Round 3 of Strike-Slip tryouts were this past weekend. First, the good news: I'm going to Cal States with the team in Santa Cruz this coming weekend. Linux and Knuckles are also are going up, so I'm glad I get to make the trip with some Smauggies. The bad news: some people who I felt very strongly should have been invited were cut. I don't really understand the criteria that the captains are using, but the seeming randomness of it makes the cut's a little more scary.
Tryouts Saturday consisted of 3 man mark, in cut D drill, deep drill, and break mark drill. We then ran some short scrimmages and worked on open field dump cuts in a rotation. I felt pretty great in the deep drill and I think I won most of my match-ups, but I was tired as a dog after the tryouts were over.
UCLA people hurried back to campus for Alumni Day, which is a big event. There are like 4 games, a bbq, and a big party during the night. People flew in from all over, and it was nice to get to see some of the alums that I know like Seraph and Docta. The game ended up being really intense. Despite missing Peaches, DaVinci, and Thor, we pulled a come from behind coming back from down 12-11 to winning 15-13. The alumni had some ballers, including Seraph, Broadway, Beastman, Sideshow, Fozzy, Kobe, Biclops, Yugo and Trogdor. Fortunately, they also had some not-so-good players that they had to give playing time to, too. Punky, though, single handedly almost lead them to winning the game. I've never seen one person affect an ultimate game of this caliber so strongly. You had to constantly be aware of position on the field and try to not pass in that direction. He came flying across the field to ninja kick an open huck look I had to the Arbiter. He had too many skies and D's to remember. He's definitely a rare player who is just an athlete at a different level than everyone else. The ending of the game was just brutal as everyone who had been at tryouts started to hit their physical limits. I was just trying to get out of the way of the guys with legs.
It was awesome to see Avatar and The Flood sky the dominant deeps from the past, too. It was strangely fulfilling beating the alumni team (which hasn't happened in at least 3 years) even though I didn't really play with all of the older guys. It's a sign that Smaug is moving in the right direction. The party Saturday night was great, and I'm a little bummed that I had to call it a night early because everyone was in rare form.
Sunday morning came early. We ran a lot of vert stack cutting drills, practicing things like adjusting the stack away from the disc and cutting cross field deep from the break side to the open side and vice versa. I felt strangely comfortable running the vert, maybe from the seasons that we ran it at USC. I think the fundamentals of a good offense are the same no matter where you set up the stack on the field.
I actually found the tryout process to be a little intimidating. I've never been part of a team where I wasn't in the top 25% of players, so it's a little strange finding a new role. I was trying to find the right balance of taking smart open looks and dumping to more experienced throwers. Still, by necessity I did a little bit of handling, which was pretty fun. Still, it's much easier to perform when you don't have the pressure of having more experienced, older players around you.
The long Saturday caught up with my pretty quickly, and I was really fighting through fatigue for hours. I had a few more turns than the day before, but overall I felt like I did a pretty good job cutting within the new system. I have very high hopes for what Bofa and Buhl can do with this team. LA's problem has never been a lack of talent, but rather a lack of leadership to control all the egos that good players tend to have. These are two guys that everyone seems to respect and (hopefully) won't put up with people's crap.
Anyway, I've started my summer in Thousand Oaks, and as expected, it looks to be mind numbingly boring. I still don't have an internship finalized, so as of rigth now I'm sitting on my ass watching The Wire and Star Trek on Netflix. I'm going to go get a gym membership right now, actually.
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