Vegas wrecked me. It was a very tough tournament to play mentally and physically. I have a number of complaints that I need to get off my chest before I can talk about anything else:
The Format:
The top twenty or so teams played pool play the entire time. The other 64 teams played in a bracket style tournament for 1 spot in the quarterfinals, which Cornell eventually won. It's basically a repackaging of the C1 arbitrary and exclusionary system. Middlebury got screwed because they got screwed out of a top spot, while some other teams got in off their names and reputation and maybe didn't deserve to be there.
Cultimate in General:
They stopped serving bagels at 11. Why? Could have something to do with the fact that they were also selling food. Yet another way to stick it to us after we had payed 600 bucks for a bid. The flat screen TVs that they bought to post the brackets were a ridiculous waste of money. They were alternately not working and not up to date. Buying some fucking poster board and charge us less.
But at least the party is fun right? Well, the rain was out of their control, but I would still blame them for hosting a disaster of a party. BSOD, Pagoda and spent half an hour wandering around with one of the party organizers to help carry champagne for the party. The trouble is, she didn't know when or where to meet the van. And she didn't have a phone. And while we were gone, the champagne showed up down on the street and we didn't get any. Then the party headed over to Caesar's, where security promptly came out and very aggressively kicked us off the premises. I thought I was going to witness some old school vegas security brutalizing some drunken idiot, but I was disappointed. We left when about 6 cop cars drove by us on the street. I didn't feel like getting arrested or harassed any more that night.
The Weather:
Friday was very windy and the games were low scoring. This was the best we would have it all weekend, though. Saturday, the storm finally rolled in and started pouring. Then, crazy wind came to accompany the rain. The fields almost instantly all turned into slop and we were all soaked head to toe in the freezing wind. It just wasn't fun to do anything in those conditions. We even capped our game against APU because it was laughable that we were trying to play.
Lack of Sleep:
This one is the one that I was most responsible for, but I can still complain about it anyway. We rolled in really late on Thursday night, at around 2:30. We had been told beforehand that Merced wasn't coming and was going to forfeit our first game. I was counting on our first game being at 12:30, but when 7 AM rolled around, we got up and prepared as if we were going to play Merced. But then we sat at the field for 4 1/2 hours. I've slept about 4 hours every night for a week straight and it's really catching up with me. It was just another challenge in maintaining my focus for the 3 days.
Alright, I've gotten it out of my system. No more negativity about the weekend.
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