit and so I kept up with that.

Oh, a sidenote is that Forch's brother played on this team. That is not that important, except they fake their backhand the exact same way. I mean exactly, it was weird.

Second game was Bad Larry from Colorado. At least I had played against a couple of these guys, Beebe and Flock and Pokey. And this game was almost a replay of the first game. We trade back and forth a bit. Then go on a little run to take half 8-4. The second half was again the same as the first game. They make a short run, but the d gets everything back. We win 15-11ish. I played almost all the O points and also added my first d point of the weekend. Again, I do not remember the details that much. I do recall the women on our team, Em, Megac, and Sky scoring a fair # of goals. And T uncorking a long backhand that Kerr made a nice grab on the sideline.

2-0 and so was Slow White. That meant we were in the power pool no matter what. Thank you very much. That was my basic goal for Day 1, get to the power pool and find a way to get better soon.

So our last game was against Slow White. We came up playing some zone and it worked early, getting a couple breaks early. The O started out clicking, but unfortunately I think I stopped our momentum. A 2 goal lead would end up with us being down 6-8 at half. Unfortunately, I had 3 turns to swap this lead. The first was a throw behind Kerr near the endzone. A simple throw that was a step behind him and his guy d'd. The 2nd was an open deep throw to Johnny that was way too far. All I had to do was put it on a shelf for him to run to. But my forehand flew by him. The 3rd was another throw to Kerr where I tried to go around the defender and to Kerr. And it was way too short. This throw is where I started to feel like I was out of it.

Coming out of half, I was not sure it would be best for me to play. I felt horrible, the kids were a bit cranky at this point. I definitely was not helping the O, so I sat and played with the kids. I say this b/c many people were giving me props for being a good dad. When really, I was killing our team and that is why I rested. Although the kids helped me relax and take my mind of the game for a bit.

Slow White was still in control by a couple. I definitely was not playing O early. After a couple of trading points, I went in on D to try and see if I could help out there. We did get the disc at least 3 times. Probably more than that. And they same story that plagued us in the first half, trying to score to fast. A force into the endzone to Sky was d'd. Another bad huck. My 4th turn was making eye contact with Will and I thought he was going upline. I lost sight of him and put it upline to where I thought he was going. Unfortunately, it fell harmlessly to the ground. Ugh.

We had our opportunities, but never converted. I thought we had a great D by Ryan, but his apparent handblock was called back by a foul. I thought it was clean, but you can never be sure. (Oh and I called a stall later in this point. But that was contested to. My man even suggested it was a retribution call, which I do not think it was). They would get another break before the end. I played our last O point and caught a huck from Markie to make it 12-14. But we were unable to do anything else after that, 12-15.

So anyway, 2-1. That means we are 0-1 in our new pool. Great, that means we play Shazam because surely they won their pool. Hmmmm, Rival beat them. What? OK, now things are interesting.

Thursday nite we made pasta at our place. I ate it successfully, but I would not consider myself hungry. The kids went to bed early and after some tv we went down too.

Friday, more of the same. The weather had been as good as ever on Thursday, not too hot. Not too windy. Friday showed more of the same, although sunnier and a bit windier. We played Rival from Atlanta early.

I had a bit more spring to my step, but still not completel there. But a big improvement from Thursday. The reason? Pepto Bismo, it did wonders (the second time this year Bismuth had helped me out. The first is a chemistry story. The paper is in progress, but this is not a chem blog).

After a couple of trades early, the d goes on a monster run. 3 or 4 in a row. They score one and we close out the half on d. I think 8-3 and it was a quick half. Very efficient by us. Will, Johnny, Sky, Jen, and Em all had big halves. They utilized the women near the disc more than most teams and our women responded on man-to-man. Throw in the fact our zone was good, and they were in trouble. The second half came and went, and we were basically in control the whole time. They had one 3-0 run on us, but our d still got a couple of breaks, so we pulled it out 15-9. That was a great game for us and it seemed like just maybe we had some good mojo going into our next round with Shazam. My favorite point of the game was a stopped disc and Emily had it on the sidline. I called Matt out of the stack to cut. He went deep, she threw it, goal, looked at me, and yelled "IS THAT WHAT YOU WANTED?!?!?!?" Pretty funny. We were definitely in the right state of mind for this game.

Meanwhile, Shazam took down Slow White and we had the ugly all 1-1 power pool. If you win your next game, you are either #1 or #2. If you lose, you hope the team you beat lost too. If not, hello prequarters.

So now it was time for Shazam, that beat us handily at ECC. And then again at Regionals, although we were up on them at halftime there. I felt like we had a chance, but what came next was ugly.

We pull to them, they turn it over at least 3 times, but we fail to convert. I did not like the look of our team on this point. Although we got the disc 3 times or so, we looked like a team not ready to score it. Eventually, they go up 1-0.

We receive and it stayed ugly. I believe this was another long point with a couple of turns on each side, long story short, they go up 2-0. Again, we were not moving the disc well. Whether that was their pressure or what, I don't know. We looked like a different team then just 1 hour ago.

Interesting beginning to a funny story involving me. After our 2nd turn (their guy walks it up to the line), I am guarding the dump. He calls a play and I immediately began to watch his foot. His foot definitely slid off the endzone line on the huck. So I call travel. I immediately get criticism from the sideline and the thrower and my man. The thrower recants a bit, but the sideline keeps it up. And my guy is really mad at me. At one point, he tells me to go back to the open game. Anyway, stays with the thrower. A couple of throws later, the disc is still near the sideline, Aron is cutting in. The disc floats over his head a bit and he runs out of bounds. The disc is hanging there and he turns to go back and get it. He does catch it, but he left from out of bounds. Meaning, he is out of bounds and the disc goes back to where it went out of bounds (make sense?). As our guy gets the disc, I make sure that he walks it to te appropriate spot. My man, the guy who told me to go back to the open game, gets even more upset with me. Telling me I need to stop getting involved in the play. I try to tell him to relax and that I want us to get the disc where it is supposed to be (probably not so calmly, mind you). Anyway, he reiterates his desire for me to play open.... They still score that point. I think he got a d on a throw to me later in the point on a high stall throw. Not that is relevant to the argument, just that, I want all the facts of this point out there. Trust me, more later.

We receive again, in this direction we were going slighlty upwind. Not a horrible wind, but still a wind. Maybe not upwind/downwind exclusively, as there was a bit of a crosswind as always. Anyway, this was the harder direction to go. And we get trapped in the back of the endzone. High stall hammer. Callahan goal Shazam.

Hmmm, 3-0, and it keeps going down. It ends up like 8-2 at the first half. We are playing awful (they deserve some of the credit), but we deserve plenty of the blame. At this point, the goal is just to play better. I think you can't talk about winning the game, you just have to try to play better. Most importantly, because there was a chance we would playing a pre-quarters game. Sidenote: the score was Slow White 8 Rival 3, so it looked good that we would be playing in the quarters at that point.

Halftime we take our time, relax. I have some more Pepto and some more Coke. And that helped a ton. And most importantly, we did start to play better. Not that I ever felt we were going to win this game, but the O got cleaner. And the d was better. 8-4 after we score on the first o point and then convert a break. Again, just getting some mo' is huge. I think they may have taken it back to 10-4. But we got at least one more break in the half, we lose 15-9. The o seemed to get better and not so stagnant. We tried to readjust the handlers a bit to help move the disc from side to side. Again, all with the eye on improving for future games (either prequarters or quarters). It seemed to work. And I left the Shazam game in a much better mood than when we started. I thought we were at least a quarters team, we just had a bad half. Hopefully, that would be the last.

Oh, before we end this game and start on my slow white bashing, let me give you another funny story. We were on O and the guy who wants me to play open was back on me. We were marching up the field and a call stopped the play. Either a pick/foul/something called. I don't really remember and I was ~15 yards from the play. Apparently, my man saw the play better than me and starting saying something about the call. So I, sarcastically, say "Oh, so you get to be involved in the play and I don't". He immediately explains that it is completely different and that he has video footage of me being involved in every call at regionals (i don't think that it is true, but there is a chance it is true). I try to tell him that is not relevant and he is doing exactly what he does not want me to do (express my opinion/interpretation of the call). And the only difference is it is him and not me. He does not like this, tells me "You think you are better than us". I loved that quote. I am pretty sure he was saying that I think I am better than all of coed males, not just Shazam. It was said with whine to it, it made my day. This is also funny b/c they have several people who used to be in Open that now play on their team. And they are key to their team, so not all open players our bad.

Oh, I really burned him on the next cut and tried to milk it into the endzone, because I really wanted to spike it. Really bad. But it did not happen, so I did not get to really show that I am in fact an ass. Oh well, we got second in the spirit rankings. That probably would not have helped.

Anyway, while we finished out our Shazam game, something happened. Rival came back. And tied it up at 12s. And 13s. Slow White received going upwind. Pull out of bounds. Guy picks up the disc. Invert backhand to break mark. Turf. Rival scores in 2 throws. Pre-quarters, here we come. Ugh.

Screw you Slow White, I never liked you anyway. You guys smell. Ok, ok, that is not fair, we would eventually have 3 chances to make quarters ( a win against them OR shazam OR Tandem puts us in the quarters). But I have to blame someone right? So it is you. What kind of name is Slow White anyway? It does not make sense.

(Please take the above paragraph as a bitter, bitter joke)

Not much left to do, excpet regroup, drink some Coke, and get ready to take the pre-quarters. We played Tandem, a rematch of 06. The weather was beginning to worsen and would eventually get to a downpour, but the beginning started overcast, a bit windy, not terrible.

We receive, they zone. We march it up 1-0. They come right back and tie it up 1-1. From there, the wheels fell off, except even worse than that. I thought the worst was the Shazam first half, I was wrong. I can count 7 drops in the first halfs. I will not mention names as it is not like I played perfect. Although I had a hand in our other 3 goals of the first half, I had 2 turns a deep-ish backhand to Kerr that did not stay up in the wind. And then at 4-2 and on D, I had a chance to bomb it to a wide open, streaking Johnny. I tried to launch a inside-out backhand deep to him. I pulled up a bit and caused the disc not to go as far to the outside as I would have liked. Thus, it went over Johnny head on the opposite sideline. Maybe 5 yards uncatchable. Ug. 8-4 Tandem up at half.

I did not know what to do. Our team looked horrible. Not only the drops (I mean drops against a zone). We played horrible defense. At least 3 of their goals, they just walked it up on the open sideline. We were not challenging them. I am not a fire-and-brimstone motivator. Nor am I one of the people on the team that had a lot of investment on the team. Sure I practiced most of the time and traveled to some tourneys, but this was not my team. I was a player and I feel a good teammate, but this was the first time in this siuation where I could not really lead the team well. I thought I was playing ok and energetic, but the spark had to come from somewhere else. I am not sure if that was the wrong feeling or just a poor excuse. But we were "against the wall" and I felt helpless. That is an unusual feeling for me. With magnum and zero, I had poured a lot of my energy and took ultimate way too seriously. I felt I was part of the core of the team. Here, I was a player expected to contribute. Maybe it was b/c I was new. I don't know. But it was a helpless feeling.

Anyway, back to the game. The 2nd half did not look too promising. Our d picked up a little bit, but nothing was there. In fact, I think they got another break. I think they even got up 13-7. The lowpoint for me was 12-7 receiving the pull. I was so worried about keeping the disc off the line, that I was offsides. On OFFENSE!!! So we had to start 10 yards deep in our own endzone. To cap it off, we are working it up and I turn it over by trying to throw a blade to James for the goal. I hung it up too much, turn over. They score. 13-7.

I was also covering Mahoney a bit this game. He is tall, so trying to make him gets under early. He did get me deep once, but really I could have d'd it. Unfortunately, he was more aggressive going after the disc. Bummer.

We score 13-8.

On the next pull, their guy, literally, knocks it down with 2 hands. One throw later, 13-9. Ok, a little mojo. That was easy, plus it is rainy a bit harder.

We pull, they score, after 1 d, 14-9 bad guys.

They pull, we score somewhat easily, 14-10.

We pull, we get another d, 3 throws later, me to someone for the goal, 14-11.

We pull, 2 throws, my man gets the disc, I get a foot block near the endzone. I throw another goal 14-12. Sweet. The rain was really coming down here. Complete downpour. Unfortunately, people mistook my footblock for lightning and the game was called for 30 minutes. I went back to the van to see the fam and attempt to dry off.

We get back on the field, we are pulling to them on game point. Very weird feeling. After a couple of dumps, they swing it to my man on the break side. It hangs a bit and I begin to believe I have a chance. I laid out and went after it near the sideline, close, but close is not good enough. Especially if you are on the breakmark side. Not only did I not d it (I think I was close, but not sure how close), now my man has the disc with me on the ground for an ez invert. An invert that would not have happened had I not gone for the disc and just marked my man. An invert that would not have lead to the last goal on the break mark side, basically screwing the Sky as her person was able to score the game winning goal. Ugly.

If you lay out for a d on the break mark side, you have got get the d.

And there it was, down in the 9th place bracket. Where else should I end up?

We played Bashing Pinatas and Poodle Club. We beat them both, maybe I will comment more on that later, but I am tired and rethinking about the last 2 games on Friday reminds me that stunk.

It was a fun weekend of frisbee, although disappointing. I think we thought we would be in the quarters. And eventually we have to prove it against one of those big boys to show we are at least a quarterfinal team. And it did not happen. Personally, I feel like crap for, well, feeling like crap down there. Thursday (esp the Slow White game) was awful for me. Friday was better, but still running on Coke and Gu is not a good thing. It is disappointing to get in shape, practice hard, and pay the $$ to get down there only to field like that. Couple T and my sickness with basically losing Will in the Shazam game and losing Daph to start the tourney (she played Friday, but not @ 100%). It was a pretty good tourney. Everyone has injuries to overcome, that is true. But this is my blog, we won't discuss the other injuries.

But what are you going to do? T and I played through it as best we could. I am pleased with the effort we all gave, just not the results. I really do not think it was the effort that should be faulted. There are things that we need to overcome and maybe I will go into that someday, but it was step in the right direction. I think this year was a good year for the FLycoons, but it was not a big step. Just a small step... there is always next year, right?

Nationals Preview

2007-10-17T10:02:00.000-06:00

So, I play in the mixed game these days. But I can’t really preview the mixed tourney. I have played against the top 4 seeds. I play for the 6th seed. Besides that, I know not much about the other teams besides where they are from. I have seen all the men on Ice and Poodle Club play before (probably). I know that I won’t be able to cheat against Black Molly b/c they have a rules committee member. And that against Bad Larry, I might be playing against the guy who took me to my first ever ultimate Frisbee practice (does Beebee still play?). And Slow White beat us pretty good in ECC so hopefully we get a chance to prove that was a fluke. Other than that, not much.

So I can’t tell you anything about the mixed teams besides the top 4 teams are good.

So yeah, I think I know a lot about open though. Since I used to play in that division. And I no longer do, so I can say things and not worry about them being used against my team in the game. I think. Maybe I will piss off their fans and that might be bad. Oh well, maybe this might be fun.

Pool A:

Jam- Best Case Scenario- Ring is in an off year and Goat does not complete hucks. Worst Case Scenario- one of the above teams gets hot and takes it to them. They won the northwest, so its hard to imagine them losing one of these games. Watch out for – this is a wow, look at the roster team. Kind of like the Rockets when they picked Clyde and Barkley. Well they do better?

Goat- Best Case – they huck well against Jam and Ring. Winning at least one, if not both of those games. Worst Case – a contentious game with Ring that spells defeat and the bottom pools. Watch out for – hucks.

Ring- Best Case – it is their on year, they get a groggy Jam (yeah 6:30 gametime) take them out and then beat Goat. Worst Case – close game with Jam that they lose or win close followed by a big defeat against Goat. Welcome to the bottom pools. Watch out for – a huge battle in round 2 for that power pool spot

VBB – best case scenario – they score 15 goals on Thursday. Worst case – they are shut out. Watch out for – rsd stud #25. I bet he won’t be so bad at nationals, but if he is, this is not a pool to be an asshole in.

In the end, Jam 3-0, Ring 2-1, Goat 1-2, VBB 0-3.

Pool B:

Sockeye – best case – everyone they play talks about how they don’t have a chance and they play 60 points or so on Thurs. Worst Case – They are still asleep and Rhino and dog jump on that. Watch out for – ummmm, everything? Including them being upset. Why are they everyone favorites, yet everyone thinks they are ripe for upset?

Dog (I refuse to call them boston ultimate, get a name) – best case – they coast through their first 2 games and are able to repeat their upset of sockeye. Worst case – their o struggles and Rhino is able to drag them down into sloppy play. Advantage Rhino. Watch out for – Goldstein and Gibson are gamers, can they carry a club team?

Rhino – best case – sockeye literally does not show up and then they get dog to play sloppy. Worst case – they play 2 crappy games and then hiccup v. Pike Watch out for – a lot of turns.

Pike – best case – they catch Rhino after 2 long games. Worst case – their o only score 12 times all day. Watch out for – Dusty’s quad.

In the end, Fish 3-0, Dog 2-1, Rhino 1-2, Pike 0-3. Side prediction – Rhino is in quarters, but Dog is not.

Pool C:
JB – best case – it is their year and it starts in pool play, rolling everyone there. Worst case – injuries take a toll and they forget that everyone is absolutely scared of Beau. But I don’t see them losing the pool. Watch out for – if their O is efficient on Thursday, that could pay dividends on Sat.

Condors – best case – they improve on their play against JB at regionals, this time with the upset. Worst case – their inexperience together bites them in the butt. Watch out for – the return of Dugan. How big will he be?

D-wide – best case – the condors are not ready for them. Worst case- spend too much time in the early games and not winning, following a loss to Machine. Watch out for – sloppy play.

Machine – best case – the catch doublewide on an off day. Worst case – doublewide does not have an off day and Tim Halt can’t throw deep. Watch out for – speed kills, will they able to use it?

Prediction – JB 3-0, Condors 2-1, Machine 1-2, Dwide 0-3.

Pool D:

FG – best case – the gang is back together again and they play like 02. Worst Case – the gang gets together again and they play like they have not played in a tourney together all year. Watch out for – the o tells the story with this team, who is used on it? And how are they scoring early?

Zero – best case – they run everyone into the ground with depth and athleticism, wearing everyone out. Worst case – they play like a bunch of 20 year olds and play too many points. Watch out for – defense, defense, defense

Truck Stop – best case – they don’t yell at each other and play well. Worst case – they play like the 2nd team from the mid-atlantic. Watch out for – a young, hungry team that could sneak in with some clutch play.

Chain – best case – they are on, just like last year, and take the pool by storm. Worst case – their hucks don’t work this year and they dig themselves holes early. Watch out for –lots of hucks.

In the end, #1 - FG 2-1, #2 - Sub 2-1, #3 - Chain 2-1, Truckstop 0-3. Chain and Sub both make quarters.

The long, windy, sometimes rainy road

2007-10-09T07:39:00.000-06:00

We were the only team in Burlington to play in all 8 rounds. And I feel that today. But we went 6-2 and we survived and advanced. Maybe not the prettiest route, but still effective.

I will start on Wed. We bought our tix for Tampa, rented a town home and car for a week. Now, that sounds pretty cocky and confident we were going to make nationals. But we decided that no matter what we would go and see friends. And it is an easier/cheaper flight for our parents to come and hang out with us in FLA then say middle of nowhere Montana. We start to pack for our trip to Seattle and then proceed to stay up basically the whole nite b/c our youngest decides not to sleep. Ugh.

Thursday, I worked, got home a bit early, finished packing, loaded up the car, and we got going by 7:00 or so. We had decided to stop in Spokane roughly half way to the Western part of Washington from here. ON the way, we realized we forgot our cell phone (making this a round trip from like 2000, crazy. I can't remember the last time I made a road trip without a cell phone and I used to do it all the time) and T's best/warmest coat. Which also had her favorite frisbee playing gloves in it. So that meant a REI stop sometime before Sat. morning.

Friday, we got a little more sleep that nite woke up, hit the road and made pretty good time to Seattle. Getting onto I5 ~2:30, when we decide to look for a REI just North of the city. After getting lost in probably 1 square mile a couple of times, we finally find it, get the gloves, our kids finally take a nap, but then we get back onto the highway, traffic jam. Ugh. Not fun. Finally did get to the hotel room and they did put us into a handicap room. So much more room in there. If you can ever swing that (especially if you are piling 15 people into room, I recommend it). We swim a bit, order take out from Olive Garden and we are all asleep by 8:30, probably before most of our team was in the hotel.

Oh, I should mention that Friday was an absolute gorgeous day to play frisbee in Burlington. Probably in the high 50s/low 60s, a little win, partly cloudy. No rain.

On Saturday we woke early, got some breakfast in the hotel where Brass Monkey was staying as well. This would be the only time I saw Brass Monkey the whole weekend unfortunately. First game was at 9 and we role in ~8:15ish. Get everything set up, slowly warmup as our sitter was not going to be there until 9.

The weather was not too bad. In the 50s, windy, but not ohmygod it is super windy. Windy enough to make you really focus on your throws, but I felt you would should be able to score in either direction. Not much rain, some occasional light rain, but nothing heavy. Which was good, because with our kids there, it would have been awful with the rain and I am not sure what we would have done.

The only other pre-games comment is our fields were of a different orientation. Meaning they were perpendicular to the other fields, I was a bit worried about this at the start of the day. But the wind was not a huge of a factor, so it was less bothersome then I thought it would be.

We had a pretty sweet set-up on the fields thanks to our teammates. One tent that was almost completely covered and with a propane heater in it. That was great, plus they made some chicken noodle soup after round 2 in there. And they had also put a tarp over a soccer goal. Not as warm, but keep the wind and rain away. Not too bad for a bunch of frisbee players.

Anyway onto the games, first round against Boise a Big Sky opponent, but I have never even seen these guys play, so that means nothing to me. We got up early and I felt we were in control the whole game. I think 8-4 at half, but they broke us twice to start the 2nd half, to 8-6, I think. Anyway, it finishes like 15-8 or so-ish. I played ~6 or 7 points maybe more in this game. I know the first 5 points I was in, we scored. I was trying to make that my goal, score every point I am in, but on the 6th they scored. I had one turn, a deep backhand. Another throw that could have been a turn, but Ken made a great diving grab in the endzone. Threw one or 2 other goals, We played a lot of zone and would continue to do that most of the weekend. It worked pretty fell, although this team had a bit of success working up against our z.

Round 2, we play a team from Portland I think. Um, we won this game. 15-?. I am not sure about anything else. I threw an invert away, that is about all I remember. We played more zone and it worked well. They probably scored around 6 or 7.

Round 3 was against CTR, they had beaten us in Portland, so we were pretty psyched to play them. And they were not ready to play against our zone. I was playing deep-deep for the first couple of points and they looked out of sorts against the zone. We went up at least 3-0, maybe 4-0. And they did not even attempt to throw a pass more than 10 yards upfield until after point 3, when Shasta from Humboldt threw a pretty sweet hammer that surprised the hell out of me. And then I realized who it was. We scored a bunch, they did not. We played a lot of zone and it worked. And we scored a lot too. I think this was my only non-turnover game of the weekend. But that will be discussed later. Anyway, good game to get ready for Shazam, it gave a little bit of momentum. And allowed us to watch a bit of Golden Spike taking down Mischief. I really never knew what the score was, but I saw 4 straights Spike goals, so I took that as they were in charge.

2 Notes about this game, I started feeling low energy. I took a lot of Gu and downed some of the soup, and some cliff bar. Rebounded nicely during the middle of it. 2nd, they were not happy with our cup and complained to me personally about it. I was not in the cup much, so did not notice anything, but we discussed this as a team and it seemed we were conscious of it the rest of the tourney. Although it became an issue a couple times later. Many of the accused though, thought they were not within 10 ft. or were just in there b/c of a crash. So yeah, not sure if we are quite to "Florida Club" type zone yet.

Round 4, the semis v. Shazam. We went over to their fields and got ready to play. And we come out pretty strong. We recieve to open the game and march down for the goal. The game goes to 4-3 with very few turns by either team, maybe 1 or 2 by each team. Michael Faris was big early for us scoring and throwing a goal. At 4-3, we have 2 great opportunities to score. After a d, I missed Fast deep in the end zone. I waited a bit too long to throw (kind of like a bad three point shooter holding the ball and lining up the shot). We work up to their endzone a 2nd time, but turn it over. They score 4-4. We score again to make it 5-4. Now, we get a turn, work up to midfield and Will hits me deep in the endzone 6-4. They score 6-5, we answer, 7-5, and then break again 8-5. I don't remember how we got that break, but it was really nice... Anyway, we take half and we are feeling pretty good. Get a quick drink and get ready to pull for the 2nd half.

We obviously played well in the first half, but there was a drop in the endzone. And another turn right on the goalline. So we left some points on the field. So I think we were still pretty confident going into the 2nd half.

They score fairly quick to start the 2nd half. 8-6. And then the wheels fall off. They apply more pressure on d and instead of responding with more movement near the disc and looking to our cutters. We respond with less movement from the handling position. ANd th stack approaching the sideline that we are being forced. So no real room to cut to the open side. No real chance to move it to the break force side. Which lead to 2 options. A risky dump that was tightly covered. Or a deep look. There were several turns on our first o point. One reciever almost toed the line on a deep throw at the back, but he lost possession. Another deep shot to me went out the back. Probably 2 more turns by us on that possession. They eventually score. 8-7. 8-8. Timeout us, try to readjust. 8-9. And then 9-9. Ok, maybe we have stopped the floodgates. We do get a d at this point, but we turn it back over in like 2 throws, quick goal for them 9-10. The rest of the game was just as ugly for us, maybe score to make it 10-13. I was able to get a d long on Finn, but 2 throws later we give it right back to them on the endzone. We had nothing left, they flew right past us 10-15. Ugly.

Again, I felt like we left some points out there in the 2nd half, but I must credit the pressure of Shazam in the 2nd half. We froze like one of the deer on Highway 93 between Missoula and Hamilton. It is never good to respond to pressure d by creeping closer to the thrower and not starting your cuts earlier. But I think it was a lesson learned.

Besides the obvious, we can no longer finish 1st thing. We now had to play at 8 am against Mischief. now that is a great deal. Thank you Tarr.

We get the kids back to the hotel (incidentally, our kids are pretty amazing and I do not understand how they still like us). Get some Thai food. Bathtime. And then bedtime. Pretty early again.

Going to sleep, I realized I have never been apart of the back door this early on Sunday since my Michigan club days. I tried to forget them, but alas I still recall it.

Anyway, we get out of the hotel as early as we can on Sunday and get to the fields by like 7:20. The temp is maybe a little nicer today, but the wind is horrible. An extreme downwind/upwind game. And that is how we start it out. Oh yeah, keeping track of turns is no longer an option. I had 3 on Saturday, but was fully ready for 40 + turns today, no reason to play around with the disc going downwind, take your shot and run. GOing upwind, more focus and caution, but hard as hell to throw it.

We had lost the flip, so we receive going upwind to start the game. Get it to Markie deep to James, got it, and then a goal. 1-0 we get the first upwind break. We may have converted the first down winder, but they answer back on us upwind soon after. Luckily, it was all my fault. They worked it up a bit, turn it. I proceed to bomb it. OUT OF BOUNDS. Now, not a "never came in bomb". But a "it went out way up here bomb". CRAP! This was the first and only time I would do this all weekend, but it was crucial (winner of this game gets a bye and then most likely Salt Lake. Loser has to play again, and again, and then again to get to nationals. Again, thank you Tarr).

Anyway, an up the line forehand to Tyler that I can't get to. I thought he was on the line, but his team was adamant about his first foot (which I did not see) being down. No one on my team to really help my cause, goal. Tyler was nice about, some of his teammates were not as nice. But oh well, I gave the disc about 15 yards from the endzone and then could not get to the throw before the receiver in their endzone. We lost the break.

I think we both broke one more time that half. Them first against our zone a forehand goes up to Tyler, I was totally baiting it. And then I slipped. (Now, I am not positive I would have gotten it, but I am >90% sure I would have gotten it). A couple of people looked at me and said what happened. That was great. Plus, I wrenched my back on that play. It was a great feeling. Both of their upwind goals were within my reach.

Halftime, 8-7 them. We pull downwind to them, even up the game. At 8-9, soft cap goes on (just to let you know I am leaving out a lot of turns). And we trade until they win 10-11. We had the disc once or twice on the final possession, but failed to convert.

This game we had completely given up on our offense going upwind. We were looking to put it whenever we could and we never tried to really work it. We approached this game more like an o/d line game rather than an upwind/downwind game. This is what happens when you don't play together much and you don't really understand how your personnel plays together. Mischief was definitely the more comfortable team in the extreme weather and had a much better plan. We had our chances, but they had more and obviously took advantage of that. We did not have the best strategery in the game, but we were still in it, so as long as we learned we would be ok.

The one issue I did have with them in this game was they seemed to be triple teaming on purpose right after a turn. Now, I will give them the benefit of the doubt that there was some miscommunication about who was on the mark, but I can count at least 5 times when we got the disc and as the thrower got to the endzone line there was a wall of 2 or 3 people within 4 feet of him. At first it seemed accidental, but later it was still there. I mentioned it to one of the players doing it, but it did not seem to matter. To continue the story, they were unhappy with our seemingly double teams (as was CTR from earlier), but our double teams were at least close to legal (and we moved out when asked and I think adjusted well after CTR complained). I will give the benefit of the doubt if the person breaking the rule is at like 7/8 feet. 10 feet is farther than people think. But when there are 2 extra people within 4 feet of the disc, that is a bit sketchy.

Twice this past weekend, people counted out steps to get to the double teamer in the cup. Both times, their steps were at the tippy toes (in the first case) or just before (in the case where I was accused) of the double teamer. I have never seen the walk off before and then I saw it twice in the same weekend. Funny. And I really don't think I was double teaming, in fact, when called for it, I responded with "No I'm not". So yeah, that lead to a discussion.

With all that said, that is not why we lost. If anything, they were telling us to work it more and not take so many dumb chances. They were actually helping us and we did not take it. Whoops.

