The SB Invite Recap

We started the season up in Santa Barbara this past weekend. I had heard some people saying that we were in the "pool of death" with Tide, Davis, and UGMO. This turned out to be true, but I'm glad that we got to see the competition that we did on day one. It's always fun to get to play inter-regional match-ups, especially at a SoCal tourney. We had a pretty cushy start time of 1 PM, and to our amazement, it didn't rain on us once all weekend despite a storm on Thursday and Friday.

We spent the night in The Sultan's church rec room, which was way more awesome than it sounds. There was pool, ping pong, air-hockey and Ultivillage playing on a laptop. It was probably one of the best places I've stayed at a tournament. We slept in, went to cheer on the women, and check out the competition. We had a long day ahead of us.

Game 1: UCSB

Both teams were playing surprisingly efficient offense for the first tourney of the year. There were not very many turns and only one or two breaks in the first half. Tide may have lost some of their ballers from a year or two ago, but they have a great system in place and they are always competitive. Jeff Silverman is a pretty unreal athlete. He seemed to really carry SB over Cal in the showcase game. We did our best just to contain him.

As usual with SB, the game was chippy with lots of spikes and foul calls. I had a questionable huck to Linux where he skyed two guys and looked pretty awesome. In the second half our offense faltered a bit and the Tide D stepped up. Tide went up 12-10 (games to 13) with a 2 minutes left before hard cap. We went into panic mode, and Tide did their best to try to slow us down. Somehow I slipped through their poachy D and caught a full field lazer down the line from Da Vinci almost unguarded in the endzone. Then the hard cap blew. We pulled out a clutch D and some chilly endzone O for the score to bring it to 12-12 universe. I took a gamble on a big OI forehand pull with the downwind trying to get the roll with the wind. In retrospect, I should have stuck with the floaty pull that had been money all game. They knocked it down and someone, I think Silverman, got open downfield for a big huck reception and a quick score. Very anti-climactic for us, but it was still one of the more exciting games I've played in.

Game 2: Cal

We moved fields from the sweet rubberized turf to a terrible muddy pit of a field for this game. there were two giant puddles that were in play that were at least 10x10. I only had to wade through them once, to pull out a wet, disgusting pull. Anyway, both teams came out sloppy. Cal had a lot of turns early, but we looked sluggish coming off our intense game just a few minutes before. UGMO's returning some serious ballers, a few guys from Jam and Revolver and a mixed team I think, and of course Andrew "Cougar"Hagen. That kid has springs for legs and plays some great D. The point: Cal looked really good. They won the tourney beating Stanford big in the finals.

Anyway, the field was sloppy and so was our play. I hit Linux with a sweet backhand shot deep, but I had at least 3 turns in this game. They eventually tightened up and started tearing us apart with IO breaks and hucks to their studs. I think the final score was 13-6 or so. We were never really in the game, and I would like another shot at them. We might not beat them, but we can certainly do better than that.

Game 3: Davis

Davis did really well at Sean Ryan, and they were seeded pretty highly in the tourney, 5th I think. They're a well coached team. I don't really know the guys, but I had fun with the guys that I was matched up on and they were pretty spirited. We came out ready to play after a lengthy break from our last game and took half, 7-6. They came out really fired up, like we knew they would, and tightened up their O. We traded for a few points, during which I got terrible calf cramps and was out for the rest of the game. I watched from the sidelines as the game slipped away from us. Final score was something like 13-10 them.

After some delicious Freebirds nachos, I forced my car to go watch the showcase game, which was surprisingly entertaining. Cal was bombing it to their deeps and Santa Barbara was playing smart O. Cal went on a run down 12-8 or something like that to bring it to 12-11, but SB punched it in for the win. We spent the night watching the Miss America pageant at Sultan's. I ate about 6 snickerdoodle cookies and passed out on the floor.

