This was my first Mixed Labor Day, and I had a great time hanging out in San Francisco rather than Santa Cruz. Some of my teammates put up the whole team in a really fun area with lots of good restaurants around. Usually, when I travel for ultimate, I feel like I don't really get to experience much of the city that we've traveled to, but not so for this weekend.
I also enjoyed the turf fields. I really like the flatness and reliability of it. I know that some people really disliked it (and we lost some people to ankle and knee injuries over the weekend) but I think I'm pretty used to it after playing on turf at SC for years. Just be sure to cover any skin that might be sliding on rubber pellets and you will come out much happier.
We started Saturday off strong win over AIR, a team that we've struggled with this year. We jumped out to an early lead and held on to it to finish 11-9ish. Next we faced Barrio, last years SW regional champions. We took half on them 8-6, but they picked up their defensive intensity and stopped throwing unforced turnovers. They came back to win by a couple. Our last pool play game was against CTR, another good Bay Area team. It's silly how much talent there is in the Bay Area, by the way. Mischief, Polar Bears, AIR, CTR, FUNK, American BBQ, and Death Star are all very talented club teams, not to mention Revolver, Wolf, Fury, etc.
CTR came with a field change and a change in the weather. It became pretty windy, and our games were pretty strongly upwind-downwind. It wasn't strong enough that there wasn't a good deal of upwind scoring, but punt and zone was a pretty legitimate option. We toughed out this game to take 2nd in our pool and played Death Star in pre-quarters. The Death Star game was similarly zoney and windy, but they were either slightly better or we played slightly worse and we lost by a couple to end the day.
We played Metro in beer-bracket quarters and lost by a couple. Neither team looked particularly good, but I think we were really showed the signs of partying away our sorrows the night before. Metro didn't have Barrs, (The Uncoverable) Jeff Chai, or Yugo playing, so our next match up at sectionals should be somewhat different. Anyway, this game was ugly for us as a team and for me as a player. Calle also tore his ACL in this game, which really put a damper on our spirits.
In our last two consolation games of the day, we beat Killjoy and then instead of playing AIR or CTR again, we played Operation Kapow, another regional rival. I don't think Kapow was very excited about playing this game, which was again windy and zoney, because they folded and we didn't even finish the game because we up so much.
Overall, I'm feeling pretty strong about our performance, even though we didn't finish particularly highly in the tourney. We got some quality wins, some excellent experience playing together in the wind, and we renewed our confidence that our team can ball when we want to.
This was my first "high level" tourney back from my injury, and my body felt really good afterwards. I played just below 50 points, a relatively light load compared to what I've done with other teams, which makes it easy to perform physically but more difficult mentally. The weekend was full of lots of highs and lows for me. I lead the team in turnovers, but also was near the top in D's and Assists. This says to me that I'm trying a little too hard and that I need to relax and trust in my teammates and the system. It also shows that I'm getting to where I want to be physically, and it makes me want to work even harder.
No comments:
Post a Comment