Round 5 (quarterfinals of the shitbox, single elim). We play Family Style from the Bay area. Now, we have no more losses, we have to win in order to keep playing for a spot in FLA. As it has been stated many times, the team who survives the shitbox, is the team that embraces it and loves it the most. And it look like we rebounded nicely. We get the first upwind break early. But we never convert after that, including me turning it over on our own goalline on a break mark backhand that only had to go 4 yards. It went 2.

They then broke back. And took advantage of the flip (they won the flip, so took the wind) and so if we traded the rest of the game we were done. We still had not changed our strategy, we were too aggressive going upwind with the disc. Including times when we were working well against them. And we had not really figured out the subbing situation yet (it appears as though I am throwing the sub callers unders the bus. But it was new for them, and I think they had to figure out the correct strategy. and eventually they did and eventually it worked. Unfortunately, at this point in the game, it did not look so pretty).

So after they take half 8-7, we talk about upwinde a bit more. Work it more, move the disc and take only good chances. Along with that, put a line of better, more experienced throwers in going upwind b/c there was a good chance that no matter what d they played, they were going to turn it over.

Anyway, we tie it up at 9s, and then things go well. The upwind strategy of not-bombing-it-early-and-often worked. I forget how, but we scored it. 10-9 us. I was basically all on the downwind points from 8-7 on, so we went in. Family Style does work it and then have a 15 yarder up the line to a wide open woman for the score (We were in zone). The throw floats though, Ryan d's it, but it it still there, Kerr comes running in to d. I jack it back to the other endzone and eventually we secure the downwinder. Up 11-9 (soft cap on). We score again upwind. 12-9. Callahan for the game by Ryan. 13-9. We survived.

Round 7 v. Portland. With our better strategery in place, we come out and are in control. Our momentum is back and a little bit of our confidence too. By this game, I was in almost all downwind points. And an occasional upwinder. It was still windy as hell and not rainy. We were up 8-4 at half. And take the game 14-8, I think, Not giving up an upwinder at any point in ths game. I don't remember much here, because it felt like it went pretty smoothly. Our zone was working well. The O was working upwind and downwind. The downwind O was still on their half of the field, throw it and hope for the best (aka keep it in bounds). Once we got the turn over half field, relax and play normal O. I had my best catch of the weekend, keeping my toe down for a goal near the back from James. And also my worst, whiffing on a quick dishy from Ken. (that is called a drop).

Sidebar - I have heard 2 sarcastic comments secondhand about this blog. First, on the previously mentioned grab "Just because he blogs about how much he runs, does not mean he was in" and another "I bet well read about how great a decision that turnover was later" Please keep the constructive criticism coming.

Anyway, Round 8, finals of the shitbox. Us v. our friends from Salt Lake, Golden Spike. Just at the end of the portland game, the rain started to come. And then it really came. It was a horrible downpour (note, not as bad as 98 regionals in AA, but approaching there). Luckily, the kids had just been put in the stroller and were napping under the shelter. And luckily, Stu's in law brought scallops wrapped in bacon just before this game. And luckily, Golden Spike did not seem ready (and they were a bit injured) to play this game. We win the flip and we trade 2-2. Same strategy of bombing it downwind and trying to work it upwind. We score to make 3-2 after I had dropped one in the endzone from James, the beginning of the end for me in this game. I stay in for the upwind, they play z after their turn, and we work it very well for a while. Get close to the endzone, I get a swing, hit fast in the back corner of the endzone, upwind break #1. 4-2. Then 5-2, 6-2, 7-2, 8-2.

We take half, I am getting cold and very wet. More of the same, it turns out to be 15-3. I play a couple more downwinders, but stop at 12-2 or 13-3 b/c Shrum asks me if I am shivering. So I try to huddle underneath coats as long as possible. Luckily, it went quickly.

Anyway, we got to Florida and that is the main point of regionals. Did not pull off an upset of a higher seeded team, but did not lose to anyone else, more importantly. We will have a chance to do the upset thing in FLA and that is all I can ask for. I think we learned a lot about our team, especially strategic decisions in the face of horrendous weather. Hello, sarasota wind. Good times.

More importantly, we eventually made it back to Hamilton. Our kids, a bit tired, are fine and will be forced to do this again, hopefully in warmer conditions, and with grandparents to help. Thank God!

Quick summary of my play - ok on Saturday, wish for something more dynamic in the Shazam game, maybe handle or switch up the lines a bit more then (And they cheated, ok that is not true, they played a great 2nd half).

Day 2, I would put my turnovers ~50. Many downwind bombs that failed, although I connected with about 4 or 5 in each game. And about 10-12 that failed. Dropped 2 discs that was bad. GOt beat twice in the upwind endzone against mischief, that was bad. But the rest of the time, played ok deep d or I was in the cup doing a lot of marking, that was fun too.

Soreness level today, a bit high. My back is pretty stiff, yeah long car ride/no run yesterday. Hopefully, a run today will loosen it up.

Silent blogs must be regional time

2007-10-02T21:09:00.000-06:00

We are officially the #4 seed this upcoming weekend. And pool play with 16 teams. This is a little weird for me, as in the central we almost always used the double elim bracket (except in 2005, which we won, I will take that as a good sign). So Saturday is 4 games, with the semis or first round of the back doors as the last round of the day. Oh yeah, and rain too. I don't mind playing frisbee in the rain. I am not psyched about having 2 little kids out in the rain.

If winning is not enough of a motive on Saturday, then sleeping in should be. You make finals, you have until noon. If you don't make the finals, you have until 8 am. Various scenarios to play out from there with hopefully no one starting their rounds early.

In our pool is CTR, the #3 team from the Bay Area. I am no idea about this team besides we lost to them at Portland. Schadenfreude from Boise (4th team from our section) and Shotgun (2nd team from Seattle's section). It is weird to go into a regional and not know anything about my opponents. I went to central regionals for 9 straight years and had a scheme to adjust if our normal o/d did not work. In this case, I will be learning on the fly about those opponents.

If everything goes according to our plan (meaning we hold seed and get by the previous mentioned 3 teams), we have (probably) Shazam in the semis. They were the team that handled us the easiest at Spawnfest. So it would be good to have the chance to play them again. I did not feel we played our best and I am hoping that was just a hiccup and not something they did. Again, hopefully we get a chance to show them we had an off game in August.

Sunday there are too many factors to predict. And saying anything will be bad. Maybe I have already said too much.

Nothing else really to discuss, it is good to have the butterflies in my stomach. It should be a wet, fun weekend.

Workouts - pretty ez the past week. Resting and trying to make sure my gut is ok. The pain is pretty much gone, still a little sore, but I was able to do one sprint workout and also survived a practice on Sunday. Most importantly, after each day, I felt good.

Sprint workout - 8 x (50/100/50), 30 s between reps, 2 m between sets. The 100s were in the 12s (not low 12s, maybe like mid 12s Pbo).

This week's workout will either be 5 x (50/60/70/60/50) or the same minus the 70 yard sprint. Not sure if I will do the full or abbreviated workout. The other thing about moving out of the central region is that I am more worried about not making nationals. Back in Minneapolis, this was not a week to taper. In fact, a couple of times I remember trying to go extra tough on the stair workout that I would do the Thursday before regionals. Now, the legs need to be a bit fresher. Although we are driving over Thurs/Fri to Seattle, so probably 2 days off there. I think I am going to try to do the full workout, my legs should get plenty of rest.

OK, I don't think I gave any bulletin board material.

A pain in the gut

2007-09-24T07:49:00.000-06:00

This week in terms of training has been very ez. I took Tuesday and Sunday off. Everything else was either a 20-30 minute jog or a 30-40 minute ride on the bike. It is a bit too early to take off the hard workouts, but my stomach/side have been hurting. This is all a result of my layout poach d in which I collided with the offensive dude. It kind of hurt then. And it still kind of hurts, although it hurts less this Monday than it did last Monday. I do not think it that serious as I landed on them later in the game for a called back score and felt ok.

Initially, I thought it was a rib injury, but the pain is no longer on my left ribs (the initial source of pain and where I was hit). The pain now most of the time feels like a bad muscle strain in the top/center of my stomach or on the right side of my ribs. My quick look on the internet gave some stretches and of course the morning starts with some ibuprofen.

It sucks to not feel completely 100% this close to regionals. Especially, with this being the first time in a long time that I do not feel 100% guaranteed of going to nationals. But really can you be 100% at this point in the season? In 05, I was much less than 100% and that worked out ok.

As far as seeding, first for the open, it seems fair to put Furious 4, but I would think there would be a bit more support for putting them 3rd. Yes, they did not have a good 07 season, but there is a bit of precedence with them not doing that well during the preseason and then turning it on for regionals and nationals. Although if you are for Jam/Revolver, you want Furious as the 4 that way they play Sockeye and the Bay area guys fight it out for a spot to go to nationals. And if I were Jam, I would rather play Revolver (And vice versea) in October then Fur ious. [That sounds quite arrogant of me, please note I am like 3-50 against the 4 of the teams I am talking about]. Based on 07, Furious should be 4. But it is not like the summer tourneys count for anything. This is not other sports were the non-playoffs count for qualification purposes. Everything before sectionals, really means nothing and is just for the improvement of your team. I think 06 results should definitely count for something. I would put Furious 2... Bold statement for someone with no clue/no investment/no voice in the division, I know. If you had to bet on 1 team in the NW open who would it be, Sockeye or Furious? Jam or Revolver would probably not be one of them. But all 4 will get to nationals and all 4 should, so it does not really matter how they get there/what place. And all 4 have an excellent shot of at least quarterfinals.

It does not seem much like any other open regional will be that big of problem for seeding.

For our division a week later and in a different local, Shazam 1, Brass 2, Mischief 3. We are probably 4. ALthough we lost to CTR in Portland, so they could 4. By my logic above, you could argue Portland ahead of us as well. I don't know about the #4 team out of the Norcal section, but there is probably an argument about them. BUT, if you just take the 07 season, we could argue for 3rd since we beat Mischief in Seattle. Now, I am not saying we should be above Mischief, I am just saying there could be an argument for us based on 07 results (although they did finish 2nd and we finished 6th, let's not let facts get in the way).

It would seem logical for us to be 4, maybe 5 considering the CTR thing. I don't think Portland has much of argument to be seeded over us. Although they beat CTR at Labor Day, so we are 0-1 v. CTR and 1-0 v. Horde, and they are 1-1 v. each other. Throw in the whole quarter final thing for Portland, that puts them 4/5 w/ CTR. Hmmm, maybe Portland is 4/5 then. And we are 6. With Salt Lake 7. Night Train 8, maybe.

Oh wait, we went to the prequarters last year, take that CTR. So does that vault us to 4/5. I don't know. Anyone care about coed out there?

So yeah, we are seeded anywhere from 3-6. 4 bids to nationals. Should be fun.

Big Sky Champs

2007-09-16T20:49:00.000-06:00

But first a recap of the week:
T- 3 x [4 x 50/100], 15 s between 50+100, 60 s after 100, 2 min between sets, felt good, this one is tough
W- off
T- Practice, not too shabby
F- ran 3.2 miles

Sat - We get up early + head up, getting to the fields about 20 minutes before supposed gametime. We got a babysitter for the weekend, set up shop and get ready. The format was 11 teams. We were the 1 seed and had 5 teams in our pool. IF we win the pool, we are in the finals on Sunday. The weather was great. Cool to start warming up later. Sunny all day.

First game was against Insult. I don't know where they are from. The most memorable thing about this game was there were 2 kids of parents on the other team. And they hung out on our sideline the whole time. That was pretty funny except that it gets old to watch other people's kids... We eventually convince them and the parents to hangout.

We won this game something like 13-7. Oh yeah, we got our uniforms! Sweet, except the #s on the shorts are a bit small. Supposedly, that was a mishap with the printing. I am wearing #1 and it just looks like I have the 1/4" dash on my shorts.

About the game, I played about 5 points. We scored all of those. But I did have an awful drop. They turn it over in their endzone. Stu picks it up, I take off deep, beautiful backhand, hit both my hands near the goalline, doink. Whoops. I think I was patting myself on the back too much. I also threw my only successful huck of the weekend in this game. Alex wide open, all I had to do was keep it in the box.

Second game, against Moscow, ID. About the same score. Don't remember much here either. 2 more turns in this game. On the same point, first was an overthrow of T cutting wide open in the endzone. They turn it, we get it back, crappy hammer behind Nate. I played about 5 or 6 points. They scored one of those.

Third game, against Bozeman B-team. 13-1, I think. And that is all I got.

Fourth game, against Bozeman. They were the the 2 seed in our pool (4 seed in the tourney) and had the potential to give us a good game. We start out on D. Get the D, eventually on the goalline, I fake a blade to James for the goal and think to myself, nah be cautious, look around, James is smiling, blade to James, goal. 1-0. We score 2-0, 3-0 (me to Sky), 4-0. We score to make it 5-0 and that was a bad/weird goal. Johnny + Bozeman dude go up for a huck, both hit it, Johnny comes down weird, bends backwards and catches it as Bozeman dude lands awkward and breaks wrist. Ugly to watch and it was bummer for the Bozeman dude. He supposedly had a broken bone all last year too... Anyway, we go up 7-1 at half. Coast the rest of the game 13-3. No turns and threw the last goal. Also, very close to a Callahan, but I could not catch it. I still have 0 Callahans to my name (although I have an unofficial one from nationals 99). We played very well and we only had like 4 turns the whole game.

After that, we hung out. Got the Michigan score! (Yes seth, this appears to be the worst ND team ever). Ate good food. We crashed up in Missoula for the nite. T went to the party + the kids and I stayed in and slept. Now, I did not really enjoy the water at the fields, so I went right into beer. I woke up ~1:30/2 with a bad headache. Drank a bunch of Gatorade and ate some grapes. Went back to bed. Woke up later and felt great.

Taking care of myself during tourneys has not always been my strong suit. Now with 2 little ones, at times, I forget to drink/eat/reapply. I think it being so sunny but not hot killed me in the end. That and the beer.

Anyway, in the morning I felt better. And I refocused myself on drinking a ton of gatorade and water. And to win sectionals by beating Salt Lake. We played then over Memorial Day, but they looked really good on Saturday crushing everyone.

We start out on O. March it down, a couple of passes on the endzone, Daph scores 1-0.

We pull, force a turn, but we turn it back over on a deep throw, they score 1-1.

We score to make it 2-1 and then get the first break 3-1. Eventually they tie it up at 5s (I believe this was my failed greatest on this point, so maybe I should count that as my first turn?), we make it 7-5 after another break. 8-6 at half. So into half up a break and playing ok. Defensively we started out well and got stronger. Offensively, we were ok, but a bit too risky. Too many 50/50 discs which turned out to be 10/90 discs, I guess.

Thoughts on the first half, both teams turned it over deep a lot. Initially, we were a bit scared of their 2 best players, but we eventually clamped down on the men. And the women had a pretty successful scheme to contain Molly. Although we hucked some away, we were pretty good on the endzone. Very efficient in the redzone, it was just when we tried to get to the redzone quickly it hurt us. (Can you tell I am critical about how much we hucked it in this game?) It is not that we should not huck it ever, but we were really open underneath a ton and able to move the disc back and forth effectively. The good thing about it was we always turned it deep and Salt Lake had some problems getting into the endzone too. We never really gave them a short field, which was great.

I would not be so critical about it if we were not so good at working it during that game. Maybe Salt Lake was aware of our deep game and trying to take that away (plus Simon is a hell of a fast poacher deep). But we did get a bit of endzone eyes in this game and throwing to close matchups or to receivers not paying attention. But it good to win sectionals and feel like you can improve over the next couple of weeks. And I think the rest of the team agrees.

Back to the game, I don't remember how the game played out, but it was 12-9. And I think it was 10-8 at one point. To get to 10-8, we may have traded breaks. Again, I forget.

During this run to 12-8, I had a 2 layout d in one point sequence. First, I had my only turn of the finals. I tried to throw a backhand from the forehand side to backhand side, but too far near the sidleine. Poacher involved. And too close to the line. Ugly throw, not enough room, ugh (so 1-2 on hucks all weekend), But then the d's came. The first was a layout catch d. I believe the person was clearing and I poached into the lane. I get up and then we turn near the endzone (I guess we were not perfect on the endzone, but good). Next, another poach in the lane, layout, but this time with contact after I got the disc. The guy hit me in my side/ribs. Ouch. Still a little sore right now. No foul though. I did take an injury b/c the wind was a little knocked out of me. But we score the goal.

The game also began to get a little testy. A couple of close calls on fouls. Mix in a couple marking violations and marking fouls. Good times.

Anyway, 12-8 and I believe our 12th goal was jesse-me-will-em all on the break side. It seemed as though we were in control. But they come back.

After they score to make it 12-9, we force a huck deep . Turn. They work it and score 12-10.

We receive, working it ok, and a huck is thrown out the side. Not a huge deal, but I was open and I glared at Kerr. I was not too happy b/c I was open underneath. It was only a look out of love, I promise. Anyway, they score 12-11.

We receive and end up with a blade from one side to another on a high stall. Turn, 2 throws later 12-12

Uh oh, soft cap on. game to 14. And they have put together 4 in a row.

We receive, and this time work it down succesfully. I was very motivated and was able to get open on 2 big unders. Work it on the endzone, goal. 13-12. Gamepoint us.

Huge pull by either James or Will. They are in their endzone for a couple throws. Someone on their team tries an around the mark backhand, no catch on the endzone. I sprint to it, pick it up, tap it in, throw it to Daph. Goal, but no travel. Not lined fields, at least not lined endzone lines, and it was very close, but I was in the endzone. (We had the port-a-fields, which were pretty good, but the line did break on a layout attempt near a line). Anyway, check back in. Daph gets open, tougher catch than I wanted it to be, but nice grab and a goal! We win 14-12.

Fun game and a good game. Salt Lake was better than I expected. I feel we are deeper than them, but when you only are playing one game in the day, depth is not a big issue. They could be trouble at regionals.

Personally, I had one turn (2 if you count the greatest, which I won't). For a total of 4 on the tourney. I scored at least 2 goals, maybe 3. And threw a couple too. I felt good and focused on no stupid turns (like really bad hucks). I was 1-2 on that all weekend, so that was mission accomplished, I guess. I felt I did not have much opportunity to bomb in the finals. The one time I did to Johnny, he had a couple of steps, but the angle was too hard. I had to throw too much outside in, and in the end I did not.

I had some nice grabs on a couple points, but still bummed about the drop in the first game.

I thought the team did pretty well, major criticism addressed above. Our defense was great in the finals game and with the exception of maybe 1 or 2 points against Salt Lake, they had to work very hard to score. Our defense should be able to keep us in games. And our O was pretty solid. One bad stretch in the Salt Lake, but I think a fixable stretch. I really enjoy winning sectionals, but I think winning sectionals with something to work on is even better. It gives a focus going into regionals. More on that later, cheers.

App St and Oregon are REALLY good at football (aka Go Lions!)

2007-09-10T20:46:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately, that has been more in the lab than on the track/field/road/etc. I feel I have 2 phases in my post-doc experience, one is "Oh #$%^, I am still a contract worker, I need to work harder" and "$%^& it, if they aren't offering me a full time gig, well I am not doing overtime". Currently, I am in the former. And I am a little tired. I have still found time to workout, but not as much as I would like with Sectionals approaching.

Yeah, Sectionals is next week! I am excited for the fall series. I am a UPA member again (the $$ is not worth the magazine if I am not playing in the fall. Too much misinformation about the recaps, but that is a different story). Of course, instead of lining up strategy stuff and playing time considerations, I am arrainging babysitters and places to crash on Saturday nite, so we can stay up in the big city.

I don't know if we are in the largest section ever, but it has to be close. The "Northwoods" was Minn, Wisc, and whatever Candian province is North of Minnesota, forgive me with my lack of Canadian province knowledge (I can find it on a map though). But this section is Montana, Idaho, Utah, and whatever Canadian province is North of Montana (See previous comment in parenthesis). Anyway, that is BIG. 11 teams, which is pretty impressive for this section. There seems to be one other serious contender in the section, Golden SPike from Salt Lake City. We played them in Bozeman and won, they were pretty good and they had an ok performance at Labor Day. Assuming all goes well, we will play them Sunday for the finals.

I love the thought of just one game on a day. It makes it seem like frisbee is a real professional sport and not just some random endurance match over a weekend. One game days rule and are very weird too (well, if we lose we have to play more, so I guess I am hoping we win). I was talking about this with Jaegs in Seattle after their Buzz Bullets game on the Thursday before ECCfest. Just a strange experience, but usually a good feeling b/c if you only have one game on the day, it usually means Finals. Finals = Fun.

Oh, random Jaeger story since at least 2 people asked for it in Seattle. Halloween tourney in OU either 97 or 98. Most likely 98, anyway we are playing OSU last game of the day. This tourney is just a fun one day tourney where you go down, play frisbee all day and then party all nite. Good time. Everyone wears costumes, not the most serious of tourneys. Well, we are up on OSU pretty big and Jaegs decides he wants to throw his reverse thumber for the score, I think that is self explanatory. THe play call is this, Jaegs, Jefff, and Reiskin will 3-man it up near the endzone. I will sit in the stack and wait for the signal. When Jaegs is happy with the positioning (~15 yards out from the endzone, middle of the field), he will travel on purpose so as to stop the disc. And that will be the sign for me to be ready for the cut (to the backhand front cone).

So they work it up the field, I am sitting and waiting. Jaegs gets it in perfect condition and then starts running with the disc to the sideline yelling "Look at me, I am travelling". --Really funny to watch--- Travel call. Jaegs walks back. Disc checked in. He turns to the dump and then throws a perfect strike of a thumber (while facing the wrong way) to the backhand cone. Goal. Good times.

Maybe not the most spirited during a really game, but during a Halloween tourney, perfect.

Anyway, quick recap of harder workouts:

~25 minute jog with 1 mile on the track of accelerate the straightaways, jog the turns.
8 x (50/100), 30 seconds between reps, 2 minutes between sets
(50/50/60/60/70/70/80/80/90/90/100/100) and then back down. Start the watch, each minute you should be starting a sprint, meaning at 0, your first sprint, at 1 minute your second sprint.....
10x(60/90), same concept as above, start the watch, every minute you should be starting your sprint. Oh yeah, all sprints at the same starting line. Hard on the 90s, especially later in the workout.
1 x 400, 4 x 200. I ran the 400 in 71/72, 3 of the 200s at 31 and the last at 29. I was pretty happy with the times. I did this with ample rest, meaning after each spring, I waited until I felt ready to go.

The 100s I have been happy with too, 12s whichi is pretty good for me.

Anyway, too much for now. I am tired and need to rest up for the big weekend!

spawncityclassic - day 2

2007-08-21T20:26:00.000-06:00

First, I forgot to mention the weather, it was great on Saturday. The wind picked up in the middle of the day but died down by the end. The temp was nice all day.

I wish I had stats for me, they would be pretty ugly, plenty o turns. One drop, that is pictured in the same link as posted in the comments section of the previous post. It is the one where I am laying out and have a hand on the disc. I did not hold on as I hit the ground. At least, I am pretty sure it was that grab.

Anyway, on to day 2-

Round 1- Bye, thank god. It was raining where we stayed in Seattle. And it rained the whole way up to Burlington. Luckily, we did not have to get there early

Round 2- Shazam Returns. They were undefeated coming into this game and we were 2-2. If we had any shot at the finals (most likely against them), we had to beat them. A 3-3 record would not cut it.

The rain was light to start this game and there was some wind. We start on O, 1-0. We would get a break after a nice grab by megac on the endzone 2-0. We had the chance to make it 3-0, but I underthrew a forehand huck to Jesse, they make 2-1. They tie it 2-2. Next O possession, I get it with a chance to throw a wide open backhand to an open cutter, but when I step with my right foot it completely slips out from under me and the disc takes off to the other field. They score again 2-3. We tie it at 3s.

Then they take off to half 3-8. Ugh. They were very efficient with the disc. And our O was plagued with some drops, at least 4 in this first half I can remember. And some turfs. Ugly. (I am not trying to make it sound like it was all our fault, they definitely pressured us, more on that in a second).

The second half was not so pretty to start either. It started to rain a little harder and there was a bit where it was a major downpour. After them going up like 5-11 or so, we did narrow it to 9-12/13 or so. We had a chance to score 10, I think to make it 10-12, but we had a high stall on the end zone that resulted in a turn. And another clumsy drop. Ufda. In the end, they won 9-15, I believe.

Shazam definitely appears to be the team. They are the most organized/together of all the units there. Maybe because they for sure had the most players in attendance(?) and that is the reason, but they looked solid all weekend. They are the most aggressive and physical team on defense for sure that I played against. You can read what you want into that previous sentence, but I do not think they bend the rules. But they don't really give you much space. IT was good to see that and know that we have to be prepared for that in the future.

I will mention that this was my grumpiest game I had. Besides the 2 earlier turns, I had another turn on another to T-dub where it just sailed a bit too high. So that was part of the reason for my grumpiness. I think everyone had a collective poor game too, so no one really stepped it up until late (and we made a run). So that was another reason. Then, early in the 2nd half, one of their guys was over aggressive guarding the dump. Eventually, our cutter calls a foul. The guy gets mad for some reason, saying something like "You can call any of the previous fouls, but don't push" or something to that nature. So he admits to fouling him. And yells at him. Our guy (Marky) gets the dump, fakes a throw to the open side and pivots back to the backhand. Now, this defender is so close to him (definitely closer than a disc space) that he does the old nestea plung and calls a foul (the worst foul call in my book, the "I have been over aggressive on the previous throw so now I am going to be even more over aggressive and call a foul even though I am the one breaking the rule"). Anyway, either then or the next throw. Travel (3rd time his call had negated a score I believe). Finally, a score. I was off the field, but came on an immediately applauded his great playing.

Fast forward another point or 2. He is on me and gets a legitimate, good d. No big deal, it was obviously the throwers fault ;),,, He gets the disc and I am stalling him, count gets high, 9...10. I think I paused between 9 and 10, because he initially looked like he was going to throw it, did not throw it, I said 10, he threw it. Anyway, he immediately says something like bs or contest or makes fun of the way I counted or something (again I believe I stalled him, but I am not 100% certain). It did not matter, the throw was d'd. I respond with "**c* you" and he responds with "*u** you, *i**h**d, 9/10". Did not matter our disc, we eventually turn it, they eventually score it, they eventually win.

Although I feel that guy was a little over aggressive, I think the rest of the team was fine and I have no problem with them. But this is about the funniest story from the weekend, so I thought I would share.

Round 3 - Flaming Moe. THe weather clears up and was beautiful the rest of the day. Both teams are 2-3, so winner goes 3-3. We come out hard and effective, 8-4. I caught a couple goals early and threw some short ones, a very clean half for our o. Our d got some big breaks early, after they got a couple deep looks. Definitely our best first half, one more half to follow it up.

We trade a little while longer 11-7(ish?). Our o, again looks strong, I think they broke us once, but we answered back with a break to even back up to 4. We change up our o a bit, they start a run. Go back to the original O, but either our confidence was shaken or they were hot or a little of both, next thing I know 12-14. Ouch, a 7-1 run. Anyway, we bring it back to 14s. I think Jen got a big d near their endzone to set up point 13. And then we got a d on the dump and I hit James deep on a fast break/nice catch to tie it up. Soft cap on, game to 16 no matter what. They score cleanly with Josh beating me in the endzone, 14-15. We score to tie it up with a backhand from me to Jen 15s.

We pull and get the d, after a couple of throws, I get it and as someone is cutting in, I notice James starting to streak down the backhand side. I have the disc in the middle/forehand side. After a fake, I decide to try and do too much with the disc, bend it around the cutter and the stack, and float it to the other side of the endzone for James. I made it to the endzone, as a blade. Ugh. They work it up a bit, call time out. Up line to a girl handler, I turn and see this and lunge way too late to get the d, Josh wide open, goal, game, Moe 15-16. Ugly loss for us, nice win for them. Fun game no matter what.

2 points on this game quickly- I was wrong about the endzone fall, I did forget the established possession clause of the unconested foul in the endzone for a score thingy... Sorry any flaming moers out there. Just so you know that I was consistent, I said that Paul should have had a goal earlier in the game on the same type of play. Whoops. Again, sorry for not knowing the 11th edition as well as I should. Although in my defense, I did say we should just take it at the endzone, since that is what Paul did.

Second, I yelled at Josh for fouling me in that game and made some comment about him fouling me all game. Again, I will go back that I was grumpy all day, damn Shazam! And snapped a little at Josh. But, I will say, my leg was being humped all tourney long. Now, it is slightly less than in an open tourney, but I don't know. I feel in every game, many of the markers were at least strattling my pivot foot. And many went beyond that. I was not expecting to have to make a stupid throw and call cheap fouls in coed, but I am now mentally prepared for that. I am not calling out all team an leaving my team out of it, but people are very close on the mark, too close. And a lot of time there is at least leg contact.

I did start to call some cheap things in the Moe game. I called 2 fouls on break mark backhands when I felt the marker was not giving me disc space, so I pivoted, made sure there was contact (since no matter who caused the contact it would be the marker's fault) and threw it/called foul. Both were completed, so it did not matter. But I know someone on Moe commented about me causing the foul from the sideline. Not if you do not give me disc space. I am a delicate little flower!

So George, I would not brag too much about coed marks, they did not live up to the billing. Especially when a man marks a woman in the cup near the trap. They might as well be hugging the girl. It is pretty ridiculous. Definitely a situation of the man marker trying to intimidate the woman. I saw that like 90% of the time on trap mark zones against us.

Now as a personal review- I am ok with how I played, but started to try and do too much with the disc. I think I am pretty good thrower 40 yards and under. Anything getting longer, I need it to be a one-on-one situation with the receiver. Basically, not the bendy around the stack flick I tried to send to james on double game point in the moe game. Damn you Haley for throwing that so well. Although sad to lose it on that throw, I think it is good because that throw will be in my head for the rest of the season. SO hopefully, I will learn. It takes a bit, I am getting older these days. Gives me throws to work on!

On defense, it felt good to be back having to challenge myself again. Defense is definitely harder for me than offense, in almost every sport I have played. Except baseball. But focusing on the position is a constant thought process and mentally tough. When I did that well, I played good defense. When I did not, the results were not always great. Kind of like some of the pics in the slideshow put up by Hugh.

