Steamy Dot Vector

Powski said it best...

2012-01-16T22:27:00.000-08:00

Re-entry is hard.

A New Year

2012-01-10T01:57:00.001-08:00

I think there are tumbleweeds blowing around this blog. It's time that I started writing again because I might have some worthwhile things to say about ultimate.

2011 was a huge year for me, ultimate-wise. I made my first trip to club nationals and played a substantial role on the team. I captained a summer league team to the finals game. I won beach league, my first LA league win. It was a damn good year.

I achieved a lot of the goals that I've been working towards for a very long time. The emotions of qualifying for nationals was overwhelming. It was surreal. My girlfriend told me that it was the happiest she's ever seen me. The tournament itself was incredible, deserving of its own post.

On the other hand, I feel a little different about ultimate now. Going to nationals was, for a very long time, one of my most important goals. Achieving it was great, but...now what?

It's not that I'm done playing ultimate. I still love it, and more importantly, the people that play it. I think I'm going to train even harder in hopes of making it back. It's just that there is not a whole lot higher to climb, and diminishing returns on the effort that I put into it. When you measure your life, how your frisbee team places nationally is not one of the most important criteria.

Anyway, my point is, I'm looking for new motivations and new goals to fill the spot previously held by the idea of going to nationals. I'm not really sure where that will come from yet. I'm in a bit of a purgatory right now, studying for the bar exam but I have a lot of things to think about. I didn't touch a disc for five weeks over break and I was surprisingly ok with it.

Lei Out is this weekend, and I'm super excited to play with all my good friends. It's going to be a great time because it always is, and we're going to have the best players in the world come to us for a change. It's been a very long time since I've played the silly, social, co-ed version of ultimate. I've didn't make it Potlatch this summer, and the hours of exhausting Condors practice have a way of grinding the silliness out of you. I think Lei Out is just what I'm needing right about now.

Anyway, I'm making it my goal to write more in this blog over the coming months. Here are a few topics that might be good to talk about:

What happened at SW Regionals
What happened at Nationals
What club nationals is like
What playing with Condors was like
How can I continue to grow as a player
Off-season training
Principles of good offense
Why regionals should never ever be in Colorado

and lots more that I have yet to think of. I'm open to suggestions.

See you at Lei Out.

Sectionals

2011-09-19T12:24:00.000-07:00

Sectionals were disappointing. We lost to Renegade on universe point first thing in the morning, then lost to Streetgang 13-8ish a couple rounds later. With that, our sectionals were pretty much over. We finished third and our road at regionals will be tougher.

I'm not feeling terrible about the weekend, though. For whatever reason, we just didn't play well on Saturday. Maybe it was waking up at 5:30 in the morning. Often times, teams walk away after losing a game to a better opponent and think, "Man, we totally should have won that game. We just played badly." In reality, the other teams good defense was the reason that you didn't play well, and there's no way you should have won the game. I don't think that's the case here.

I think we can play much better. Whether we will or not, and what the conditions will be like in Colorado, that we will have to wait and see. But at the moment, I'm not especially broken up or worried about it. Just back to the grindstone for 3 more weeks with a focus on regionals.

Discos Champs!

2011-08-30T22:10:00.000-07:00

I haven't felt motivated to write for a while, but winning a tournament has a way of getting you excited about ultimate again.

Until recently, this summer has been a grind. Studying for the bar kind of sucked the life out of me, and Condors have been grinding out long practices without much actual playing yet this summer. I wasn't able to go to the 1 day Scramble, so the last time I played a real game with the Condors was in late May, and it was with a squad of 13.
We knew ahead of time that the level of play at Discos wasn't going to be very high. I pushed hard to go to the tourney, though, because I thought it was important to build chemistry and log more games playing together before the series. I hadn't really played with a lot of my teammates, so I think every game we can get together is beneficial. Also, Chico is really fun.

There were 8 open teams, but only Wolves, Boost and Condors had a real chance of winning it. (Why the change from Wolf? I always liked the lone wolf sound of it.) We started at 1 PM, during the hottest part of the day - probably around 95. We were efficient with putting away the first two teams, Chico and some Cal college guys, many of whom had played 3 games of co-ed right before. Both teams went down 13-2, and we had plenty of time to hydrate and re-apply sunscreen between rounds. The big game of the day was against Boost Mobile, a very athletic squad of Palo Alto/Stanford guys. Their scouting report is in th
eir name. We were pumped up to play them again after receiving a frustrating 15-10 loss at the thrown together Cal States in May. This time, we had a full team and a few months of practice under our belts.

We broke them for a score out of the gates and never let them see a lead again for the rest of the game. Our offense moved the ball quickly and we took only smart deep shots when they presented themselves. Our D was on fire this game, including a couple of super impressive layout D's on hucks from Peter Raines. It stayed pretty close til the end when we pulled away from them with another break or two to take the game 13-8.

Sunday had us in quarters against Paradox, a first year team out of Long Beach. They struggled with both our tight man D and our junky zone looks all game, and we took the game quickly 13-0. Semis were against an Oregon team, Darkstar, that drove down to the tourney in the NexGen bus driven by Cody Bjorklund. They played flashy Oregon style offense (which I love) but they didn't quite have the skill to make it effective. We won 13-5.

We went over to see the end of the other semi, Wolves vs Boost, which came down to the wire. Wolves were up a couple (9-7?) when we showed up, but Boost got a break or two back to bring it to universe. Wolves received on offense and dropped a nice medium range huck to take the game.

We were 1-1 versus Wolves this season before the game, beating their tryout team at Cal States, but losing on universe at the Scramble. They had a lot of turnover after last year but, Bay Area ultimate being what it is, they still have a lot of talent. We scored the first point of the game on a quick huck by Ian, and then broke them on a dirty layout D by Curtis the next point. We got another turn the next point, but I over threw a downwind huck to Dirty Dan by a few feet, and they scored to make it 2-1. After that, things took a ba
d turn for us.

Shy and Mateo were abusing us on the break side, dropping dimes on offense. Our O had a bunch of mistakes, bad decisions and tight D by them that had them taking half 7-4. We traded out of half until 10-6, when our D went crazy. I think the heat and fatigue started getting to the Wolves, because their hucks started floating and our D line started getting opportunities for huge blocks. Adam Bolenbaugh in particular went crazy during the second half of this game and got us some huge D's (pictured).

The momentum of the game turned very quickly. Wolves made sure the caps were on, and used some time outs to try to stop swing of the game, but it was too late. We got possession at 11-11 and brought it down to the goal line. The hard cap sounded a few seconds before we connected on a short pass and the game was over. 12-11. I always prefer to just let finals play with no caps, but we had an 8 hours ride home ahead of us, so I wasn't complaining. After a quick dip in the river, the ride home was a much happier one than it would have been otherwise.

This game made me happy that I chose to play with the Condors. I've been on teams in the past that would have folded in the same situation, but instead my teammates got angry and stepped up. We might not be the most experienced team, but we're sure as hell not going to give up.

Next weekend: Chicago Heavyweights. So excited.

Condors 2011

2011-06-10T17:45:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if I've said it on here yet, but I'm going to play Condors this year. It's gonna be a great season. They just announced the roster today:

Condors 2011

Adam Bolenbaugh
Adam Paicely
Alec "Strider" Surmani
Andrew "Pebbles" Pebley
Blake Robillard
Collin Gall
Curtis Worden
Dan Bellinger
Dan "Vector" Oettinger
Ed "Biclops" Melo
Evan Brydon
Ian Meyer
Jason Craig
Jordan "Fawkes" Gatti
Keith Reschke
Ken "Gambit" Soo
Kevin "Nos" Stefaner
Mark "The Arbiter" Elbogen
Michael "The Sultan" Kiyoi
Nate Young
Peter Burke
Peter Raines
Ryan Gallagher
Tyler Bacon

End of Year Thoughts

2011-05-10T03:14:00.000-07:00

Smaug had a great regionals. Unfortunately, I had a final first thing Monday morning and couldn't make the trip up to Morgan Hill to help out the team, but I followed the team closely all weekend through score reporter and twitter. My heart was racing and I must have hit the refresh button about 100 times when they went to universe point with Chico on Saturday.

I'm really proud of what the team accomplished this year. We knew that the team was going to be young and that there would be some bumps along the way. However, at the beginning of the year I said that I thought Smaug's program is developed to the point where it doesn't matter who is on the roster - you should expect us to be good every year. The guys proved me right. Smaug finished tied for 5th (you might call it just 5th based on head-to-head with Davis at regionals) in the brutal new Southwest. Along the way, they beat Davis, Long Beach and Arizona, and finished higher than UCSD and UCSB for the first time in recent memory.

A lot of the credit goes to Peaches, who did a great job coaching and staying tirelessly energetic and enthusiastic. Even though we implemented a new system this year, it was looking great by the end of the year. New players stepped up and figured out what it takes to win games when teams are fighting tooth and nail. We overcame number of big losses to injury, including Zodiac, Machina, Gambit, Spectre, Scarecrow, and Fawkes for Sunday at regionals. Those guys are all starting players when healthy, so it speaks to the depth of the team that others were able to fill in and still keep rolling. Although the regular season was really inconsistent, the team peaked at the right time and finished as well as anyone could have expected.

The outlook for next year depends entirely on how many returning Smauggies find themselves a serious club team to play with this summer. Smaugs have always come from LA Open and Condors. If the young guys actually take the effort to try out for top teams, Smaug could be very good next year. There are a lot of athletes and a lot of good returning players. Most of the big teams in the Southwest are graduating a lot of their big players. UCSC, SDSU, Cal and Long Beach will be different teams next year, off the top of my head.

This weekend, though, it's time to put the team back in their place at Alumni Day.

What does this say about law students?

2011-04-18T17:49:00.000-07:00

From a school-wide email:

International Beverage Tasting Contest!
J.D. Students v. LL.M. Students v. Staff v. Faculty

2010 Champions: J.D. Students
2009 Champions: J.D. Students
2008 Champions: J.D. Students
2007 Champions: J.D. Students
2006 Champions: LL.M. Students

I'm going to Vegas!

2011-03-04T02:49:00.000-08:00

I'm going to the last ever(?) Trouble in Vegas this weekend. For my first time ever, it won't be with a college team but with Hammy's team, City Wok.

I fully expect that our team will be ballin this weekend, although the competition will probably be pretty stiff. Check out the roster. There's a bunch of people I haven't played with since Monster '08, and some new people that I've always wanted to have a chance to play with.

Samuel Chen
Peter "Fish" Zao
Ed Melo
Jerry Yang
Jamison Gorin
Scott Roeder
Andrew Ho
Mike Ng
Yama Afshar
Andrew "Box" McRae
Dan Oettinger
Matthew Hennessy
Daniel Smeltzer
Trevor Smith
Andrew Chao
Mark "Arbiter" Elbogen
Joe Forbes
Evan Valdez
Jordan Gatti

It should be a pretty fun. For the first time, I get to treat TiV like what it is: an excuse to have a good time in Vegas without having to pretend like we're there for "serious ultimate." Not that I ever did a very good job of that in the past.

Work on Your Jump Shot

2011-02-28T00:25:00.001-08:00

I can't help but think about ultimate whenever I watch any other sports on TV. When I was watching basketball the other day I was thinking about what basketball teams must work on during their practices. I imagine it would be set plays, defensive formations, and maybe some drills. I imagine they don't spend very much of team practice working on their shots, though. That's something that players have to do on their own, spending hours getting the reps in to maintain and improve their fine motor skill.

The same thing applies to ultimate teams. If you're not throwing outside of practice, you're a basketball player that never practices his shot. Just like basketball, being an skilled thrower/shooter can help you overcome superior athleticism. I'm not really thinking so much about mark breaking, which is like creating your own shot, but being able to hit the wide open shot when the opportunity comes.

Kaimana Klassic 24 - Off the Field

2011-02-26T01:26:00.000-08:00

I've heard there are 4 fun tournaments that every ultimate player should go to: Potlatch, Kaimana, Poultry Days, and Paganello. (I would put Nationals and Lei Out on my personal list, too)

Kaimana certainly lived up to the billing. The hawaiian ultimate players really do a great job putting it together. I was super impressed with how well prepared and thought out everything was. At 32 teams, they can provide way more for you than at a huge tournament. Your tourney cost gets you camping, breakfast and dinner, and endless beer all day and night for three days. On top of that, you're camping on a picture perfect white sand beach.

Fei agreed to come along and make a week long trip out of it, and I'm really glad she did. We were there from Wednesday night to Thursday afternoon. We stayed in hostel in Waikiki the first night. Fei met some interesting travelers during the day at the hostel and hung out with them until I got in later that night. On Thursday, we started the day off walking around Waikiki and swimming at the beach. Waikiki is kind of crazy. It's a little bit like Third Street in Santa Monica combined with the Vegas Strip. Great people watching. We walked to a traditional Hawaiian lunch place, which was awesome, and followed it up with some shaved ice. This was my first trip to Hawaii so all of it was new to me.