Day 2

Game 1: Irvine

Our first game was at 11:30, and it was Windy. There was a pretty stiff cross wind that was changing directions so neither end zone had a big advantage. I really like playing Irvine because they are fun guys and I like matching up with my teammates from this summer, Box, Roeder and KG. Their receivers Stig and Fish are athletic and becoming good very fast, and they have Miller and Eeyore, but beyond that, they didn't really have the depth to keep up with us. The game was even until about 6-6 when we started throwing a flat cup zone and went on a 7-1 run or something like that. It will be interesting to match up against them when the wind will expose their weaker throwers less, but today, we had the upper hand. Anyway, it was fun game and I got into Box' head talking shit to him on the field. Maybe.

Game 2: Colorado St.

We played the Colorado St. alum club team in October and they had some studly receivers. Thankfully, they were not around on this years team, but they are still a very athletic team with good wind throws because they are from CO and not CA. They were running an interesting O with 1 guy iso'd and 3 guys chilling and waiting for continues. We were hesitant to run zone against them at first because we thought they would laugh in our faces and throw hammers all over the place to pwn us, but that didn't happen. We found ourselves down 10-6 when we finally started sticking with our zone in the heavy wind. Chotchkie's bladey flick huck was on fire and pinned them in the back of the end zone every time for easy turns for us when we were playing upwind D. On O, we managed to work it up with a combination of handler movement and choice hucks. * Luckiest play of the weekend: one of our cutters was stuck on the front corner of the endzone with a high stall count and throws a swilly hammer into a crowd. The disc gets macked, flutterguts style, towards Arbiter who jabs out his arm sideways and snatches it for the score. Wow. At some point, Thor decided that he had enough of this bullshit and he was going to single handedly win us the game. I remember during the soft cap he had a full extension lay out at the front corner of the endzone for a score, a sick upward layout deep D, and he broke open for a full field downwind bomb to take the game to universe. Universe point had a pair of turns for both sides, but we put it in upwind to take the game. It felt good, but it also felt like we stole this one. Most of our comeback came during soft cap. Oh well, it's a long season.

Game 3: Davis. Again.

Our last game was a rematch on the same field with the Dogs. It was the Beer bracket championship, so we were playing next to the Stanford/ Cal final, which was pretty fun. It looked like people were giving out some absolute bitchings in that game and it's a shame I didn't get to watch. We were determined not to let the same thing happen with this game (that was to 15, with shorter rounds than Saturday for some reason) as had happened the day before. But that's exactly what happened. Deja vu. We took half 8-5, and they came out fired up again. I didn't play very much during this one. My left contact lens had gotten something cloudy in it (sunscreen?) and I was struggling to overcome the distraction. I threw a few bad hucks (and 1 good one! hah!) and got taken out of the handler rotation by the coaches. I played a little bit on D, but by the second half our D line wasn't playing much because we kept getting scored on. I watched the game slip away from us on the sidelines again, 13-9ish, capped.

Overall, I'm really happy with the weekend. I was bummed that we didn't win more games, but we definitely improved as a team.

Personally, I played alright, but I could have played a lot better. Consistency is the name of the game for me now, I think. I had entirely too many turns for an offensive handler, at least a couple per game. The coaches talked with me this week and I think I'll be cutting more in the future, which is something I'm more comfortable with, but we'll see how it works out. Whatever helps us win. I can only remember 1 solid D that I had all weekend (in the CO St. game), which is disappointing to me, although I played mostly O-line.

These things were bothering me a lot until I remembered that this was my first real tournament with this team, and my first tournament in the role of offensive handler. There are big improvements to come in the future, and now I know more clearly what I need to work on. I need to get out of the Ghettobirds mindset of forcing something to happen and relax and put more trust in my teammates, because they are ballers. It will come. I can't wait for Vegas.

Why start a blog?

They say you should write about what you know. If you are a chef, you should blog about cooking. If you're a designer, you should blog about design. Well, I happen to know a lot about making bad decisions. They mostly fall under the following categories:

1. Playing Ultimate

2. Going to Law School

3. At UCLA

I spend so much time thinking about these things, I might as well write them down somewhere. And I'm just kidding about the bad decisions. Sort of.

I'm planning a write up of the SB invite in the next day or two.