It felt great just to be back at frisbee fields and playing again. We had a ton of fun and it was good to play, see old friends, etc. I remember how much fun I have playing frisbee. Someone from moe said "I thought you said you hated co-ed". Now, I do not remember ever saying that, unless it was as a joke so a coed player that I knew could hear that. I have definitely made fun of co-ed before, so maybe that was taken as I hated it. But I have also made fun of open before too...

With all that said, besides open/coed etc., I really enjoy playing frisbee first and foremost. When I first started playing, I did not fall in love with frisbee because I wanted to be an elite open ultimate player. I really enjoyed ultimate because it was a competitive outlet and I really enjoyed the people I was playing with. Somewhere along the way, I really wanted to train hard/practice hard/and play the best available outlet for me. When I was in Ann Arbor, it was magnUM or whatever fall team I played on. In Minneapolis, it was zero. And now in Hamilton, it is the Flycoons. I feel we showed we are competitive this past weekend. Plenty to work on, but plenty to take from. And most importantly, I enjoy my teammates on and off the field. That is why I play frisbee, so I can run around, chase a plastic thing, and bs when the day is done. I am looking forward to the fall. More to come

ECCfest - day 1

2007-08-20T22:16:00.000-06:00

It was a long trip, but we have arrived back into the smokey Bitterroot a quick recap of the events:

Last workout on Wed.- 6x(150,100,50) 30 s between reps, 90 s between sets

Thursday, no workouts, packed up the car and headed to Spokane (slightly less than halfway to Seattle. It is funny to go to slightly big cities from our town of 4000. They seem huge.

Friday, finish up the drive to Seattle, we stayed in Seattle ~1 h south of the fields. Walked around the city a bit.

Saturday morning, we had arrainged for a babysitter to meet up with us at the fields. We were not able to get there until 8:30 am. 30 minutes before gametime, which left us ~10 minutes to warm up. And that showed.

Round 1 was against Mischief, they won last year. We receive, center to me. Now, I saw Kerr who had just receive the pull coming upfield wide open, my man was now on me. So I flip it back to him. Or more accurately, back behind him. Oops, disc on their goalline. 0-1. Hmmmm. They pull, something else strange happens, not with me this time, 0-2. And they had moved the disc like 10 yards total. Apparently, it is hard to complete a pass in coed.

Well, things improved after that, we would get the lead at 4-3. And then basically trade until half 8-7. I don't remember much about the half besides we lost one of our key receivers/pullers to a hamstring injury and I scored the goal to take it to half from Daph.

The 2nd half went much the same. Mainly trading points. I guarded Tyler a bit in the 2nd half. He has a very effective, very low release, deep backhand. He threw a big huck that started out under my leg as I tried to kick-block it. Impressive. The other thing they do is throw everything to him. A 3 possession sequence for them was a very big hammer to him (I thought I d'd this one, he thought I stripped it, it was close, no contest, goal), a big break mark backhand for a goal to him (again on me), and another big hammer to him, this time I d'd it fair and square !!! (I don't mean that in a bitter sense, the first one was very close). On that d, we were able to march it down and get the goal for the only break of the 2nd half. They had an excellent opportunity for a break, but a not great throw to an open receiver literally bounced off the top of the receiver's head and so no goal. We receive at 14-13, march up the field, call a timeout. Out of the timeout, my guy poaches, hammer to me, after that some sort of call, disc in, scoober, goal, 1-0 for the day. Alright!

Fun game and good game. I had no idea what to expect so it was good that we can be more than competitive. Bad news was we lost one of our main guys for this grueling tourney. That sounds like whining b/c I am sure everyone had someone got injured. I apologize.

Round 2- This game was against Horde. I guess there have been some pretty close games in the past between the flycoons and them, so the team was still pumped, especially after the win. BUT, we do something strange again on the first point, i believe the disc was just dropped 0-1.... Uh oh. We rebound and play fairly well, we were up 7-6. We pull to them, on the first d we get, I try to bomb it to Sky (now a slight wind and we are going upwind with the disc). Turnover - a theme of the weekend on my throws trying to gain more than 50 yards. We get another d, this time I turn it over with a hammer to Sky on the endzone. I learned nothing from the wind on my previous throw. Fast forward, Portland takes half 7-8. Great job me! Instead of up 8-6 going into half, we are now down one.

They start off the 2nd half strong, 7-10. After finally answering, we start to play zone and that gives us the momentum. Also, they touched a pull as it was coming down so we did get a very cheap and ez goal. I threw at least one push pass goal here, maybe 2. Fast forward, 14-11 us. We are 2-0! This mixed stuff is really easy...

Round 3- Brass Monkey. Much like the other first halfs, it is close. I believe we were up 8-7. Exhausting was setting in, so I don't remember much here, except it was like an 99/00 college all-star game out there.

I know they ran out of the second half fast, I believe they made it 8-10. This game was the windiest. It was upwind/downwind, but with a definite cross breeze to it. Back to the game, we were able to tie it up, but I do not think we ever had the disc with the chance to win the game. They win 13-14 and run up the field on the last point. Sorry the details are a little foggy for this one. We did lose Sky in this game as well. So 2 of our biggest deep threats were down.

Strange how I only remember the victories well.

Round 4- Slow White. Damn them and their first round bye. And for also crushing Portland in the previous round.

We stick with them for a bit, but they are up at half 4-8. And they score to make it 4-9. Here is where you feel it. This is where I start to think, time to drink up and rest for tomorrow, nothing can be done. BUT, we did respond. And that was a great feeling. A big reason for this has to go to 2 peeps, Pablo and Emily. They gave us a much needed emotional lift on the defensive and offensive end. I feel like Pablo forced a couple of bad throws. And Emily had a big grab and big d. In the end, it would not be enought, but we did bring it back 11-13 and I think we had the disc on the last point. I am not positive of that, but I feel like we did. In the end, we lost 11-14. I guess you always have to look at the brightside. 2-2 on the day. One loss at double game point. And another victory we could have given up, but we fought back. That was somewhat encouraging. I think no matter what, we would have taken 2-2 on this day. Moral victories don't count for much. But in August they mean more than in October!

On the brightside, James who was injured in the first game came back and played a couple of points. I was just happy it was not serious.

Ok, so that took a while, and I am tired now and I have to go to work tomorrow. So that is about it. I only saw a little open. Sub was up big on Chain, Chain comes back and maybe goes up by 1, but Sub comes back to win. I saw double game between Dog-sockeye. Fun stuff, I am not sure about green jerseys.

Showcase game, did not see much of. Nice big, long hammer from Wiggins. Chase-to-Jaegs deep huck. Hector forgetting he is not riding a bike. But yeah, did not catch a whole hell of a lot of this game. More soon.

Unhealthy Living

2007-08-15T07:38:00.000-06:00

It is pretty ridiculous here. I mentioned before that was smoky. Now, it is very smoky. I mean less than 1 mile visibility smoky. It appears to be a major rainstorm at times outside. You would have no idea that there are mountains nearby, although today is not as bad as I can see the outline of them. AND it rains ash on a pretty regular basis. I guess most of it is from a fire in Idaho, but there is a pretty big fire 30 or so miles south of here. Click on the title above to get a smoke image of the area (we are in the little groove in the southwest part of the state).

What this means is: very unhealthy to be outside. And extremely unhealthy to workout outside. It would be like running 4 miles right next to a bonfire or something. There was still practice in Missoula yesterday, but we did not go since we felt bad taking our kids outside for that long. If I am out of whack at spawnfes/ecc, I will blame the fire.

So yeah, now we are very exciting to go to Seattle, b/c hopefully we will see the sun again or just regular clouds or something else than smoke.

On to workouts, a lot of easier stuff as we have had some visitors, so I have not invested the time in doing a lot of hard stuff:

Tues- off, smoke
Mon- rode exercise bike 30 min, lifted legs
Sun - 2 x (5/5/5 jog/hard/walk), ended with a 200. My legs felt tired, but it was a good workout. First 5 min hard was @ 5:40 pace (I got a little more than 1400), second 5 min hard was faster (I got ~1450). After a 5 min break, I ran a 30 second 200. I was pretty pleased with that. I have not run a 200 that fast in a long time. And that also probably means I could run the 5 min harder.
Sat - 30 minutes pushing the baby jogger
Fri - short stuff track workout, I talked about this previously, a lot of quick stuff, changing directions and some jumping and throwing. Oh, and I also rode the bike to and from work.
Thu - easy run, somehwere ~25 minutes
Wed - off
Tue - easier practice, the team still a little sore from Portland. Some drills, but mainly doing instructional scrimmages to make sure everyone is on the same page
Mon - 29 minute run - first 15 minutes pushing LT over to a babysitter's house
Sun - 30 minute - pushing baby jogger, just me and LT for 2 days, so she went everywhere with me.

Last, my COTD critique-

Kirkshank's throw - I don't think a bad decision as it appears the receiver had plenty of room, it was just a poor throw. Happens to even the best apparently.
Furious receiver - awkward bid, I am guessing he think he should have had it, but tough grab as it appears the Goat defender interferes with him. Not fouling him, but the furious went up as if no one was around or something. Still a turn on the thrower, but it could have been a COTD for the receiver if he makes the grab.
Goat throw - ummmm, the invert that sails the wrong way. It appears the throw is meant for the receiver on the bottom/left side of the screen, but loses the invert. Thus, it brings another, unsuspecting receiver into the play. And a very good defender. Oscar went up big and aggresively, a pretty nice d. It always feels good to get a d before the receiver knows/thinks about getting it.

Smoke Alert

2007-08-05T21:16:00.000-06:00

Quick results from tourneys that I know of- Kleinnmann Flycoons finish #2 losing to CTR in the finals something like 15-11 after beating a Rhino-ish team in the semis on double game point. That was a rematch of pool play from the previous day. CTR beat the main portland coed team like whoreshack or whatever there name is in the other semis

CC - Bravo over Jam. Both teams 6-1. Sub went 5-2 losing to both teams previously mentioned. So they beat Machine, Truck stop, condors, boston, revolver. Double game point victory over Condors. This was the first time that a Sub Zero team ever beat a Condors team. I know this b/c when we played the Condors in the quarters of 01, over half the team basically pooped their pants before the game. It is always fun to watch your team get more and more nervous during warmups. Not that I played a perfect game or anything. Just check out a missed disc in the calendar from 02.... Ugh.

So it seems that frisbee is going pretty well in Missoula. I feel that was a good showing in Portland for our team. The usual excuses for an early August tourney apply, but it definitely seems like a good step. Of course, this is from sitting on my couch in Hamilton the whole weekend.

We were able to play 4/3 at practice for the first time for awhile. It definitely is a different challenge mentally on the defensive side. Adjusting from open where you have potentially 6 other guys to help you out if in trouble. IN 4/3, there is a definite feeling of stopping your own person the whole time just b/c of the gender switches.

We played a going to Portland game against (mainly) not going to Portland game. Needless to say, my team lost and it was not pretty. I guess they sent the correct squad there. I had 2 major turns, a misfire on a huck, just threw it too fast and maybe too long. The second was a high stall bailout huck, surprsingly it was almost caught on a nice play by the receiver. I got froze looking upfield again. Hopefully, I stop doing that soon.

Working out has been going ok. I have not been doing a lot of hard stuff lately as we have had some visitors and it is smokey as hell here. Today was pretty ridiculous as it looked like horrible rain clouds all day today. But really it was smoke clouds covering the sky. You could not see the mountains.

Sat- hamilton practice, hot and 14 people, so it was not a huge success, although fun. Just really, really hot. My team got crushed in this one too. Hmmmm, a pattern is developing. We got behind early and I was letting them fly, to really not much success. I basically ended the scrimmage as a floated a backhand that ended up in someone getting a pretty bad cut on their eye. Everyone stayed in Hamilton, hungout and went to see the Simpsons. Pretty funny, although it is just basically a longer version of the tv show. But still really funny.

Sun- I ran, not sure how long

Mon- Day off

Tue- 3x(4x150) 1 minute between reps, 2 minutes between sets. Ran them all in 22/23. Felt ok, legs not as good as I would have liked, but the rest of me felt good.

Wed- 25+ minutes

Thu- Practice, see above.

Fri - Biked to work in the morning and back for lunch. >6.5 miles total. Ez nothing particularly great.

Sat- Day off

Sun- 28 minutes, ran pushing LT in the stroller. EZ, ~8 minute miles.

Hamilton here we come

2007-07-26T22:55:00.000-06:00

Besides the temperature finally getting below 100, the wildfires close by, discussing MUDI and finding out seigs has a blog again, not much is new. We are preparing the city of Hamilton to have the first ever ultimate frisbee practice in the city. Everyone is psyched. I have normal July feeling of the fall series seems too far away and I just want to play frisbee at a tourney. I guess I'll get my fix in Seattle.

Anyway, working backwards from the past week or so-

Today - practice, not too bad. Good running, weather was nice, pretty good frisbee. I turned it over once on a cut miscommunication. The ol' couldn't hold the disc in. Oh, and I biked to and from work this morning. Total trip ~6.5 miles or so. The first time in a while I have worked out twice in a day in a long time. Now that is a good way to get ready for a tourney, two-a-days.

Wed - 4 x 300/200, 15 seconds between, 4 minute between sets. A killer workout, but good. 300s were 50-51 and the 200s were 34-36. The 300s felt really good and I did feel like I was holding back. The 200s on the otherhand, my legs felt dead. It was a good workout though.

Tue - short run, ~15 minute run. I wanted to throw afterwards, but it was too dark.

Mon - 5 minutes up/down, 16 x 100accelerate/100ez. Similar to my last post. Felt good.

Sat/Sun - Great weekend, we got up early on Sat. and went up North, just west of Glacier and just west of Polebridge. Beautiful country, right on the North Fork of the Flathead River. One of the Flycoons had a birthday camping weekend and we joined them for a day. Drove by beautiful Flathead Lake. And got up to the destination ~3 pm. Just hung out and had a bunch of fun on the river. The ended with a bonfire. And of course, frisbees through the fire. Good times. On Sunday, we got up, had some food, packed up and went through Glacier on a recommendation from our friend DaveO. I am so glad we did. We hung out in Apgar Village on Lake McDonald. Even though we were there for only 3 hours or so, it was well worth. It is just gorgeous up there. I highly recommend it. Got home late on Sunday,but it was worth it. I even got a run in when we got home. ~25 minutes. I was inspired to wear my new shoes.

Fri - Got ready to go camping. Did buy some new shoes, the Nike Air Milers were half off. My legs are very thankful.

Thu - 6 x (100/200), 30 seconds between reps, 90 seconds between sets. 100s were in the 13s, 200s were 32/33. I felt good again. My last 200 was my 2nd fastest, so I took that as a good sign.

Wed - I forget

Tue - Practice, I felt really good at this practice. There was a lot of lightning early, so we waited that out. And eventually had enough to play some frisbee. I don't remember much though. I threw some hucks that were completed that is about it.

....

Thats all for now.

no content

2007-07-14T20:27:00.000-06:00

Hello. Please move on, there is nothing new here. The only news is I am very psyched not to be travelling to Tulsa this year to play frisbee. Nothing against Tulsa, it is just a long ways away from anywhere I would have lived.

This week was all about regaining lost ground. Last weekend was busy and a bit trying at times. Initially, I was going to take it easier and then easy became 3 days off as various things got in the way of working out. Anyway, workouts over 2 weeks:

Sat- Warmup/down, Ran a 8:30 minute 1.5 mile on the track
Sun- We attempted to do some quickness oriented stuff in our backyard ie rabbits, jumps, sprints, shuffles, explosions, throws in attempt to simulate some sort of frisbee like activites. We wanted to do it for 40 minutes or so, but we got interrupted and only did 20 minutes.
Mon- Off
Tue- Warm up/down 2 X 100/150/200/150/100 with 1 X 100/300/100 sandwiched in between, this workout felt great the 200s were 32; the 300 was 48.
Wed- Ran 25 minutes
Thu- Practice
Fri- off
Sat- ~45 minute bike ride
Sun + Mon - off
Tue - Ran 25 minutes
Wed - 2 X (5 200s), did not feel so good. First off, it has been hot as Chiapas here. And it gets hot here between 4-6, right after work, when I usually workout. Ugh. Second, it definitely felt like I took time off.
Thu- Practice, this was pretty good, a lot of throwing, playing and running. Still the main problem is not playing in a 4/3. But I feel at least the effort is there. One very important thing I learned very early on was it is not important to have 14 people at practice. The most important thing is to work hard when you are there and not worry about things you cannot control (like not having 14 at practice, not having 6 women at practice, etc.). If everyone is on the same page and works hard when you are together, things will work out well.
Fri- Warmup+down 6 laps on the track (jog the curves and accelerate/sprint the curves). So bascially, 12 100s somewhat hard, 12 easier 100s. Each lap took 1:40.
Sat- Stationary bike 35 minutes

Non active stuff:
music- wilco cd is good stuff. I think the previous 2 (so far) Are better, but still darn good. white stripes very good as well. The best use of bagpipes since acdc

movies- saw the wilco documentary - good, united93 - intense + good, narnia - not that great, i am getting tired of the big battle scenes where good and bad meet on an open field.

Infection

2007-06-30T19:55:00.000-06:00

So we missed our first practice this week. I think we had a good excuse as our daughter got a foot infection. Now, we don't really know when or how it happened. What we do know is a. we have a cat and b. there are marks on LT's foot that look remarkably like cat bite marks.

After our usual routine on Thursday morning, I went to work. I come almost everyday for lunch and so I called beforehand. After not getting an answer at home, I called our cell. And a "where are you guys?" was answered with "Convienent Care". What? In the mid-morning as they were going outside, T noticed LT's foot was swollen, a trip to CC, then to the drug store to get the antibiotics. Anyway, she appears to be fine now. Never did she get a fever (really, she was never in a bad mood). She had a little bit of a limp yesterday but today the swelling had gone down and there was never any spreading.

So yeah, that was fun. It does not help that I am really paranoid about random infections like that. I have had 2 of them. Soph year in high school during cross country at "Semi-state" (the 3rd of 4 levels of the Indiana state tourney process) was my first. A half mile into the race, there is a sharp lefthand turn. This was on a course that we ran 3 or 4 times a year, so I positioned myself on the inside. Unfortunately, the guy next to me wanted to get inside or something as well. He planted on my right foot w/ 5/8" spikes. And he turned while still in there.

I have been spiked many times, my first thought was it would not be so bad. Well, the first step was very painful. And the second one sent a sharp pain up my leg. I was done. Ugh. I remembering struggling to walk back and not being very happy. Plenty of time waiting in the er after. They sew it up with some advice "It is probably going to get infected, so see your doctor soon". Anyway, it did get infected I was on crutches for 6 weeks. But they did not cut me from bball, probably sympathy.

The second was in the spring of 2000. It was the year I started grad school, I got in during the "winter" semester at Michigan and I was working full time at a local chem place. Near finals, there was plenty of stuff going on at work and at school and of course with ultimate. Our last weekend before regionals, we had 2 practices. Nothing out of the ordinary, one small cut below my left knee. But anyone who has played ultimate has had the same thing happen to them, I am sure.

Anyway, I went to bed Sunday nite with a sore left knee. I have "Pre-patellar bursitis" (aka "Housemaid's knee). So my left knee is always a little bigger than my right knee. And if I land on it wrong, it call flare up. When I went to bed, I just assumed that I landed wrong at some point.

That nite I did not sleep well and when I got up to go to work, I stepped out of bed on my left leg. And proceeded to fall over. I had stayed at T's that nite and she asked "are you ok?" To that, I replied "I can't walk". My temp turned out to be 103. So yeah, another ER trip. This time was the fastest to get seen. Immediately taken back and put an IV in. The fever goes up a little and the first 24 hours absolutely sucked. IV's + painkillers on a continual drip.

Tuesday was much better, my fever came down considerably and the pain was pretty much gone. It was a staph infection, but no one really understood how it happened. I did have that cut. And we did practice next to the Huron River (not the cleanest river), but the docs really thought that should not happen. But it did. I stayed into the hospital until Saturday. Which was the start of regionals at Purdon't. I did have thoughts of driving down there that nite, but I had to inject myself with antibiotics. And after each injection, I pretty much was shot for an hour or 2. I imagine kind of like a druggie, only not so good.

After qualifying for natties, I was still on the IV drugs for ~2 weeks. Basically, did nothing for those 2 weeks because I had to give myslef drugs every 6 hours. And I was knocked afterwards for some time afterwards.

I got my knee checked out at Medsport, they told me not to play at nationals in 10 days. I asked the pt, who also played frisbee, what I should do. After telling me the best thing for my knee was to take another month or 2 off, she told me she would play at nationals if it were her.

So I did, I was horribly out of shape, although I got an appreciation for watching baseball back. I hyper-extended my other knee 3 times on the weekend. We lost to Salisbury Steak in the first round, beat UCSC, and lost to Colorado. Of course, the steak lost to sc and so we were done from the prequarters due to point diff. And we finished 9th. Good times. My knee, I feel, I are still pretty fragile, so anytime I mention that, this is what I mean.

Recent frisbee stuff-
the flycoons aka spangled finished 2nd at the calgary tourney. Losing to Edmonton again

Workouts-
Sat - 2 sets of 5/5/5s, I think. The hard 5 minutes was at 6 minute mile pace.
Sun - 10 200s (2 sets of 3, last set was 4) all 33, one was 34. Felt pretty good.
Mon- 40 minutes on the exercise bike
Tue - 2 x 100/150/200/200/150/100 (200s at 32/33, 150 23/24, 100 13)
Wed - nothing, just a long day or something
Thu - 25/30 ez run
Fri - nothing again, too tired
Today - I have not yet decided but something soon.

Also, the new VW ads have all songs off the new wilco album. Sweet. I still need toget the album yet. Maybe it comes with a car. Hmmmm.

Nothing

2007-06-24T15:31:00.000-06:00

Ultimate- we are in full swing figuring out how to play co-ed with 2 kids. There is probably not a more perfect team for what we want to try and get out of this year. There is only one practice a week, the absolute max we could do. We live 45 miles south of missoula, it is a very ez drive. But that is about all we can stand for road trips right now. We are spolied as we live 3 miles from where I work, so there is not much car time these days. We have also been lucky enough to leave our oldest at home with a sitter. That makes practice a little easier.

The team itself is pretty interesting because there are plenty of men, but not nearly enough women. The main weakness of this team will not be to practice 4/3 really ever. There will be ~10 women on the team, but at least half are usually not in Missoula. For men, save for a couple of men out in the field for the summer, there are usually 15 or so. At times, it is 6/1 on the field which changes the dynamic completely. I have no idea about the personnel and where they are, etc., but it seems that there will be occasions when we can practice 4/3.

As far as the practices go, it is good to have one day to run around a little bit. We have been trying to discuss o + d stuff at the first couple, so presumably the practices will speed up as everyone gains comfort in new ideas. I love being part of a team trying to figure a new system. Especially since I sit back and watch a little more at practice, it becomes obvious which team is playing more and thinking less. And that is usually the team that wins on all levels, the team that thinks less while playing.

I also love going to new team's practices. I always wish I played a year or 2 with one of the top teams (read win nationals or get to semis at least). I have always wondered how their practices ran, drills, etc. Please, I would love insights into the practices from the great years of dog, condors, etc. At least, what happened and what was done. I have my own beliefs, but never have I been playing late on a Sautrday at nationals. What am I doing wrong? (besides not moving to Seattle)...

It will also be interesting to see if a team that practices only once a week and goes to tourneys ~1 a month can succeed. Well, that depends how one defines "succeed". I would think, at the very least, everyone on the team wants to get to nationals. And I think that most of want to do well at nationals. Now, as I say this, I checked the Easterns or Boston Invite or whatever it officially is now and saw that no team West of the Mississippi lost to a team from East of the Mississippi. Even better, the northwest region lost only 1 game (results from the first 5 rounds), from non-northwest opponents. Hmmm, have I ever mentioned that the Northwest region is the hardest region EVER... Sorry, I just moved here, I have to work on dropping that as much as possible.

The other funny thing is I have no idea how good these teams. I have no idea about actual co-ed strategy, aside from some 5/2 success at P.days and a 4/3 victory at the famous Shampoo Banana tourney. I mean, Shazam is 5-0, Mischief is 4-1 etc., but I never played against good co-ed only teams. Only whore teams for a summer tourney. The Flycoons went up to Calagary this weekend, but we could not make it. The thing is there is obviously talent here, just not sure how it will translate. It is not like picking some of the madison guys in 05 and knowing that we were back on top of the region. We are on a talented team in the region that always win coed nationals.

Fortunately, we are *planning* to go to the ECC coed tourney. This is in 2 months and basically right before the series begins, so who knows how informative that will be for us. At the very least, it should be an interesting experience playing in a top level coed tourney with only coed teams.

On a side note, anyone know any good babysitters who would be willing to hang out at ultimate fields and watch frisbee for a weekend in Seattle? Or more specifically just north of seattle? Let me know.

Basically what I am trying to get at it, I have no idea about how good we will be. I felt I always had a handle about what our team could accomplish on Sub Zero and magnUM, but not here.

Working Out- it has been up and down. We were all sick the past week, so it was tough. Even on my "sick" day, I went for a slow bike ride pulling the kids in our nifty little trailer. Of course, that absolutely wiped me out for the rest of the day. I was able to have a decent workout last nite at like 10. 2 x 5/5/5 (5 minute jog/hard/walk on the track. I ran the hard at 6 minute mile pace and felt pretty good). I ended the workout with 2 hard 200s 31 + 33. Hopefully, that translates to another hard workout tonite.

Other hard workouts I have done were 2 X 400/300/200/100, 4 x 100/200/100, and 3 x 100/200/200/100. I also had my longest run of the year, 48 minutes following a good portion of a 10K course + getting a little lost along the way.

Other stuff - I am probably 1 of 22 people in the country bummed that the us track championships are not on tv anywhere I can find.

Umm, I will admit to checking scores of a coed tourney (boston) for the first time ever.

And both youngsters are up, I should be a parent

my first coed tourney

2007-05-28T22:07:00.000-06:00

Not really true, since I have played in a lot of the summer series coed tourneys. But never with an actual coed team before. Anyway, this weekend we packed up the family and headed to Boseman for Bozofest.

Now this is a classic tourney. No pools up beforehand. Starting later than advertised. Teams bailing at the last minute. A friday, saturday, and sunday party. This was definite old school frisbee.

Anyway, we arrived to play with the Flycoons from Missoula. This was our first time playing with this team. We had met most of the team before the weekend, but never really played with them besides a little pickup 2 months ago. There had been no practices as of yet, since most of the team was caught up in the grueling spring league season (which is not going great, after a 2-1 start we are now 2-6, ugh...) It was my first tourney in 10 months. And much longer for T. Plus, we brought our 2 kids with us to the fields. And that would be the hardest part, trying to play and manage the kids at the same time. Personally, I was trying to limit myself as much as possible, but still stay somewhat warm.

We were the 2 seed in our pool behind edmonton who won last year. We had a ton of guys (~16 or so) and ~7 or 8 women, losing 1 of the ladies on Sunday. So a ton of men, probably not enough women. But I had no idea, since this was the first time in a while I had been at a strickly 4/3 coed tourney.

The first game of the day was easy, I think against a team from Moscow, ID. We played a lot of zone and we won 13-1. There was not much talk about strategy before the game. And on my first d point, we just called a zone and no offense. They turn it near the endzone. I was the deep and I get called to pick up the disc. As I am walking to the disc, my only thoughts were I have no idea what anyone is going to do. Luckily, it was obvious and the goal was an ez throw. 1 throw as a flycoon, 1 assist. I played 3 or 4 more points, caught a goal. And I was on the field for the one they scored. Blah, I hate that, but we survived the first game as a team. And our kids were not going crazy.

Game 2 was against the Vipers from Portland. They were pretty funny, they wore vests, and did a pretty funny cheer at the end of the game. But that is really all I remember. We won fairly easily in this game, although I think they score more goals. At this point I was just happy the weather was nice and that the little ones appeared to be enjoying the outside.

Game 3 was against Edmonton and obviously the toughest game of the day. I like ultimate much more when you have to run and you have to play well. The challenge is great and these guys were pretty good. Their guys were tall, skinny, ultimate looking type players with a couple of short speedsters. Their women were solid and had excellent disc skills. Probably the most skilled women-wise we faced all weekend. Going into this game, I was pretty confident with our team. It did not seem like there were any real weak-links on the guys side. There were a couple guys who preferred to play offense, but they were not guys who were lost causes on defense. And I was confident our women could hang. Solid athletes and solid throws all around for the team. Again, much better then I expected to be in Montana before I moved here.

Back to the game, ummm, saturday seems so far away. What I do know, we won 13-8. We were very good defensively in this game. And to my surprise, zone was very effective against this team. We were able to get some takeaways and force goofy throws. I had a footblock and then also kick someone in the hand. I bruised my butt as I was undercut going up for a disc, not a dirty play, but the guy did not expect me to go up. It was close to a foul, but I took it back. It's May...

I also had several turns at high stalls. This was the first time when it was obvious that I never played with any of these peeps before. Well first, I was lazy turning to the dump. Always late. Second, I got into the habit with zero of turning and firing. When I was turning here, they started to fake instead of me just firing it into them. I felt like I went up to 5 different people on saturday and said "this is what i like..." I am a high maintenance teammate. Totally just 2 different schemes coming together. All of which lead me to about 5 turns in this game. Yuck. But we won, I learned a lot about my new teammates, my kids were napping for a good portion of this game, and we won.

Last game was against the Bozo B team. We traded points for a little bit. Took half like 7-4, and then went from there. We were totally mentally checked out of this game. So we won our pool, 4-0 and the quarters did not start until 11 on Sunday. Sweet.

From what I hear the party on Saturday was pretty good. Of course, in our room I was in bed out by 9:30.

On Sunday, we got to the fields around 10:30 and lets just say the quarters were not going to start at 11. Once they eventually got going, we played Moscow, the first team we played in our pool. We were sluggish, they were not. So instead of 13-1, we start out 3-3 or something like that. We talk half 7-4 and the cap goes on. 9-4 final. We took half after a timeout call on the endzone when they played some sort of junk d that involved not covering anyone. And I threw a endzone-endzone backhand (wind-aided) for a goal.

