SoCal College Sectionals

Sectionals results were surprising to say the least. I don't think anyone expected Long Beach to show up as the best team at the tournament, but they did and won very convincingly. They beat Tide in pool play, Squids in semis and SDSU in finals to take the section. Those guys love ultimate, and they love playing with each other, and the effects are really starting to show. Jake has taken a big step up as an ultimate player and has become a near unstoppable force. A college team can go a long way with those things.

The other surprising part of the weekend was the squids dropping from the #1 seed down to #4. I don't think they were prepared for the quality of LB in the semis. It reminded me of our semis against them last year, except Long Beach had the mental strength to close out the game. After that, I would guess that the team checked out a little.

As for us, I think it's fair to say that our results were disappointing. Sectionals is always a weird tournament, with maybe one tough game on Saturday and lots of unfocused, sloppy ultimate in the other ones. We gave up a combined 5 points in our first 3 games of the day. Irvine played well against us, and we weren't super focused, but we pulled it out at 11-7 despite great play from Stig, Miller, and Fish.

Our Sunday morning game against against SDSU started with 2 breaks for them. We traded basically for the rest of the game, maybe giving up another break or two at the end of the game. They play hard nosed ultimate with solid fundamentals, and they have a lot of young athletic players to complement their senior leaders. Our defense just wasn't good enough to stop their systematic deep and under cuts, and on the few turns that we did get, our D-lines O looked pretty helpless moving the disc upfield.

The Tide game was the most frustrating for me. We've played tight games with Tide so far this year, but Boucher and Max were both hurt for this game. They were just the mentally tougher team, falling back on their excellent system and coaching and we didn't. Not enough of our cutters stepped up to make plays. Tim was all over the field for them, moving the disc and being generally impressive. This game was the most frustrating to watch and the most that I've wanted to play since I hurt myself.

The huddle after this game was one of the most emotional huddles of the year. We stood for a long while in silence just thinking over the game. I hope that we can use the feeling that we had in that huddle as motivation for the remaining few weeks of the year.

Going into Regionals, I really have no idea what to expect. I was very impressed by SDSU and CSULB. UCSD is too loaded with talent to not contend, and every year Tide proves that no matter what their roster is, they will compete at a high level. I think we're seeing the benefits of Strike-Slip (and Streetgang) with the parity of the top handful of teams at sectionals, and once again, I'm bummed that Strike-Slip fell apart.

I think the weather in Ft. Collins will play a big role in determining who gets the bids. I fully expect it to be windy and horrible, but I'm not really sure which teams that would favor.

I finally cleated up and played some real ultimate at practice tonight. My PT would not be very happy if I told him about it, but there is absolutely 0% chance that I will allow myself to not be ready for regionals. It was great to finally be on the field again, and it's so much easier to get a sense of what the team needs to do. However, right now my legs feel like they're made of lead. There's no way I'm going to be in good shape in CO. I'll just do the best I can.

Music

As I get older, I feel like get I really excited about fewer and fewer albums. It takes something unusually good or extreme to catch my attention nowadays. Maybe I just have less time to search around for new things to listen to.

I'm super excited about LCD Soundsystem's new album, This is Happening. I've listened to it a few times through, and I have a feeling this is what I'm going to be into for the next few months.

I go through phases where I listen to albums that I really like obsessively. Those albums become inextricable from that time and place in my life.

A few that come to mind:

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend: Spring semester of Senior Year, Living in Olympic Village

LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver: Studying abroad in Edinburgh, Fall '07

Tegan and Sara - The Con: First semester of Law School Fall '08

Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga: Spring '07, living on Kenwood

Lately I've been on an Andrew Bird kick since seeing him in January, but I think I'm ready for something new.

The problem with LA Open

I'm really frustrated with the break-up of Strike-Slip. I thought that we had a really successful first season, winning sectionals etc. We had the core of the team coming back, and for once there looked like there would be some continuity in LA Open. No team is great in its first year together, and I thought we were really going to do big things this year. I thought we were committed to a new season.