What surprised me about Hawaii is how different it is from the rest of the US. It's thousands of miles away out in the middle of the huge pacific ocean, and it really has a unique feel. The weather is the first thing that you notice. It's pretty humid and it rained a little bit almost every day, but it never bothered me because it was always pleasantly warm. The next thing I noticed was how Asian it is. Asian is the largest ethnicity by good amount, followed by white and native hawaiian, and there are tons of asian restaurants and foods. The culture is a little bit different too. Between the hawaiian language everywhere and assorted oddities it just feels different. It really made me feel I had gone somewhere far away from home, which I liked.

We then took the bus over to Pearl Harbor to take some tours. Unfortunately, the last boat to the Arizona Memorial was booked, but we took the submarine tour and checked out the museums. It was cool, but definitely a long bus ride from Waikiki. That night, we got together for pre-tourney team dinner at SOUL, an upscale Hawaiian/Soul food place where Dukes' girlfriend works. Afterwards we went to the "pre-tourney party," which was really just all of the UCLA teams at a hot, sweaty bar. A solid first day, if not a little hectic.

Friday morning we walked a couple miles to meet up with everyone for a group breakfast and game plan. We decided to catch the bus to the fields early to make camp instead of doing more touristy things around the city. I was ready to get out of the Waikiki and relax, which is exactly what we did. We had almost entire the Stanford men's team on our bus to the fields, and their rowdiness definitely upset some of the old ladies who were riding the bus. Other people were very friendly, tho, and helped us find the right stop for the campsite. I was blown away by how awesome the field/campsite location is. There are huge, jagged Jurassic Park looking mountains on one side, and the tents go right up to the sand on the beach. We basically had the whole place to ourselves. We spent the rest of the day hanging out, swimming, and playing double disc until dinner time and the first night of partying. There was a live band with kind of a ho-down, flddle-y sound. More and more people came in as the night went on, and every was really excited to get playing the next morning.

Because so much happened, I'm going to omit the tournament part of the write up and save it for the next post. Instead, I'll skip to Tuesday morning when we bused back to Honolulu and picked up our rental car for the next couple of days. The only thing that's important about the tournament time is that I sprained my foot on Sunday morning so walking was a little difficult for the rest of the week. I wasn't able to really go on any hikes because of it. Anyway, we ran into a Balls and Kate, Hennessy's friend from Alaska, who were left at the campsite with no real plans, so we invited them along for the trip. It helped that we got upgraded from an economy car to a full size car. Sweet! Not sweet - everyone in O'ahu drives 25 miles an hour everywhere. Getting around the island takes forever.

We met up with Fei's friend from St. Louis and he brought us to his favorite beach in Kailua, where we did some snorkeling and hanging out. At late afternoon, we dropped off the girls at peoples' houses and headed up to the North Shore where 15-20 UCLAers and friends had rented a big beach house with a private beach. We basically filled every available space in the house with people, and it still wasn't cheap, but it was worth it. There was a hot tub right next to the beach where we hung out, and Jamie and the Sultan cooked up a ridiculous 4 course meal for everyone.

On Wednesday, we set out with the intention of finding sea turtles, but it turns out that Turtle Bay isn't very accurately named. There was some pretty good snorkeling, though, and we spent some quality time at the beach there. We stopped the much hyped Giovanni's Shrimp truck for lunch, which was really tasty. I got garlic/olive oil/lemon and Fei got the spicy shrimp, and we split them up. While I'm mentioning seafood, one of my favorite things about the island was the omnipresence of Poke, raw tuna salad, which you can get everywhere from gas stations to liquor stores, and is usually pretty good.

After lunch we headed further north to check out the famous surf spots, Sunset Beach, Pipeline and Waimea Bay. The surf wasn't very big, but it still looked pretty impressive and there were big crowds watching the surfers in some places. Waimea Bay much smaller than I expected. I think you could run along the entire beach in a minute or two. It was so nice there, though, that we spent the rest of the afternoon playing volleyball and trying to bodysurf and getting smashed into the sand. A storm was rolling in, so we headed back to the house for some barbecuing and games while an incredible lightning storm happened all around us. We sat out on the back deck and watched it until some rain drove us inside.

The next morning was a little sad as everyone said good bye and went their separate ways. We picked up Arby, Biclops and Knuckles for the ride back to Honolulu, and we made them come on a short hike through forest since we had spent all our time on the beach and hadn't actually seen anything inland up until that point. We returned the car a couple hours late (which they didn't charge us for - score!) and caught the bus to the airport.

And then it was all over and I'm back to my regular life, which isn't nearly as fun or exciting.

I wish we had stayed for a day or two longer. I didn't get to hike up to any good views or go snorkeling at Haunauma Bay, which is supposed to be really great. I would love to go back. It would also be great to check out some of the other islands, like the Big Island or Kauai. Maybe next year...

Lei Out, and Life After College Ultimate

2011-02-03T00:33:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I've posted anything on here. I guess I could blame it on not having a college season to play in, or focusing a lot more on school, but really I've just been lazy and have gotten out of the habit. I'm going to try to update here more regularly because it helps me sort things out in my head and keeps me motivated.

Lei Out was pretty awesome. Whiskey Business came together to be a super fun team, and I think we played some pretty good ultimate. We ended up playing 2 of the semi-finalists in the in our pool and then drawing a third semi-finalist in our first bracket game on Sunday morning, and we played both of the teams that ended up making finals. Our tough draw had us feeling a little inadequate, but after our first loss on Sunday we won our way up the A2 bracket and blew a late lead to Davis and lost our chance to play Sham-wow for a bottle of Grey Goose. Oh well.

The parties Friday and Saturday night were a blast and our team was super fun to play with. Next time I put together a team, I'm going to be sure to have fewer guys on it, but I was glad to play with everyone. The weather was insanely perfect. I wish Lei Out could come more than once a year.

I've been helping out with Smaug by running with the team at practice and helping Peaches plan things out. It's really cool seeing the 2011 team taking shape and developing it's personality, but I still can't help but look ahead to the next time I actually get to the take the field. I'm trying not to feel like I'm just passing time until Kaimana rolls around, but it's hard. I'm starting to get back into shape between Winter League and running conditioning drills at practice, but it's time that I get back into the gym and start lifting seriously again.

I was feeling kind of bummed about not getting to play very much lately, but now that I think about it, there's a pretty good string of tournaments lined up heading into the summer.

Kaimana Feb. 19-21

Club Trouble in Vegas March 5-6

St. Pat's Hat March 25-26

DUI April 2-3

Fools West April 9-10

PAGANELLO?? Late April

Cal States - Early March

That's a pretty solid line-up.

But about Paga...

Thoughts on Nationals

2010-11-01T21:49:00.000-07:00

I decided not to go to club nationals to spectate this year, although I'm sure it would have been a blast. It was partly because of the money, but mostly because I felt like I wanted to earn a trip instead of being a hanger-on for some other team.

I followed the weekend pretty closely on twitter and the inconsistent coverage from USAU, although I missed the finals live stream on Sunday because of beach league. The most exciting result of the weekend for me was Polar Bears winning the national championship. Amazing. Their average age is probably 24 and I don't think they have more than 2 guys over six feet tall.

When I heard they were planning on taking their Lei-Out team that went to finals to the Series, the idea of them winning nationals never even came close to entering my mind. Going into nationals, I thought they would do well, quarters or maybe even semis, but I figured they would fall to one of the traditional co-ed franchises just because they're a young first year team.

I think they brought a combination of things that other co-ed teams couldn't match. They were deeper in athleticism and disc skills and had younger legs than almost every other co-ed team, so they could outrun most teams on defense. They had a great collection of throwers and team chemistry from their core playing together for years. As a group, they were probably the closest and most dedicated group of any of teams at nationals.

I'm really, really impressed by their performance this weekend, and I'm super happy for my friends on the team.

As for Open, it looked all weekend like Revolver and Ironside were destined to meet in the semis. I'm glad that the young guys on Revolver finally got to see their young team make it all the way. They're the most talented team in the world, and they deserve the win. I hope that we see parity among the top teams continue to grow, though, and we don't see them go on to win the next bunch of nationals. (ie. Fury).

I was pretty disappointed with the Southwest's showing. For the first time that I can remember, we had no one in quarters in any division (Masters doesn't count). I was a little surprised Bravo didn't come through, disappointed for Metro's pre-quarters loss, and bummed out about Streetgang fizzling out. I really thought Metro had a chance to go on a run after their strong showing at regionals.

So that's how 2010 club season comes to a close. Next year Co-ed and Open will both get 2 bids, barring some sort of shake up. I'm left with just Lei Out, Kaimana, and lurking around Smaug to get me through the long offseason.

Recovering

2010-10-12T01:33:00.000-07:00

1. Metro*
2. Barrio*
3. 7 Figures
4. BCBC

I'm having some serious post-tournament blues today. Everyday life is seems boring compared to the series. My body is sore like I haven't been sore in a long time.

I'm really happy for Metro taking the region in our own backyard. It's good to see all their hard work paying off in the end. I actually didn't get to see them play at all this weekend, but from far away I could see their big receivers making some huge grabs.

I'm having mixed feelings about the results of our season. I feel like we probably did about as well as we should have, all things considered. On the other hand, things could have been different if we had not had some key injuries and if we had put our team together with a little more organization. That's kind of the nature of the beast, though.

A pretty good measure of an ultimate player is how fun a he or she is to play with. Players that flow well, make big plays, and make you look good are awesome teammates. By that measure, BCBC has some of my favorite teammates that I've ever played with. I would be very tempted to come back to the team just to play with some teammates that are crazy ballers. I doubt that any team (that cared about winning) had as much fun off the field as we did this year, too.

I had a great time during my very short club season and I'm pretty bummed that it's over. BCBC was basically what I wanted out of this summer. We had copious amounts of fun and played some good ultimate, too. In the end, the wins and losses will be buried in score reporter, but my friends and memories will stay with me.

Still, another regionals has gone by and I'm again on the outside looking in.

Sectionals Recap

2010-09-30T01:02:00.000-07:00

Sectionals played out just about how they were supposed to. 7 Figures, Metro, BCBC. There weren't any real surprises in open, either.

Saturday we played some games that were tighter than they should have been, and all the injuries to our men really started catching up to us. We went into our game against Metro, the third game of the day, with only 8 guys. Calle, Fever, Tom Hall, Whitey, and Mike Nowak were all unable to play, and we definitely missed having the depth as the game dragged on. They went up 7-3 to start the game after we dropped the disc all over the field. We started playing some serious defense and shifted the momentum of the game to bring it back to 7-7, but then they toughed out a series of progressively longer points to end the game 11-7 at soft cap. The last point lasted around 20 minutes, and I had to come off near the end because my calves started cramping.

I had to take off after this game, missing our last game and leaving us with only 7 guys. We won something like 13-3, but I still felt guilty about putting the extra strain on everyone else. Fei bought me a ticket to see Grizzly Bear and Phoenix at the Hollywood Bowl, which was an awesome show. The tourney schedule changed at the last minute because we unexpectedly lost a field. Oh well.

Semis against 7 Figures was a tough match up. We definitely earned our D's against them, but our offense wasn't nearly as efficient as theirs. They're really good about taking smart deep shots and they use the open space on the field much better than other co-ed teams. The game was pretty heated, but it was never really close. The Lunch Money 3/4 game was much tighter than it should have been. It was a classic letdown game combined with us seriously underestimating them. The 7Figs vs. Metro final was tight until about 5's, when 7 Figures turned on the jets and left Metro in the dust.

Looking back on my weekend, I accomplished about half of my goals. I only turned the disc on about 8% of the points I played, which I think is pretty good considering how much I was touching the disc. I played hard and enjoyed playing a lot more points than I have so far. On the other hand, I didn't get many D's. I think it's a combination of still being a step or two slower than pre-injury and still being a little hesitant to make full speed cuts on my ankle.

I went to the the first Smaug vet practice of the year tonight, and I realized by comparison to my match-ups that I'm nowhere near in the shape that I was in last year. Some of that effect might be from the slower speed and sloppiness of playing mixed. Some of it also might be fatigue from lots of lifting and workouts. I think it's time to start tapering down and letting my body recover for the next week.

Playing with Smaug today gave me some very mixed feelings. I haven't played with those guys since Prez Day, so I was super happy to be on the field with them again. A lot of people have really improved over the summer, and there are some really good transfers and rookies that are showing some promise, so I'm really excited for the team this year. At the same time, I won't be on the field with them, which is tough after losing basically all of last year. For that reason, I'm not looking forward to the end of the club series. I won't have a team anymore.

Look for a write up on Regionals and BCBC in general in the next week or two.

Sectionals Preview

2010-09-16T02:26:00.001-07:00

The major players are 7 Figures, Metro and BCBC. 7 Figures has come on strong late in the season and clearly established themselves as the team to beat. Metro and BCBC are both coming off disappointing showings at Labor Day and are going to have something to prove.