For the semis, we played Salt Lake City. There definitely seemed to be a rivalry between our team and theirs. Of course, I knew nothing about them or this rivalry, so I was looking forward to another challenging game. This game starte out pretty even. We got the first break pretty early, but they would eventually get that break back. During this early stretch, one of their better guys hit me with a follow-thru on his backhand. He called a foul. Ugh, horrible call. Not much else to do about it besides contest and whine a little bit. Eventually, Jesse gets a pretty sweet catch d block in front of his man. That starts a charge to half, ~8-5 or so. And we role some more, maybe 15-9. The second half we were definitely in control. My last memory was throwing a cross field backhand for the game-winner to Skyla.

They switched to a force middle sometime late in the first half, as if to signal they could not force us to turn it. And we did not really force anything, a fairly clean game on our side. Really, they did play ok, but I think this was our best game. Our execution and defense was excellent. Not much else stands out about this game. At least, not at the moment.

The finals was rematch of pool play with Edmonton. They had defeated the Bozeman team, I think. But I am not sure. Anyway, we came out hot in this game. An early d followed by a break mark huck/floater that Will pulled down 1-0. The next point, I got a poach d and then a foul on the throw of a potential huck to me. Grant pulls down another hucks and calls to. Dump to me and T is open for the goal 2-0. I think they scored next, because I went back in at 3-1 with us pulling, I think. Anyway, we get another d. I give-n-go with Becca and then jack a horrible forehand that is turned over because it floats forever.

Three things about this throw, 1. it was horrible. I had my worst weekend throwing deep forehands since sometime in the summer of 04. I completed one forehand over 40 yards, I would say. And that one was on a great grab by Jesse. 2. my defender called a horrible travel on me. It would have been the worst call of the weekend, but it was incomplete so the call did not matter. The reaons why this call was terrible are A) my pivot foot stayed in place B) his first argument was I did not stop in 3 steps. I do not know exactly how many steps I took, but I came to a stop as quickly as possible and then threw it. C) his second argument was I took 4 steps. Now, what I do know is my last step was with my right foot, my non-pivot foot. My second to last step was with my left foot as I was stopping to set a pivot foot. So if he indeed counted correctly, that count being 4 steps. I established my pivot on my 3rd step and threw it on my pivot, how every normal stopped person does. Whatever, it does not matter, I turned it. Point #3. our mo' stopped after this point. I have no idea if my incomplete huck had anything to do with it, but we stunk after this point.

After going up 4-2, they storm and take half 6-8. At some point around this time, we stopped dumping and swinging. This is what absolutely killed us. We basically only used 15 yards wide of the field and tried to stuff down their throats either with unders or deep. Not even really break mark hucks or anything, straight getting forced one way and never using the full width of the field to try and score. Take that into effect with 3 dropped discs in or at our goalline. A hammer thrown away on the goalline. Somewhere in their run, I called a to, and then threw to the incorrect shoulder of Daphne allowing her woman to get a d.

After half, they score the next 2 points on our o. 6-10. We finally score off a pull with a huck from me to Andy who throws a short pass for the goal. 7-10. We get several ds on the next point, but fail to convert. Included was a stall on our endzone. And another dying quail of a forehand from me that is almost caught by the receiver. Ugh. I used to be good at throwing forehands. Then end up scoring 7-11. Late first half/early second half, they started going 3 men/4 women and really let their women cut downfield. Our first response was to go zone. I was the deep, and we put 2 men in the cup. This is the one bit of strategy that I was not sure about, I would have put the men in the middle of the field (middle cup, short deep, and deep deep), but I was definitely interested in how the 2 guys in the cup would work. This zone was ok, but eventually they worked it well and I got sucked in on a shot up the line and the women threw a hammer over me that I could not recover in time. We did not go back to the zone the rest of the game. Definitely that feeling of man-to-man desperation, you know, where you have to take it away with one-on-one defense set in. Not that should not be that way, but our zone was fairly effective the previous day. Something to remember if we face the canadians again.

I go back in at 8-12 (the cap was on, so now game to 14). We were bogged down even more. Twice we had it on our goalline and twice we crowded the thrower who then had to force it in an attempt to score.

We scored to make it 9-12, fairly easily as I recall as our "force it down their throat" strategy finally worked. We pull and get a big d from Skyla on the line. Her woman did catch the mack, but was ob. We begin to work it up and I was able to get 3 unders to half field, but not much room after that. On the third, I threw a backhand that all I had to do was keep it in the box for a goal. Of course, that did not happen. They march it up, I tip the disc on a break mark with my cleat, 50/50 ball that Kerr appears to have d'd, but a foul call. I did not agree with the call, but there was some contact. It look as much as the offense's fault. Well, they eventually hit 2 break marks and score the goal. 9-13. And then 9-14 as we are unable to convert . Those darned canadians win.

It was a fun game, they were a good team who was able to force us to use only a 15 yard wide section of the field. I did not feel like their marks were that spectacular, but definitely good enough to stiffle us. Props to them. Their strategy of 4 women also appeared to help, I think in part b/c we were deeper then them with men. And our women were tired. The ineffectiveness of late Saturday games and early Sunday games hurt us. In those games, the inefficiency does not hurt. It is the cummulative effect that takes its toll on Sunday. 4 lines of men and only 2 lines of women is tough. I believe there will be more women during the late summer/fall series.

It definitely intrigues me the different strategy that is now on the table. And I look forward to see what we can come up with.

From a team standpoint, I would call this weekend a success. We started out not even talking about offense and just "flowing". From there, we started to morph into something pretty good, see Salt Lake City game. But something that needs work, see Edmonton in the finals. Although a majority of the team is back from last year, we had not practiced or had any strategy discussions. We faced some challenges and did well. And other not so well.

The obvious improvements on o are use the full width of the field and give the thrower space when he/she has the disc. Also, a little organization on the endzone would help. In terms of d, not much is needed. I think we were a little too scared of Edmonton's deep game at times. They did not really kill us with hucks (they were more successful than us for sure), but it is not like I felt these guys/girls are amazing huckers. Maybe a little too much respect there.

I was impressed of the athleticism of this team. I guess I had the stereotype that co-eders would not be great athletes or have some other flaws. But all across the board, everytone proved their worth to the team, especially on the d side. I can respect that and it excites me to play with them more. I will never have the feeling that we will be an inferior team on the field against anyone we play. That is a good thing.

Personally, it was good to shake the rust off. I probably will have to re-shake the rust off at the next tourney since that will not be until August at the earliest. I was disgusted with my forehand and have already worked on it this evening in effect to figure why I threw so crappy. It just never felt right all weekend.

Also, I had way too many turns. Most of them involved poor sequences witht the dump. Hopefully, that is all ironed out. It peaked in the finals when I turned, went to throw, and the dump started to cut upfield. I could not hold the disc and threw a 1 yard backhand! Lesson - turn to the dump earlier nimrod.

I was happy with my endurance and my backhand. I feel I am slowly gaining my speed back. But I am not going to do away with longer track workouts for a little. Still cementing the endurance side.

I am exhausted though. Not only b/c of playing, I played very little compared to past tournament experiences for myself. But because it was non-stop. I was either playing or running around with Lucy or holding Leo. It was quite the different experience. I felt bummed that we could not hang out more with our new teammates, but that is part of the deal. We are parents and we survived. Not major meltdowns. Our 2 year old just loves to be outside, that is good. Hopefully, we will employ some help at larger tourneys. But it is not how I grew up on ultimate. Playing hard and just sitting around and bsing about ultimate. Now, its where the milk? Or Grapes? Or baseball???

I think it was worth it. And I think we are going to try and brave it some more. Ultimate is really fun. And the Flycoons are really fun. For now, we are going to keep getting in shape in Hamilton.

This is long. I am posting it now. Good day!

More nothing

2007-05-07T20:25:00.000-06:00

Last monday - 22 minute run
Tuesday - off
Wed - spring league game #4. This was not as good as last week. Several factors, first the weather. Colder. A little rainy, but not too bad. A sarasota like crosswind. No real upwind or downwind, but definite side advantages on the width of the field. In this case, the home side was "upwind" and therefore the power position with the disc. The away side was "downwind" aka the trap sideline. I have been trying not to talk strategy or get involved in team talking, instead letting the captain do her thing. But I did try to stress the importance of forcing away. As I said previously, we are really bad at marking a certain way.

Second, we had a frustrating start for us b/c we thought we were getting stuff to make our bike stroller/trailer a conversion kit. But long story short, it was not. So yeah, we had a little tent that looked like it could be a stroller if only it had wheels.

Third, all our men showed up. What I am now learning is we need ~3 guys NOT to show up for us to be at our fullest potential. Not necessarily a certain 3 guys, but just 3 guys in general. Just to keep the rotation of guys down.

Anyway, we showed up to the field just before gametime. I was a little behind as I had to carry the tent over to the field in an attempt to keep the little ones dry. We scored the first point of the game and I thought, maybe these guys weren't any good.

But they would score the next 3 points. I was struggling to get ready and keep the kids calmed down, so I really did not see much, but we were dropping a ton. I believe last week I also said we did not really drop ever. I guessed I jinxed us.

Anyway, I get to play, this was about the height up the wind. A huge crosswind and I was trying not to throw it to the away side. In the end, I ripped a very bad blade that was tipped near our goalline and caught by a layout. And then for a goal. For the next point, we were able to pin them on the corner of the endzone and they were not able to do much. We scored as I threw to our tall guy. It was tied up. I played a third point, but they scored as I got too greedy, poached off their best thrower, and he immediately threw a bomb for a goal. 3-4.

I played only 1 more point in that half as they ran the rest of half 3-7. Our huddle at halftime was pretty funny. I thought our captain said some pretty good things, but then a couple of the guys basically started saying other stuff, most of it the same. Pretty funny.

We scored the first point of half, I think as I threw it high to our tall guy. And then had a chance to score again, but after a TO we had a TO. [Incidentally, I did not even know we could use TOs in spring league and we used 2!]

At that point, the wind was dying a little bit, but was starting to rain harder. Not too bad, but I took our kids into the dugout next to the field. Well, I kept an eye on the field and the other team scored what I thought were like 2 goals, it turned out to be 4-12. Ugh, I finally asked if I could play again knowing it was close to the end. They played zone and after we traded several turns, we finally score, again a throw to the upwind side. 5-12. The next point was much quicker as we get a d and Tdub and I work a give-and-go-huck for a goal. 6-12. Another long sequence of turns ends with me throwing a break mark to Tdub for the goal. 7-12.

At this point, our team is getting very excited. I think someone yelled "Do you believe in miracles?" There is a rainbow on the other side of the fields. All the other games are done, people grab some beer and start to watch our game.

The reason we go on this mini-run is we have our most reliable players on the field during this span. It is not a tricky concept, so the ultimate when we were on offense was fun b/c I had at least 2 targets who were not going to do anything stupid with it.

Anyway, we go zone on this point. They had 2 good guys on their team. They both understand the wind concept (I think both are flycooners). Anyone the one guy throws deep to the second good guy, the taller one. An obvious, and smart, HnH strategy. We have a taller guy playing deep and there is definite contact, the o guy does not like and our guy was arguing that he was just running and the contact was incidental. As usual, contested foul back to the thrower. I was playing the weakside wing (in hope to either get a d if a throw hung or help out deep). At this point, they huck it again but throw it low so I can get it. I turn and look to throw to the home side, someone is open. As I throw it the second good taller guy from the other team attempts to layout d it. It was an impossible d (think Phil's gratoitous layout d picture back from 98 magnum). In this case, he hurts his elbow. This is the first time when I think, maybe we can win the game. With one of their 2 real good guys out, their advantage is negated. But it is still a game to 13, so chances are still pretty slim.

Well, 2 throws later one of our guys gets point blocked by their last good guy standing. I go to help deep, I get called off to help somewhere else. Goal. Game.

It was a more frustrating game, but still fun to beat the wind as a thrower. I am glad I am on this team because we have a couple guys that occasionally collide with the other team. At least this way, I know going into the situation who the most dangerous people are. We are 2-2, right in the middle of the pack. And we play a 3-1 team next week. We shall see how it goes, the weather at least is supposed to be much nicer.

Anyway, back to workouts-

Thurs- 25 minute run
Friday - off
Sat - 28 minute run (distance unsure, but 15 minute out, 13 minute in)
Sun - 14:15 minute run (roughly 2.5 miles, maybe a little less, I was fairly please b/c that means at least I was running 6 minutes miles and I felt pretty good)

Mon- probably going to run about 20 minutes ez and hopefully get up to go spinning tomorrow.

My only other news is I got my usual right hamstring strain in May again. This always happens when I start throwing more often. T and I are trying to throw a couple times a week. I tend, in some of these sessions, to really pivot way out. Basically, imaging an around the mark throw. Not worrying about anything else besides pivoting way out and throwing low. It definitely gets me a little more tired throwing and is as close as I can get to game throwing. Just means I have to do a little more stretching and maybe less running/more biking. That usually loosens this up after a month. Usually I go through tryouts not feeling quite right...

Go Pistons, wings and Tigers.

Formats

2007-04-29T20:13:00.000-06:00

Something I will never understand is the backdoor game to nationals (of course, why I am writing this is UM lost to OSU after beating them on Sat. Not to take anything away from OSU or IU, congrats, and good luck in Columbus).

Anyway, why is it that the victory on Sunday means more? UM beats OSU in the semis on Sat. Then loses to them on Sun in the game-to-go. It is fine b.c that is the format and everyone knows that. You have to win your last game to get to nationals. Fine. But why does one one loss team get to go over another one loss team? Shouldn't OSU have to beat UM twice? Head-to-head they are 1-1. On paper, that probably means they are the same/equal. Maybe they should be forced to do a combo team for nationals. Or why not a 4 pm round on Sunday? Or one more game on Monday?

One team made it to the finals, just lost to the champion, and has to turn around 30 minutes later in an attempt to go to nationals. The other team has won 2 games, they have momentum, and a little more confidence going into the last game. Not to mention a revenge factor. How long was the time between the finals and the game to go? There should be an extended round to allow for the loser to regroup. I feel the loser of the finals is at a complete disadvantage here. Or maybe move the time of the finals up a little bit, that way that loser still has some time to regain their focus. Shouldn't their be some sort of an advantage for the loser of the finals? Since they actually did get to the finals? It makes no sense to me and all the explanations that have been given, I feel, are not very accurate. Please, someone try to explain this to me (looking for tarr, looking for tarr)

With all that said, UM still should have won that game to get nationals. But having been in a similar situation before, it is difficult. I wish there was some way to look at the records of these games. What is the winning percentage of the loser of the finals/game before the last game to go?

I feel much better now.

Workouts:
Sun 4/22 - 2 sets of 5/5/5 (jog 5 minutes, run hard 5 minutes, walk 5 minutes). I did this on the track, for the hard reps I got 1400+ and then ~1450 (completed turn 3). Not too bad and felt pretty good the whole time

Mon - off - weird day at work and had to get home

Tues - biked 35 minutes at the gym. Watched a horrible Raptors/Nets game while riding the bike.

Wed - Spring league game 3. We win and we are 2-1. Either we are becoming the best spring league team or we peaked. This was clearly our best week wining 13-9 or 8. The main reason we did so well was we did not drop the disc. I feel I can handle throwing to's, since throwing is the hardest thing for the newbies to pick up. Catching on the other hand, well, it is easier to have fun if you feel your teammates can catch the disc. And that is what we did, we caught the disc very well.

We started off very well, we went up 3-1. They were big on zone early, but we were able to find the cracks. It helped to have our full compliment of good throwers there. The funny thing about zone is you can work it up all the way and inevitably someone throws something crazy. We have one guy who gets close to the endzone and throws a hammer to the shortest person on the field covered by the deep who is more experienced and taller and can jump higher. But that is funny.

Up like 7-5 at half, but tied up at 7s, 9-8, and then we run away with the game to the end.

Another thing that I find humorous about spring league, on a turnover the offense-turned-defense does not get the the defense-turns-offense like to throw it deep. So the new defenders never pick up anyone going deep. Ok, so maybe that is a hard concept to understand. But some of the same people who go deep when we get the turn, do not cover deep when the other team gets the turn. I am not sure why they don't understand it.

We also had a guy crush one of the girl's on our team going for a disc. I mean crushed her. Totally reckless.

On a personal note, I scored my first 2 goals on the season. I threw about 4 or so goals. Plenty of turns. 2 ugly hammers, not really factoring in the wind when I threw them. I turfed a backhand to T. Threw another one to her that should have been a turn but someone else saved it. A stupid backhand trying to go around too many people. Anyway, it was a W.

Thu - Ran home from work, 23 minutes

Fri - Biked 30 minutes, lost a 3 game series in ping pong.

Sat - off. Basically, I forgot to workout

Sun - 2 x split 1200 (800 hard/200 ex/200 hard) and 1x400, too tired to do a 3rd one of the 1200s. Splits (2:33[75/78]-75-37); (2:34[75/79]-75-37). Ran the last 400 in 74 [36/38]. I am trying to get the hard distance between 2400-3200 meters. Although this one was at the shorter part of the range, it was the fastest.

workout

2007-04-21T23:28:00.000-06:00

I ran a lot more than usual this week. I have not been able to really find time to go to the gym this week. And I only want to go early once a week due to lack of sleep issues.

Mentally, I am starting to do workouts as though I am going to play frisbee during the fall. And it looks more and more like I will now be a co-ed player. The weekends have seen some great weather and we have been throwing in the backyard. I have not signed any contract, because we need to determine if we can survive a tournament with 2 kids in tow.

Friday - 22 minute run
Saturday - 35 minute run
Sunday - 5 minute warmup/cooldown, 4x800 (2:46, 2:44, 2:44, 2:43)
Monday - 22 minute run
Tuesday - 45 minute spin class
Wed - off, of course Wed's are usually the worst weather these days since those are the days we would go play frisbee. We were not going to go anyway due to a lingering illness, sinusitis?, in the house. League was cancelled anyway.
Thu - 25 minute run
Friday - off, long week of work, feeling like crap, and free beer at the brewery were the reasons
Sat - 31 minute run, very slow, found a new trail along the river. It felt good to get off the road

Games 1 and 2

2007-04-14T09:13:00.000-06:00

Spring league has started here in Western Montana. All the team names are Montana Dinosaurs, so we are Troodon. I think that is how you spell it.

Game 1 was last week. It was a 40 degree, rainy, windy day. So basically the worst conditions for starting a spring/summer league. We had a lot of women, I think 7. And about 8 or 9 men. We are much more experienced on the women's side. 2 club level women. Plus a couple others that have played before and are rather athletic. Our men were not quite so experienced. We had a guy who was wearing a Purchase Cup t-shirt, but he left before the first half ended. Most of the rest of our men have played, they are pretty fast or pretty tall, but not the best throwers. Which in the end is fun for me, because I almost always get to pick up the disc and throw whatever.

Our first game was a game of runs, it was more of a crosswind then upwind/downwind game. We would go up by 2, then they would go up by 1, etc. We were leading at half 7-6. This half took a while. Probably close to 2 hours. It was not a clean game. I was happy that we were up because I felt they were better. They had one guy who was a definite club level player. Very good. 3 other guys who were quick and who could throw well. This meant that after one or two completions, they were still likely to complete the next pass. A distinct advantage. Plus, they had 2 athletic women, so our biggest advantage was not nearly has big as their man advantage.

Their strategy was to put one of their less experienced men on me and allow the really good guy to roam and make sure I would not huck it. That was a bummer. We worked it up decent many times, but most of the times something would go wrong before we got into the endzone.

The second half was not so good. Theresa was stuck on the sidelines taking care of the little guy. And they went on a 4-0 run, pretty much putting the game away. THe turning point was their main guy (I think his name was James) pulled to the back of the endzone and it stayed in bounds. Everyone ran away from me, so I had no one to center to. After holding it for 5 seconds, trying to convince someone to come back. I just launched it. Which was much shorter than his pull. Needless to say, they scored that point.

We finally score to get to 8-10, but it was pretty dark outside at that point and the damage was done. I am assuming the game either got called or the other team scored 11 (the game was capped at some point). We decided to take off after 8-10 due to darkness, wetness, and coldness. Lucy was on the sideline repeating the word "Home".

Although we could not pull out the w, we have a pretty fun team. Everyone understands our predicament with the kids. And everyone as the attitude to just run around. FOr the most part is good, but we are a team that does not believe in keeping a force. Which is fine and it forces me to always watch the marker. Which side are we forcing? It changes from throw to throw.

The highlight was that the Murray/Webers threw all 8 goals (TJ 7, T-dub 1). And one guy on our team was really good at catching my blades. Including one that was a very good Jerry Rice over the shoulder grab. The lowlight for me was the disc I doinked near the end of the game. It was one of those that I could not decide fast enough whether to pancake it or crab crawl it. Instead I did something that allowed it to go right through my hands. I think I was worried about breaking a nail. My hands were very cold at that point. Another lowlight was my inability to throw a straight forehand for more than 40 yards. For that, my excuse is my cat had just scratched me on my middle finger and it hurt.

Notice I do not have the # of turnovers. I lose count of those during spring league. Too many to count

Game 2

This was this past Wed. Unfortunately, it was just Lucy and I as T-dub was very sick after our journey to Sun Valley last weekend. Plus, a couple of our other women were not there. We were allowed to take one of the women from the other team as well. So we played 5-2 this week (the previous week we played 4-3 the whole time).

This week, the other team was more experienced then us (a nice way of saying Al anf Jim would have fit right in with them talking about how great MASH was). Which meant one thing, zone. That would not be a bad thing, but 2 of our best throwers were not there. The weather was much nicers, 50s, a slight breeze. So not the worst weather to face a zone against.

After a delayed start, we went out in front 3-1. Luckily after we would turn it over against their zone, they would turn it quickly back. THus, we would throw a huck and score. The good news was we had a new guy show up right at the beginning of the game. He could throw and would throw deep too. That was excellent. And he had a 6 year old daughter, that was good b/c she eventually hung out with Lucy a lot. Oh, and he really wanted to win. So we now had more momentum to get the victory.

While our offense revolved around them turning it over, their offense was much more organized with a stack and a good thrower and a really fast guy who resembled Randy Gage.

After some back and force, we would take half 7-5. It seemed like things were going well, but in the 2nd half their zone clamped down on us and they were able to gain the lead back. Eventually, our team would catch on to my strategy of blades. I finally convinced a couple of my teammates to stay deeper and behind their defenders so I would rip them a blade. Then it got catchy as 2 others on our team starting throwing hammers over the zone. It worked very well. The momentum changing point was one of our men ripped a blade while we were stuck in the back of the endzone. The receiver, immediately threw deep to our smallest receiver for a 100 yard goal in 2 throw point! Just like we drew it up.

I thought we were not going to pull it our when one of our guys jumped caught the goal and then landed out of bounds. The jumping part was unnecessary, so very close to a "stupidest". But not quite. We were able to pull it to 11s. We forced a turn near their endzone and a moderate huck and another mid field huck got us our first lead in awhile. 12-11. They again worked it up methodically against our "We don't know which way we're forcing, so you don't either" defense. An upline pass headed to the endzone was d'd on a poach. Immediately I take off, complete huck, 2 more throws later we score and pull out a W. We are now 1-1. Only one game out of first. Assuming there are 2-0 teams...

This week was more fun, mainly becuase of the weather. I will admit to get a little frustrated at not being able to have a consistent force. By the end of the game, I gave up on that and felt maybe this was the best strategy. If we didn't know what we were doing, they wouldn't either. Then I thought maybe no strategy was the best strategy of all. And that is what I going to stick with. Although I did try to chime in at one point with some advice, I realized no more. Less talking is more. I was always trying to get Sub Zero to think on the field more. I think I will try to keep that idea away from Troodon.

This week I only threw 6 goals... I still have not received any. In fact, I am not sure if I have cut into the endzone yet. I would like to say that my turns were down. But it is spring league. I did not drop the disc which was good. And I threw it better deep. We'll see if we can keep this one game win streak up next week.

Workouts:
Since I last posted, workouts have been few and far between. We went to Sun Valley last weekend. Plus, another illness was in our house this past week. I stayed away from it, but the others did not. Hopefully, I will be able to pull a couple days in a row.

Old #19

2007-04-02T20:23:00.000-06:00

No, I am not talking about Stevey Y. or even Job Bakija for that matter. This has to do with my friend/zero teammate Shaner. If you do not know what this is about go to: "http://groups.google.com/group/rec.sport.disc/browse_frm/thread/92bc605a86d1efff/5289eadf4344ede2#5289eadf4344ede2". (Sidebar, how did I lose the ability to link stuff? Instead of saying here with a link, I have to put it all in. Anyone?)

Anyway, I have several points I would like to make:

#1 - Shane is a good friend of mine and former teammate, someone I would really enjoy playing with/hanging out with. So, this post will be biased in that way. Shane made Zero after his freshman year. He is easily bigger and more solid than 95% of all ultimate frisbee battles. He will rarely lose any collision whether it is on purpose or accident. Early on, he came close to hitting people and actually did make contact with a couple. I feel all the captains spoke with him about it. We stressed to stay aggressive, but not learn to avoid the offensive player. For 2 main reasons, the main and most important part is safety. Reckless bids do hurt. Secondly, if you even touch someone you risk getting a foul called even if it wasn't. I feel he worked on it and when I last played with him (early 2006), his defensive game had improved immensely. And he was no longer hitting people (he was HUGE in the fall of 05). Definitely a defender who change the game.

#B - I did kind of whine about the potential of what Shane is doing in an earlier posts about the rules. I can only speak about what I saw of Shane and since early in his first year with us, he has not damaged anyone. Of course, everything is subjective. The people who crushed me probably did think they had a chance. I don't really understand what happened to the UNT guy. He was tiptoeing the line, then laid out, then was landed on. He claims had no bid at the disc because it was 5 feet out of bounds. But the defense can go get it out of bounds. I am confused.

#3 - Can we stop putting the Nord picture out there and saying this is how it is done? Well yeah that is how it is done. But you have to be 6' 11", goofy, red-haired, and hella-athletic to do that. Plus, Nord is only a slightly larger stick than I am (let's call him a branch). So if he gets hit, he is probably getting hurt. Unless of course, it is by me. (Sidebar: Is Nord the best red-haired athlete since Bill Walton? Ok, maybe Steve Timmons)

#4 - To the guy that says this is caused by elite ultimate and aggressiveness. Some of the worst layouts injuries I have seen are in summer league or pick-up when the not so athletic, not so good, and not so athletic people are playing. There is a certain level of aggressiveness at the highest level that is for sure. But reckless abandon happens all the time. Part of the process is learning what is which. I believe Shane knows this, so until further evidence is out there, I believe he was not being terribly reckless (since there is no sportscenter to show me the highlights). BUT in the college game, you have players with less than 3 years, or less than a year or even less than 3 months out there running hard and trying to prove they belong. They are trying to make plays. They will do anything to do it. Unfortunately, injuries do occur when people are trying to figure out their limits. It is unfortunate, but laying out to get a d is one of the 2 most identifiable plays in ultimate (the other being a huck for a goal). Everyone loves a lay out d. When they see the best do it (ie "The Branch"), they want to do it. They might not be able to or not as tall or not as skill. Don't they have to learn somehow. Hopefully, no one gets hurt.

#4a - Are younger guys allowed more lee-way like this? Thinking back to my posts, I was mainly discussing club players. I do not remember as much of a problem in call. But I guess I am saying newbies have a little more room for error in this since they are just learning.

#4b - The only time I saw elite high school ultimate was in 05. The one thing that I saw was just tons of laying out. I am not sure if this is across the board, but lots of laying out on the mark, on deep cuts, on in cuts, etc. Besides being a dumb philospohy to allow as a coach, it concerns me a little more. Maybe younger guys should not have the leeway. Maybe they need to show that they have the ability and coordination to do it.

#4c - like how I argued both sides there? Basically, I think high coaches should not encourage laying out all the time. They should talk to their kids about when to do it.

#e - You mean ultimate is a non-contact sport. Really? It is supposed to be a non-contact sport. But there is always contact. There just is and there is nothing you can do about it.

#5 - Larger point, why the hell are the college teams travelling so much? Whatever happened to 1 or 2 big tourneys and 2 or 3 local tourneys. And where the hell are the getting the $$$? The more big time tourneys with the big time comp you go to, you are going to get injured more often. Why not travel to a couple more local tourneys, blow some teams out, improve the play of your younger/bottom roster guys, party a little more, and know you are going to win a tourney if you are Wisconsin? These tournaments are tougher than nationals, with more games per day, less rest, not in the best shape. You are asking for disasters. Stay home and get the younger kids better. Rest your bones What do I know, I only made quarters.

#6 - who gave Nick reeck 5 stars as poster? No way.

#7 - Re- the over-aggressive nature of Wisco. It sounds like UNT is not used to that level of play. From what I have seen of Wisconsin, they are not cheap players. They definitely mark hard, but legal. They just have some many athletes they can throw at you. It reminds me of 2000 when we went to Stanford, do not do so well, maybe a quarters loss to Black Tide and won the spirit award. Later, we come back to play in a central region tourney and we are called dicks on rsd but some of the great lakes teams. We are spirit winners against the top and asses against the bottom. Maybe UNT is just not used to the top just yet, I am sure they will get there as it seems they are playing well against the top. It just takes some getting used to.

OK, I am done. That was one of the first times I have read every post on rsd in a while. And since it dealt with a good friend, I felt like I wanted to say something. Shaner, I hope you are alright, keep doing what you are doing, just stop landing on people on accident you haggard!

A New Philosophy

2007-03-31T21:10:00.000-06:00

After a couple weeks of various illnesses in our house, I have finally been able to attempt to get back into shape. Right now, I mainly think about getting into shape. But on my runs, I can't help think about getting in shape to play ultimate. My philosophy to get in shape was to run. Whether it was hills or long runs or sprint workout or whatever, I was running...

There are plenty of reasons for this philosophy, but first and foremost is it is in my blood. All my siblings run (and all faster than me). While many complain about running 30 minutes, I am definitely more likely to complain about biking 30 minutes or lifting or other workouts. I actually like running

The second reason for always running is that is what 90% of ultimate is. YOu have to run to get open. You have to run to cover your man. Etc. Running is my strength and I have always tried to use this to my advantage. Many people like to call timeouts on long points. I always tried to convince people not to, b/c I knew my man was more tired.