Honestly, I don't really even know what the full story is. I think that some people thought that we weren't going to be good enough this year, or that we weren't going to get the players that we expected and decided to form a new co-ed team instead. Or maybe they decided that they just didn't want to play open at all. We lost a fair amount of players from last year to people moving away, and I was part of the problem because my status for the summer was up in the air with my injury. People left and the captains were left with a different team than the one they had signed up to captain.

People are just too afraid of losing. We just want to win as quickly and as easily as possible. It's understandable that some of the guys are getting older and don't want a multiple year commitment to rebuilding a team, but that is exactly what being a successful club team takes. The best club teams are the ones that have a core committed to continuity. Team chemistry and experience is extremely important.

It's true that LA doesn't have the type of player that dominates at the elite level, but those guys are just icing on the cake. LA has great players. I was always really impressed with my teammates last year. The commitment to building a lasting, quality team is more important than the players you have on that team. Of course you need some minimum level of talent, but we were definitely there.

Maybe what needs to happen is for LA Open to start over. Build a team with young guys that will commit to playing for multiple seasons. The first season will be rough, but it's all about developing players and building a team. Maybe in the second or third we'd start attracting the top players in LA who would have previously played co-ed, but want the challenge and reward of playing open. The club team would improve all the area colleges, who then feed it with higher quality players.

After all of that, I'm still not sure what I'm going to do this summer. I have my career to think about, and I don't know if I can commit huge amounts of time to helping lead a young team. I don't mind playing on a young and inexperienced team, but I don't want to play on a team without enough talent. It's very tempting to go play co-ed or to commute from Thousand Oaks to play with the Condors. For the first time, I don't have the obligation to my college team to play in the situation that will improve me the most as a player.

I'm going to check out the different teams and see what I like. I'll see what kind of roster the LA Open team could put together. Then I'll go from there.

First things first, though. College regionals are coming, and we have big goals. I have to rehab properly and make sure I don't re-injure myself.

SoCal sectionals were crazy. I'll do a write up of them soon.

Dan-O-Mite!

I'm super excited for our all Dan team for Huck it Long Beach. Everyone on it will have a first name that starts with Dan.

Not only do we have all have sweet names, but we're going to have some ballers on our team as well. I think I'm just really excited about looking forward to a time when I can actually play.

The only problem is finding talented women with names starting with Dan. Finding talented women is hard enough as it is. Finding good women that names that start with Dan is downright impossible. We might have to stretch the rules a little.

Props to Peaches for coming up with the awesome name.

Btw, Huck It Long Beach will be June 12-13.

Overload

This past week was full of crazy ups and downs in terms of ultimate news.

I went to the doctor on Monday and had him check out my ankle. He told me that it looks like it's healing well, and that I could stop wearing my giant protective boot. That was great news, and I scheduled physical therapy for the next day. Walking around with nothing on my foot feels totally exposed and weird, but I love it. Each step of my recovery makes me totally happy, which makes the whole process seem shorter and more bearable.

Wednesday, the final UPA rankings came out. We jumped up to #17, and earned the third bid to nationals!! I guess we jumped because results where teams had ineligible rosters got discounted, but I have my suspicions about the whole process. Hopefully it will work better in future years. I've heard bad stories about teams changing their rosters exclude players who quit and having their results disqualified. Huh? Anyway, the third bid is exciting and motivating for me to get healthy as soon as I can.

Finally, yesterday I found out that Strike-Slip is no more. Some people decided that they wanted to play co-ed, and the captains thought that we wouldn't be able to get the quality of team that they had signed up to captain. And like that, LA ultimate fell apart. Now we have 3 good co-ed teams, but no good open team. I was super bummed out by this because part of my motivation in rehabbing was to get back and play during the club season with Strike-Slip. Now I have no idea what I'm going to do this summer.

The one bright spot from all this: LA Open gets a new name.

Sam already wrote his opinion on the recent developments in LA ultimate, and for the most part I agree with him. I'm planning on writing a post later on the ordeal, both to inform and to sort out my thoughts on the matter.

I'm about to ride my new bike to PT. It's sunny and 70 degrees outside. Sectionals are tomorrow.

Things are good.