I really enjoy Saturday of sectionals. There are lots of people you know, but it still has a special occasion feel to it. I enjoy the ego boost of beating up on teams in pool play, and I'm looking forward to spectating during our bye. Our bye should be especially sweet because it will have the match-up between Condors and The 405, as well as Recess (UCLA) versus USC. Should be good times.

Obviously, the most important game of the day is B1 v. B2, Metro BCBC. It's happening late in the day, so there's a good chance that the wind will have picked up by then. One of the strange things about Mixed is that teams throw zones in good weather as well as in the wind, but if it's windy it might push our game more towards zone and tedium. Winner will play 7 Figures in the finals. Loser will play 7 Figs in the semis.

I think our teams are actually pretty evenly matched this year, so the mental and strategic aspect of the game will be especially important. I think the best way we can approach it is to not treat it differently than any other game and simply go about our business doing what we do. We shouldn't get too worked up about who's on the other line.

I'm going to be playing mostly D line this weekend, which I'm pretty cool with. I haven't played much D in the past few years, but D-line is where the glory is.

My personal goals for the weekend:

a. Value every point that I play equally, with as much intensity as I can bring.

b. Don't force things. Go with the flow.

c. Sky/layout D some fools. I haven't been doing all this work for nothing.

I guess this isn't much of a preview, but Hammie already did a much better preview of both pools and all the teams anyway.

I have a really good feeling about sectionals. My body felt great tonight at our track workout. My throws have been crisp all week. The last time I played at Sectionals in Long Beach, we won it.

There's not too much to be said really. It's time to play things out and we'll go from there.

Labor Day Wrap-Up

2010-09-16T01:54:00.001-07:00

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.

Chico Recap

2010-08-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

Chico proved to be as good of a time as I could have hoped for. I think the trick to making the most of Discos Calientes is to not take it things too seriously. It's going to be ridiculously hot, the schedule will be weird, it will take 9 hours to get there, and the level of competition probably won't be the highest. If you can get over the shortcomings of the tourney and focus on the good, you can have a great time there. I probably enjoyed this years tourney more than the other three DIscos that I've been.

It definitely helped that we were staying with a completely awesome family that took our entire team into their home. Saturday night, I got to take part in the epic rematch of 8 BCBCers vs. the Sir Bjorn, his daughter, and his best apprentice. It ended very much like the battle last year, (with all of us getting our asses handed to us.) Sir Bjorn explained to us that medieval martial arts happens at tournaments around the country, with a small but avid following and rules predicated on chivalry towards your opponent. Hmm... sound like any other sport you know of? No wonder we get along so well.

The mixed division on Saturday started late, at about 2:30. It was nice to have a leisurely breakfast and relax in the shade at the fields before we had to cleat up, although we did start in the worst heat of the day. The temperatures were not nearly as bad as they could have been, though, probably in the low to mid 90s. It didn't end up being a big issue for us because of massive roster that we brought.

Saturday didn't bring too much in the way of competition. Our closest game was against the first team of the day, Sesame Street out of Davis, which was probably about 13-7. We also played Butter and TFT in pool play. We played a pre-quarters game under the lights at the end of the day against some young Humboldt players, but this game was more silly than anything else.

Quarter Finals:

Sunday started bright and early at 8 AM. We had American BBQ as our match-up, who had several recent UCLA grads, including Diesel, DaVinci, Kobe, and Artoo. They had lost only to Death Star, the number 1 overall seed at the tourney, and I was expecting them to be sharp. We started sleepily, getting broken again and again until they took half 7-3. This was really the turning point of the tournament for us. Instead of rolling over, we poured on the defensive pressure and stared running a triangle junk D which gave their offense lots of trouble. Whitey, in particular, got about 3 incredible layout D's in big moments, and we managed to claw our way back into the game and then into the lead. I think we finished up about 11-9 at the hard cap, saving our weekend. American BBQ has some seriously good players, and this was their first time playing together as a team. They were impressive, but it's not a game that a team that considers itself a nationals contender should lose.

Semis

We drew Kamanawanaleaa (or something like that) while 7 Figures and Death Star matched up in the other semis. I don't really know where they were from, although they had ex-BCBCer Tyler Bacon playing with them. By this point in the day, we had gotten over our early morning hiccups and rolled through the game without too much drama. I think we won around 13-8. I was really happy after this game because I felt like was finally getting into a rhythm and had found my stroke.

Finals

7 Figures came into the game with intensity, warming up with focus while we sat in the shade before the game. Our relaxed attitude carried into the game and we quickly went down a bunch of breaks. 7 Figures was by far the best team we had faced up until that point in the weekend, and we weren't ready for the step up in quality of play. In the semis, we had gotten away with a few marathon points where neither team could run an effective offense. That was not the case in the finals, were 7 Figs quickly took advantage of our turns with quick deep strikes. 7 Figs were clearly the better team on Sunday, and easily took the game 13-4.

We've seen this year, with the Polar Bears, the success an experienced Open team can have by connecting with some good women and moving into Mixed. The 7 Figs guys have played together for years, and also picked up some nice players such as Joe Forbes, Milhouse and Chucktown to round out their men (I'm not commenting on their women mostly because I don't really know them, other than Minh and Tai, who are ballers).

I don't think the difference in the score of finals is too huge of a worry in terms of how we will match up in the series. BCBC is a younger team and has a lot more growing left to do this year (not to mention that we have yet to even finalize the roster - can we get on that please?). However, the finals score does show that we will need to bring a different mentality to Labor Day if we want to play with the big kids.

All in all, it was a great weekend, and I'm left with the feeling that I somehow didn't get enough ultimate. I can't wait for our retreat up to SLO.

At least tomorrow is the LA Summer League tournament and party, one of my favorite events of the year. I'm picking up with the Black team in Co-ed, the last place finishers this year. Hopefully Knuckles will come down and Bakersfield and we can surprise some people tomorrow.

Easing into the Season

2010-08-11T00:57:00.000-07:00

I finished my first full track workout of the summer today. I've been working extra hard to try to catch up my fitness with the rest of my team, and it's been rough. My body isn't ready to perform the same way that it used to. Lifting has really helped start to regain the leg muscle that I've lost. I won't really be able to tell where I'm at until I give it a go this weekend.

I did a little bit of offensive handling at the BCBC retreat last weekend, but it was a little uncomfortable when we turned it and I had to play D on a cutter. Luckily, though, I'm still seeing big gains in my ability every week. I imagine it will plateau into a very slow return to 100%, and my doctor says that it could take up to a year to feel completely normal again.

It feels amazing to play again, though. BCBC is full of awesome people, and I'm really excited for all of our upcoming events. It was hard to gauge where we're at from last weekend both because we were missing a bunch of people and because I was a little too focused on my own playing and health. Also, I haven't played high level coed in years, so i don't really have a barometer for what is really good.

Chico is almost always 90-100 degrees, but it has some redeeming factors that make it worthwhile: Sierra Nevada, the river, the party, and the Castle. I'm really excited about staying in the medieval themed house that BCBC traditionally stays at in Chico. Actually, I think the Castle is a good part of why we're going to Chico instead of ECC. I can't say that I complained too much.

We're leaving on Thursday to head up to Sac and do a river float down the Sacramento River on Friday. An extra full day in the sun couldn't hurt, right?

SW Open Club Outlook

2010-07-27T16:49:00.001-07:00

The club season is underway, even though I have yet to join in.

I'm not sure how interesting the Open category will be this year, as Johnny Bravo and Streetgang are the clear frontrunners for the (two?) bids out of the SW.

Johnny Bravo - Boulder, CO

Bravo lost some big players last year, but they have a constant pipeline of top quality players from the colleges in the area and I think they'll have another very successful year this year. Until Streetgang shows they can beat them, they're considered the top team in the SW. However, they're also not the juggernaut Bravo of a few years ago. Look to see how CO and SD stack up nationally at Colorado Cup this weekend.

Streetgang - San Diego

Look out for a very talented club team in its second year together. The first year always has some hiccups, and San Diego's second year together should see them reaching national prominence. They picked up some good Squids guys that didn't play last year, as well as Allen Lai, Evan Valdez and Matt Welsh from LA and SB. This should help them run deeper into their roster than last year. Talent-wise, their roster stacks up well with nearly any club team in the country, and the sky's the limit in terms of potential for them.

Condors - Santa Barbara

Last year, the Condors chose to go young and rebuild with local talent. Predictably, they had a tough year, although they made the most out of what they had. This year should be a much stronger year for them. They picked up a pair of dominant receivers in Jake Juszak and Jake Baumer. They also strengthened their roster with some quality Long Beach guys as well as Fawkes from UCLA. They had an impressive win over Wolf at Cal States, but it looks like they're not going to get much of an opportunity to see what they can do during the regular season because they're having trouble getting accepted at the top level tournaments. Breaking into top level tournaments can be a bit of a catch-22: You have to have an impressive resume to get accepted to the tournament, but you have to be at the top tournaments to face the top teams.

I wouldn't expect the Condors to upset either of the top two teams to earn a spot to nationals this year, but I wouldn't be shocked if they did, either. SB brings a lot of mental toughness and fundamental soundness that could be too much for one of the top teams given the right scenario/conditions. They're a solid number three out in the SW.

Beyond the top three teams, it's kind of a crap-shoot for how things will play out.

Entourage - LA

I'm pulling for Entourage because I think we need a young, committed ultimate team based in LA. They should be the best club team in LA, but they haven't played a tourney yet so it's too soon to say where they fit in.

Sweet Roll - Albuquerque, NM

They played Strike-Slip tough in the desert heat last year at regionals. They would probably be my choice for 4th this year, but who knows what kind of roster they will return from last year.

Sprawl - Arizona

Another decent desert team. Where do all the best U of A players end up? Barrio?

Recess - LA

A bunch of UCLA have been putting together a more chill club team to enter the series.

This year, most of the depth of talent in the LA area has gone to the co-ed division, leaving the SW one of the weaker regions in the country in terms of depth. I know I'll be watching the Santa Barbara/San Diego final at sectionals if I am able.

Home Again

2010-07-27T15:59:00.000-07:00

I've been all over the place these last few weeks. The trip up to Seattle was awesome. I drove up with Jaws and Balls the entire way up, and Jolie and Scout for portions of the trip. Oh, and Whiskey, Balls' puppy made the entire trip with us, too. I always think of San Francisco as being far north in CA, but the drive from there to the Oregon border is endless. It took us over 12 hours to make it to Scout's ranch, although some of that was thanks to our leisurely food stops and subsequent getting lost in the middle of nowhere in the dark near Bend.

Our day at the ranch was relaxing and awesome. It's about an hour from the nearest town, 45 minutes of which are on a dirt road. The cabin is right next to a cold river with good trout fishing. It's been in his family for a long, long time. We spent the day playing horseshoes, swimming, skeet shooting, fishing, and drinking beer on the porch. Needless to say, it was a good time.

Friday we drove up to Seattle, which should have been a short 3 hour drive, but instead turned into a day long ordeal. First, Scout's volvo completely lost its tire outside of Portland. Then, pulling into Seattle, we found out that Whiskey had Giardia and had to go to the Vet to get special medicine before she could be checked into her kennel for the weekend. So, after a long day, we finally pulled into the fields right before dark and Potlatch ensued. It was a great roadtrip, but I'm glad that I flew home and didn't have to make the ride down.

Following that, I had the Oettinger reunion in Thousand Oaks. 44 Oettingers from across the country flew in for an intense long weekend of huge amounts of eating and socializing. Then, the next weekend, I flew to Boston for a family reunion for my mom's side of the family.

I really enjoyed the change of scenery in New England, and the week was generally more relaxing than the Oettinger reunion because we weren't hosting people, there were fewer people and more time to enjoy things. On Saturday, my uncle got us tickets to go to Fenway and see the Rangers play. It was fun to see the scene around the ballpark, and even though our tickets kind of sucked, it was awesome to stand 2 feet behind Cliff Lee and watch him warm up before the game in the bullpen.

The next day, we drove up to Maine for a week in a lake house. Every day I went swimming, ran, played badminton, and played pool. We did lots of cooking every night and went on day trips to interesting local places. It was a really nice time, and all the activity was really good for my ankle. I ate lots of lobster and clams while we were there, and I was a little bit bummed to be back in the "real world" of LA when we got back Sunday night.

Now I'm just waiting on an appointment with my PT to see where my ankle is at. The time until I can play again is shrinking pretty quickly.

Off to the East Coast

2010-07-16T01:04:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow morning at 5 AM I'm leaving for Boston and Maine for over a week. My grandparents are renting a lake house and my mom's family is having a reunion for the next week. It should be very relaxing.

See you in a few weeks.

Why Not?