This philosophy began to change in 05. Increased hours in the lab and increased hours of watching infants started to occur. I wore out easier and my knees ached a lot more (coming from bursitis/infection in one knee and repeat hyperextension in the other due to bursitis/infection in the first knee). To alleviate this, I began forcing myself on the exercise bike. I try to do this at least 1 or 2 times a week as a way to workout without the constant pressure of the road on my legs. This seemed to help as I had a pretty good nationals and more importantly I felt like I did not wear out. Something I definitely felt in 04 at natties.

My training regiment has changed even more in Montana. These days time is much more important to me. I no longer have 60+ minutes to spend on a workout. I try to fit in workouts in under 40 minutes. Occasionally finding time to go to the gym for longer. So most of my runs won't be more than 4 and a half miles. Track workouts will be shorter. A way to get around this is to get up early and workout then. Right now, it is pretty dark in these parts until ~7. I am still not very comfortable running around here in the dark. Also, I tried to get up at 5:30 a couple times a week and go to the gym. It turns out that I am not a great early morning person. I think I can do that once a week. But more than that and I am absolutely dead by Thursday evening/Friday all day.

So, everything is abbreviated and leads to more workouts during runs. Like accelerations or 5 minutes hard/5 minutes jog. Not bad, but not the focus of my workouts the past 10 years.

For example, last week was a week in which I would love to repeat as often as possible:
Sunday (my one longer workout day) - Track workout - 5 minute warmup; 1200 (4:20) - 800 (2:40) - 400 (76). 3 minute rest after 1200, 2:30 after 800. 5 minute cool down. The workout started out great, but the 400 hurt. Not sure if I will get to a 5:00 mile this year.
Monday - lifted for 40 minutes
Tuesday- spinning- 45 minute class
Wed.- 25 minute run
Thu. - 23 minute run
Fri. - off
Sat. - 22 minute run pushing a baby jogger. It is less strange running with no arms moving then it is with one. I would have never thought this.

This week differs from previous pre-season b/c most everything is scaled back a bit. My track workout is a little slower. When I did lift, I usually ran on the same day. And I tried to always hit 30 minute runs (or a total of 30 minutes if I ran twice in that day). All in all though, I am happy with it. Part of me is just estatic to get in shape, if I haven't said that enough.

Another part is I am preparing for a different role on the frisbee field. One where I am not a captain. Assuming I do play this year, I will not be attending many practices. I will not be travelling to many(any?) tournaments. I will be playing with 2 kids on the sidelines, in between games, at the hotel, etc. My energy will no longer be directed trying to be the best player on the field all the time. Only some of the time....

Pickup

2007-03-20T21:34:00.000-06:00

Good evening. Life had been bz for us, 2 bouts of illnesses, march madness, work, and a brief vacation in a hot springs. But finally on Monday we played outdoor frisbee. For me, it was the first time since July and it felt like an eternity. For T-dub, well, I think she played outdoor a little bit last spring. But this was the first time she was playing "solo" for like 2 and half years or so.

It was fun. The quality of ultimate was actually pretty good. It helped that I was on the team with "Fast Johnny". Bascially, he goes deep faster than anyone else. So if you can throw it that far, it works out well. Luckily, I can throw a flick far enough. The backhand made it far enough most of the time.

Pickup feels very strange (Am I the only one to have this feeling?). I have played very little pickup in this century. Maybe 5 times total? Maybe less? All that I have played since 99 has been very structured. Practices, games, scrimmages, etc. All with guys, (occasionally with girls too) who I know what they are going to do out there. It is strange to get out there and not know anything about anyone. And have everyone running around. Little things like a stack that is stretched out over 35 yards. I never allow that on the teams I have played on, but I found myself 30 yards from the disc just standing there. Or when my man is fronting me and good thrower gets the disc, I start busting deep. Only I find 2 other teammates going deep. And another in the endzone. I thought this would frustrate me to no end. And I would not be able to play. Nope, I loved it. It was just great to play again.

I totally felt like a little kid out there running around. My legs felt great, that is what I worried about the most. I have had knee and hammy problems early in the season for the past couple years. Not that I am ready to declare that pain gone, but I felt like my legs were spry. I feel I had the same expression on my face as a smoker who started smoking again after stopping for 6 months.

Pretty soon spring league will start and we will see how the legs then. This morning though, they felt fine. Of course, it was just pickup.

The funniest thing is now what we bring to pickup. Seriously, it was like our car was packed for a weekend of ultimate. Baby jogger for one kid. Pack-n-play for the other. A bag of our stuff. A little cooler. A bag for the kids. A chair. I used to make fun of who we become all the time. We tried to leave 5 minutes before the game ended. But we still were packing our stuff up as everyone else removed their cleats and made dinner plans. I just laugh at us. I wouldn't trade it though. I hope I find a good balance with family and ultimate this year, both of them make me a happy person

upa rules

2007-03-03T22:39:00.000-07:00

Two posts in 2 days, I am staying up too late. I have been reading the new uparules.blogspot.com since I did not follow any of the developments over e-mail or during the voting (I was not a upa member last year, so i never even bothered to look at them until now). So far, the best addition to the rules is the disc space rule. Basically, I like that the thrower gets at least 2 extra seconds if the marker invades disc space early in the count without having to stop play.

There are 3 major violators (I think) of disc space when you are a cutter. First, the good defender who either gets the d by not hitting you or just misses ds (ie lays out and just misses the disc as you catch it). This violater does not bother me so much b/c the good ones know when they can go for the disc and not crush you. If you do catch the disc, they will be recovering out of the way.

Second, the really bad defenders who can lay out. Basically, these guys just lay out when the disc in thrown to you and they are close often times catching your knees or pushing you out of bounds or ending up in your business. Commonly, these defenders attempt to go through your back or legs to get the disc b/c they might have a chance to get the disc. Even though it is through you. I complained about this wrt to natties 05 and Todd Owens got injured. Also, one of my *favorite* players from college/club in the midwest ended up in my legs 5 times over my career. Anyway, if you take that abuse, at least you should be able to do is get 2 extra seconds while the guy gets up off your legs.

Third, the purposeful bump every time you get the disc b/c you are dangerous. This has not really ever effected me. The worst examples of this are when the cutters are really fast (and usually small). The extreme case I saw was with Alex Masulis. I loved playing with Alex and it is unfortunate he is a big city with no frisbee. He is arguably the best cutter I have played with, but anyway I digress. He is small andfast and can throw and jump. So he is an excellent target. I will not name names, but during a game in which we were doing well against a big name team they employed a pretty cheap philosophy. Everytime Alex would get an under (which if you have played with Alex, can be very often), this defender would lunge into Alex. Part of our success early in the game was Alex getting unders and either jacking it successfully or getting rid of it quick and getting open.

Anyway, this really hurt us. If he called a foul, play stops, slows down the flow, and more importantly slows down Alex. If he did not call a foul, he loses a couple of seconds. And at the very least is off balance early in the count. I guess 2 seconds is a decent amount of time back. In retrospect, we should have addressed the issue with the opposing team's captain b/c it was fairly obvious it was on purpose. But I will admit to being a bit intimidated to bring something like that up (which is another issue in itself).

So yeah, i like the 11th edition rules so far.

I figured the title thingy out!

2007-03-02T23:02:00.000-07:00

Hi, I have nothing of any ultimate interest to report. My mind has been boggled by kids vomiting and vaccines (both for my kids and for the world). Today though I signed up for an ultimate outdoor 7-on-7 league with a draft and not just a stacked team of friends for the first time in 8 years. Not since Tdub and I captained a team back in A-squared have I played a co-ed league with a draft. And I am looking forward to it. I think I miss competition. Not in your face, win or die type competition. Just the type of competition you find in a pick-up bball game. Heck, I found myself excited about the possibility of playing softball for work.

I remember my freshman year in college. For the first time since I was 6 or 7 (I forget when I started playing teaball), I was not involved in a competitive activity. I decided that I did not need sports, but I wanted to stay in shape. So I took to running, but I thought there was no point. I found it hard to motivate myself to just stay in shape, even though it was good for me. Of course, as many freshman do when it comes to this, I turned to other activities that may or may not have been legal for an 18-year old. By the end of the year though, I found that I did not really care about anything. Not that I did not care about sports, I just lost motivation.

I went home that summer with the thought that I would try to get in shape and walk-on on the cross-country. To avoid embarassment, my times were not good enough to run on the team. But I had some friends on the team and was starting to get in shape. Of course, I did not really commit to this because the whole time I was running I thought to myself I am not good enough. And so I never was getting into great shape.

Late in that summer, I was at lunch with some friends when a guy from the ND frisbee team met us at lunch (I worked at ND during the summer). After throwing around and not going back to work for way too long, he talked me into coming to a practice they had. And I loved it. It hit me, this was just the type of competition I needed. I still wanted to win, but I had grown up about it or something. I did not have the pressure on myself or maybe more importantly I never thought I was not good enough. Because I was really doing it for fun. That was a great feeling and I look forward to that in April. I look forward to having fun and running down some frisbees again (of course in between, I took frisbee way too seriously, but that is another time) while trying to squeak out a win.

The weather has been beautiful here, a little colder, but better then most places in the country these days, that is for sure. The last week, the sleep schedule has been off so no early morning spin classes. And barely any long runs as it seemed like I had my first survival week of a working parent... But everyone is on the rebound it seems, so hopefully this week gets better with sleeping/running/life. I got the new Shins + Lucinda Williams over the past 2 weeks. Not too bad, I have not really been able to really listen to them, just here and there. The new Tragically Hip has been on the radio lately. Good stuff. Special mention to the radio here, not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Easily better then anything in Minneapolis, I think. Maybe because my expectations were so low.

2007-02-17T08:26:00.002-07:00

Help. Living here in the mountains near the unabomber, I am kind of out of touch w/ college ultimate. Unfortunately, rsd is no longer a place to get a quick recap of a tourney. I tried to figure out the vegas results instead it is a thread of 100 posts with scores for each round as they are happening. Is there a simple vegas recap anywhere? Or president's day? Or anything like that? Please feel free to give a quick rundown below. I am asking for it, I really don't care about things as they happen round by round, only during the series is that important.

I want to know-
1. Who else is really good besides Wisconsin? (not who best in bad areas, I want to know who has a chance to win)
2. Did Florida beat Wisconsin in the Finals? And does Florida still have the 2 really, really good guys?
3. Michigan results would be nice too.
4. A quick recap of early college tourneys, with just basic results like who won who was in semis... Not who Northern Arizona played in round 2.
5. Anything else of interest, like how injured is Goldstein?

Any help would be much appreciated. Of course, nothing ultimate related from me right now. I am still trying to recover from 6 months of not working out. And taking advantage of the weather that has been much less snowy and much, much warmer then places I used to live. Which is good for me, not as good if say you enjoy skiing. Highlights of the past couple weeks have been 2 35 minute runs and getting a pair of padded shorts for spinning. But no basketball, and I am forced to watch a UM-MSU bball game where a balding, lefty, 6'1", white guy is hands down the best offensive player on the floor. It's the little things that keep me going.

2007-02-03T08:22:00.000-07:00

For the first time in awhile, I find myself really jonesing to play frisbee again. Although I wanted to play last year, frisbee took away from my main objectives for 2006 which were help out with the new addition to our family and get the hell out of graduate school. The graduate school thing is what really killed my desire to play last year. 12-14 hour days in lab 5-6 days of week. The weekend would come and it was not fun to wake up and go to practice. It felt like a chore. I was never rested and I never felt like I was as prepared as I wanted to be (and used to be). Sub Zero is a very fun, young team and I have made some great friends there, but my motivation to play was dying. It felt like a 2nd job and not a fun team activity.

So I stopped everything altogether. For the first time since 96, no frisbee. Plus no running, or anything for almost 6 months just chemistry, writing, family, and finally moving. Now, I am slowly getting back into shape. And I found myself excited about playing spring league. Just to throw around a frisbee really would be nice. After 2 really great weeks here, were came back and dropped a couple inches of snow. If we were skiiers (and maybe slightly older kids), we would be at the local ski area with the rest of Hamilton and Bitterroot Valley today. Maybe in a couple of years. At work this week, people were absolutely giddy about the snow. It is going to be the best weeked for skiing so far in 2007. Obviously, everyone loves skiing here and I think that is what started getting me excited about frisbee again. Everyone has a favorite non-work activity and frisbee is my thing. Luckily, it is our family's thing. If it not gotten suddenly colder, I am sure we would have been outside even in the 38 clear day throwing around. It was weird last year not getting up in the morning and wanting to play ultimate. I find myself, at the least, wanting to get in shape so I can play ultimate. That is a great thing.

Because of the sudden turn in weather, I have only ran once this week. I did a mild workout at the local cinder track on Sunday. I think I was slightly inspired by the track meet I watched on tv as well, but I went and ran a blistering 6:10 mile and followed that up with a 2:55 half. I am at least getting close to how fast I was in 8th grade. I will also blame the track for at least 5 seconds.

I have started to take a spinning class twice a week. On Tues + Thur, I got up before work and went spinning. Now, this is not your kick in the butt spinning classes that I have heard about before. For one, I am definitely the youngest person in there. And there are also heart attack jokes made by some of the spinners. I feel uncomfortable because I did not how serious they are. But it is a good workout as long as I turn the resistance up and try to keep myself going. I am not much of a biker so I have to get used to the pain in new places.

Nothing on MWF, Monday our schedule got messed up so I could not run. W I was exhausted and F well it was Friday and took a little longer at work then I wanted. I have to get used to the 8-5 thing and maybe have to consider going to the gym before work everyday. I am not the greatest morning person in the world, so that could take awhile.

Lastly, I would like to comment how beautiful the mountains are. Growing in Michigan and then living in Minneapolis, well, lthe scenery is not as nice. That makes driving to work fun. Running is more fun when you are tired, I find myself just staring at the mountains. Even cloudy days are great here. Anyway, enough of my attempt to tell you how great this small town is. Cheers

2007-01-27T08:37:00.000-07:00

First, Luke I think you should have a weekly dietary tip. I could not believe how informative your last post was. Is everything ok? I hope I soon learn how Jim makes his lasagna.

After 5 months of no frisbee/physical activity and all chemistry/family/moving stuff, I finally have a little free time to start working out. But currently, I do not know if I getting in shape to play frisbee in the fall or if I am just getting in shape (high altitude training). Before that decision is made, I need to get in shape. Between the middle of July to 2007, I ran once. And that was for 10 minutes because I missed the bus to get home. This is strange for me because I have been running since the 7th grade. Right now, I am convinced I could be me as a 7th grader, but not as an 8th grader. Hopefully, by the end of the month I will be able to pull that race out.

Also, thoughts of how to plan a team or how to run practices or how to Goldstein in Minneapolis are no longer there. It is refreshing to run and not also use that time as planning method for the team. Although I am sure I will missing being a co-captain of a team, I will not miss all the drama and scheming to make sure the team functions well. I can just run and enjoy it (or at this point try to struggle through 25 minutes).

And instead I can look forward to playing in a spring/summer league for the first time in 8 years.

I have even joined a gym, this is the first time I have not been a student since the fall of 99. Even then, I could still get into the university gym for free. THings like spinning classes and all that jazz I have actually looked into and it seems as though I will be joining them soon. I have always hated riding stationary bikes, but my knees are not the greatest and I keep telling myself it will allow me to not have arthritis until I am 35 or 40 instead of next year.

So the last week I ran 4 out of 6 days, each 25-30 minutes. All relatively easy and today I will hit the gym for the first time and incorporate some of Luke's off-season tips. Before I left Minneapolis, I did play one last indoor game. Hoping to pad my indoor coed resume, we played the old rivals who we have played in the championship the last 3 or 4 years in the dreaded 11 pm game. Luckily, my legs did not fall off, I got to throw a couple of bombs and some scoobers, no incompletions, and a victory. Exactly what I was looking for in my retirement game! Hopefully, I can spill that over into a successful summer league season.

2006-12-11T22:58:00.000-07:00

Hmmm, it seems my days are numbered on the frisbee field. It has been a crazy past 5 months that has involved basically no frisbee, besides showing up to the occasional practice for ~1 hour and then leaving bummed that I could not play. For the first time since sophomore year in college, frisbee was not a priority at all. BUT I did get my schooling done and well, my family increased by one.

So yeah, it was a great year. And we are heading out of the great Central region. I will be moving to Hamilton, Montana working for one of the big pharma companies out there. Everywhere I tried to go, they told me I needed more experience (great, now a phd is not enough). Well, I guess Hamilton, MT is the perfect place for that experience gathering mission.

What may surprise you is that Hamilton does not seem to have much frisbee. Part of the bummer is frisbee has been so much of our social scene. Although it is close to Missoula, so I am thinking it is time to strap on the ol' summer league cleats. I have not played summer league since Ann Arbor in 99. It should be a good time and I think I found some stuff about the league, at least last year's league. Or maybe it will be good not to hang out with frisbee players all the time.

There is a competitive co-ed team in Missoula. So maybe we will play co-ed... Now, if I only had not made fun of co-ed so much, it would not feel so weird to say that. Or I will rent myself out to the highest bidder. Highest bidder being very key there.

Oh, Jim- the secret to a Huck 'n' Hope team is they can also be flash in the pan teams. For example, you could argue Zero 99 was a HnH team. Pike of 04. Ring of 02. So yeah, AJ I am looking at you right now. Where will Chain fall? Basically, if a team flounders in the 8-12 range, jumps up the semis and then falls back down to the > 10 range, they were probably HnH. That is my theory and I am sticking to it. Maybe sometime if I can find the time I will expand on this theory. Cheers.

2006-11-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

Stolen from another e-mail from another hemisphere:

Start quote:

So as you all probably know by now we yook 4th. Disappointing, but here is the
story.

We played a very good and very tight firs half with buzz bullets. We started
on O and we each got two breaks on each other, therefore SZ took half 9-8. The
first half was fairly clean on both sides. They D'd one hucka dn we maybe
dropped another pass, an that was about it for our turns, I think.

Buzz plays either very poachy man D (the quickly jump into cutting lnes and
intercept under throws) or they play a zone that transitions to man late in
stall counts. Both were very effective at stifling flow.

We played good old american force one way, don't get broken and use our
bodies. Buzz goes up the line incessantly and move the disc quickly, but when
we got our marks on and stayed aware of the cutting lanes, we stymied them and
forced turns.

In the second half buzz got three consecutive breaks. All were SZ drops or
trow aways. To buzz's credit they forced us into a bad situation with clever
Ds, but bottom line we did it to ourselvs. This perhaps exposed out biggest
weakness, lack of depth. When other teams went on a run against us, we had a
hard time knowing how to mix up the personel to adjust... there weren't many
options!

In the second half we score maybe one or two goals-- ver disappointig. But
hand it to Buzz, they run very hard on O and D. They almost never allowed clean
flow from their opponents, they rset the disc efficiently, and the only TOs they
had were rare executions errors (2 in our game) or a calculated deep risk to a
match up.

The next game was chilly. We were down emotionally and they were content to
have their one 6-5 duse throw hucks to one of the other 6-5 dude and take their
60% completion percentage. We were late changing to a zone, nonetheless we made
it interesting in the end. 17-15 I think. Too bad we would have loved to bring
home bronze.

At the end of the game chilly gave Schmelzle the "game ball" and aussie rules
football. Schmelzle, as deep in the zone, must have gotten 8 jump balls,
bringing us back into the game at the end.

End quote.

2006-11-16T09:23:00.000-07:00

Hi, here is a report from down under. Although I have edited somethings out, it seems to be going ok. On the roster are 11 guys currently on Sub Zero, 2 fish from Seattle, and 3 Sub Zero alum: 2 recent alums, 1 from the 99/00 era. So 16 guys.

Zero will be up against Buzz Bullets in the semis of Worlds**.

Stolen from an e-mail:

Yesterday, Zero had a close game against clapham. Clapham took half 9-8, but we
held together and went on a run in the second half to win the game 14-12. We
were capped due (I think) to the game before us going over time.

We all left the game feeling we had done our best yet. One player on clapham
kneed andrew B in the thigh early in the game and (seriously) bit Naz in the
shoulder later in that game. Not surprisingly, Todd got into (and won) a battle
of words with ther goon during the turning point of the game.

Seth Crockford started out on their stud (also called Naz, black dude from
France). Seth contained him well. Later Kyle switched to cover him and totally
tooled the guy-- scoring two over his head and D'ing him besides. Kyle has been
super sick for the last 3-4 games, nearly 100% throwing and catching and D'ing
everything high. Good thing cause he is the only depp we got....

Naz had a great game versus clapham, he even laid out!

Today was Quarters against fakulti ("faculty") a young tall and aggressive
team from Sydney. They threw a twisted metal-esque zone and made deep throws.
It was a crazy cross wind. We got the first 5 breaks on the backs of great
hucks from Will Henry and Todd O. Then we carried on to a 17-10 win. Mad props
to Kyle again for catching everything up high, even the crazy blades.

Tomorrow we get the buzz bullets again. Lucky for us we are literally a
different team than last time we played them. We are nursing a few injuries but
otherwise we are doing OK.

Other notes:

Potter has no TO's and 3-4 Ds

John S dominated the trade night.

Everyone is starting to take ice baths before bed to reduce the swelling. [I am not sure if they are all taking them together or not]

They have great beer down here.

the temp ranges from 70-90, sometimes clopudy, sometimes very windy. Very UPA
national esque.

Wish us luck.

2006-10-21T10:27:00.001-06:00

Go Sub Zero!

2006-10-21T10:27:00.000-06:00

Go Sub Zero!

2006-07-17T21:37:00.000-06:00

Catch-up time.

It has been awhile. Very bz on the non-ultimate front. Trying hard to get out of school and occasionally looking into jobs. Anyway, I did not go to Boston. But we had ~19 guys go. If everyone played their best and no one got injured, a chance at a title was possible. Well, the above 2 things did not hold true. Suffice it to say, we at least achieved (not over or under, I think).

After everyone got home, the difficult task, finalize the team. We went from huge to not so huge after the 2nd round. ~32/33 guys, but a couple of injuries took 2 guys away. After it was all said and done, we settled on 27, BUT we are still looking at 2 guys. One of which was injured another of which was out of the country for all of tryouts. We shall see how it goes. So at least 27 guys, possible 29. Why so big? Well, 2 returners have been on the dl all year long. Plus, some other struggles with that. Plus, some out of the country guys over the next couple of months. And well, I bet we will be no more than 25 healthy guys in October. It just always seems to work out that way. Due to out of towners during the fall, this assures of 3 practices w/ > 15 guys every practice. Plus, it allows us to brainwash everyone into our way of playing.

So 5 "new" guys definitely. "New" because 2 guys were on the team in 04. One left the country for a year. The other was cut and now back as solid as ever.

After Boston, we always take a couple of weeks off. We had 2 major leaguers on the team.

Throughout July, we have optional Goaltimate on Weds. That started this past week. Although it does not look like I will be able to improve my short distance blades for awhile.

And we kicked off the summer tourney schedule w/ the Minneapolis Ultimate Disc INvitational. 16 teams, actually the best comp ever at the this year's version. Madison + Chicago came. Of course, since we were the 1 seed, we would only get to play 1 off them. I thought of trying to argue for a power pool format. But never really put that much effort into designing one.

Saturday saw pool play. We had TBA (local Minneapolis team), St. John's (yet another small school w/ frisbee team) and Uncle Buck (guys from Wisconsin Steven's point and around there). It was really hot, so we played shorter games to 11, except for Uncle Buck, they wanted to goto 13. We won all 3. Buck scored 6 or so on us. The others were so close. Pre-quarters saw the wisconsin masters team. Again, not really the best game.

Sunday was not as hot, less wind to start, but thunderstorms. It was not running much, if at all. But there were visible lightning bolts nearby. We started ~1 hour late. Beat Liquid Assets, another local team. It was close early as we traded breaks to 3-3 or so. And then 7-4 and 13-5, I think.

The semis saw the Minnesota college team + friends. 10-0 at one point. Maybe 13-2.

The finals was against Machine. We always get a decent game in the finals of this tourney and w/ Machine, we always seem to play close. I think we were 1-1 with them last year.

Anyhow, the wind picked up. Mainly upwind/downwind, but a decent crosswind. Going upwind, if you were trapped on the forehand side, it could be difficult.

We pull to start, both teams are rusty. We have 2 chances on our endzone to score first, but then take the point 1-0. Our o turns it early, gets it back, and ties it up. 1-1. The game would be like that to 4-4, I believe. In those first 4 points, we were 0-6 on break opportunities. Our O had 2 turns, but got both back.

Our first break comes after a failed centering pass by Machine. A couple passes later, we are up 5-4. They score and immediately break back. 5-6 machine. Both O's score to end half 6-7, on serve, Machine. We finished, on d, 1-8 on breaks. Our scored 6-7, but had 3 turns total (maybe 4).

We receive going downwind to start the 2nd half, we score fairly easily, 7s. Finally, we start to convert on turns. The college kids come through big to go up 8-7 and we convert the downwinder to go 9-7. I believe that 9-7 point was a long grind point. We allowed a bunch of throws, but they were not able to go very far upfield. No hucks off. A bunch of swings, finally a turn, and after a timeout a conversion.

They make it 9-8, but the O playing strong goes 10-8. The d adds 2 more goals, to extend the lead. The O puts it aways 13-9. 7-2 in the 2nd half. I am not sure if the O turned it in the 2nd half. Maybe once. The d though only had 2 turns, which was much better. Not great, but definitely not bad for the first time together in a couple of weeks.

A couple of ez weeks of practice before Colorado Cup and another good test of where we are. Should be fun.

Oh, Superman Returns is good.
Matchpoint not so good.
Footloose is classic.
Gnarls Barkeley is good.
New Strokes ok, although the first song is addictive.

2006-05-27T21:45:00.000-06:00

Hopefully, tomorrow I will be able to say I lost to the national champs.

After our first round of cuts, we had 1 practice and then the madison kids came up to Minneapolis for 2 games to 15 on Saturday. Our roster at the moment is in the 30s. But that includes 3 guys on the current hodags roster. At the actual scrimmage for us were 28 healthy guys (and a couple not so healthy).

The hopunks would win both games. The first somewhat easily 15-10, running away with it after we traded points almost the whole first half to 8-7. I think they went on a 3-0 run to start the 2nd half. The 2nd game was a little closer, 15-12. But another short run in the middle saw us unable to claw back.

This was the first time I felt like I was really running at game speed all year. It felt really good to challenge and be challenged. The 5 or 6 throwing turns I had did not feel good. Including an absolutely awful hammer upwind, getting foot blocked by Heijman, and an interesting backhand. The legs feel good, the throwing, ummm, not as good.

It is an interesting thing to take 28 guys and try to sub them equally. And actually, you try to sub in the bottom 10 or 12 more frequently. In our case, we were obviously using this to see how the tryouts would perform against a good team, fast, with throws, and they play well together. It was fun to watch them at times and frustrating to watch us. Of course, every line we put out there was relatively new.

Anyone who has ever played on a team where I have been involved in subbing knows you have to make a play or 2 early to stay out there (esp. if you are low in the rotation). Well, here I felt like I had to keep putting the same guys out there. Even if they weren't getting ds or getting open. And even though there were really good players on the bench sitting there making fun of q tip.

Oh, and easily the only time I have played the least # of points since my first tournament. That was in the first game. The 2nd game, I called my # more often.

Mix in all the new guys playing plus a bunch of rust from the old guys, it got ugly at times, especially when we received the pull. I will admit to making the o line better in the 2nd game by getting more vets p.t. then. That is why we kept it sooo much closer in the 2nd game.

We have scrimmaged cut every year since 02. This was the first year we every took on Madison. This mad-town team is impressively deep and fast. I can understand why they are rolling over everyone.

But back to tryouts, the weather was great out today. In the 80s probably for the first time all year. We are in a lull b/c we are about to make our next round of cuts on Wed. It should be interested. Basically, taking what was once a 38 man tryout roster. Down to ~30 or so. We have no real set #, but it will be interesting to see what happens when the 4 of us sit down and discuss players. Plus, there is potential for some new hodags to be trying out....

Basically, these next couple of days will be "fun" from a leadership standpoint. As I said, the first round of cuts are usually easier b/c there are so many there you do not get an attachment to certain players. The 2nd round is much harder. Everyone there is working their butt off. Who knows, maybe we will have a 40 man roster this year.

Workouts- 6 days in a row last week, although I missed track workout and Wed. practice. The first time this year with 6 days, the legs are feeling pretty good. We did stairs on Thursday and definitely the best I felt on Friday afterwards. Hopefully, that will be able to put me in decent shape for Boston. Twice, I did 25 minute runs, so still nothing long endurance wise. Endurance, I am not too worried about. That pretty much takes care of itself for me. The quickness is what takes a couple months to get back.

Predictions- Hodags over Florida 15-11, Pistons in 7 (currently down 1-2) Prince goes wild in game 4, Tigers beat the Cardinals in 6 games in the world series. Curtis Granderson MVP.

2006-05-16T21:02:00.001-06:00

The first round of our cuts is over. If you count every person who showed up at one of our open tryouts, the number is 60+. But those who showed up to 2 or more is somewhere in the upper 50s. Wed was a pretty fun practice. Close to 55 total, we eventually split into 3 teams once we figured out a field in between softball games. A quick round robin, all games to 3 kept my team in the middle at 1-1. We then split the winning team and played another 2 games. Good times. It was the first of the CUT boys up in town and they delivered as expected. Several people held their own and not many collapsed under the new pressure of more good players.

On Saturday, we arrived to an overcast day that promised to be very cold and windy, possible rainy. Luckily, the rain held off and it warmed a little bit. A cold day to play, but not horrible. Much better than anything last year. With only 2 of our 4 captains there, many of our cuts were made beforehand. But I believe there was a list of 8 or so guys that could play their way into the 2nd round. We had ~40 guys there, but only 35 playing due to injuries. After warmup/drills, we had 5 teams randomly chosen. Each team played a point, if you scored, you stayed. If not, go to the end of the line. The longest run, I believe, was a 5 point run by the first team out there. We ended with a 1-on-1 huck drill and a couple longer games. The other captain and I were looking at our "list" and trying to find if any of those guys would play their way onto the team. No one really did, we took a couple of flyers on guys who look promising and have typical ultimate athletic skills (good in air, on d, fast, etc).

