Colorado Cup Preview

Friday afternoon we’re headed for Boulder for Colorado Cup. We’re the two seed at the tourney, and the one seed in our pool, which looks something like this:

1. Strike-Slip
2. 99 Problems
3. Double Black
4. Sprawl
5. Riverside 1
6. Blackfish

I don’t put too much stock in the seedings since it’s still pretty early in the series and most teams don’t have much of a resume yet. 99 Problems and Double Black are both Denver area teams, so they’ll have a home field advantage. 99 Problems is listed as a combination of players from Bad Larry and Slow Dance. Sprawl is from AZ, Riverside 1 from Austin, Texas, and Blackfish is from Vancouver. I’m pretty interested in playing a team that flew in from BC for this tournament. Anyway, none of the teams have much of a history on score reporter so each game will be a mystery box.

A1 is Prairie Fire, a bunch of good Kansas guys who beat Johnny Bravo twice at a tourney in the early season. I really hope we have a chance to play them at some point because they look to the be the team to beat in the open division.

Our practice this weekend looked much improved over previous weeks, and I think we’re finally starting to gel a little better. We had about 17-18 on Saturday, but we split into an O-line and a much bigger D-line. As far as I can tell, the O line will be some combination of Buhl, GVP, AJ, Linux, Keith, Bobby, Alan, Me, Concord and maybe Korb. There will probably be some other guys who weren’t at practice, too. It’s an interesting combination of young and old guys, and pretty Smaug heavy. It makes sense to have young legs and smart veteran handlers together on the line together. It’s interesting that they’ve gone with younger guys over some of the more experienced players, but it’s good that they have confidence in us.

I like the idea of having a small O-line and a big D-line. Offense is less fatiguing, and chemistry will be key for our efficiency. I like that we have some ballers and big throwers on the D line, too, and hopefully they will be playing most of our points at the next few tournaments. We did an interesting drill where the O team played savage and had to score 9 points before the D team (who had lots of subs) could get 5 break points. It definitely sucked for the D line, but it was pretty effective. I feel like were finally starting to get the motion vert offense, and it’s definitely helped by our increasing familiarity with each other as players. Ultimate is such a repetitive game that it’s key to know your teammates habits, abilities and tendencies. It seems sort of obvious, but I think it’s still undervalued.

Strike-Slip reminds me of Smaug in that there’s a lot of talent, but not many dominant athletes that are going to come up with huge plays. This is probably why the captains went with the vertical offense, which is very methodical and workman like. That said, there is still a ton of talent on the team, and every practice I feel lucky to be playing with these guys because it’s by far the best team I’ve ever been on.

So HOT!

Weekend 4 of Strike Slip practice. We scrimmaged for about 6 hours between Friday and Saturday. I thought this was a nice break from the tons of drills that we've been running most practices. It was in the upper 90s today in Pasadena, and we only had 15 players, so we played a series of games to 3 with lots of shade and water breaks in between. It was really nice to build some chemistry and just play ultimate with my teammates. We're definitely getting better at running the system, but we have a long ways to go before we'll be doing really well.

For whatever reason, it's been tough to get numbers at practice. People have been sick, traveling, injured or whatever, but the turnout has been very disappointing. We have a roster of 22 and I don't think we've had a practice with more than 16.

In other bad news, we lost two big players to co-ed. Welsh decided to play with Metro, and Lafitte left for BCBC. I don't really blame Lafitte because the last two times he's played Open, he's hurt himself seriously. He's a great player, but if he can't stay healthy, BCBC is probably the way to go. Losing Welsh really hurts us because he's probably one of the most underrated receivers on the West Coast, and even though he has his shortcomings, that guy is a phenomenal player. Metro now has three big receivers in him, Keegan and Barrs (not to mention some very dominant ladies) and it should be really interesting to see how the SW Mixed division plays out this year. BCBC, Metro, Barrio and at least one very strong CO team will be fighting for 2(?) bids to natties.

Anyway, I feel that what LA Open needs right now is commitment and hard work form it's members. I had a lot of fun playing in the scorching heat this weekend and I really think there's a lot of talent on our team, we just need to get some experience.

Personally, I played alright this weekend. I'm feeling really strong after a few months of lifting, and I really want to start stepping up the intensity of my track workouts. I had a some pretty good deep receptions, but I really need to work on not throwing to receivers that are too deep. They look so tempting, and it works most of the time in college, but defenders are too fast and discs move too slowly. Also, we have about 8 plays that are all very similar, and I really need to make some flashcards of them or something.

Overall, it was a very positive weekend because this was probaby the most fun I've had playing with SS. Uniforms are coming soon!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Your 2009 Strike-Slip

Aaron Jacobs
Alek Korb
Allen Lai
Andy Sammons
Dan Oettinger
David Hunt
Dean Bolton
Ben Parrell
Eric Maniez
Geoffrey Buhl
George Van Pelt
Jack Moxon
Jerry Yang
Keith Reshke
Laffite Lamberto-Egan
Matt Welsh
Mike Kiyoi
Micheal Liu
Orin Moore
Sam Regnier
Tim Gilligan
Dan Davisson
Steven Chang
Yama Afshar

The Hangover

Potlatch is amazing. If I could only go to one tournament in a year, this would be the one. The fields, the level of play, the party, the camping, the river, the gifts... it's very special. Mah Na Mah Na had a good showing, finishing tied for 37th, which was totally acceptable given that we had no expectation of winning much at all. The number one goal in putting the team together was to maximize our fun. Mission accomplished.

I fully plan writing more about the weekend, but for now I'll just leave of few of my favorite moments that I don't want to forget:

• Peaches switching clothes with a girl on the other team and a drunk dude thinking he was on his team and throwing Peaches a Callahan
• Lupin smacking Warehouse's blood blister with a sandal, squirting the contents onto Concord's leg
• Finding the Team USA flag in our camp and Concord and Lupin challenging Seth Wiggins and Dylan Tunnell to a flutterguts game to get it back. Seth was not amused.
• 2/2 on the Zyzzx.
• Floating down the river at the end of the day
• Playing Mischief to 9-8 before we dropped 2 pulls. oops.
• Grant and Linux' layout catches against Mischief. Baller.
• Peaches' Billy Mays impression.
• Watermelon detonator
  
• Coming back from down 0-4 to beat Cookin' by the Book (Sorry about not being there to accept the apron. It's pretty sweet.)
  
• Dragging the Wiz out of his tent on Saturday night and him having no memory of it
• Smashmasters beating Team Stinks on Universe, and Banshees layout D on Lugsdin to get them there.
• Floating the disc to Grant in double coverage and watching him nut on them (about 10 times)
  

What else have I forgotten about?

Some of my Favorite Advice

I was trying to think back to some of my favorite things that people have told me over the years.

• When you get the disc, move your eyes to the deep space first.
• Only worry about what you can control. Everything else is irrelevant.
• Mark in three dimensions, not two.
• Playing zone D, always ask yourself what target you are taking away. If you don't know, you aren't doing your job.

I'll think of some more later.

POTLATCH!