2010-06-28T00:08:00.000-07:00

This week I'm going to road-trip up to Redmond. Normally, I would think it's crazy to travel three states to go to a tournament where I'm not even going to play. However, Potlatch is my favorite tournament ever. I've never been to Kaimana, Paganello, Poultry Days, Nationals, or Worlds, but until I do (and maybe even after I do), Potlatch will stay #1.

Potlatch is best of every thing that I love about ultimate - the best athletes, the best parties, the best silliness, and some of my best friends. It's a great feeling of escape from everything. For three days, the fields become your home. The festival atmosphere and quality of competition has had me playing some of the best ultimate I've ever played in the past. You roll out of your tent in the morning, and you're standing right on the fields. Play. Float down the river. Party. Repeat.

Unfortunately, this year, worlds fall on the same weekend so spectating highest level games might not be quite as good, but I don't think I'll mind too much. It might be nice to be able to walk around and watch some different games a little more than I've been able to in the past. Maybe I won't be as tired by the end as I have in the past. Last year, it took me about a week to recover.

I'm looking forward to the drive up just as much as the tourney itself, too. We're going to leave on Tuesday and take our time, and see some of the sights along the way. We're going to spend most of a day at Scout's cabin in the woods doing outdoorsy kind of things like fishing and hiking. I fully expect this next week to be awesome.

Summertime

2010-06-18T14:46:00.000-07:00

I haven't played any ultimate since February. It's the longest stretch I've gone since I started playing in winter of 2005, and it's going to keep going until September at least. For the first time in a very long time, I really miss playing the game just for the sake of the game. Up until now, my motivations have been centered around team goals or personal goals. Now that the college season is over, I realize that I'm starting to kind of forget what playing is like. I can't visualize situations or plays as readily as I used to, and it's strange.

I really miss playing for the sake of exercising, too. I realize now that I'm much less productive and happy when I'm not getting regular workouts. I don't sleep as well at night and I generally feel unhealthier. I've gone from crutches to now walking in my walking boot, and next week I think I'm going to start PT again. I can tell already that it will be hard to not push myself to be more active than my doctor wants me to be. I find that once I break a self imposed barrier in rehab, like walking instead of crutching, there's no going back. I'm worried about what playing will be like and what I'll be able to do after being a couch potato for 5 months.

During other times in my life, if things were going badly or if I was unemployed and bumming around, I could always turn to ultimate or working out as something constant I could rely on while other things in my life changed. Right now, though, I'm just a bum.

I've been watching a huge amount of sports on TV and ultimate videos online. When I'm watching the world cup, or the NBA finals, I'm constantly thinking about how what I'm seeing applies to ultimate. I think watching Smaug for the better part of a season from the sidelines might be a good thing for me in the end, because I feel like I got a more objective, slightly removed perspective on the game. In the end though, I think about ultimate entirely too much and I miss it a lot.

Media Coverage of Ultimate

2010-06-09T14:38:00.001-07:00

I find it very interesting that the last video that I posted, Luke Johnson's own footage of finals, was sent DMCA takedown notice by CBS Sports. I haven't taken copyright yet, so I don't have a fully informed opinion about this, but my impression is that copyright laws only protect your coverage of an event, not the game itself.

If Luke had posted the Go211 stream itself on Vimeo, that would clearly be an infringement of their copyright, but the video that he posted was entirely filmed and edited by him. I'd like to see what the contract between CBS and the USAU looks like, but it seems to me that Luke's video is his own property.

From about 2 minutes of Googling the subject, I found this case:

National Basketball Ass'n v. Motorola, Inc. 105 F.3d 841 C.A.2 (N.Y.) 1997
As noted, recorded broadcasts of NBA games-as opposed to the games themselves-are now entitled to copyright protection. The Copyright Act was amended in 1976 specifically to insure that simultaneously-recorded transmissions of live performances and sporting events would meet the Act's requirement that the original work of authorship be “fixed in any tangible medium of expression.” 17 U.S.C. § 102(a). Accordingly, Section 101 of the Act, containing definitions, was amended to read:

A work consisting of sounds, images, or both, that are being transmitted, is “fixed” for purposes of this title if a fixation of the work is being made simultaneously with its transmission.

17 U.S.C. § 101. Congress specifically had sporting events in mind:

[T]he bill seeks to resolve, through the definition of “fixation” in section 101, the status of live broadcasts-sports, news coverage, live performances of music, etc.-that are reaching the public in unfixed form but that are simultaneously being recorded.

H.R. No. 94-1476 at 52, reprinted in 1976 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 5665. The House Report also makes clear that it is the broadcast, not the underlying game, that is the subject of copyright protection. In explaining how game broadcasts meet the Act's requirement that the subject matter be an “original work[ ] of authorship,” 17 U.S.C. § 102(a), the House Report stated:

When a football game is being covered by four television cameras, with a director guiding the activities of the four cameramen and choosing which of their electronic images are sent out to the public and in what order, there is little doubt that what the cameramen and the director are doing constitutes “authorship.”

Now, I haven't researched the subject, nor am I qualifed to be giving any legal advice, so please understand that this is just speculation.

If the USAU didn't want anyone else filming finals, they should have prevented people from doing so at the event. Did they post notices on the admission tickets that filming was not allowed?

More importantly, does USA Ultimate really want to prevent ultimate players from sharing and enjoying material from ultimate games that they've created themselves? I know USAU wants to become a more "legitimate sports organization," but at the same time we have to accept that media coverage in ultimate right now is overwhelmingly provided by the players themselves. The video that Luke made is excellent promotion for the sport, and in many ways more enjoyable for experienced players to watch than the professional coverage because Luke knows what he's doing and there doesn't have to be announcers explaining every rule of the game.

Maybe it's not appropriate to blame USAU for this. It might be that it was just some guy in an anti-piracy department cubicle sending a take-down notice for what he believed to be CBS property. I assume that USAU sold (how much is that actually worth?) the exclusive rights to film and broadcast the finals, so they're protecting themselves by not wanting other people to have video up. In the future, it seems they'll either have to go more open or more restricted with access to events that they plan on televising. My guess is, things will become more restrictive.

It's just another small step towards taking the sport of ultimate away from the players in an effort to become a "real sport."

Is that what we want?

Nationals

2010-06-05T13:18:00.000-07:00

Carleton vs Florida - 2010 USAU College Finals from luke johnson on Vimeo.

There's a great video of nationals finals on vimeo (thanks to Luke Johnson) in high def and with all the arguing edited out. It's about 1000x more watchable than the live stream on Monday.

Carleton seems dedicated to slowing the game down and playing fundamental ultimate. Florida takes the huck look whenever it's there, and sometimes when it's not. They get away with this because they're playing incredible defense and Carleton can't seem to get much decent flow against them. Maybe it would have been dumb for Carleton to throw more aggressively, or maybe they just didn't have the players to match up with Florida's in the deep game. The first time I watched the finals, I felt like the outcome was somehow erroneous or unexpected. Watching it again with more clarity and continuity, Florida was the better team for the conditions and should usually win this game.

Florida has an amazing amount of athleticism, and Brodie really is the most dominant player in ultimate, although I don't regret not voting for him for Callahan after watching this game. My first thought on watching the game was that Carleton didn't adjust well enough to stop Florida's style of play, but upon watching the game again it seems like they were doing nearly everything they could. He was just unstoppable.

If we were doing a draft of college players to club teams (how sweet would that be?) I suppose Brodie would have to go #1 overall, but I would have concerns about melding his playing style into a team that isn't completely tailored to him. I really hope he decides to play club because I'd like to see how his skills translate to a higher level of play.

An Observation

2010-05-24T19:29:00.001-07:00

I found this email in my inbox today. Actually, I never realized that. Thanks, Warehouse:

To: Me, Danger

If you take out the Oettin in vector's name, you get the name of the other person included in this email.

Potential applications include vector being able to proclaim that "Danger is my outer name".

Thanks,

WH

Callahan Videos

2010-05-15T21:25:00.001-07:00

Eli Friedman for Callahan 2010 from Oregon Ultimate on Vimeo.

I love the Callahan propaganda videos that come out at this time of year. A good one can swing the election. If you know of any other good ones, please pass them along to me!

Regionals Write-Up

2010-05-13T16:29:00.000-07:00

Coming out of this college series is the best I've felt about any team's performance that I've been a part of. Strike-Slip made the game-to-go this year, but that was exactly what were expected to do so it wasn't as fun as it was grueling.

We went into the weekend as the 7 seed. The tourney was a huge bracket, so we would very quickly be playing in important games. Shockingly, the weather was great. Maybe 65 degrees and light wind. It worked to our benefit.

Saturday:

Game 1 - Colorado College

This game was supposed to be easy, and it was. They seemed decent enough, but they had serious problems with our box and zone looks. They also dropped it a lot. I think we took half 8-1. They scored a few more in the second half, but we won pretty easily 15-(not very much).

Game 2 - Long Beach

Long Beach was only playing 10 guys, so it was bad luck catching them this early in the tournament. They took half by a break or two. At about 9-7, we called a time-out and the team got fired up to make a last ditch effort to make a comeback. We started gaining momentum with a couple breaks. Thor had a huge layout D on a bad dump throw. We brought the game to 10-10 universe, with them receiving. We got the disc a couple times (once on a 50 yard hammer look) but they punched it in on a sky from Jake. Flood did a good job trying to contain him, and there were some spectacular plays in the air, but in the end it wasn't enough. Uni, Bogo, Marcos, and Mike all played great in this game as well.

Game 3 - Air Force

The guys were down after our universe point loss with LB, and I think we all assumed that we were going to walk through this game. And we should have. But we let them hang around, down only a few points. They scored a few breaks and started acting like the shirtless pilots in the volleyball scene in Top Gun. Going up wind, someone put up a janky, floaty huck and Spectre had a huge sky for the score.

During soft cap, we received on O to end the game. Arby hucked to Curse wide open on the goal line, and the coaches called for a time-out. During the timeout, the other coach insisted that we had called 2 already in that half. He was right. Turnover. Before we knew it, it was universe point with us receiving on O. We worked it downwind calmly and put it in for the score, but not with some serious sweating. We almost ended our season against Air Force. I don't even want to consider what that would have been like.

Game 4 - Arizona

We started off with a few breaks. And then a few more, until we had taken half 8-1. Arizona is a better team than that, and I don't know if they were just tired or what, but they really rolled over in the first half. Their best player, the tall blonde guy, was going crazy in their huddle. They came out of half and went on a run, but they were too far down. We started trading until hard cap, 12-6. The team was tired after playing all day at altitude. Thor also hurt his knee pretty badly skying the balls off the blonde guy after he came down and got landed on. Despite our "big roster," we ended up playing on Sunday with only about 14 or 15 able bodied players, and it definitely hurt our chances.

Saturday night we went to HoHut, Ft. Collins best (only) AYCE mongolian bbq place. It was actually pretty good, and perfect for a big hungry team. After the Lakers game, the coaches and injured people went out to check out the local Brew/pub. It was a fun night.

Sunday

UCSD

We came out fired up quoting this guy. We felt like we had nothing to lose, and because of that I think we went into this game with the right attitude. They gave us a bunch of turnovers, and our D-line was taking good huck looks when we had them. They took half 8-7, but I was feeling really good about the attitudes both teams were playing with. They threw their box, which has always given us trouble in the past. We struggled for a point, but the second point we shredded right through it and did the same on each subsequent point. My main memory from the end of the game is Avatar getting a huge layout D on Kattan and the macking the disc squarely off his chest. We received the disc on universe, and slowly marched it down through their zone for an easy score. 12-11. This win really felt good. To my knowledge, UCLA has never beaten UCSD before in the series and I don't think they ever saw it coming.

SDSU

SDSU had beaten us pretty squarely the last 2 or 3 times we played them, but we were riding high off our win against the squids. I think the altitude made the games a little more turn heavy because peoples hucks were misfiring and we were getting more chances for breaks than we normally would. We sat on a nice 2 point lead for most of the game, until the end. We called a couple of time outs late in the game to help run out the clock, and SDSU took issue with it. However, we played completely within the rules and the game was observed, so I really don't feel too bad about it. They scored the last point after hard cap blew, but the game was over, 10-9.

UCSB - 2nd Place Game

Tide was coming off a blow-out loss in finals to Colorado, 15-5. They were very strategic about resting for the game they could actually win, I think, and it worked out for them. We came out hot and went up 2 breaks to start the game, but the fatigue from the weekend started to catch up with us. It also got fairly windy in this game, and it hurt our hucking game and benefited their more fundamental style. However, I don't think they would have won had it not been for stellar play from Max and Tim. Those two destroyed us like they have every time we've played them this year. Once they got up a couple points, they held on and never let us back in the game. We were running out of gas pretty quickly by this point. Pagoda, Thor, and Spectre were not playing by this point, too, which also really hurt us. We were running 14-15 guys and were looking pretty ragged. Huge props to Curse for working his ass off all Sunday though. He was our best and most consistent cutter, and favorite target for Arby's hucks. He also skied the balls off a Tide guy on an upwind floater near the sideline.