We ended with a # of 40 by the end of the last scrimmage. After that, we announced those who advanced (all 23 returners and 17 newbies). I think we had ~14 of those guys set in stone before Saturday. They had done enough the first 2 days to warrant an extended look. The other 3 were made throughout the practice. Two things really stick out between those who can possible play at the level we want and those who can't - 1. Ability to move the disc side to side. It was somewhat upwind/downwind, but there was a decent crosswind as well. It exposed some handlers. 2. Ability to time a continuation cut. I feel that continuation after an upfield pass is not the hardest skill to learn/understand. But it seems that many people don't know it.

I would prefer to talk to each person individually, but really that is too time consuming. We do make ourselves available to discuss why or what needs to be done to get better, etc. Most of the people there know they will get cut and they are there just b/c it is open. There are a fair # who are disappointed and want to discuss it. This is easily the worst part of being a captain, telling someone they can't play with you.

So now round 2 begins. Round 2 will be 6 practices over the rest of May including a 2 game scrimmage with Madison this weekend. That will be fun. Anyone who makes it our 3rd and final round of cuts will go to Boston with us for the Boston Invite. And we decide after that. June will be even more intense and then we back off for a little bit in July concentrating on the disc sport of the future, Goaltimate.

The best part about tryouts is it allows me to slowly get in shape. Anytime I am tired, I can't stop what I am doing and "watch" the other tryouts... My workout schedule has been inconsistent at best, although over the past 14 days, I have only had 2 days off. Including a hard hill workout, a couple 800s on the track, and a couple sets of stairs. So my legs are slowly getting there. Unfortunately, my training has not really fit in anything above 25 minutes in terms of my longer runs. So endurance wise, I am not where I am usually there. Now with less guys at tryouts, more running and more intensity. That will be good.

Music stuff- if you go to a concert, do not hold your cell phone up in place of a lighter. Completely uncool. Why is your cell phone even on or out to begin with? And if you answer, "B/c I am taking a picture with my camera phone" well that is not a good answer. And you are even more uncool. New Pearl Jam is pretty good. I would not compare it to Ten/Vs/Vitalogy. But it is up there, definitely more of an attitude then some of the newer stuff. The first 2 songs are great. Oh, Raconteurs out today. I have not purchased it, but have heard a couple songs. Jack White does no wrong.

2006-05-09T22:56:00.000-06:00

Tryouts have begun. This is our 4th year of starting the weekend after college regionals. We figure we are mainly recruited college kids, so that have momentum and hopefully they are in shape. We start out with 3 open to anyone tryouts. This past weekend was beautiful and we had ~35 guys there. We are expecting more tomorrow b/c there was a conflict w/ a high school tourney as well as most everyone is Northfield had a conflict.

That was actually a low # for us, the past 2 years we have been close to 50 the first couple of tryouts. 35 worked out well, 50 is way too much for only one field (it was crowded at Nokomis on Saturday). It seems there are 60+ at Moe tryouts this year, maybe they are more attractive.

We tell everyone we are looking for defense, athletic ability, good decision makers, and good teammates. I think Dave has given the same talk all 4 years. After that we did various amount of drills to showcase either 1-on-1 or 2-on-2 skills. Everything live o and d. We are looking for that unexpected hit that we have been lucky with the past couple of years (berkseth, shane, mark, to name a few). Then split into 2 teams and had 3 scrimmages. With one team coming out on top all three times. And that team was not mine.

There was some solid players, no one made the decision ez by clearly dominating. This year, we are doing 3 rounds of cuts. This coming up weekend being the first round. After nationals 2nd round, and after Boston 3rd round. There were several guys who did enough to advance to the 2nd round. No real set # for round 2, but whoever we think could make our team. But the competition always increases when the CUT boys (and if any Madison boys show up after natties). Last year, tryouts were completely different before CUT/Hodags arrived and after they arrived. Obviously, those 2 schools are the class of the region and they expect to be the best. They carry themselves in that fashion. While some of the smaller, newer programs have guys who are not nearly as confindent and not nearly as used to succeeding. Let's just say, the CUT/Madison boys were in control of tryouts when they were there.

The exceptions are the ones that make it. Kyle last year. Berkseth, Shane, etc from 2 years guys. Guys who go out there with something to prove and to show they belong. It is fun to watch, although they are less experienced, they are a sponge. Soaking everything up and not wanting anyone from those 2 squads to take a spot from them. That is when tryouts get fun. Usually this takes place in early June, b/c that is when the guys who qualified to nationals arrive. This year it starts tomorrow due to the epic 1 bid battle in Iowa City. {We have a rule, if your team makes college natties, you do not have to be there until after Memorial Day}.

It is crazy though. Not much teaching of an offense. 3 handlers, 2 sets of buddies downfield. Some rules, but not many. I personally like to see creativity out of the tryouts this early on. Do they have any clue what is going on besides themself? Or are they just running around only concerned about themself getting the disc? At times, it is very disorganized and very chaotic. This also allows more opportunities for ds.

This year, it is probably more competitive than ever. We have most of our squad returning. Plus, the quality of ultimate in twin cities area is picking up. Plus, there are some good locals who are a year or 2 removed from the college scene that are now interested in playing with us. All this for up to 8 spots or as little as no spots. Definitely makes the decision making process more fun and much harder. The first round will be ez. The second round, that should be interesting. We will venture to Boardman's house, fill up the whiteboard with names and go from there...

2006-04-26T12:33:00.000-06:00

Arguably the best rivalry in college ultimate will be played this Sunday for 1 spot to nationals. CUT v. Hodags in Iowa City. Only 1 bid from the Central Region. Very tough.

First, there is absolutely 0% that any other team will be in the finals. Unless a natural disaster hits Northfield or Madison within the next 3 days. I think Luther, Iowa St., Minnesota, Whitewater, etc. all have some good players and will be better in the future. None of them have a shot at playing for nationals. I am very comfortable saying this even though I have watched 60 minutes of college frisbee this year.

Second, is there a better rivalry in college? The way I understand it, they have hated each other since the early 90s. They have always been in the same region. The last year they did not play each other in the finals was 99. Besides the occasional Iowa team, these 2 have dominated the Central Region since the new regions in 99.

So who wins this game? It comes down to CUT's throwers v. Hodags' athletes (not to say CUT has no athletes and vice versea). But I do not think you can argue with the strengths of these 2 teams. CUT will break your mark and throw long in many ways with several talented throwers. Madison will beat you deep and under as well as d you.

The format favors Madison. They seem to have a deeper bench and seem to rely on guys who are able to replace one another. I believe they will have 3 games on Saturday and the finals will be the 3rd game on Sunday. The only time they face will be the 6th game of the weekend. CUT will have to have 3 or 4 of those games to be ez. If it is windy and they can play zone, that could easily be accomplished.

I think it helps CUT if weather becomes a factor. They can play more zone, probably get easier goals on D, and maybe people will play more zone against them. That way their main throwers can get more of a rest.

I do not know if Madison has a good zone, I am assuming they do with their ability to put athletes deep and on the wings. But when I look at their roster, it seems to me they will crush with a man to man d.

Madison has obviously had the better season. I heard rumors of a CUT injury or 2, but we scrimmaged them last weekend and their full squad looked healthy, fast, and ready to go.

If I were Madison, I would worry about slowing down the top 4 or 5 throwers. I don't think physical is the way to go, those guys were abuse physical marks by taking the free throw, etc.

If I were CUT, I would worry about Madison's ability to put it deep and high and not necessarily being able to do anything about it.

Madison is the favorite I believe (winning Centex, Terminus), but I do not think that means anything between these 2. Madison was the obvious favorite last year. A freak wrist injury and the next thing you know CUT has a big lead and takes the region. Hasn't CUT won regionals the last 3 years? That has got to mean something.

I anticipate the best college game of the year, so far. No region has these stakes. No region has the history between the teams. No region has the stud players of these 2 teams. I think all the other teams going to regionals are excited to watch this game.

I wish I could be there. The only thing I will predict is that both teams will be in the finals (the ez prediction). No way, will I attempt to predict the outcome.

2006-04-16T22:10:00.000-06:00

Going back to the 1998 college season, I left off at regionals. This was the last year of the 6 region system. So Colorado, CUT, Madison, and Iowa all were in our region. And at that time, much better than us. Plus, Oberlin + ND were pretty good.

I feel like anyone who played at this tournament remembers it. Or at least, anyone who played on Sunday. The weather was probably the worst I have ever played in.

We hosted regionals that year. Regionals is always during Finals or Graduation for Michigan. We were afraid of travelling to Colorado for regionals, so we hosted it. And by hosted it, I mean Jon Bakija did a lot of work and we played at Concordia College.

Saturday was absolutely beautiful. When I think about days playing ultimate, Saturday was the ideal. A little chilly in the morning, maybe upper 40s/lower 50s. But almost no clouds. Gorgeous sun. And a little breeze. Nothing too bad, but enough to kill any bad throws.

There was a Klink-friendly format used, meaning pool play. 4 pools. I believe everyone else had 5 teams, we only had 4. We were the 7th seed and in CUT's pool along with IU and Miami Ohio.

All games to 17 and we started with Miami, OH. Continuing with the tradition of absolutely killing the bottom team in our regionals pool, we crushed Miami. This game as well as our drubbing of IU really do not stand out. The games were not close and we were excited to play CUT.

At this point, we had never played CUT before. Some of our guys played them during fall regionals in Lexington, so we were pretty stoked. We had a bunch of people out watching us, the weather was great, and the wind was starting to pick up a little. Still not bad, but it was a little more intense.

They start on O, after a couple of turns they go up 1-0. Then 2-0, 3-0, 4-0... Take half 9-0. 10-0, 11-0, 12-0, 13-0. Luckily, we were playing to 17. Ugly. We did not really have an O and D team at this stage, but we definitely had guys who mainly played O and guys who mainly played D. Well, the guys that mainly played D were not too happy at 13-0. I feel like we tried everything, punt + zone, 3-man weave, etc., but everything we did resulted in the same thing a turnover followed by a goal (sometimes multiple turns). Somewhere in the early tens, our d guys started to play. I do remember Rook (probably our sketchiest O player at that time) scoring the first goal. 13-1. Yeah! The game ended 17-3. I am fairly sure this was the worst defeat in terms of point diff I have ever experienced. I wish I had some sort of stat sheet from this game. Just to see points played and turns.

So we were devastated, but still in the quarters. Against Iowa who had already beaten us a couple times that year, but we felt we could play with. So all was not lost. I drove home w/ Karl, probably our main d guy. Meaning he didn't get to play much in the last game. He was p.o'd at me since I called the subs. That was fun. I get home, take a long nap, go over to Jaegs and most everyone on the team is over there bbq'ing and drinking. Pretty much the only thing to do at that point.

We are still throwing, the wind is picking up, it is cooling down, and we drink for a while. Most of us end up at the party, which I think was at the nectarine, a fine local club in Ann Arbor. Funny place for a frisbee party, but still good times. After having way too much fun at nectos, Pfil and I stumble back to our respective places in very cold and very rainy conditions. Very different from earlier in the weekend. I leave Pfil, but he would return to my place 4 hours later picking me up to go back to Concordia and rain.

That morning I woke up and watched the weather channel. The weather continued to get worse from about 6 pm on Saturday until then, ~8 am on Sunday. There was a 40 degree difference in temp and there was a lot of precipitation. It was very cold, but not cold enough for snow. It was a nice rainy/ice mixture. Plus, there was a greater than 20 mph wind.

At the stage in my ultimate career, I only had cotton. So I took maybe 2 cotton long sleeves and my uniform and headed out the door. We get there and a big meeting about playing regionals. Well, no lightning so it was going to be played. Dave Hunter gets the biggest score by getting McDonalds to donate a couple things of coffee.

We "warm up" with some throwing drills, which for us meant a lot of chasing.

Finally, we play Iowa. These conditions really played to Iowa's advantage. They had an excellent 4 person cup zone. They had 4 or 5 strong throwers, that were not necessarily the most athletic, but they could throw very well. They were much more experienced. Oh, and they had Ryan Nation. By the second half of our quarters game, we had lost 2 of our best throwers, Bischoff and Reiks, b/c they could not throw a disc. (Sidenote, they were graduate students who both went to undergrad in the south).

Iowa's 4 man trap was killing us. We rarely got it off the line and when we did, it was a dying blade from myself or Bakija to the middle of the field, hoping someone would catch it. The final was something like 15-6 or 8. Never that close.

So we drop down into the backdoor bracket to face Madison. A team that usually crushes us. It was getting colder and windier. There were now several guys on our squad just in cars and not playing b/c they were too cold to play. Since people were so cold, our rotation was pretty small, maybe me, Jaegs, Hales, Pfil, Wu, Paul, Karl, Dave H., Gus, and Jon. About only half our roster was playing, if you sat on the sideline for too long, you were no good. Maybe if you were drinking coffee you had a chance.

Madison comes out in a 3-man cup zone and this gives us almost as much trouble. When we do get open looks, we are too tentative. Brian Lane (sort of coach) is screaming at us to just bomb it anytime we get an open shot. Basically, we are turning it over anyway, why not turn it over with a chance near the endzone? We do eventually score, but we are down 7-1 at halftime. We huddle around the coffee and Brian Lane is telling the only thing we can do is bomb. And so we come in half #2 and that is what we do. First, Jon to Paul, then Me to Paul, and Jaegs to Pfil. 7-4, all on deep passes after one swing of the disc. They score to go up 8-4. But a couple hucks later and a couple of big grabs by Paul, 8-7. It is all of a sudden a game. They go up 9-7, the cap goes on (most of the points in the 1st half were very looooong). So now game to 11. They go up 10-7, I believe. 10-8, then 10-9, and finally 10-10. We are extremely psyched. We have all the momentum and we are forcing the issue. We pull to them, out of bounds, so they take it at the brick.

What happens next I remember very well. Charlie, current teammate former arch-rival, walks the disc to the brick mark. I am guarding someone last in the stack. We are forcing flick. I-o flick to Ben Jammin off the front of the stack. He immediately catches the disc, stops, pivots back to his left-handed backhand invert, and launches it to my man. I feel I am right on my guy and can easily make this play. He was in front of me, but as the disc gets close, I now have the inside position and he is to my right with the disc up and on my left. As it comes in, I remember thinking that it was mine, I line up my jump, get up, and the disc sails over my hand. At what point do you realize you can't get the disc? I did not realize this until I reached my peak, I have no idea how close I was to it. But I could not believe I missed it. It felt like there was no way I was going to miss it, I was stunned. I immediately look back and my man has caught the disc for the game winning score. UGH. 11-10. Madison beats Michigan, again.

I did not stick around too long as I was dealing with exhaustion and I was unbelieveably cold. I was escorted home by a future mom, dethawed on the couch, finally took a shower getting my core temp back to 98 degrees. Ate some lunch at the brew pub, studied, and played some "Go" at a local coffee shop.

I am not sure how many times I thought about missing that d over the next 24 hours...

As bad as that ending was (And really the whole tourney), so many good things happened for myself and our team. I feel like that weekend we realized what we had to do to be a better team. We had to play better comp throughout the season. We all had to be able to play O and D. We all had to play during the summer and improve. We all needed not to wear cotton shirts in really crappy weather. We needed a coach. Most importantly, we finally believed we could compete with the best in our region. That was definitely not true at the beginning of the weekend. We immediately started talking about the 99 season.

2006-03-27T10:51:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-03-20T23:18:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-03-15T23:47:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-03-07T09:44:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-03-02T20:13:00.000-07:00

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).

2006-02-23T21:41:00.000-07:00

Recent Want Ads I have come across on the internet:

WANTED someone to throw or catch a goal in Las Vegas. If interested please call either Carleton College or University of Wisconsin @ Madison.

WANTED a genetics graduate student who is fast and interested in playing frisbee. $$$ available. Please contact the University of Minnesota Grad School.

WANTED a dump cutter. Please call Shane at Madison. PS, Chris or Jacob or Leon, feel free to call.

WANTED a successful methyl-ziroconation. Please contact me. Oh yeah, if you have a spare organic chemistry job in the Twin Cities, that would be handy.

WANTED lessons for in-line skating. Call A-ron.

WANTED a mean-spirited team that can kick some butt in frisbee looking for a place to play with some pretty cool and nice teams. Please contact any state in the greater Metro East area.

WANTED young, new knees, preferable with acls intact. Please, only big vertical leaps should call. Look for Josh, Mark, Andy, Andy, Phil, or Chris.

WANTED a new song. Call 3-1-1.

WANTED Sub Zero handlers because OBVIOSULY Seattle is much better place than Minneapolis, Madison, and the rest of central region. (And the rest of the frisbee world for that matter). Contact The Fish.

WANTED a Jaegs-like severance package, I need the time off to find myself. Please e-mail Spilup. Oh, if you have a backhand, that would be nice, too.

WANTED a magnUM alumni to go on Wheel of Fortune, because you all have had such success on the Price Is Right and Jeopardy. Call Mr. Sajak.

WANTED someone with some gerth or speed or both to beat up people in im basketball. Ex-MIAC players can apply. Contact Brian.

WANTED none of my friends to get married during the fall series. Seriously, my summer is booked with these damned things. Do not contact me.

2006-02-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

Everything I need to know for frisbee, I learned in basketball-

- hit the open guy

- move without the ball

- reverse the court

- hit your free throws

- follow your shot

- don't stop at the foul, finish the play

- be able to beat your man with both hands

- get into the lane

- don't force action with shots

- reward the big man for running the court

- always acknowledge the assist man

- create a passing lane for the dribbler

- win your individual battle

- if overplayed, go back door

- box out

- don't speak unless spoken to

- defense is a full time job

- look to help with your body and your mouth

- triangulate your man, ball, and hoop

- know when you are 1 pass, 2 passes, or 3 passes removed

- pressure the ball

- zone does not mean you do not run

- move your feet, do not reach, stay on your toes

- don't get beat back door

- keep your hands in the passing lanes

- when the pass is thrown, it is either a steal or completed

2006-02-09T14:20:00.000-07:00

In a 24 hour span starting 11 pm Friday nite, I played in 7 ultimate games. WIth our friday nite indoor league + then saturday's open not in las vegas indoor tourney.

Friday nite was against some Sub vets. 11 pm is way too late. We only had two women so at first I was worried we might be in trouble. But then we just had them guard Severt, so pretty ez. I had several turns in this game and did some other things, but we won 13-6. And now there are some rankings up and we are 4th even though we just beat 3rd.

So Saturday at 9, we played in the indoor tourney. We had about 15 guys, but never more than 11 and never less than 8 or 9.

First game was against Masters-Fall league team. Game started at 9 am, luckily we had 5 there at 9am. And then 5 more by 9:05. In what turned out to be a theme of the day, we were down 4-1. Crawled back into it and then sprinted home something like 13-6. I believe the other team got mad at me when I skiied the shorter woman on their team. Although she switched on to me during the throw. I thought I was a gentleman. Oh and then I broke her for a score.

Second game was against TBA, the periennal pick up team in Minneapolis. Recently it has been fun to play them b/c they get mad at each other very easily. But this time it was just a drubbing. It is fun to watch arguments. Ummmmm,

Third game was against some St. Olaf guys, some non-st. olaf guys, and some guys from a high school. We were down 4-1. My favorite player on the team was the kid in the khaki pants that did not change speed at all throughout the game. And I am not talking about high speeds. I am talking about level 1 on George's workout speed.

After a lengthy bye and watching the Zach Puchtel led Gophers. We played the Hopkins high school team. I had some errands to do, so I did not get to participate, but we will come back to high school team soon.

So, we go 4-0, and play the U of M b team and some alumni in the quarters. They got up like 1-0 or 2-0 or something of that nature. But eventually the game went out of reach. Highlight of the game for me was skying Harry Potter and then spiking on him. Good times. SOme people on the sidelines started calling me Lord Vladimir or something. Apparently, he is the evil guy in the Harry Potter books. It is always good to sky someone 6 inches shorter.

The next hour we had a bye and watch the other quarters. This was the upset round where both 3 seeds beat the 2 seeds. The flaming moe guys lost to the team we played first. And the hopkins high school team beat the olaf + olaf alum teams. Very impressive to watch. The hopkins team has about 7 or 8 pretty solid duders. Their o was fairly impressive and I do not think the olaf guys broke them at all. I feel like I was watching the future of sub zero, well, assuming they stay around the cities and thinking to myself, I hope they let me play. It was fun to watch and in a 5-on-5 setting, they could excel. They won something like 11-8 or so taking down the Truesdale/Cram Olaf team. ANd Hamline' sprediction from the morning was true, Hopkins in the semis.

Then the semis, we now played the Hopkins team again. They were pumped to start. Up 2-1 on some nice long throws by them. Shortly afterwards, the nrg of the quarters victory started to wear off. I am sure it was all our experience, but they started not completing hucks and dropping stuff and being tired, I think it was past their bedtime. Most importantly I was able to sell some fresh new sub zero hats to the kids. 15:1 shot one of them makes our team.

So the finals, we played a CLX/IOWA/Liquid Assets team. I guess most of them were from CLX, but I would not know since I have never seen them play. They came out on fire and I came out throwing the disc away. It was sweet. They went 4-1, so the 3rd time we were down like that, except these guys were pretty good. and we had trouble stopping their huck. And I had trouble completing passes or we had trouble catching the disc in bounds. It was a struggle. Down 4-7, we push it to 6-7 and I have a wide open backhand to Boardman that I throw out of bounds. So we do not tie the game. After some more 3 stooges ultimate, it was 8-10. We score to make it 9-10. We finally were forced to play d. Stop their huck. I was guarding their deep guy and it felt like they would just wait for him to burn me deep. And sometimes he would. And other times they would misthrow it.

Anyway, back to 9-10, cap goes on, which means we score, one more point. They score, game over. We play good d, force a blade turnover. I run a give-n-go with Andy Dikeman and bomb it away to a wide open RG. With a wide open CY underneath. 2 open guys. I throw it out of bounds! If I had a 3rd chance, I guarantee the game would have been tied.

Needless to say, they scored that goal and now we have gone 2 winters without an indoor tournament W. Truesdale + Cram were happy b/c we had been giving them a hard time about losing to high schoolers. And now they could tease us about losing to co-eders and people from Iowa. A double whammy!

SO yeah, I had to recover from that.

T-web saying maybe my indoor ultimate career is on the decline. I should have reitred after groundhog day in 99.

Oh, I did get into one interesting discussion with a defender in this finals game. When I pick up the disc, I will at times hold the disc in 2 hands about 2 or 3 inches from my body (more than disc space). Now, if he bumps into the disc and then me, that should be a foul. Even though I have more than disc space, I have claimed a legitimate position and done so without fouling him. He then bumps me and claims all he has to do is give me disc space. I disagree with that. Am I wrong here? (He also started bumping me on pivots, but that is another story).

Incidentally, I did not call the foul, just asked him not to bump me. And he was a little angry with me to start.

And then I watched the Steelers/Referees play the Seahawks.... I don't really think the Steelers can complain about the colts refs anymore.

And IM bball starts. I thought the b division was not supposed to be that good. Turns out my team just isn't good.

2006-02-01T11:32:00.000-07:00

Two quick things to mention- First, finally a loss at the indoor YWCA. Our winter league team was defeated by a bunch of St. Olaf grads. I have not smiled all week... I clearly fault my teammates, besides throwing a scoober away, a huck into traffic, and a hammer that was completely shalacked by Berkslut. I played very well. Oh yeah, I was t-bagged by an old fan of magnUM. [I was having trouble connecting to this link earlier]

We lost 8-6. I still believe I was +1, but I could be wrong there. It has been awhile. I will blame the loss on Tempe. And Truesdale, he cheats.

The other thing I have to mention is the gophers bball game. Besides forgetting to workout this weekend, I watched/listened to the Gophers game against IU. In the starting lineup for u of m was Zach Puchtel, brother of Batman (Scroll down to Max's name and click on a picture). Good times.

Best Zach quote was "Oh and six sucks" Or "I did not transfer from Harvard to sit the bench"

Bye

2006-01-24T11:06:00.000-07:00

3-0 in the big winter league season. Although the schedule looks to toughen up a bit as we play the "Alumni from the other school in Northfield that plays ultimate, but never had any success". Kind of a weird team name.

The game was close for a while, 5-5 at one point. Then a decisive 4 point run put the game away and we would win 13-6. My stats, again, were very unimpressive. 7 points played, +3 (the last 3 I played, part of the decisive run!), 1 goal, no assists. Although if this were hockey, I would have had 4 assists. Clearly, the throw before the goal throw is very important. I did have my first every point block on a woman. I got skiied in our endzone, but then skiied the same guy back the same point.

2 things from this game. First, 11 pm games are very tiring. Second, and somewhat more controversial, this game reminded me of a topic we use to discuss a lot when I was in Ann Arbor. Specifically, 2 types of players, well there are plenty types of players, but this is more fun to discuss. The first group - the Worst-Good Players. The second group - the Best-Worst players.

The only real rule is you will never be able to switch from one group to the other. Well, maybe it is possible, but I have never seen it.

For example, let's say Paul Greff (used to be considered tbpitg) gets really bad. Well, he, at worst, could only be the worst-good player now. He could never ever become the the best-worst player.

You can improve your stock. I used to think Matt Higbee was the worst-good player in ultimate. Then playing with him in 2000, he clearly was a good player. And he could have the worst-good player removed from his playing ability.

I bring this up b/c we played a team with a couple guys who you could argue are the best-worst players in ultimate. There are a couple of things that make you the best-worst player in ultimate:

1. Athletic- usually these guys are athletic, fast, can jump, but rarely can put all of their tools together at one time.

2. Throws- they have ok throws. Take away the wind and they complete some funny stuff which in turns fuels the fire to make funnier throws.

3. The earlier the season the better. You do not want to play these guys indoors or early in the outdoor season (maybe more significant in midwest). You must remember these guys only have one level and they play at that level all year. If you are not ready, they can beat you. They will be more motivated than you to play, that is for sure.

4. A refusal to go to the dump below 7 or 8. Almost the most reliable part of their game.

I am slowly beginning to learn really how to take down these guys. Really, it involves a tough mark (and by a tough mark, I do not mean hacking the hell out of them pups). At 6-5, this is what changed in our defense, we marked better and took away open throws with the mark. They got discouraged and either hucked it away, or got stalled or threw a stupid dump at 9.

2006-01-16T10:56:00.000-07:00

Is it worse to feel cheated by a neutral party (ie ref in the steelers game) or by a player on the other team (ie frisbee)? I mean, can't you feel equally cheated in both cases? If I were a steelers fan, there is a good chance I would have gone crazy. Luckily, Peyton Manning was quarterbacking the other team.

So yeah, I watched a lot of football this weekend.

Winter League Update- 2-0. This game was much uglier for us, most likely b/c our fearless leader, Mr. Boardman was not there. I think we had no discipline. We won like 11-2 or 3 or something. My stat line was not as impressive as last time. 4 points played, +2 rating, 0 goals, 1 assist (not coed but upside down), 0 turns. I think playing most of my points with RG kills my stat line. I will have to change that.

The most important thing about that game was we had 3 hell points. Points of longer than 5 minutes. I was in for exactly 0 of those. Those points were equivalent to the 4 corners in college bball in the 80s. Just take the air out of the frisbee. We had a "stupidest" aka someone catches the disc in the air, clearly in bounds (with me saying, "plenty of room, plenty of room") and then throwing it before landing well in bounds.

My season stats are 11 points played, +9, 1 goal, 6 assists, 1 turn.

Workouts last week

Sun - Ran twice, 15 min to work and 10 min from work, I think running 2 shorter times in a day is very good for ultimate training.
Mon - nothing, only situps and pushups.
Tue - Ran 10 minutes + 90 minutes of bball. first bball in a long time. I could not hit anything outside of 12 feet. Luckily, I kept shooting.
Wed - Ran 22 minutes, the weather was great for Jan.
Thu - Nothing, What was my excuse? I forget, I had a good one.
Fri - Ran 10 minutes + played frisbee
Sat - Ran 26:30 minutes, longest run of the year. The first 20 minutes felt really good. I think I covered about 10o yards the rest of the time. Don't finish runs when you are out of shape going up a big hill. The weather is still awesome here.
Sun - Nothing, Absolutely nothing. I watched a lot of football. So a very mentally taxing day.

2006-01-11T13:30:00.000-07:00

Here is my attempt to talk about something theoretical.

Offense wins in ultimate. [Go here or here for what prompted this topic. And also, the fact that the redskins gained like 100 yards and still won a playoff game puzzles me.]

I feel I have played at or close to the top of the elite club level the last 5 years with zero. I have never been in the semis. This year was my first glimpse into it. Although we were not there, we were close. We had a chance. The first chance I have ever really had. And it was due to the offense.

What was the difference between the semifinalist and the rest this year, offense. The northwest + dog, all had their offense scoring consistently in the very big games. Same holds true for 04 when the northwest and Pike were scoring big on everyone.

When we struggled in 01 + 02 to attempt to get the semis, it was not due to talent (Masulis, Chase, Turtle, Ryder, OBrien, Greff, Sebby, Guyette, Cooter, Burkhardt, Kaiser, Severt...). And those were the guys we lost since then. We could play d on anyone. We could convert ds on anyone. But we did not have an offense that could consistently score. We did not have an o that when receiving the disc late in the game, you can count. We could score in one way, a long throw. Watching Furious, Jam, et al this year, that can score with the bomb or working it up the field.

03 + 04 saw us change to an o/d squad to maximize experience playing with each other. 03 lack of experience + talent. Followed by 04 where we were better, but still taking baby steps.

05 saw the same concept of o + d. Part of it this year was having enough talent that stocking the o team did not leave the d team bare. So we could avoid runs + make runs at the same time (not necessarily true in 03 + 04). Plus, this year we could score in multiple ways, something that the talented 01 + 02 teams struggled with.

Granted a d team can go on a big run. Convert a lot of goals. But if your O can't hold it, it means nothing. It is not so much that the other team knows they can win. It is that you are unsure if you can win.

College is different, less skilled player, rely on more d. But the 02 Stanford team and the 03 Hodag team were some of the best offenses ever in college ultimate. Maybe they could not have done great at the club level, but they took that basis of club ultimate and applied it to college. If you get a smaller group of guys who know each other and play well together with the disc....