UCSD - 3rd/4th Place Game

It really didn't look coming into this game. They were up and throwing, and our guys collapsed on the side line. They broke us twice before we got on the board, 3-1. The whole first half we looked like we were just ready to give up. Forge was skying the balls off of everyone, and we just didnt have the energy to put up much of a fight. They took half 8-3.

During our huddle, we reminded everyone that this was likely the last game that our seniors would ever play with Smaug, and that there was no reason not to give every last ounce of effort we had. We we're the team that was not supposed to be there, and we should just play to enjoy our last half of ultimate of the year. We came out looking revitalized in the second half and got a bunch of breaks to bring it closer. I think at one point I think it was 11-9ish, and we were bringing all the momentum. Unfortunately, we ran into the soft cap and they calmed down and played "the most boring point of ultimate of their lives" to put in the final point.

A lot of guys came up huge for us in this game, when our stars were running fumes. Syntax came in and looked great running the offense. Attica had an amazing goal line layout D on two guys that were standing about 5 feet apart. In the end, we were just too tired to take advantage of the position that we had put ourselves in. I hate to speculate, but if we had had Pagoda, Spectre, Thor and me playing, who knows what would have happened.

Still, we earned the highest finish in the history of Smaug, and made it to 2 games to go. The end of year circle was amazing, and there were more than a few happy tears from the guys that were finishing their years on Smaug. I hope the young guys can take the experience of this weekend and realize what it will take to make the jump from a high placing team at regionals to a team that will go to nationals. We had wins this year over Stanford, Davis, Victoria, Florida, SDSU, and UCSD. On the other hand, we had some losses to some teams that we probably shouldn't have lost to. It seemed like everyone on our team peaked individually this weekend. Going through our roster, I don't think there's anyone who I can point to and say that this weekend was not the best I've ever seen them play (except guys coming off long-term injuries. I may have seen them a few steps faster).

I'd like to think that a lot of our younger guys, especially the guys that have never gone through a season on the A team, saw this weekend how amazing ultimate can be. The high that you get from winning big games after a full season of working towards that goal is incomparable. Now that they've had a taste, hopefully they'll keep working so Smaug can have that feeling again next year.

Surgery Photos

2010-05-11T20:29:00.001-07:00

My surgeon sent me these photos he took during my surgery. With his iPhone. I didn't ask too many questions, or want to know how much he uses his iphone during surgery. The pictures are pretty cool though.

In them you can see him pulling my peroneal tendon forward into view. Then he pulls the retinaculum up and sews it together and anchors it down to the bone. Hopefully, it will heal strongly. The good news is, you get to see the inside of my ankle. And it DOESN'T look anything like a vagina.

Post-Surgery Update

2010-05-04T22:06:00.001-07:00

For those of you who don't get bombarded with my twitter feed or google buzz, I re-tore my ankle last Monday night at practice. I was popping in a zone and I pushed off my ankle as I caught a pass and the exact same ligament snapped. It wasn't super painful, and I wasn't sure at first whether I had torn it or whether someone had kicked my ankle. When I was able to pop my tendons out of place, it was pretty obvious, though.

Anyway, I went back to my doctor and scheduled surgery for yesterday. I was pretty nervous because I'd never had surgery of any kind. I'd never even had an IV, so all of it was a pretty new experience. My mom's job has amazing health insurance, so all of my health care so far has been pretty swanky. The surgery center had a super minimalist, modern style and was totally empty when I went in. I got dressed in a gown and they hooked me up to an IV, but my doctor was running behind schedule on his first surgery so I ended up waiting for like an hour and a half. I passed the time by chatting with a young guy who was teaching people how to use the cold water circulating machine about LA for like 45 minutes.

Eventually the anesthesiologist came around and gave me a nice shot of valium into my IV. After that I was pretty cool with everything. They wheeled me into the freezing operating room and and had me roll onto the operating table. The doctor gave me a shot of something stronger because I don't remember anything that happened after they gave me an oxygen mask to breathe into. I know they were going to give me a nerve blocking injection and then test it by using electro stimulation, but the next memory I have is waking up in the recovery room with the big splint on my leg. My leg was completely numb for rest of the entire day and through the night, which was probably a good thing, but it's kind of scary not being able to wiggle your toes.

The pain in my ankle woke me up this morning, but I took a pill, crutched out to the couch and fell back asleep. I have an awesome machine that circulates cold water over my foot, and I've been hooked up to it pretty much non-stop. I spent a good part of today napping, but I've been feeling better and better.

I have tickets to fly to regionals on Friday, but I'm not sure yet if I can go or not. If the weather report says rain, I won't go, but so far it looks good. I'm worried about getting through the airport and keeping my foot elevated, etc. I could really use those three extra days to work on my term paper. However, this is maybe the last tourney of the year. What we've been working for all year long. I don't think I could feel ok with myself if I didn't go. I'm going to wait and see how I feel Thursday before I make my decision.

I should have 1 month of cast, 2-3 weeks of walking boot, and then I'll start rehab mid-June. I'm going to take my rehab slowly and carefully, and it should be easier cause I won't be at practice all the time. I should be able to play again mid to late August. I'm committed to playing with BCBC when I get, assuming they still want me by then.

For now, I'm just trying to focus on finals and recovery. After that, I'm going to enjoy my time off and focus on my job search. I can watch the last season of the Wire, watch the Yankees in HD and do some reading. Should be nice.

SoCal College Sectionals

2010-04-23T01:18:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-14T01:57:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-13T00:42:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-04-13T00:28:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-09T14:28:00.001-07:00

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.

Post-Centex

2010-03-30T02:14:00.000-07:00

I chose to drive with the team to Centex rather than fly because, hey, it's my last year of playing college ultimate and it seemed like a very college ultimate thing to do. It ended up being really fun (besides really loooong) and a worthwhile experience, although I spent most of the rest of my spring break recovering.

Saturday morning we awoke to horizontal rain blowing past our door and lightning bolts. We went back to bed, and I woke up every hour or so to check Cultimate's twitter feed for updates. It was pretty clear we weren't playing that morning, but when and where we might play was up in the air. We finally rolled out of bed and went to get a late mexican food breakfast around 11. During breakfast, we got word that cultimate had found "super secret backup fields" near San Antonio, a mere 90 miles away. We paid our bill and booked it to the hotel so we could hit the road.

The fields were muddy, and the wind was absolutely brutal. 30-40 mph gusts made it almost impossible to throw more than twenty or thirty yards. We were scheduled to play Illinois, Florida and Kansas. Illinois won the flip, and we traded downwinders the entire game. We actually managed to almost score upwind twice, but both times we failed. We lost 6-7 at hard cap.

We won the flip against Florida, and put down our first W against them in school history. True, the conditions were terrible, but we did play terrific defense to stop them from working it up, which they were always threatening to do. We won at hard cap, 13-12.

Kansas decided not to play their Saturday games. We heard that they had found fields and had intense practice all morning, thinking that Saturday would be canceled. We got a forfeit win against them.

Saturday morning the conditions were actually decent for half of our pre-quarters game against Stanford. They didn't seem to be fully awake quite yet, and our guys were pumped up to play. Our D did a terrific job of stopping their dumps and forcing their throws upfield into waiting poaches and layout blocks. Bishop and DaVinci punched it in on their goal line again and again with break throws, and Arby was money with hucks to Flood and other people. By the end of the game the wind had picked up and game had devolved into zone in a strong cross wind. We still managed to punch it in for the last point at cap, 13-9. (Stanford went on to beat CUT 13-4 later that day. Baffling.)

In quarters we matched up against Oregon, the pretty unanimous #1 team in the country. Unfortunately, we weren't really playing ultimate by this point. It was more like throwing turnovers in a windy field. We basically traded hucks back and forth, both teams afraid to turn it in front of their endzones until someone brought down the swill. Their athletes were really good at bringing down their bombs and they went up to an 8-1 lead. I think we were a little too happy to be sharing the field with the #1 team and no one really expected to win. We picked it up in the second half and brought it 15-8, a more respectable score. It was more than UNC or Colorado scored on them in Semis and Finals, for what that's worth.

We lost our next game to Michigan 14-11 because they were slightly better at throwing in the wind than us. By our last game against Cal, our guys were gassed and we didnt want to put up much of a fight. I offered 40 oz of incentive to everyone who got a layout D, and the guys had some fun in the second half trying to earn theirs. We brought it back from something like 0-6 to a final of 9-13.

Overall, it was definitely worth our time going to Centex. We benefitted from the quality of teams we played, but the most important was the bonding experience for our whole team. I wish we could have stuck around for spring break on the beach somewhere, but I guess that is for future years of Smaug to do. We got some quality wins over nationals level opponents, and it should have been a boost for our rankings and region. I'm very confident that if the weather had been good, we would have had at a couple good wins for our region.

As it was, the results were just totally wacky. Tide had a really tough weekend, and their RRI rating went down and dragged us and the SW down with them. The wacky conditions created wacky results, and the hierarchy of teams was totally overthrown. Teams like Harvard, with at least one dominant thrower and one dominant receiver were able to beat almost everyone because everyone point had about 30 turnovers (not to take anything away from Redline, but normally they don't beat Cut and take Colorado to universe).

CSULB and SDSU just played Easterns this past weekend, and they both had some quality wins, SDSU especially. Hopefully they can gain some strength points back to the SW, but it looks like we're going to be getting 2 bids to Natties this year. I'll share my opinions on the ranking system and bid allocation process later.

We went into the tourney seeded somewhere in the 22-28 range, and we ended up finishing 8th. Not too bad.

I had forgotten...

2010-03-30T02:09:00.000-07:00

...what an amazing photo this is.

http://www.mei-photography.com/gallery/8834345_zc8BK#585371509_Kvvdr-XL-LB

Potlatch is definitely my favorite tournament (so far).

I don't think I'm going to have the time/money/will power to organize a Potlatch team this year. Plus, I'm not even sure that I'll even be able to play by then, although I wouldn't be against going just to hang out.

Anyone have a team that might take me?

Ankle Update

2010-03-16T18:09:00.000-07:00

I'm finally free of my cast!

That thing was absolutely awful - it was dirty, broken and smelly. I scrubbed my leg and foot for about ten minutes in the bath tub as soon as I got home.

I'm now in a walking boot, but I'm not supposed to start walking for about a week still. The tendons and ligament on the back of my foot are contracted and tight, and I need to ease my foot back into a flat position over the coming week with a series of pads under my heel.

I have some good news and some bad news:

Bad: It's still not clear whether my ankle is healed, or will heal fully. It probably won't be for another 3 weeks or so. Basically, if it pops out of place, I get cut and I start over.

Good: I could make it back for Regionals if I do heal properly.

I'm going to have to stay disciplined and stay off it to allow it to properly heal. It feels exposed and fragile when I take it out of the boot, but I know I'm going to be tempted to push it. Knowing myself, if it's not fully healed, I'll discover it sooner rather than later.

Anyway, I'm in good spirits now that I have the fiberglass off my leg, and I'm super excited for our road trip to Centex.

Pools below:

http://scores.upa.org/scores/#college-open/tournament/7064

I just wish I could play. Maybe with a little luck I'll get to play against some of those teams at nationals.

Stevinson Open Preview

2010-02-24T02:17:00.000-08:00

Our schedule is tough, but full of goodness. We play UCSD, SDSU, Arizona, and Davis, in that order. I wish Stanford had varied up the schedule a little bit so we got more than one out of region game (and a rematch at that), but I'm not complaining too much about that.

A few thoughts on the games:

1. UCSD - The Squids are legit this year. The guys that they lost last year have been more than made up for by the addition of 3 grad students/transfers. They're also benefiting from the experience of 2 nationals appearances, college and club for the guys that played with Streetgang. Their players are big dudes, and are playing with a lot of confidence.

2. SDSU - SDSU has looked very good this year, beating some good teams and playing very tough games with some good teams like Cal. We really can't overlook this game because SDSU is definitely a team on the upswing. They've beaten Tide twice, something we haven't managed to do yet.

3. Arizona - I really don't know what to expect out of them this year. I'm pretty sure they graduated Gregerson and Gaffni (unless they're back for 5th years). Regardless, they're a quality program and have lots of athletic guys. They're a fun team to play and this should be a very good game.

4. Davis - Rematch from SB Invite. We we went up 3 breaks on them and then blew the lead in the second half. I hope our guys are hungry for some revenge. They're very good this year, and well coached. They move the disc quickly and are smart players.

This is going to be a big weekend for us. I'm expecting us to take a step up after our first full tournament 2 weeks ago. We've gotten some experience under our belts and our squad should be at full strength (minus myself of course). I smell an upset or two in our future.

Ankle Update

2010-02-24T01:59:00.000-08:00

I finally got through to my doctor and got his opinion on my MRI. It's what we suspected it to be, a torn peroneal retinaculum. There are signs of a bad sprain, but not much else beyond that.