What are some of the keys I see in the successful teams breifly mentioned above.

- Win with the huck but not die by the huck. Guys who can throw deep, guys who can run deep. But also guys who can throw short. Around the mark. Beat them underneath. A team knows that can beat you with the deep game, but they do not HAVE to beat you with their deep game. I would argue a lot of teams who lose in the quarters die by the huck.

- Interchangeable parts. The most important idea. Did anyone see the Kirkshank moving downfield move? If someone told me that after 04, I would have thought what the hell are they doing. It got them a championship and obviously a couple of guys and to fill in for his numerous throws around the disc. If your guys can ONLY handle, your o is in for some trouble. Same goes if they can only go deep.

- Scoring on the endzone. Duuuhhh. We had 2 extra possessions on the upwind endzone against Furious. My hammer gets sl-mo'd on disc 4. Luckily, they don't show the other turn. I am fairly certain Furious never turned it on the endzone against us.

- Hot receivers. Sockeye last year, even Pike last year. You need at least one or 2 guys that the defense is scratching their heads.

2006-01-09T16:56:00.000-07:00

Winter League started on Friday and my unbeaten streak at the MInneapolis Y continues. (On an unrealated topic, what was said about dog's o such that the pups website is down and out?)

Friday nite, we (wanna buy a duck) beat Big Red ~13-2 in our 50 minute game. Our team was slightly more experienced than this summer/fall league "co-ed" team. We are composed of Zero + Bait with some friends of the program sprinkled in. A deep roster of ~14 for 5-5 (3/2) co-ed ultimate. That big a roster is necessary when all your games are on Friday nite.

This year will be more challenging as we cart a little one around, luckily her bedtime is about midnite and everyone enjoys babysitting.

Anyway, to the game. I played awesome. I was just so stoked to be playing ultimate frisbee again. I was +7 (only played 7 points). I had 1 goal, 5 assists, but 1 turn, a breakmark deep flick that bladed a little more than I desired.

I thought in co-ed you got 2 points if you threw a goal to a girl, but you don't since 5 of the 6 goals I was involved in were co-ed scores and we never got 2 points. I do not think the women on the other team were used to women being thrown to.

I did fall down on my butt once b/c I was avoiding a collision (also a very important point of indoor ultimate). It seems I have lost coordination.

Our "cover 2" like defense was in full effect. Some say it is mean to play zone. We say we are just lazy not mean.

Ummmm, that is all I got.

2006-01-05T22:51:00.000-07:00

2006, time to get in shape. Now that I am old and only a club player, there is no need to stay in shape all year round. Or no good reason. So, I take all of November off. Start thinking about running in December. And now, finally, I begin.

January in Minnesota is not the easiest time to get in shape. It does not bother me that much b/c I grew up near Lake Michigan so cold, wind chill, snow is normal. Although wind chill below 0, then that bothers me.

My first week is fairly easy. I mainly run to get into shape. I will start going to the gym occasionally when school starts to ride the bike, play some ball, or maybe even lift a weight.

So far, it has been every other day. 23 min Sat, 20 min Tue, and today 15 min. Not much, I like to slowly ease into it. The pace is ~7 min/mile. I think that is the pace I can always hit no matter what. By the end of the season, I *think* I can get that closer to 6:30, but not too sure. The first week is just making sure I want to do this and I feel like getting in shape. Right now, the weather is beautiful for Jan. Upper 20s/lower 30s. No wind. No snow or ice on the sidewalks. It is as good as you can get....

This year I have decided to do push-ups and sit-ups everyday as well. Paco inspired me earlier in the season. I felt bad b/c I stopped short of the team goal due to a hand injury, but now I am trying to make that up. I have done 50/100 everyday. Before you say that is all, I am pretty sure I had not done more than 200 pushups in my life before this year.

So 3 out of the 6 days I have ran. Not a bad start. Tomorrow will be a short run and the start of indoor frisbee. 50 minutes of look how good my throws are. I have yet to lose a game inside the Minneapolis Y. I look forward to continuing that streak this year.

Oh, holiday music that I acquired. White Stripes "Walking like a ghost" single, classic, they rule the music world. Death Cab, got as a gift, better than expected. Makes me want to get the cd with "sounds of settling on it". Coldplay, "X&y", ok, unsure of his voice. Some songs good, others ok. I swore I would never get a coldplay album b/c of that stupid yellow song. It was a gift, so I find that acceptable. Also, Pixies live dvd is excellent. And heard the Wilco live album. GOod if you like live albums. They would be on top if it were not for the stripes.

2006-01-03T22:52:00.000-07:00

It's like 1993 again. I can hear "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" in the back of my head.

Although far less interesting than other discussions going on, I had a small talk with a sz alum about our performance this year. He was quite impressed and called it equal to the 1999 zero semis performance. I found this interesting as we did not make the semis and that year zero was very competitive in the semis against the 'dors. His point was this, they beat a nobody to get there (bog) and then had a tight one with the 'dors. Instead of playing a nobody in the quarters, we played the monkey and lost in the quarters.

This, along with all the NFL parity talk, got me thinking about parity in ultimate. Or lack there of. To me, ultimate is like the NFL in the 80s a couple of teams who are always there and the occasional up and comer.

Since 99 (when quarters started), here are the semifinalist:

99 - dog-furious, condors-zero
00 - condors-dog, furious-jam (?)
01 - condors-dog, jam-furious
02 - furious-dog , ring-sockeye
03 - furious-ring, condors-jam
04 - sockeye-pike, jam-furious
05 - furious-jam, sockeye-dog

If you consider zero "lucky" in 99, meaning not playing any of the big 4 [not that they should apologize], you could consider 99->01 that there were 4 top teams and then the rest (w/ zero being the best of the rest in 99).

And it seems now that there has been a top 3 to emerge at nationals the past 2 years. Although they have played close games with other teams, they are the ones left standing.

My thoughts turn to how can this be cracked? Zero is currently has an interesting mix of young guys based in the twin cites + madison, plus a key # of vets around the cities. The current core of the team will be on our 4th year together (bascially a reloading year in 03).

The obvious disadvantage for us is "frisbee central" aka northwest is 2000 miles away. 5 of the top 9 teams are out west and it is hard for a team w/ $$ issues to get out there much. I feel we have to see them at least once before nationals and hopefully we will be able to do that.

The other coast, although not as good, still is better than the central region. If we are to choose where to go, is it better to go against teams at a similiar level or even below us? Or should we go exclusively to the place where the teams are at a similiar level or above us? The ol' confidence v. expereince during the non-conference schedule.

Although local tourneys allow us to have a bit more fun + experiment with new things + positions, there is only so much that we can do with these. It is unfortunate that we have a tourney 5 hours from the cities and fairly central to our region, but teams like Chicago + Truck will not go to b/c they can't get enough good games... I can't blame them, but maybe our 6th place finish will bring them back. The only real driveable tourney that is competitive for us is Chicago. And that is late in the year.

We are not located in the greatest area for competitive frisbee, that is for sure. But we enjoy it here and we enjoy playing here. Last year was very interesting b/c of our youth and our combo with some of Madison. It worked better than expected and it gives me confidence going into the new year. We had much success this year with very little experience together. People came away from nationals thinking we can compete at the top and we need to improve. That is a great attitude to be apart of.

Now this year, what can happen? What other teams will now shoot for us? Will the upper teams expect a little more from us? Will we push them more? For me, what will happen after a tie score like 10-10? We did not win many of those games last year. A sign of inexperience on the field and inexperience together.

2005-12-29T18:33:00.000-07:00

Hi again. First, if you are ever down by 10 points or so in the 4th quarter against the University of Michigan football team and Llyod Carr is coaching, you are probably going to win that game. Sheesh. I really don't advocate coaches getting fired that often, but this guy is still living off of Charles Woodson's coattails. Charles Woodson can't do that anymore. It takes a lot of talent to blow 4th quarter leads consistently.

So time to talk about another team who couldn't hold 4th quarter leads (no, not sub zero, I am done with them until at least 2006). I am talking about magnUM. Where I last left you was the summer before the '98 year. We had 2 captains, me + Jon (elder grad student, uber-organized). I stayed in AA that summer and played a ton of frisbee, Karl + I made Big Ass Truck which at the time seemed like an accomplishment.

During the summer, there were 5 of us who came up with a plan (me, Jon, Karl, Brian Lane-last year's captain/possible coach, + Terry-older brother of best woman's player). Basically that plan was 1. Recruit, 2. Learn how to Throw, 3. Play as many tourneys as possible, 4. Find a name that would stick. I think that was an excellent plan.

Our plan for recruiting was 3-fold. First, put as many ads in as many places as possible like dorms, freshman booklets, the daily, etc. Second, throw on the diag (or mall or quad) as often as possible. I think we may have even had schedules for the beginning of the year. Third, "clinics" trying to get as many guys + girls to play as possible. The clinics started to work. We were able to get some very "athletic" freshmen out as well as just more people knowing and playing frisbee (some of us may have found girls that day too, but that is for a different blog). And during the spring season, Michigan would have its first ever b team.

Anyway, the year started out well, not only were the freshman good, we found some grad students. And by found, I mean they came here and they already knew how to play. And they were pretty good. All in all, we would get 7 newbies that season, all of which could play from the start. And by the end of the season, 4 of them were solid handlers (at least for us). We had at least 10 returners from the previous season.

Before, we started to travel to any tourneys, we wanted a new name. TUKA was not going to do it that year. We wanted something with UM in the word. Maybe not creative, but it was our goal.

It came down to magnUM or tUMult. I have NO idea how tumult ended up there, but we decided to play a game to 3 to decide the name. You played on whatever team you wanted the name to be. Well, tumult was up 2-0. The magnum team had our best players on it, but there were still a lot of tryouts there. After the early lead, the magnUM team sent in our best 7 and we won the game. Exciting, I know. Sadly enough, I used to remember the 7 guys that played those 3 points, but those brain cells are long gone.

And magnUM was born....... (Oh, if you think this is boring, just wait until you get my winter league updates starting next week! Nothing beats indoor ultimate in Minneapolis)

2005-12-19T10:32:00.000-07:00

A quick review of Disc 4. Got it on Friday and have watched it completely twice and skipped around multiple times. Anyway, I thought it was well done. The music takes me back to the nintendo days, but a lot of quality highlights. Here are some of my thoughts questions-

- No matter how many times I watch our quarters game, we still do not win it.
- Seigs, really, a kick spike against PBR Streetgang? 15-3 win?
- Al Nichols + Al Nord are the 2 best players. They don't do anything wrong.
- Twisted beats Condors in their first ever nationals. And a couple of there guys are way too casual. You can't tell me they knew they were going to win.
- How big would Jason Simpson fro be if he did not have corn rows?
- Jim, that had to be one of the top 5 worst ever point blocks against you.
- Alex, what were you and Lou talking about?
- The best thing about the Kevin Cissna greatest was while everyone was watching what Kevin was about to do. Ron was the only person starting to set up another cut. He made an amazing play to get the disc, but he was the only one moving before the throw.
- The video makes me like Lugisdin more, but I do not think he should have been allowed to take an injury sub in the finals. He may have been injured, but he was not injured on that play. That was pretty sketchy.
- And if Oscar argues a call, there is a good chance he is wrong.
- Enough Furious hating, they played well.
- I would make fun of the condors here, but I have never beaten them.
- Hales, at least you are not the only person to throw a callahan on the dvd.
- Also, if you want to make a case against observers, watch this dvd. I really think that if observers are going to be used, they need to be on the field. Too many bad calls by them when they are on the sideline.
- Oh yeah, the furious call on Safdie in the finals of the NW, doesn't look too good for Furious either
- The dvd made it seem like we were actually in the game against Jam.
- Does AJ from Potomac ever see the poach?
- For the finals, they should constantly remind you how windy it was. Like a wind gauge in the corner or something.
- Seriously, how does Al always get open? He is like a 3 point shooter in bball that you can never take your eye off.
- Geoff, it is nice to see you are still willing to mix it up a little bit.

Anyway, the DVD was excellent and fun to watch. Rob did an excellent job

2005-12-15T22:13:00.000-07:00

At the end of our first college season, we held elections for our college team. Incidentally, i think I beat out Jaeger for the second captain position! It was the first time I was elected captain of a frisbee team. Including that time, I have now been captain for 10 UPA series. 4 in college, 6 in club (2 in Michigan + 4 here). In total, I have played in 5 college series + 9 club series. It is humorous to me that I have been captain so much, maybe not so humorous to those that spend a lot of time with me.

Anyway, the most important thing that I have learned while being captain is there has to be some sort of committee/brain trust/elder council or something. This may seem clear to you. It was not always so clear to me.

Take my first season as captain of magnUM. We were all relatively new to the game. We tried to get Brian to coach us, but he was not around enough. Damn med school. I was probably not the best guy on the team after our first year, but then I played a ton of summer league + played on Big Ass Truck. So heading into the fall, I was probably the most driven. I had a small taste of winning and I wanted to win more. Most importantly, I had a team that seemed to be heading in the same direction. We all wanted to win more.

That year was somewhat successful. It ended up with us losing to Iowa and Wisconsin on the 2nd day of regionals in AA. That day deserves another blogging-day.

I learned a ton that year, not only as a player, but as a leader. There are 5 lessons that I really learned after that first year (and I forgot when I arrived in Minneapolis and became captain again).

These lessons-

1. Experience + Outside Observers (ie coach) are huge and you need to use these resources as much as possible. Although our strategy was a little more complex then the horse + buggy, we were unable to adapt during games. Not only did it take a more experienced guy to help us out on that 2nd day of regionals, he was also not involved in the game. This was huge and something that benefits the team (Assuming the coach is not a tard).

2. Critical thinking about what happened. Take what you did the previous practice/tourney/scrimmage and try to improve. Now, not a practice or tourney goes by without me without evaluating the team + the structure of frisbee related event. My first year it seemed I often wanted to forgot or just remember the positive things. But to improve, you have to focus on what you believe was negative + help you or the team correct it.

3. Have a group who are comfortable talking to you (maybe this should be more like 1a). This is more for a 1 or 2 captain team. You have to have others who can talk to you and critique what is done. And you have to be willing to listen. ON Zero, we have 4 captains w/ a range of experience/ideas, but we still solicit input from others. If people feel like they can't approach you, you are asking for a revolt.

4. Be the teammate/player that you want others to be. You must lead by example on and off the field. If you do not allow others to have excuses for practice, you can't have them yourself. Captaining w/ Jaeger in 99 was great b/c he was always working to get better. The people who I have captained on Zero the past 3 years have always been those working the hardest at practice, at workouts, and at tourneys. If you are lazily warming up, not participating in drills, or getting beat on d, well.... It makes it harder for your teammates to follow.

5. Say something positive once in awhile. This is the hardest thing for me and it is probably why I keep Charlie around. He is greating at telling people that are playing well. For me, the John Wooden quote of "Always thank the guy who gave you the assist" (or something like that) is huge. It does not always have to be immediately after the play, but we have a break in between scores so it should be soon. I have a rule to myself that I try to talk to 2 or 3 people after each game and tell them how well they played. And try to give 1 or 2 specific examples from that game. I am such a nit-picker during the game, that I hope this is enough.

2005-12-13T23:24:00.000-07:00

In the end, how much does strategy really matter? Seriously. Or is it the longer a team has been together?

Furious has won 3 of the last 4 titles. The core of those guys started together in what 97? 98? They knocked on the door for a couple of year (even creeping through the door here in Minnesota).

Before that, Condors had 2 titles. Does anyone know if they went to college together? They won some titles together in college and then came up through the ranks in club. Again, winning some and losing some big games along the way.

Dog had a couple titles in a row. And they played together for a while. And lost for a while.... Etc. Etc.

Obviously, strategery has something to do this. If that had no plan of action, all of these teams would not be as successful. But did they win b/c they had the best strategy? Or did they have the people playing their's team philosophy the best? Or is it that they knew exactly what to expect out of each other under pressure?

Against Furious in the quarters, their offense had some newer guys to the team. But it was still Jeff, Andrew, Kirk, and Al. The others looked to them at difficult times. And they looked at each other. And they knew what to do. On their d team, even though that had MG on there, they struggled with the disc. And maybe this is why that had trouble pulling away from us. Or the fact that on our offense, we had only 3 or 4 guys that were there last year for us.

My point is maybe strategy is overrated. Maybe knowing what your teammate is going to do and wants to do is the most important thing. Maybe this means I agree with Luke. Uh oh...

I have no stats to prove it, but it seems in March Madness there are more upsets then in the 80s and early 90s.

The little guys beating the big guys. It seems like the little guys have 3 or 4 seniors on the team. Been there for all 4 years. Playing together vs. a team of Burger King All Americans who are stopping by a college on their way to the draft or NBDL.

Of course, there was Sockeye last year. With a # of newcomers to their team that were very important. But those newcomers were very good and big play guys. And for the most part, were not around the disc guys (except Burkhardt, who was important for them). So maybe there is a chance for the team of athletes and young-ins to get hot and take over a nationals. But >95% it takes a team of athletes and guys who are confindent with one another to make it through the 4 days in Sarasota. Recruit guys who are committed to your team and want to play with you. Hoepfully, they stay around.

2005-12-08T21:32:00.000-07:00

Thumbing through this post of GC's made me think I am playing in the dark ages of 3 handler v. a zone. Apparently, there are never any risky throws with a 2 handler set...

[NOTICE- i have read no books on ultimate and read that article a long time ago]

Here are my arguments FOR a 3-handler set. And there may be some arguments FOR a 2 handler set too. I do not know where I am going right now.

- I personally believe a 2 handler set puts too much onus on the throwers to make harder throws. (A lot of this is from playing against 2 handler sets and not in a 2 handler set, so please bare with me.) In a 2 handler set, the handler with the disc only has 1 bail out option. Or at least one guy who expects to touch the disc a lot. If I am in the cup and the count starts to get high, there is a good chance I could take away that bail out handler. In a 3 handler set, you have 2 other guys expecting to touch the disc a lot.

- Just standing there v. cutting. One argument for was you are more likely to get the disc in a 2 handler set just standing there. I agree with that, more people up field. But just standing there waiting for the disc is just as dangerous as cutting for the disc for the offense. If you are standing there, most likely the zone knows where you are. If you are cutting, either someone has to stay with you or the zone has to adjust. Isn't that good for the o? Isn't there a more likely event that someone misses an assignment? I feel like a lot of the standing around would be in hard places to throw it. Say a blade or hammer over and in between some defenders. I am going out on a limb and say if you are on a college team you want the team your are zoning to throw that. Even at club nationals this year as a deep-deep on a team that played a good amount of zone, I would say there were only 2 guys at the whole tourney that I was really, really worried about that could throw these throws. I will take those blades + hammers all day from your average handler.

- Movement. I think you can generate more give and gos from a 3 handler set. Either the usual kind or the hook and ladder kind (hit the guy upfield and go). If the 3 guys are always standing there, 15 yards away from each other. Very predictable, requires a lot of dump + swings. But if you have 3 guys at times spaced out, but at times moving. Invading the cup. Give-and-go. Changing fields. It is a lot harder to guard. You now have cutters cutting for the disc downfield (poppers + wings) as well as upfield (handlers even or behind the disc). I think this is actually the most important part of any zone o. The more movement, the better.

- Hitting the wing. Mr. P. argues, if successful, that the 3 handler set gives an inexperienced wing the disc on the sideline, where the 2 handler set stays in the middle. So do you never throw to the wing with 2 handlers? Are the wings that much more expereinced in a 2 handler set? There is a problem if you never use the lines. Any good zone will not guard the lines if you are using them, they will stuff the middle up. I do think the advantage for the 2 handler is more options upfield after you break through the cup. I can't argue that point. But any good zone adjusts by taking away the immediate threats.

Here are my thoughts on zone,

[use whatever handler set you want, b/c I do not feel that is the most important issue (I do recommend 3 handlers, but what do I know)]

1. Movement from all positions,
2. Create 2-on-1s or give and gos,
3. Make the Zone adjust to you,
4. Overload,
5. Don't always do the same thing
6. Go into the cup

2005-12-06T15:52:00.000-07:00

First, I would like to congratulate myself for being, I believe, the first blogger to make a COTD (Alex was on the Trailer for Disc 4, but not actually doing anything frisbee related, just yapping). That is my nice anvert huck to Berkseth. Let's just say it floated a little more than I intended.

Second, I like George's classification of my blog, "Although a bit off topic". I think that is an excellent name for this blog.

So on that note, TUKA's (now known as magnUM) 1997 summary.

Michigan Indoor. 7on7 indoor on the football field. A little narrow field (2 fields on 1 football field). We went something like 4-1, beating all college teams. The only play I really remember is Geoff catching a goal and colliding with a defender from Mr. Yuk (Carnegie Mellon). The defender, calls foul and is laying face first on the turf in obvious pain. Geoff, with his back to the guy, yells something like. "Foul, that ain't no foul. This is my disc Bitch!" I know the word Bitch was in there. Oh another point I remember is dropping the disc on double gamepoint against the Ann Arbor Club team. We lost. I had the last turn. Also, Lippy + Greff had a team and they ended up winning the thing, I think. I left early to drink.

Groundhog's Day. A tourney at an indoor soccer place. 5on5, with it 4-1 coed. Also, the tourney started at 10 pm and finishes at 6:30 am. Good times. We had about 6 college guys with 2 club (dave Moran and Jimmy Young). Our girls were Amy Young and then some Oberlin girls, I believe. I remember nothing besides beating Oberlin at some point and getting to the finals. Then we got crushed.

Artic Vogue in Cincinnati. Outdoor. We go 4-0 on Saturday. Our 2 best guys are sick, so we leave after Saturday and do not stay for Sunday. This included one of our best games against Notre Dame. We score the last 5 or 6 points against them. All playing zone. The best d was Jaeger laying out for a point block, but the thrower faked it. The thrower goes to throw the same throw and Jaeger, from the ground, blocks it.

White Smoke at Notre Dame. We do ok. I can't remember much besides getting beat by ND pretty handily on their home turf. I left after Saturday b/c I had to work. I think that was the only game we lost on Saturday.

Clemson. This was a tourney when I really fell in love with ultimate. Drove down Friday afternoon and got there late. Woke up, played against the best teams we ever played against. San Diego? Clemson? I remember nothing except our team only had like 4 discs there. Partied very hard Sat. Woke up, won a game on Sunday, then took off. The whole trip was awesome.

Sectionals. We won this over K-zoo, Hope, Lansing Community College and State. I can't believe we were that much better than anyone else in our state.

Regionals in Northfield. This included the first time I ever crossed the Mississippi in my life (now I do it like 4 times a day). Leaving AA at like 6 pm b/c of finals and getting in ~4 am. We got a speeding tix and met some drunk cops when we pulled into the hotel.
-We were seeded 8th or 9th as we were in Wisconsin's pool.
-Saturday, we beat 2 teams. Including St. Olaf, probably our best game that year. -Karl had a hat trick of drops during this game. I remember this b/c I still have pictures from this game.
-The infamous "If there is one thing I know, it is not a broken collar bone" comment from Brian Lane. Well, Dan did break his collar bone.
-In the 3rd game, we played Wisconsin. They crushed us. At one point, Jammin comes onto the field (drunk) and is bragging about the fact he is going to nutmeg someone. Well, they huck it to him. He drops it. We turn it over. He gets the disc back and goes to nutmeg Wu. Wu pushes him over and yells at him "call a foul". I felt is was appropriate
-In our last game, we play Colorado St. The winner advances to Sunday. Loser goes home or more accurately gets drunk and goes home. Well, they beat us. It was close. I remember the last point fairly vividly. We were playing d, I was on Scotty Conway. Someone poaches, his guy gets the disc and bombs it to Scotty on the break force side. I can't get there. One more throw goal.

As you can tell, not much strategy from that year. The horse and buggy does not allow for much experimentation. We just kept bombing it and playing d. The next year we tried a little more strategy. But the best a Michigan team had done since the 80s. We had started something and we had almost everyone returning...

2005-12-02T12:56:00.000-07:00

My running diary of the world games. To model after my favorite writer of all time, the Sports Guy. I decided to relax and watch the dvd of the world games final between US and Australia. I mean after all, I selected the team. Another reason I am doing this is I was intrigued by Mr. Parinella’s thoughts on the actual time of play… So you will see some time stuff along the way. I started the time for each point from the pull until the goal was scored. And tried to stop my watch for calls. Not sure how accurate everything is.

-Lots of talking, this guy sounds like Rich Eisen!
-I am going to try and time the actual play….
-US will receive. Hmmm, Aussies are tall. Hopefully, Chase is tall enough. And didn’t Zip graduate? I thought he did.
-So you can’t really see the cutting which is a bummer, but a good view of thrower and marker.
-First call – 27 seconds in. Not sure what.
-1-0 Will to Dom on a nice big throw. Some d pressure on the initial start play, but none after the US goes upfield. Total time for point 41s.
-Time in between pull - ~58 s.
-1-1 Big huck 42 to “one of the dowle twins” , total time ~22 s. One call this point as well.
-Time in between pull - ~70 s
-Lots of poaching by Australia. 2-1, Zip goes up to get Eastham’s throw. Very nice grab. Incidentally, is Zip balding? Isn’t he like 22? Rogaine is a solution. Time ~ 22s
-Time in between pull - ~ 61 s
-42 big huck and again one of the dowles gets it. 2-2. It looked like they ran the “double with cheese”. 28 s. So far Australia takes 2 or 3 throws to get it to 42 and then he sends it. Hmm, its starting to rain
-Time in between pull – 65 s
-3rd call. And 4th call. Apparently, someone Aussie girl is named Granny and no one knows why. 3-2 Will to Chase up the line. And Will maybe hurt. Uh oh… Only 2 subs and 1 guy hurt. Time of point ~ 63 s.
-Hey look its Ron!
-Time in between ~ 55s
-They are ripping on Bart’s pull. It looked a lot like one of my 62 yard pulls.
-Another high swill huck. What!?!?!?!? #42 lays out out of bounds high w/ Namkung all over hmm laying out and throws the chicken wing greates. One throw later a goal. Holy cow. I did not think athletic plays were allowed in co-ed. A great play by 42. I think he is a key guy. 3-3 Total time ~25 s.
-Timeout by someone. Time in between ~115s.
-First brick. 4-3 Zip to Deb. Ez point for the US. 25 seconds to bring disc to brick, then 28 s to score.
-People think I look like Jeff Eastham. He is a little too fat to be me.
-In between pulls ~63s. Chase pulls out of bounds (stop lifting Chase). Another brick. 40 s to get disc in play. Aussie girl gets stalled . First turn of the game. US has disc near endzone, Miranda with disc, high stall, turn. Long discussion, pick after the turn? ~40s. Aussie huck, nice grab by one of the Aussie women. 42 to girl unsure of # . 42- girl #44 for the score. Nice bid by Miranda. Time of play, 120 s. Total time of point 3:50. Lots of discussion time. Each team with their first turn. And a couple of calls. I should be counting calls and not time… 4-4
-Some dude from Australia heard they were in the finals and flys there overnite to see his women play. Love is no neat.
-Time in between pull ~70 s. Will is ok.
-Chase throws into poach. Nice layout catch d. Guy 14 – girl 20. 4-5. 34 s of play, 10 s of discussion.
-Timeout, and I can’t wait to hear Jude’s nickname. 75 s in between pull. Oh, his nickname is widowmaker b/c of one time…. I am pretty sure you do not get that nickname b/c of one time.
-Will comes backs. And throws a decent length backhand to Deb. 5-5. 44 s.
-Oh, Will “zipped that thing” even though he is not zipperstein. This announcer is just like Rich Eisen!
-Time in between pull 76s
-There has to be some slight wind, but not sure. Chase’s pull barely got to the endzone.
-Miranda d. Just beat her woman to the disc, it looked like. Zip to Namkung. 40 s total for the point. 6-5
-I think the US women are much better then the Aussie women. They seem a little more athletic and less nervous with the disc.
-Namkung is wearing some Enge-like tape on his neck.
-Time in between pulls. ~55 s.
-The aussies are actually working it up the field for the first time. Big, tall hammer. Potsy threw it. I did not know he played ultimate. Happy days are here again. Oh and 42 caught it. Over someone, I missed who. 40 s for the goal. 6-6.
-Time in between pull 70s.
-I think 42 is very important for Australia’s success
-Lefty pull, oh no, that is actually his right hand . I am making fun of Rich Eisen…
-Deb huck to Bart. Wide open. I mean wide. About 10 yards short of endzone. Timeout Bart. 18 s. It seemed no one was there to help Bart.
-So I just realized the game is to 13. So this is for half. Big point. Timeout took - ~1:45.
-Aussie comes out in z after to. A good surprise. Invert by Deb, missed by Kati. Not sure if that was a throwaway or drop. It looked catchable, but it could have been too far behind her. Namkung interception. Oh, some call. Nice frustration roll back to thrower. Potsy gets stalled. Didn’t he see the Fonz open? Watson to Namkung up line. Hammer To Will,. 7-6. Time of play 56s. About a 1:45 minute timeout. And about 25 s of discussion… Total time of point 3:05.

Ok, so I know the US wins. Here are my predictions:

- The US d has to have Chase covering the guy going deep or else one of the other guys has to step up to get a deep d.
- I think the US will exploit the match up of the women. More d’s from the women. And maybe more goals.
- Straight up on 42?
- The only way the Aussies have gotten d’s are on zone or poach. If I were an Aussie, I would play more zone in the 2nd half. It seems the Aussies can’t hang with the US person on person.

So first half summary:
7 – 6 US over Australia.
US 3 turns –
Will has 1 g 3 a, zip has 1 g 2 a, Deb has 2 g, Mike has 1 g 1 a, Dom + CSB have a goal, Jeff has 1 a.

Australia 3 turns – 42 has 1 g 4 a. The Dowle Twins have at least 2 g.

Actual time of play – 563 s. Or 9 minutes 23 seconds for 13 points. This is the actual disc in play time. Does not count pulls, discussion of calls, or timeouts.

Total time in between pulls including 2 commercial breaks – 833 s or 13 minutes 53 seconds..

One timeout in point of 1 minute 45 seconds.

I wish I could have kept the discussion time for calls. I would say that this added an average of ~ 20s per point, maybe less. That is an additional 4 minutes or so to the half.

2nd half later, LT is up.