My doctor thinks that there's a 60-70% chance that my ankle will heal on its own without surgery. Of course, that leaves a significant chance that I will spend a bunch of time in a cast, and then in rehab only to find that it didn't heal properly and then have to start over again. However, my doc thinks that the best course is to try to let it heal on it's own, and I guess I agree with him.

The thought of another 4 weeks in a cast if it doesn't work out is really scary, but I'm pretty optimistic about my healing powers. I guess the best thing I can do is try to stay off of it, eat well and get plenty of rest.

Ankle Injury

2010-02-22T00:41:00.001-08:00

In our last game at Prez Day, I rolled my ankle awkwardly landing on someone's foot. A few points later, I was making a cut and I heard a "pop" in my ankle. I went down, and it was pretty clear that I had done something really bad.

The next day I noticed that the tendons on the side of my ankle popped out of place very painfully when I everted my foot. I went to the doctor, and he thinks i tore the peroneal retinaculum in my ankle that holds down the peroneal tendons.

I had an MRI on Wednesday, but I'm still waiting for the doctor to get back to me with the results. For now, I have a lower leg cast on and it sounds like the chances of it healing on its own without surgery are about 50%. I'm also hoping that there was no tendon damage either, which would make it more severe.

I have my fingers crossed, and I'm trying to stay optimistic about it. I'm super bummed that I'm going to be missing most, if not all, of Smaug's season. Right now I'm just trying to deal with basic problems like getting myself to school, getting disabled parking, switching cars with someone in my family (so I dont have to drive my stick). I've always relied on my bicycle to get me everywhere at school, and now I have to sit and watch my new bike gather dust after getting to use it for about three days.

I'm hoping that the doctor will call tomorrow, but not during my mid-term that I should be studying for right now. Regardless, I'm going to have a long rehab ahead of me, and the possibility of surgery if it doesn't work. A part of me just wants to have the surgery and avoid the possibility of spending 3 total months in a cast instead of 4-6 weeks, but I suppose it's best to avoid cutting if possible. It's all speculation anyway until I know the results of the MRI.

Anyway, I'm going to try to keep leading Smaug as best as I can from the sidelines, starting by going to all our practices this week. All of this news really bums me out, so let me focus on the bright side of my injury for a moment:

I get a disabled parking placard, which apparently allows you to park at meters for free. How baller is that?
I can focus more on school now that I'm not focusing on improving myself as a player. This is a good (and needed) thing.
I got to see Andrew Bird last night in Bovard at USC. FO FREE.
There's an awesome black fixie waiting to be ridden as soon as I'm rehabbed enough.
I have an excuse to sit around on my ass and watch nature documentaries on Netflix.
Finally, and most importantly, I'm very grateful for my friends, family and girlfriend that have done a ton to help me out during the past week. I really appreciate everyone that's offered me help, rides, notes, etc. Thank you!

Anyway, this injury has led to bit of an identity crisis in my life. For a full week, I did nothing Smaug or ultimate related with my days. I've always identified myself as an ultimate player who happens to be doing other things with my life. Without a team and season to focus on, where should I put my attention and energy? Smaug can still use my help, true, but in reality my role on the team is much smaller now. If I'm not playing, I'm just another assistant coach, and if there's anything Smaug doesn't need more of, it's opinions.

Anyway, I'll keep updating the blog with news about my ankle, Smaug, the upcoming club season, and whatever else in my life needs talking about.

My Letter to the SW Regional Coordinator

2010-02-03T10:45:00.001-08:00

Hey Cambell,

I'm writing you on behalf of UCLA Utimate. We think that you should reconsider your decision to host regionals in Colorado for a second year in a row. Traditionally, regionals has moved around each year, and I think somewhere else, either in SoCal or Arizona, would be more fair.

I've been working with Frankie Rho to help get a bid together to host regionals around here. We've been working on locking down a couple different sites that would work for both men's and women's regionals. I've heard a rumor that the bid deadline has passed. I can't seem to find any announcements on RSD or any other public forum calling for bids or announcing a deadline. If I'm wrong, please send me the link.

I realize that it sucks for Colorado teams to have to fly to tournaments most of the time, but locating regionals in an area with a higher density of teams is a much more efficient solution. Last years regionals were extremely expensive for our team, between flights, rental cars, hotels, etc. I'm sure the facility in Ft. Collins is very nice, but it's very difficult and expensive for 25ish of the 32 teams to get to.

We're trying to get our team to fly out to Centex for the first time this year, and we're working hard to fundraise for the expenses. We were relying on the fact that college regionals is usually not in the same place two years in a row, but this announcement has a very good chance of killing our chance to go to Centex.

One last point: the last two Colorado regionals that I've been to have been cold, wet, and miserable. I promise our weather will be better.

Please give our Southern California bid a fair look, and consider the interest of the majority of the SW ultimate players that you represent as RC.

Thanks,
Dan Oettinger
Co-Captain, UCLA Smaug

Sideline D Help

2010-01-25T14:16:00.000-08:00

I wrote up some short instructions for Smaug after this weekend. Our sideline D talk can be much more productive. These are few of my favorite ways of helping. If you know of any other ways to help from the sidelines, please let me know in the comments section.

1. The most important thing is to just be saying something. Even just yelling to run hard is better than saying nothing.

2. Tell your guy where the disc is on the field. Tell him whether it's far side from your voice or near you. This is a good thing to do when your defender is on a cutter so he knows how to adjust his positioning. He knows to play tighter or to sag off a little bit because the disc is not in a threatening position. You can yell "HOT" at the person when he is clearly the focus of the handler or when you can see a dangerous situation developing. eg FAR SIDE, FAR SIDE. MIDDLE. NEAR SIDE. HOT.

3. If you are talking to the dump defender, tell him what the handler is doing. The most important thing is to tell your guy whether the guy with the disc is looking at his offender or not. Echoing the stall count is helpful, and also saying where the disc is going (up, break, etc.) eg: NOT LOOKING, NOT LOOKING, STALLING 4, 5, LOOKING, LOOKING.

4. If your guy is on the mark, be sure to tell him where the receiving threats are on the field and where his marking emphasis should be. The words INSIDE or AROUND are the standard. Also, as you see the stall count get above 5, remind the person on the mark to shift his emphasis on taking away the around and pressure the dump throw.

5. Old school: yell "UP" calls. Yell HUCK or BREAK if it applies. Also, if a person is in power position, yell "POWER, POWER"

6. If there is one dude who is hucking a lot, every one should echo the call "HUCKER" when he gets his hands on the disc.

7. Special situation: If a team is being very successful with their huck looks, 1 person should stand at each of the front cones of the endzone that we're defending and help out the defenders as they come into the deep area. Make sure to tell them where the huck is going when it goes up. ie: LEFT LEFT or RIGHT RIGHT or SHORT or BLADEY. This is the only situation in which you are excused from following the play on the sidelines.

SB Invite Preview

2010-01-22T13:12:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow morning we drive up the 101 to Santa Barbara. The tournament is notorious for having bad weather. This year, it rained for a week straight, from sunday at Leiout until Friday night. Weather reports say that there is only a small chance of rain over the weekend, but I know better than to believe them. I'm bringing all my tights and trash bags in preparation.

Black Tide lost all of their grass fields because of the week of rain, so only 12 men's teams are playing this weekend. Fortunately, we were seeded high enough to make it in, but CSULB got screwed over again, getting un-invited from their second tourney this year. That really sucks.

Because they're going to have to shoehorn in all the men's and women's games onto the artificial turf fields, the schedule is going to be pretty wacky. We're playing Colorado and Davis in pool play, with cross over games until 10 PM at night. One nice thing about losing the fields, at least, is that we get our first game at 10:40 instead of 8 AM.

Colorado and Davis. I'm excited about playing both of them, but they will be tough games. It's time to see what we've got.

A few more...

2010-01-19T02:02:00.000-08:00

I'll write something about it soon.

Lei Out 2010: Success

2010-01-19T01:58:00.000-08:00

Mah Na Mah Na! rocked Lei Out. Definitely the best one I've been to. Im still recovering.

Back on the Horse

2010-01-06T23:30:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the long break between posts.

Finals hit, then Nicaragua, then the holidays, and then a whirlwind trip to San Francisco for new years. I didn't think much about ultimate from mid-December until now, and the rest was pretty rejuvenating. This semester is going to be a lot of work, and it was nice to pretend I'm a normal person for a little while.

We're practice and one track workout into the season so far. The SB Invite is three weeks and I'm really excited about our pool:

http://www.upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=122&id=7110

We have Tide, Stanford and SLO, in that order. Tide and SLO are good regional match ups, and Stanford is a semis team from last and we will get to play with nothing to lose.

First, though, is Lei Out, one of the highlights of the year for LA ultimate. We're debating whether to move up into the A pools for a second year in a row. It worked out OK last year, but we will see.

Anyway, here are some pictures form Nicaragua:

Fall Wrap-Up

2009-12-08T19:09:00.000-08:00

Fall ended on a strong note with a good showing at SoCal Warm Up for Smaug. We brought two teams, Team Hip and Team Bro. Because we lost Sean Ryan as a try-out tourney, we had me and Bishop captain Team Hip as a tryout team with all the guys trying out for the A team that we wanted to watch more closely. Arby and Knuckles captained team Bro, which had more returning A-teamers, but with both teams having a full 30 people, they ended up being pretty evenly balanced.

Hip went 4-1 in pool play, losing at 8 AM to a UCSD Z team in a pretty sloppy game. We won games against USC, Redlands, Irvine and Arizona Y (who was more of their B team). This put us in the 5-8 bracket on Sunday, which mercifully started at 11 AM, so we got to enjoy ourselves Saturday night. It was windier Sunday morning, and we faced a Long Beach team with only 10 guys that ran zone every point. It was not a very fun game. We played an extremely fun game against the Squids Rick Roll team, which had a lot of hucking and exciting plays. We scored the last point of the game, but hard cap ended us at 11-10.

Team Bro went 3-2 in in their pool, beating UCSD Y, USD and Northern Arizona, but dropping games to SDSU X and Arizona X. On Sunday in the 9-12 bracket, they lost a tight game to Azusa Pacific, who also ran a lot zone, per usual, but had also picked up three ringers from SLO who were looking for a team to pick up with. In the last game, they lost a tough game against Claremont on universe.

SDSU Y ended up winning the tourney over Arizona X. SDSU has had an extremely successful fall, and are looking to be dangerous this season. I am pretty surprised to hear that they haven't been accepted to the SB Invite yet. I think people remain skeptical of fall tourney results, though, which can produce some pretty odd results. It's all about the season.

We've finally (almost) set our A team. We're still waiting to see BSOD and Avatar, who spent the quarter abroad, and Syntax, who had the flu during Warm Up and couldn't play. Otherwise, Smaug will look something like this:

Attica
Avatar
Bishop
BSOD
Da Vinci
Eraser
Falco
Fawkes
Knuckles
Machina
Mongoose
OJ
Pagoda
Rachet
Scarecrow
Spectre
Syntax
The Arbiter
The Curse
The Flood
The Fuzz
Thor
Turok
Vector
Vonage
Whiplash
Zodiac

The squad is really big this year, athough Thor recently had ankle surgery to fix a severe high ankle sprain that he suffered at WarmUp, and he might be gone for the season. We made an effort to bring more youth to the team, because next year Smaug is losing 12 guys to graduation/eligibility. Still, competition for playing time will be stiff, and we expect everyone to earn their way onto the field at every practice.

We have 3 new players who we're really excited about. Our true rookies are Mongoose and The Fuzz. The Fuzz is the shorter of the two, and extremely quick with good field sense and sick lay outs. Mongoose is smart athlete, with surprisingly good disc skills and nice hops. Whiplash is new to the program, too, but he played a year with Santa Cruz' B team and transferred to UCLA, so he'll have 3 years in the program. He got probably 5 or 6 sick lay out D's over the weekend. The most important thing about our three rookies is that they have great work ethic, and I think all of them will contribute this year.

What really excites me about this team is our overall team athleticism. We have a lot of speedy and tall receivers, and a good squad of huckers to get it to them. Our D lines are going to really get after it, and we have a relatively large number of guys that we would be comfortable putting on the other teams best player.

We lost a lot of experience last year - lots of guys with high level club experience. They will be tough to replace, but I think our ceiling this year will be as high as we we want it to be. Last year, we were knocking on the doorstep of getting there. If people decide that Smaug's success is important to them, and put in the necessary work in the gym and throwing outside of practice, we can make a lot of noise this year.

We're running two different offensive systems this year, a vert stack borrowed from Strike-Slip and a split-stack borrowed from Condors. The vert stack will be very systematic and put our handlers in position to play aggressively and control the game. The split stack will open up a lot of space in the middle of the field and will give our cutters more freedom to take over with their athleticism.

The Southwest will be tough this year. There's a good chance we will only have 2 bids after UCSD and UCSB struggled at nationals last year, but the UPA is still working on a new plan to make the regular count for bid allocations, so we've been working hard to be ready to go in January.

Squids, Tide, Arizona and Colorado are the big dogs in the region, but the next level of teams have a lot of talent and will be a threat every time we play them. CSULB, SDSU, Claremont, SLO, UCI, and Colorado State are all dangerous, and I'm sure I've forgotten another good team or two.

I can't wait until January when we finally get to play as one squad at Santa Barbara. Until then, make sure that you're working out over break, and if you want to see us do well this year, call up a Smauggy and make sure they're doing the winter break workouts.

Sean Ryan Fail

2009-11-17T02:51:00.000-08:00

I was so pumped to go up to Sean Ryan last week. We had been prepping and planning furiously, organizing rides, practicing zone and getting people pumped up.

Tuesday morning I got a text from Big Jake saying that he was forwarding us the Santa Cruz email. I thought he was referring to the captain's packet or schedule or something, so I thought nothing of it. After all my classes, I went to check my email and find this gem:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: CSULB Ultimate <>
Date: Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 2:42 PM
Subject: Fwd: Sean Ryan field Trouble
To: Smaug Ultimate <>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Slug Ultimate <>
Date: Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 12:24 PM
Subject: Sean Ryan field Trouble
To: [a bunch of teams not including Smaug]

Hey All,
The UCSC men's Soccer team make the DIII playoff tournament and decided to host the first round at our lower fields. This means, that in spite of the Ultimate team having the field reserved for the last two months, as of last weekend we are suddunly very cramped for space. In order to solve this we are cutting the number of teams we are inviting to twelve for each division. Im sorry for the inconvience, the 12 teams invinted were chosen based on past attendance and proximity.

Thanks for all of your intrest hopefully we can avoid being screwed by our university in the coming years.

Here are the teams invited, in seed order:

Stanford
UCSC
California-Berkley
California-Santa Barbara
California-San Diego
California-Davis
Las Positas
Humbolt State
Cal Poly-SLO
Claremont
Chico State
Santa Clara

--
Cassidy, Russell, Max
Slug Captains 09-10

Keep in mind that this is Tuesday and we're supposed to leave Friday morning. I spent the next few hours seething and trying to find the phone numbers of any of the UCSC captains to call them and get some more info.

I found 2 of their numbers, and called about 10 times with no answer. I left voicemails for them to call me. I wrote a very angry email to them listing our complaints and asking them to call me.

Still, it took until late that night before Arbiter reached one of them and asked if they could adjust the schedule to accomodate for the teams that got booted. No, they couldn't do that.

My complaints:

1. Not telling a team that's planning to move 30 people that they're spot has been canceled 3 days before they leave.

2. They said the reasons for cancellation were proximity and continuity. We've been going since 2005 [edit - Kiosk thinks since 2000]. UCSD and Claremont are farther away.

3. Last year we finished in the top 8, beating squids and losing to Stanford 11-9. Crappy teams got in ahead of us.

4. It impacts teams that are further away more than it impacts teams that are closer. We have to plan more for the trip and commit to hotel reservations.

5. They couldn't man up and return any of my phone calls. I can understand that your school screwed you. At least be men and return my phone calls.

6. It seems like the right thing to do here because of the short notice would be to change around the schedule and share the burden between all the teams. Saying "F you" to 4 of the teams is not the better option.

The whole thing kind of took the wind out of my sails for the week. We were counting on Sean Ryan to be our tryout tourney for our A-team, and now we only have SoCal Warm Up before winter break, which were sending a split squad to.

I was so angry, and it was even more frustrating because we were totally at their mercy. There's nothing we can do about it, and it's not even likely that we'll play them this year because they're out of region.

Basically we had to bend over and take it.

Thanks Santa Cruz.

Rookie Practices

2009-10-22T01:28:00.000-07:00

We've been running practices 4 nights a week, 2 for the rookies and 2 for the A team tryouts. It's a lot of practice, and it's a lot of practice to plan. Bish, Trog, Yugo and I have been dividing up the duty, but it's tough coordinate a consistent message for the week.

It's been kind of tough to go from club regionals to teaching people that have never played ultimate before. The two worlds couldn't be more different, and it can be kind of frustrating at times. I get really excited when I see our big players make plays because I'm looking ahead to the Spring.

Today, though, I was totally happy when our rookies took the lessons of the day and executed them really well in our scrimmages. We were working on teaching them to recognize power position, throw dish passes, and make cuts from the front of the stack in our endzone offense.

We ran a dish to huck drill for probably 15 minutes, and did some mini end zone games. During the scrimmage, I noticed people when I got the disc in power position, there was almost always someone streaking deep for me. Our vets handler movement improved from running the handler set on the endzone as well. It was very satisfying to see such immediate results from our designed practice.

I think our drills have been giving too much autonomy to the rookies as players on the field. We should be designing drills for them that teach the simplest processes that veteran players don't even think about as they do. We forget that rookies don't have the basic instincts to cut for the swing or for the break throw.

I think it was someone from Florida that wrote on The Huddle that you have to put your rookies in the position to succeed by giving them the tools that they need right now. It's a balance between teaching rookies what they need to do to win at a tournament this weekend and what will make them the best possible player a year from now. For right now, I think we need to focus on what will make them win this weekend -- the most basic fundamentals.

Once we start playing our tournaments, they'll see what ultimate is all about and they'll improve by leaps and bounds. We met tonight and picked our teams for Sandwich Day this weekend. There was some smack talk and I think people are pretty excited. And our team names are awesome:

Goat-c, Bicurious George, and Up Town Brown.

My Third Club Regionals

2009-10-08T16:46:00.000-07:00

So we lost in the the backdoor game to go to nationals to San Diego, finishing 3rd in the region. I feel very split about the weekend, because we pulled out close wins in 5 of our 7 games, and we made it as far as I thought we would make it. We showed great heart along the way, and we had some pretty clutch wins.

On the other hand, we didn't put of that great of a fight in the game to go. Even though it doesn't seem likely that we could have overcome San Diego's talent, I still feel regretful about how we did. I felt the game slipping away from us the entire time, and I felt like there must have been something we could have done.

Playing with Strike Slip on the whole was a great experience. We went full circle from overconfident, to beaten down, and built back up to confidence. Winning sectionals was a huge accomplishment for us. We showed people that LA Open is back on the map.

Congratulations to the TWO LA co-ed teams that got bids to natties this past weekend (I wish San Diego decided they didn't feel like going to nationals after beating us!). That's a huge accomplishment and it shows the talent that our college programs are developing, and the increasing dedication to high level ultimate in LA.

Anyway, it's time to transition back to my last season of college. We're still getting about 100 people out to our rookie practices, and it's a crazy transition to go from club regionals on Sunday to teaching what a mark is on Monday.

I'm still recovering from the weekend, and I might want to give my body and mind just a little time off from ultimate and make sure I'm focused on school enough before I jump into the college season. We have lots of rookie tournaments coming up and it's going to be a grind, but at least a fun, silly kind of grind.

First A team practice of the year tonight. We'll see what we've got.

Club Regionals Preview

2009-10-01T02:29:00.000-07:00

It's late so I'm gonna make this quick.

Our pool is:

1. SS
2. Sweet Roll
3. Condors
4. Sprawl

Overall a nice draw for us in pool play. We lucked out by not having San Diego in our pool. I guess they were trying to avoid a sectionals rematch? We just have to be efficient and take care of business on Saturday. I'm guessing that our games will be long, because the other pool has 5 teams. Our 10:45 start time is pretty awesome, although Bob was pulling to go to the field early to watch the Bravo / Street Gang first round match-up. I think the more we stay out of the sun and heat, the better, but I'm tempted.

The other pool looks pretty brutal. Johnny Bravo, San Diego and Monster are three tough games. Hopefully they SD has tough games against JB and Monster on Saturday. Monster gave SD a run for their money at sectionals (13-10), and I really hope they rise up to the occasion again.

Anyway, if things go like they should, it should be Strike Slip/Street Gang in semis, and Johnny Bravo/Condors in the other game. Then things get really interesting. If we win in Semis, we play Bravo in finals. I'm not going to say that we don't have a chance to win, but it might be smart to concede this game and rest for the backdoor game. If we lose in Semis, then we have to win two more games ( 1 decent team, and then probably Condors/Monster) to get to the 2/3 backdoor game to play the loser of finals.

It's really tough to beat a good team twice in one weekend. We worked so hard to beat SD at sectionals, it's tough to imagine it happening two more times. They've probably been planning for us and will give us some different looks next time we play. However, the game that really matters is the last one.

It's going to be hot, and even though we'll have a bigger squad than at sectionals, it's still not very big. The key to our weekend will be to have both our O and D line stay very efficient on offense so we can minimize our time on the field and in the sun. I'm already hydrating now, and I know it will be a challenge to take care of my body in the heat. However, the weather report is saying that it could possibly be in the high 80s, which would be inifitely better than 100.

Good luck to BCBC and Metro! 3 bids! There's room for all of us. Let's represent LA.

Like I said before, I just want to find myself in the game to go and go balls out.

What Smaug can learn from Strike Slip

2009-09-28T01:19:00.000-07:00

There are at least three things that I can think of that Strike-Slip does well that Smaug can benefit from. In descending order:

1. Run a System

We sort of ran a system last year, but it was not not nearly enough. The offense should be well thought out and documented in advance. It doesn't have to be rigid, but there should be no guesswork involved for the offensive players on the field. We can beat inferior teams with no system, but when we play teams that are as athletic and talented as us, we need every advantage we can get.

2. Have called plays

This follows closely with point #1. Taking the guess work out of running an offense is an easy benefit.

3. Huck Smart

Hucks are green lighted, but only on the right kind of look. We want to lead our receiver with a flat throw, and the receiver should be to the opposite side of the field that the receiver is cutting from.

4. End Zone Mentality

Our end zone offense needs to change from focusing on a one-man iso to running off give-and-go handler movement, looking for quick horizontal cuts off the front of the stack. This isn't set in stone; the important thing is, we need to move away from a system that doesn't work as well.

The question now is, what should Smaug's offensive system be? I want us to be able to run both a vert stack and some form of ho. There should be as much similarity between the two systems as possible for simplicities sake. The handler motion is the most important part to lock down because it must be the most reliable and it should be the most frequently used part of the system.

I'm not sure if the Strike-Slip vert would work with college players. It's pretty simple in concept, but it might require more throwing skill than we have. Time will tell.

UCLA is a team full of very smart people, but I feel like we've haven't used our intelligence in the right way. Memorizing plays would be a good use of our brain power. Over thinking things would not be.

On the Eve of the First Day of Practice

2009-09-28T00:53:00.000-07:00

Smaug's first practice of the new school year is tomorrow night, 7-9. We have no idea how many rookies to expect, because the turnout to the informational meeting was pretty low, but we have a ton of email addresses on our list. Last year it was something like 70 rookies, and I'm hoping that we can at least equal that.

Since most of our players will have never played before, we're going to start off with 15 minutes of vets showing rookies how to throw. Then we're going to break into 4 groups and teach them:

1. How to mark
2. How to cut in
3. How to cut deep
4. Defensive positioning

After rotating through these drills, we'll take as much field space as we can and play some small scrimmages, maybe 4 on 4, for the remaining 45-60 minutes.

The idea is that we'll start to give the players the individual skills they need before they can learn team-wide strategies. The drills should give us a chance to see who are the more athletic rookies that we should take a look at for the A-team, too.

We don't want to throw too much at them too quickly, but we want to show them that we're a serious team and that we're going to work hard this year.

The Best Play I've Seen in Person...

2009-09-24T22:09:00.000-07:00

Bofa's layout D near the end of the game in Sectionals finals.

Thanks to Meeko for the picture!

Awww Hell Yeah....!

2009-09-22T19:36:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Adam Newon for the pictures!

The pictures say it all.

Strike-Slip came together this weekend in a way that none of us were really expecting. The D line converted their scores, the O-line was efficiently, and, most importantly, everyone was very positive at all times.

Our only real test on Saturday was against the Condors, which turned out to be a shorter game than we'd expected. We won 11-5, and after that game we took a few moments to appreciate the fact that it was the Condors first loss at Sectionals in 12 years.

On Sunday we seemed to have lost a bit of our swagger. We had to finish playing 6 pool play games to 11, mostly against college and pick up type teams, and it was hard to stay motivated. We had an especially long break between the end of pool play and going straight to finals. The loser of finals would have to go on to play a 2/3 game - just a little extra incentive for the winner.

Earlier in the day, George had layed out into my knee and ankle. I thought I heard a pop and I was sure for a few moments that my year was over. After a few seconds on though ground calling injury, I got up and realized that I was nowhere near the level of pain that would mean serious damage. I really lucked out - my massive calves come in handy for something I guess. I spent our long bye icing my joints down and popping ibuprofin.

We did almost a full warm up again, with 3 man mark and a lengthy, intense end-zone game to prep for the game. In the first few points of the game were a shock because we hadn't played anyone of Streetgang's caliber for a long while. They got a few breaks on us and we went down 2-5.