2005-12-01T18:32:00.000-07:00

Back to the winter of '97, we (being TUKA, which eventually morphs into magnUM) assemble at the astroturf of Oosterban Fieldhouse to learn our first offense.

First, the set-up of our team that year.

Throwers: Jon (big throws, cautious with the disc) + Brian (big backhand, not cautious with the disc)

Kind of Throwers: Wu + Jaegs

Receivers: Me, Kevin, Phil, Alex, Jamie, Geoff (but really wanted to be one), Dave Hunter, Skow, J, Karl (should have been), Dan, Tuve!, Wags, Russ, anyone else here?

Really, what kind of offense can you have when you have only 2 guys competent enough to complete 20 yard throws on a consistent basis? Well, the horse + buggy.

Very, very complex. I will try to simplify. 2 handlers. Always a dump present. Cuts from the back of the stack. Only from the back of the stack. Whenever we get the disc, get in a line and the guy in the back start cutting. When we received, I do not even think we called a first cutter. Just 2 handlers. And usually it was very obvious who was handling. Nowadays, it is like a book on tape before the pull.

We either hucked it or dumped it. That is about it. No starting plays. No other cuts. No break mark options (besides the dump).

Pros of this offense: it kept the disc in the hands of our throwers. It kept the disc out of the hands of our non-throwers. Really, the only offense we could have run. If we tried to swing the disc in a sort of 3 handler set, we would have probably had just as many turns as our force it down one sideline and occassionally get a swing off strategy.

As been pointed out by another blogger, you have to figure out what you can and can't do when you are trying to close the gaps with the elite. And try to maximize what you can do. And minimize what you can't do.

We could run and play defense with pretty much anyone. A lot of teams could not run with the top teams. We only played a couple of those teams that year and they never beat us on being better athletes. Most of our "kind of" throwers and "receivers" were ex-athletes of some kind. And about 6'.

We could not spend a lot of time trying to move the disc from side to side. Again, lack of break mark throws, but lack of skills at that position. Had we tried to do a Stanford type offense with a lot of emphasis on going from side to side, we would have turned it over near our endzone much more. [Note: we did work on breaking the mark and improving throws a ton, but we were starting from a very low point.] This killed on the endzone. We definitely scored more on fast breaks and hucks then in any endzone offense. Of course, our endzone o was our regular o.

We could throw it deep, or at least some of us could. Brian, Jon, and even Jaegs backhand could go a good distance. Anytime an open deep shot came, we took it. We had to. If this taught me anything, it taught me to go deep whenever given the option.

It worked about as well as expected. We were ok, we could hang for ~8 points with teams. Then our lack of skills came into play. How'd we do? Well, you'll get the '97 summary sometime soon.

Sidenote: Did anyone else see the video of the high school football coach in LA moving the chains on 4th down when the refs weren't looking? Good stuff. Apparently, the coach regrets that cheating incident. What was the guy holding the chains thinking? "Oh, this is ok." Seigs or J-co, try to rationalize this!
Goto: http://www.dailybreeze.com/hottopics/articles/2018037.html

2005-11-29T00:28:00.000-07:00

What if there was a quiz on the rules to be able to play at nationals? Seriously. How well do people really know the rules?

You had to score greater than 90% to play at nationals.

One guy on our team called a lot of fast counts. No big deal. But he would almost always get the count back to 0 b/c when the marker went down, he did not say the word "stalling". In the rulebook, it says you have to say "stalling". Brilliance.

Or the guy who called travel on me (not at nationals) for chaning speed as I was walking then running to the goalline. He said that was a violation. After he makes that crappy call, the whole play is dead.

Maybe not for nationals. Maybe for regionals would be more appropriate. How would the 10th place team at regionals score on a rules test?

At UPA sponsored tourneys, each team would have a bye round and during that bye they would have to take a test. Sounds like fun.

How many people have actually read the rules? How many just have learned the rules from their captains? How many of those captains knew the rules?

Or would this increase the # of arguments, because now everyone would have read the rules. Instead of a couple loudmouth geeks spouting out rules, all the dumb guys would get into arguments as well. So maybe this isn't the best idea. Then defenders would really know how to cheat.

I am not claiming to be perfect. I f'd a situation up last year observing sectionals, for whatever reason I let people set up in different positions after a foul call in the endzone.

2005-11-27T09:31:00.000-07:00

Although it was believed that I started before July 2006, it was not until the summer after my freshman year that I first played at an organized practice in South Bend.

Once back in Ann Arbor for the fall, I began to attend ultimate practice. Ann Arbor ultimate was the furthest thing from college frisbee at the time. Almost all the college eligible players were grad students. I believe in spring 1996, there were about 8 people who went to regionals, but I do not know. And anyone else who came to practice was a local who wanted to use the university fields, but not develop any team.

So the scene was not the best for a college team. Luckily, we had a couple of people/things in our favor.

1. Big Ten school means grad students (in your face small liberal arts colleges). I mean 2 in particular. --Jon Bakija. This guy did everything, organizing the fields, starting intramurals, organizing tourneys.... And he was a grad student with college eligibility He is not someone I would say was a great athlete, but he could run forever, he could throw, he loved to stretch, and he did all the behind the scenes work. --Brian Lane. I have no idea who was in charge before this ex-Yale B teamer arrived, but when I got there, Brian was in charge. This was a mistake for all the club guys who wanted the university's time. He got us interested in catching goals and laying out.

2. Non-eligible players who were interested in helping out youngsters. This is absolutely huge if you are starting a team. Dave Moran, Terry Cussen, Dave Miller, Mike Van Lent, Gene Hsu, and some others. I think all these guys played in college and knew how fun it could be. They help us separate from the other duders who only wanted field space. Even though that meant they would eventually have less field space. I learned a ton from these guys. Plus, when they played with us, they could throw. Maybe I discounted throwers in an earlier post, but for the beginning of a college team, throwers are important.

3. Many newbies who wanted to play. Myself, Geoff Buhl (Geoff had the funniest thing happen to him. He took a Noah forehand through the cup right in the mouth. Lost 2 teeth, I believe... I still think he plays with a mouthguard), and Karl Koto all started at the same time. Throw in Wu, Kevin, Dave Hunter, and others. There were all of a sudden 10 or so college eligible players always around. Unheard of in AA before 96. Add in Phil, Jaegs, Jay, and a couple more in the winter. We had plenty for a team. And we always to practice. Or we met a ton on the diag or law quad to throw. Barely a day went by without throwing. If you are beginning or trying to make a college team, throw at least 100 backhands and forehands everyday. Even if you already made the team, do that. I was always throwing.

4. Lighted fields. I did not have to miss dinner. No conflict with afternoon classes. What else was I doing from 8-10 on Mon and Wed? Looking back, Michigan was very nice to us. We got a decent amount of field space that increased each year. We got to host plenty of tournaments. At Minnesota, it seems like they get barely any field space and barely any indoor time.

We only played 1 tourney as a college team all fall. Some of us played on the club team that went to sectionals and regionals that year.

But as a college team, we only had 1 thing, the AA fall tourney. I think it was only 1 day that year. Of course, Chicago and Northwestern were there. We played them at every single tournament for like 3 years. And I do not think we ever lost to them. There were not many tourneys in the Midwest at the time. I felt like we were springing up at the same time as a lot of the current Great Lakes teams were. Only really IU and ND were established. Maybe OU + Oberlin as well.

Anyway, I do not remember anything about that tourney. I remember we lost to the Ann Arbor Club team and that is it. I do remember playing in snow, diving in mud, and starting to really dig ultimate. We had no offense. Although we had 2 plays.

#1 Hitt. The first ever played I came up with. Huck It To Tim.

#2 Fried Rice. I have no idea who taught us this. I think this dude named Jon that played in high school. Basically, we would call someone fried rice on the line. And anytime you yelled fried rice, he would cut. Pretty complex. I do remember calling fried rice on a dead disc. Wu was in the game. The other team pointed to him and said he is cutting. I forget who fried rice really was, but it was not Wu. That was really funny. Basically, we never called Wu fried rice after that.

Having no concrete offense was definitely an interesting way to learn. Sometimes I wonder if some of the newer Zero guys do not get the opportunity to be as creative as we where when we would just assign 3 handlers, 2 mids, and 2 deeps. Even though we never defined what these positions did, we all had it in our own head what they should do. And that is what we did. For example, Karl thought middle meant never to cut and only get the disc if you are wide open. I thought deep meant you should always cut. It definitely allowed me to free lance and make stuff up. If you ever watched us, it was pretty clear we were all doing different things. It allowed us to learn how to move without the disc though.

Now, if someone gets over anxious, I snap at them.... I guess we on Zero are not meant to give people the chance to do what they want. We want to win and you need to fit in. Although tryouts do not have a lot of structure in terms of offense, you can see some thought and creativity there. But one month is probably not enough.

2005-11-22T21:46:00.000-07:00

The worst throw in the world is the high release backhand. Ok, there are dumber throws. And dumb throwers, but look at the best. None of them are defined by the high release backhand. They all can throw it. But it seems as though they prefer not to.

The high release backhand is the first "trick" throw that college kids pick up. Probably the first one I picked up. And usually the first one all of the rookies I see pick up. It is not a bad throw for a quick little dump. Or if the marker has over-committed to stop your low backhand. But to use this throw to beat a cup through the middle. Or throw a 25 yard break mark pass. Or do anything more than just to continue the point. That is pretty stupid. Yes, there are counter examples. I play with a dude who loves to break the mark this way. He started on our O. I must admit to holding my breath anytime he flung this in the air over the marker. Where is it going to end up?

I think there is also a difference between a high release backhand and a backhand thrown from a higher release point. The first means (to me) you are throwing over someone. Or kind of flicking a backhand up in the air, to come down somewhere else. The most common example is a college team working against a zone. Thrower gets it. Receiver 5 yards to the side or behind the cup. Instead of a low break mark, thrower goes over the top of the cup. This gets d'd by the cup or by another zone defender b/c it is that easy to d. The second means to throw a backhand, but at a higher release point. Maybe semantics, but a big difference.

Here are some alternatives/advice/thoughts:

- Don't be so lazy, pivot around the mark. Geez.

- Just because it works indoors does not mean it will work outdoors. (This means nothing to anyone on the west coast or south, but it means a lot to us midwesterners).

- It is much better to throw low and stretch past the marker. You will throw with more spin. And you can more easily throw past a marker rather than throw over.

- Get a scoober. High release backhand is very often used when trapped on the forehand line. With a scoober, you never have to change grips. You can get it off quicker. You can get more spin on it. It also makes you look like a better thrower.

- Never, ever try to throw over a cup with any throw unless it comes out in blade form. Therefore, work on your blades or hammers.

- Any wind situation will take your high release and shove it. The high release has less spin than a throw at normal level or lower. Not a lot of high releases thrown in Sarasota on Saturday.

- If you tryout for a team that I am on, I will immediately label you "not a thrower".

Happy turkey day.

2005-11-21T17:22:00.000-07:00

One caller says: "I would go so far as to say that I'd take a less athletic "player" over someone who is faster but looks lost out there."

I completely agree. If you have field sense, you will be light years ahead of anyone that you tryout against. While at Michigan, I think there were only a handful of freshmen that got "it" within the first 2 weeks so they could start distancing themselves from other freshmen. These guys were always contributors starting in the fall of their first year.

The "it" here is very hard to describe. Some people know how to cut in the middle of the point. Others need to be told for a year or 2 when to cut. Some know d positioning without being taught. Others need help each year. The more "it" you have, the more likely you will be able to make up for your slower first step or your 15" vertical leap. Being smarter can get you open much more than being fast. Now, smart and fast. That is a combination.

You can definitely be taught "it". Just some people struggle with it for awhile.

All other freshmen we kept showed athletic potential like running fast, jumping high, or being 6' 7". I would be more willing to give some with athletic ability who looks lost out there more of a look then someone who can throw but slow as dirt.

On zero this year, we had 2 guys from the last junior worlds team tryout. One hella-athletic dude (arguably the athletic tryout) with solid throws, but lost on O + D. Another very solid thrower, not the nearly the athlete (but still a good one), and very, very smart with and without the disc.

The 2nd guy made our team ez. The first lasted awhile, but was always out of position on d and misreading situations on o. The only time the first guy would make a play was if the disc was thrown to HIM. Not to his man. Only to him.

The second guy could make the same plays, but also create opportunities on O and D. He could create with the disc or get open without the disc. His will power seemingly got d's in tryouts. He was great to play w/ b/c you only had to teach him the o.

Among other things, it required to big of an investment for us to keep the first juniors guy. A very nice guy with a lot of potential. We will see how much he has improved next year. I hope he gets "it".

Basically, "it" is a very good thing to have and can make up for any shortcomings. Try to remember what you have been taught. And learn by watching others.

2005-11-16T22:43:00.000-07:00

Here we go, I know everyone has been waiting for this, the history of magnUM according to me. What you will get today is a brief overview of my 5 years there and over the next couple of months, I will attempt to give more details and give my thoughts on how to build a semi-successful college team.

We have gone through 2 phases. Phase 1 starts basically in 95/96ish, we were not yet magnUM and practices were filled with a lot of non-college Ann Arbor club players. Out of the mix of AA locals and grad students, a small team of grad students got more and more undergrads to participate. Basically, magnUM comes out of this mix in fall 97 (epic game, definitely to be discussed).

Phase 1 ends/Phase 2 begins after Boulder '99. The core of the team over the past 3 years either graduated (undergrad or grad) or ran out of elgibility. We would transform from a grad student heavy team to a team of less than 20% grad schools (I know, I know all you little liberal arts college guys are thinking, grad students are unspirited. I laugh at you.)

Phase 2 continues today with mainly undergrads, sprinkle in some grad students, but the core seems to be youngsters.

So what have I learned about forming a team, since we did it basically twice when I was there.

There are many important things, but if you want to be a team that can succeed, you need a lot of one thing: athletes. Throwers are way overrated (or kids who can only throw). There were plenty of guys who could throw, but were not very fast, not very determined, and not very athletic. But they could throw. I am pretty sure not a one of those guys ever made our team (here is a good time to make fun of Brix, but I feel he was semi-athletic).

By the end, guys would show up that had played in high school. Now there are some schools that have sweet ultimate programs. I got to see some of that this summer. ANd I have played with some of the best out of these programs. Unfortunately, none of these guys ever came to Michigan. My take was if they played ultimate in high school, there were not good enough to play other sports (I know, there are plenty counter examples, but again they did not go to Michigan). Even looking at the Minneapolis high school league, it still appears there are not many good athletes playing.

So, I wanted guys who had played other high school sports. My preference was soccer or basketball or football. Some track or cross country background was good too. But if you played a sport, I wanted you out there.

We took are lumps early. My first 2 years, we were not a good throwing team. If we stayed close with you, it was with our athleticism. If your team is made up of good athletes, they will learn how to throw. That is partly what makes them a good athlete. Look throwing is not the easiest thing to learn, but if you put in time and effort over a year, you can become a solid thrower who is reliable. Eventually, we were able to be competitive at the highest level.

The hardest part is getting the athletes. To get them, you have to make sure they know you are around. Some guys go to school and want to be competitive still. Ultimate is getting more popular, but not many know how fun and competitive it can be. You have to find them.

1. You need to have free clinics teaching people how to play (oh, co-ed clinics help out for both teams. College guys want to be somewhere with college girls. ANd vice versa. Huge bonus. Trust me on this one.) Have like 3 or 4 of these clinics in your usual practice time. Another funny trick we would do was if you gave us your name and e-mail, you would be entered into a raffle for free discs. We would take the names and then "draw" the names. And by draw, we would make sure the people we wanted to come back won the discs.

2. You need to play pick up ultimate on main drags of campus. We used to play right on Palmer field early in the semester. A crappy field, but within 50 yards of 5 dorms. Everyone is welcome. Also, you need to be throwing the disc on your "mall" or "diag" area as much as possible. There was always magnUM guys on campus throwing if the temp was above 40 or 50. The more frisbees people see, the more they get interested.

3. Flyer the dorms. Put as many flyers in as many dorms as possible. Tell them when you are playing.

4. Ad in the newspaper or ad in any welcome magazine or any freshman publication.

5. Have a party, show the kids you can have a fun time. Make sure there are girls.

I hope you learned something today. Very soon, you will get more details about individual years and players. GOod stuff.

2005-11-14T16:58:00.000-07:00

Some team stats (just points played, does not include multiple turn points)

Jam (3-8; 7-15): O 1st half: 3-7, 2nd half 4-7, 7-14; D 1st half 0-4 no ds, 2nd half 0-4 at least 6 ds, 0-8

Pike (8-7; 15-13): O 1st half: 7-8, 2nd half 4-6, 11-14; D 1st half 1-7, 2nd half 3-7, 4-14
[Note, I do not believe there was ever more than 2 turns on a point the whole game. In the 2nd half, I believe we converted every turn we got. At best, we forced 4 turns. Definitely under 15 turns the whole game.

VC (8-7; 15-11): O 1st half: 7-8, 2nd half 4-4, 11-12; D 1st half 1-7, 2nd half 3-7, 4-14

Bravo (8-7; 9-15): O 1st half: 7-8, 2nd half 1-7, 8-15; D 1st half 1-7, 2nd half 0-2, 1-9
[Note, first half very ugly by both teams, greater than 20 turns in the first half. 2nd half very clean by Bravo, not so much by us]

Potomac (8-7, 15-11): O 1st half: 6-7, 2nd half 4-5, 10-12; D 1st half 2-8, 2nd half 3-6, 5-14

George (7-8, 15-16): O 1st half: 6-7, 2nd half 6-8, 12-15; D 1st half 1-8, 2nd half 2-8, 3-16
[Note, definitely no more than 2 turns total in a given point. Also, the d was, I believe 3-7 in total conversions, meaning 7 total d, their d was roughly 3-6, maybe 7]

Total O 1st half 36-45 (80%), 2nd half 23-37 (62%) , 59-82 (72%); D 1st half 6-41 (15%), 2nd half 11-34 (32%), 17-75 (23%)

Sorry, I am a #s guy. Just wanted to see what they looked like.

2005-11-14T15:09:00.000-07:00

Some more personal evaluation of natties

Jam - If I would have played by best game ever, I think we lose that game 15-8 instead of 15-7. The only thing I wonder about this game was could we as captains done anything different to be more competitive in this game? Or did we need this ass-kicking. Also, gave Bart a charlie horse. And got a d on him.

Pike - Start off on D v. these guys. I took Danny the first point or 2, but switched onto Bailey when I realized, hey, he pretty much plays like me. I thought I did a pretty good on him. Made him work hard, got a deep d on him, and had a almost point block that resulted in a beautiful d by Shane. That eventually gave us the lead. I threw a couple goals. Eventually, finished the game playing on the o team a little more due to injuries, but came in on an injury sub on the final d point to score the game-winner. Also, Bailey gave me a compliment "You are the only ultimate player who makes me feel fat." Skinniest guy in competitive ultimate!

VC - Play a fair mix of both O and D. Nothing too spectacular early in the game, mainly throwing hammers against some weird zone that left the middle open. A d later in the 2nd half. One cheap play on game point where the guy is riding my leg and I just throw it and call a foul. That was fun. No turns, but nothing spectacular.

I was very happy with my Thursday play. NO turns, a couple ds. Threw and caught some goals.

JB - moved to O b/c we are unsure of TO's status. I think I should involved him more early instead of easing him back into it. I put a lot of the responsibility that TO does on myself and AB. But I was not sure how he would go. By the end, it was obvious he was ok. Involved in 2 turns. 1. a bad throw by me to Jacob. 2. a throw to boardman where he started to cut deep and I threw the under. I threw a couple goals. And got a d or 2. 2nd half we fell apart, I feel as a captain, that is where I failed most in this game.

Potomac - again mainly O. Did get some d points late in 1st half and beyond. Threw a very weak hammer that should have been a turn, but Boardman saved. So no turns this game. I was happy b/c my man started always sprinting down and right in my grill, eventually was not playing at the end of the game. I like outlasting people. Again, some assists and some goals. I do not remember any d's, but I felt I was good as a deep deep when we played zone against them.

Friday- involved in 2 turns. Not nearly as many ds, but we make it to the quarters.

FG - back mainly on the d, although a decent # of o points throughout the game. I covered, mainly, one of their 2 guys on O that does not do much. I was hoping to be able to sneak away and get a couple ds. But major attempts of me poaching resulted in goals. One where I am not sure how I did not get. Another one that Pbo makes a beautiful run, tips it, but my man still catches it. So not very successful poaching. I did not get a d during the game, but I do not think that I played horrible d. We broke 3 times. I threw the last goal. Called the play on the 2nd goal after a to. And the first goal, I do not think was after a timeout, but I am not sure. Goldstein caught it, I forget from who. As I can remember, I was involved in 3 or 4 turns. 1. bad, moonball hammer by me. 2. OUt of timeout, miscommunication between chaz and I on the dump. I started going the other way he threw the same way. 3. The to on gamepoint us where I needed to get open. 4. I think I threw the disc that was dropped on 14s. So involved in only 2 turns all weekend until then. Craptastic. I threw a couple of deep goals late which felt good. I did not throw an incomplete huck all weekend until the elimination games.

I won't evaluate my play of the elim games. I just do not like doing it. Although I threw ~3 or 4 turns in them.

All in all, pretty good weekend. As a player, I would have liked to get at least 1 d against furious. Also, not been involved in so many turns. And also help stop the bleeding more in the Bravo game. I must admit though of thinking a lot of the 2nd half of the Furious game more than anything.

As a captain, late in the furious game, making sure we knew what to do with a high stall count was a brain fart. Also, at 14-12 it seemed we may have relaxed a little. I could have stressed the importance of ending the game on d. The 2nd half of the Bravo game still remains a mystery. They played well that is for sure.

2005-11-08T18:29:00.000-07:00

A lot of talk these days about fouling, cheating, etc. And it made me think about my game and how big of a cheater I am. As a player, not very big.

I feel like I have only fouled once on purpose*. 2001 natties with zero against dog in our pool play. I felt forch had intentionally fouled twice on the mark on my teammates. So next point, I intentionally fouled him on a huck attempt. He was not too happy, I felt dirty. I guess retribution. Seriously though, I do not think I have ever fouled intentionally besides that. I definitely have fouled on the mark before or a receiver, etc., but never on purpose. Usually it is me getting faked out or reaching to try to get a point block or something. I used to travel on my backhand when I started, but today I make an effort to keep my pivot foot still at all times.

(*At practice, I foul routinely, especially against people I feel may get fouled in a game. Also, in less than major tourneys, I will often times foul my friends so we can laugh about it or I can complain to them they are a wimp. I do not consider this cheating, rather having fun or trying to make my teammates better.)

As a sideline guy or just watching the play on the field, I do not call stuff just b/c it was close or go against what other teams say. If it is close and a teammate of mine calls it one way, I will usually support. But if no one knows, I just don't call in our favor.

Great, I have just spent a couple of paragraphs talking about how awesome I am.

Now, where I wonder how much of a cheater I am is as a captain. Let's go back to the fouling on the mark example. I have never told, taught, or proclaimed to anyone that they should foul on the mark. But I have never discouraged anyone else if it has been said "Do not let Parinella get that throw off. Foul him if you have to." I will say to a comment like that "Better yet, just get the block." How bad is it that I have never told the person who said the first comment, "Hey, don't tell people to foul"?

Or there are guys on my team past and present that I know will foul more often than others. Especially, if they are on the opponent's main thrower. I have never addressed this issue with them. Usually when they mark up, I agree with it and start focusing on my match-up. Never do I say, "Hey you, don't foul Fill." I also know what it means when someone comes up to me and says "we need so-and-so on Fill". And I have even thought we need that guy on Fill so we can have a tough mark on him. Tough mark that sometimes (not always) equals a foul.

As a captain, do I have a bigger responsibility to make sure my team plays exactly by the rules? Or am I not spirited for knowing ahead of time that there is a good possibility for a foul? (I will say this, anyone on my team who is sketchy like this, does not always cheat. I am not trying to rat my team out, but there are guys on every team that will push what they can and can't do to opponents). I guess what allows me to sleep at nite is knowing every team has a couple of these guys. Maybe that is not good enough. Just because Truck has guys like this, does not mean we can have guys like this, etc., etc.

I do try to set an example with my play, but maybe not so much with my words. I could be sterner, but I feel I would be nit-picking. Again, I do not feel like we always have sketchy markers on the field. Nor do I feel like those guys are always in that mode of playing.

In the end, it would not matter what I say. Individuals will do what they feel is ok. And I trust my teammates to do that. I have never played with anyone who I felt really bends the rules every game. I think I would have a problem with that. I feel that currently Sub Zero plays an aggressive hard style of ultimate, but not super physical or a style of play that depends on the rules. We win b/c we played better ultimate than you, you win b/c you played better than us. I have not felt since ~02 that a team has out-called us and that was how they won their game. Our big games 2 weeks ago were clean, but also very aggressive and fun. Exactly how I think ultimate should be played. Sometimes we responded well to the challenge and won and other times we did not pull it out.

I guess the other issue with me as a captain is how often I get involved in calls that are made. Against Furious, after we called a couple close calls and their whole team erupted, I was sort of angry. Later, they made 2 close calls in a row, both times I erupted saying something like "Where is the Furious outrage after that call?" I have even yelled at individual players, the Pike game sticks out in my head. This may not be cheating, but it is definitely not very spirited.

My fear with my team is we do not push back sometimes. Lyn one time told me, "ever since you joined Sub Zero, they cheat more". My response was "ever since I joined Sub Zero, you get to cheat less". I do wonder at times how vocal I should be during calls. I tried as best I could to stay out of the way most of natties. I was really upset a couple of times at regionals, so I tried to calm down at natties.

That did not stop me from yelling "great huck aj, that had to be a foul" during a discussion. [speaking of aj, how about the other aj recapping nationals or talking about how chain lightning hates each other now or something. come on!]

Again, a lot of people do this, but as captain I probably should be setting a better example with my potty mouth.

Yeah right, that won't happen anytime soon...

2005-11-04T19:57:00.000-07:00

The state of Sub Zero is good. We have done better at natties the last 2 years. We won the central region for the first time since 02. Won the northwest plains section for the first time since 02. Won Chicago* for the first time ever. Won Cooler for the first time since 02. Won Throwdown. Won Aquatennial. Third in Colorado and Boston. We finished with a record of 39-11. With 7 of those losses coming against the top 5, 3 more against teams from the top 12, and only 1 against a non-nationals team.

Where do we go, well we did not win at natties, so obviously we can go up. We were 0-7 against the top 5 teams this year. An improvement needs to be made there if we are to get to semis and beyond. 9-10 against all teams at nationals. A > 500 record would be nice. That would help with confidence going into big tourneys. That would help with coming through in tight spots.

How do we do this? One helpful thing would be all of us to move ~1000 miles either east or west would be nice.

Since we can't do that, we will have to travel. My big thing is just playing more together. Maybe going to Terminus or even something like Fools Fest. Taking 12-14 guys and just keep learning how to play together and hopefully how to pull through some tight spots together. Tourneys in March/April/May that do not mean a ton, but do mean a ton in terms of building a team and getting to know your abilities. Making everyone have to throw and catch and not just rely on the same core of throwers to break the mark and the same speedsters to bust deep. Make everyone do it.

Finishing 6th allows us to pretty much get into an tourney we want (at least I think it does). We probably have to go out west now. Last year, maybe not the best, but this year, we are a little more prepared for it. Labor Day or ECC, here we come?!?!?! Hopefully, finishing 6th will help bring some teams back to Chicago or Cooler or even Aquatennial. We are a young team and we do not have a ton of money to go everywhere. When we get driveable tourneys in Milwaukee, Chicago, we have to go. Even though the comp might not be what is used to, it is still a lot of frisbee and still good for us.

Open tryouts have been great for us the last 3 years. Each year, there has been at least 1 or 2 guys who play big in May and have a stellar season. It sucks to have to rely on that, but I am really hoping we can get some more guys. We had 23 at natties with 4 guys on our roster not there. 2 guys were significant. We will probably lose at least 2 or 3 guys from our 23. So there are definitely spots open.

Plus, no torn acl for Winey. Maybe some minor damage in there, but not having him go through 8 months of rehab again, that is big. That means we could be coming back with the same O as last year. Good stuff. We struggled through 2 or 3 halfs at nationals on O, but for 9 or 10 it was great. Much better than any O I have ever played with nationals. It is good to start with a solid foundation, not a shaky o foundation like 04.

On D, we had times where we looked good on both sides. And times where our d was good, but we literally could not catch a disc. I can't wait to see next year. Everyone had a dumb throw or drop is some of our big games. So everyone should have some motivation.

This is as excited for frisbee in November as I have ever been. I will enjoy this time off, but can't wait for tryouts to start.

2005-11-03T10:45:00.000-07:00

So, how do you figure out what pool was the toughest from nationals? Best finish? Top 2 teams? Best average finsih? Well, there is only one thing I can think of, cross country scoring! It is pretty complex, you add up the places and lowest score wins. So let's see, if you consider all 4 teams as scoring then Pool C looks the toughest.

Pool A 34.5: 1, 3.5, 14, 16
Pool B 31.5: 3.5, 6, 7, 15
Pool C 30: 2, 8, 9, 11
Pool D: 40: 5, 10, 12, 13

But say you do like cross country and only count the top 3 with the 4th guy being a tiebreak (in cc, you have 7 runners with only 5 who count). And yes part of the reason I am doing this is it makes my pool the strongest.

Pool A 18.5
Pool B 16.5
Pool C 19
Pool D 27

Maybe strongest/weakest isn't the best, maybe who played the best over last weekend is a better way to describe it. A quick analysis: Pool A was top heavy with the top teams taking 2 of the first three spots and the bottom teams pulling up the rear. Pool B had the strongest top 3, but no one really went all the way and only 1 team really stunk it up. Pool C had a solid top team and 3 decent perfomances from the other team. 3 teams in the prequarters and all 4 in the top 11, made for a tough day 1. Pool D had the worst showing with half of the bottom 6.

There is no clear cut hardest pool although there is a pretty clear poor performing pool. What is tougher a pool? A pool with 2 semis teams? A pool with 3 quarterfinal teams? Or a pool with a semis team, 2 prequarters teams and a 9th place team?

I guess pick your poison.