There was a small upwind/downwind aspect to the game, and going in the downwind direction the SD didn't hesitate to bomb it to Rookie or a few of their other athletes. We didn't really have an answer for their deep game, but we didn't have to.

We clamped down on their dumps and forced them out of the middle of the field. Our D-line caught fire and got a series of poach blocks and pressure throw-aways and we took half 8-6.

I know the UCLA guys at least gave a few passing thoughts to the Squids game at sectionals where we took half on them, but then gave up a late lead to lose on universe. I definitely felt the pressure of the game when I was on the sidelines. But when I got on the line, I took a few deep breaths and did 4 years of repetition took over and I played unconsciously.

Our O line played a strong possession game for the rest of the game. Our handlers were unstoppable with our dumping swings and give-and-go's. The D line got 1 more break, but we got broken near the end of the game and gave it back. Streetgang was playing a poachy transition zone, so point after point I would run to the back of the endzone and wave my arms around and try to get the deep deep to respect me. I cut as hard as I could every point, but I hardly had any touches. Bobble was on D and he was doing a good job and our throwers were respecting him. Alan broke deep for a couple huck scores, one of which was a full field bomb from Bofa.

Near the end of the game, one of the SD handlers put of a bladey OI huck that didn't have quite enough on it. Bofa got one of the sickest D's I've ever seen in my life. He bid upwards and tipped it away by his fingertips while Keenan was bidding parallel to him on O. Keenan came right down on Bofa's head and shoulders and he was down for the count. The trainer was over him for probably 5-10 minutes, and we were are really worried for him. Amazingly, he got back and seemed to be OK, coherent even. He iced down his shoulder for the rest of the game.

Eventually, we got the game to 14-13, with us receiving going downwind. I put my head down and was running big deep and under cuts. I got faked under and was coming in wide-open at Bob. He put up an low OI flick that wasn't quite leading Linux. Linux came flying in sideways with the bid pictured above and made an amazing catch with his hand literally on the ground. His entire body lifted up onto his neck from his momentum, but he was holding the disc in his hand! Our sidelines went wild and we rushed him with a huge celebration. It was the biggest win of my ultimate career, and the first competitive tournament that I've ever won.

I've felt all season that people have been too quick to write us off as a team. We have too many players to not be good. Something happened this weekend, though, where everyone started to believe. We let go of our mistakes and worked towards making the next great play happen instead. We picked up our teammates and supported each other. Individually, everyone played the best ultimate I've ever seen them play. It was special.

In a sense, no matter what happens now, I will consider our season to have been a success. We've seen what our team can do, and what we have to do to as individuals to get there. Our goal isn't to win every game, but instead to play every game as well as we can. Winning comes naturally if we can achieve this, and we should expect to win every game we play.

I hope we can roll into regionals and continue with our "nothing to lose" attitude. San Diego is great team, but now we know with no uncertainty that we can beat them, and that we have a legitimate chance at making it. The idea of going to club nationals seems so strange to me after just a few years ago, I was shedding a few tears with my teammates on the Ghettobirds after losing a heartbreaking game to advance to college regionals.

My first priority right now is healing my knee and ankle, and then it's back to work in the gym and on the track. I'm looking forward to regionals, and I really want to get to the game to go. From there, we'll give it our all and see where that takes us.

Sectionals Preview

2009-09-16T23:03:00.000-07:00

Pools have finally been posted. No guarantee that they'll stay the same, but seeing as to how it's Wednesday already, I'll go ahead and give a few thoughts:

Pool B:
Strike Slip
Condors
Old Men from the Sea
Las Vegas
Santa Barbarians
Claremont
Ghettobirds

Interesting that they went with 2 big pools instead of lots of pools and a bunch of bracket play. I guess we'll have a lot of short games and lots of down time between games. It's can be a tough to keep focused playing a schedule like that.

Street Gang is the #1 seed overall, no surprise there. I am a little surprised to see that we got the first spot in our pool over Condors after our scrimmage last weekend, but I don't think it really makes a difference either way, other than that we get to stay on the same field for all our games.

We have three consecutive games, a bye, and then our big match up of the day against Condors. I don't have much to say about this game. We will have to be mentally tough to pull out another win.

The seeding for the teams outside the top four is pretty arbitrary. Most of the teams are college guys (that aren't playing club) or pick-up kind of teams. Old Men from the Sea are a some older Long Beach guys, I think. I know I've played them somewhere or other, but I don't remember exactly where. Las Vegas, Santa Barbara and Claremont should be quick games.

The only other thing that I'm excited to see on our schedule is that we're in the same pool as the Ghettobirds. I love playing the Birds. It's my old team and I love seeing them get better. I'm glad that they're playing Open this year instead of Mixed; it's a sign that they're taking more steps to get better. Hopefully they can get enough people out on Saturday to play a game - last year it was an issue.

That being said, we should bagel them. The game might last 20 minutes.

Santa Barbara Scrimmages

2009-09-15T01:26:00.001-07:00

This past weekend, Strike-Slip went up to Santa Barbara to scrimmage the Condors and the Beyondors. We played in a softball outfield across the street from beach, with an ocean view. I'm jealous of how easy it is to get field space in just about every city but LA.

We arrived at about the halfway point of the scrimmage between the Oldors and the Youngdors. The game looked pretty intense and I saw Husak get about 3 D's during my glances towards the field while we were throwing and warming up. The Beyondors won about 15-12 or so.

The Beyondors:

The Beyondors are the Master's team put together by Steve Dugan, the coach of the Burning Skirts. Dugan seems to bring success with him wherever he goes, and the Beyondors should have a great run in the series. Greg Husak and Brandon Steets, both coming off national championships with Jam, are their big name players, but they have a number of older ex-condors that tooled on us. However, they don't have a ton of depth, and their star players had to play nearly every point.

The game started off with us going up a break or two. Knuckles had a nasty layout D on the first point of the game, bruising his ribs, but played like a stud for the rest of the game. Linux hit me with a flick huck over Steets for our second point of the game. It seemed like we were cruising, but we got broken on the next O point to bring the game back even. I picked up a swilly overthrow but quickly turned the disc back over with a shot to BOFA streaking towards the back cone with not enough touch on it. I had three turns on the day - too many.

They started playing zone against us, and it got them a few easy breaks. Our handlers were having trouble moving the disc around their double and triple team-ey cup, and they ran the score up to 7-2, Beyondors. We switched up our handler looks to have Orin and Bob do more handling and things turned around.

Our D line was the star of this game, getting tons of turns against the older dudes. We started picking up some steam and I think we rattled off a couple breaks before they scored another point to take half, around 8-5 or 6. We had smaller numbers this weekend, maybe 14 guys, so as we started gaining momentum we opened up the lines as our D played multiple successive points.

We brought it back to about 10-10, then 11-10, then 11-11, when our "hard cap" was called. Universe point. We were pulling on D. We were playing very physically and both teams were making lots of foul calls. One dude threw an upwind janky backhand that floated into a crowd and got D'd, but called it back on a foul. They moved the disc around their handlers for a few more throws until Dugan saw Husak cut deep and ripped a backhand, for what I was sure was going to be the game winning score. Instead, Orin, playing heads up defense, saw it happening and picked up Husak deep and skied him by getting better position on him. So clutch.

We worked it to midfield. Sultan caught the disc on an in-cut and turned to see Bofa streaking deep with 2 defenders on him. I was screaming "Sultan Nooooooooo!" as he threw a downwind backhand huck. It was out in front, and Bofa made an incredible layout catch past both of his defenders for the win.

The Condors:

The Condors seem pretty thin this year. They rely heavily on Ian Meyer, Jeff Silverman and Dan Bellinger to be the core of the team. They weren't at full strength Sunday - Dan wasn't playing as well as a few of their Tide guys. The Arbiter had also arrived in SB from Costa Rica at 2 AM the night before, and he looked pretty tired.

We were feeling good coming straight out of our last game, and we rolled out to an early lead. We went up a few breaks to start off the game and cruised into half up maybe 8-6. We relaxed and hydrated and I took some pleasure in hearing one of their captains going ape-shit in their huddle, screaming about how they needed to play better defense. It must have worked because they came out of half fired up and broke us a few times with some transition poachy zone looks to bring the game to 9-8 or 9's. But then, for maybe the first time, Strike Slip toughened up and put away the game by going on a run. Soft cap sounded at 11-9 and we got two quick D's to finish the game 13-9.

It was a solid win for us, and for the first time in my life, I can say that I've beaten the Condors. It was two really solid wins for us. It was great to see Strike Slip finally gut out some games and come through in the clutch. I don't want to put too much stock in these games, but I feel like it was something that we really needed as a team.

People forget, but this was only the third weekend that we've played competitive ultimate together. We've played Colorado and Chico, and that's about it. It takes much more time than that to build the chemistry that winning teams need to have. People have been bummed about not winning right away, but I have faith that our team is good. If it doesn't happen this year, then next year, but it will happen.

That being said, the Condors at Sectionals are going to be better than the team that we played on Saturday. I expect them to bring their A-game and I know that it's going to be a battle.

Sectionals are in Long Beach on the 19th and 20th. There are going to be 14 Open teams, including SD, SS, Monster, Condors, UCSB, Claremont, USC, CSULB, SD2, Las Vegas and a few others. It should be a good time, and I would recommend coming down to hang out by the blue pyramid.

One last thing: I made my car stay and watch the USC-Ohio State game at my parents house on the way home until the end. While everyone else was bored by the lack of scoring, I felt sick to my stomach because I was sure SC was going to lose for 90% of the game. Way to pull that one out! If only Sanchez was still starting at SC...

Later that night, there was even more hanging out with LA ultimate for Geoff's birthday. Those of us that stuck around until late were treated with GVP singing James Brown's "Sex Machine" in one of the best karaoke performances I have seen in a long time.

It was one of the best overall days I've had in a long time.

Once Pools and Schedules are up, I'll do some sort of quick write up.

Catching Up

2009-09-09T00:56:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the lack of updates. Things have been crazy since my last post, and I'm doing all I can to stay on top of things. In the time between my last post and now, I have:

Moved

I'm now living Southeast of campus in a very snazzy apartment with a friend from law school. Come by for a visit and check it out.

Played Discos

We finished 3rd after losing to End Phase in semis. We blew a late lead. I came to the conclusion that if we're not going to win by being super serious and not having fun, there's no reason not to have fun.

Played the LA Summer league tourney

Congrats to Purple for a great season. We were not at full strength and lost to a very good red team in the semis.

Gone camping

Camping with my friends is never a very organized or well-run affair, but this weekend was particularly dirty. We set out on Sunday morning of Labor Day weekend, stopping at every camp site between Malibu and Ojai. We finally lucked out and found a reserved spot that had been abandoned by Lake Casitas. Highlight of the trip was the night spent making chili over the campfire while hanging out with Fei, Brent, Balls and Mylihn.

Started classes

My weekday life is probably 90% occupied by studying and working out. The club series is rapidly approaching, and school is picking up steam. I'm taking Evidence, Business Associations, Federal Income Tax, and Entertainment Law this semester. My professors are probably the best group that I've had so far, but the workload is pretty heavy.

Pretty soon the undergraduates will invade the campus and Smaug will start up again. I'll have the added responsibilities of helping run recruiting events and running rookie practices, which will be a three ring circus if the turnout is anything like last year.

Next weekend Strike-Slip is going up to Santa Barbara for a scrimmage against the Condors and the Beyondors, Dugan's masters team with many of the ballers from the Condors dynasty. My parents are awesome enough to have the team over for a BBQ and pool party in Thousand Oaks the night before, and I'm looking forward to some quality hanging out time with the team.

I'll try to make writing updates a more regular part of my schedule, once I have a schedule. I have plenty of thoughts on Strike Slip, Smaug, the Series, law school, and fitness. I'm just finishing up The Inner Game of Tennis. It's a good read, and it's applicable to pretty much any sport. I've heard that some of the John Wooden books on coaching are good. Any suggestions for good books on coaching or sports psychology?

Discos Calientes Preview

2009-08-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

It finally happened - a cool picture of myself playing ultimate. Only took 4 years.

Everyone else is writing their Chico previews, so why not? I can't wait for this tourney, because we get to play all the teams that I've been wanting to play this season. I've also been eager for some redemption after Colorado. I think this tournament is huge for us because it's our last test before the series. Next stop after this: sectionals.

Pools were finally posted. They're gonna look something like this:

Condors

End Phase

Army of Darkness

Buddies

The Pirate Bay

Strike Slip

Monster

SCUC

Seduction

Club Sac

According to the schedule, we should have a first round bye, which is OK in my book. 7:50 is awfully early to play ultimate. However, the heat is going to be a factor, and playing in the cool early morning might actually be better. We're going to have 3 straight games between 930 ish and 1230, but at least were done before the hottest part of the day rolls around. It's supposed to be in the high 90's. I guess we should be more used to the heat after our 100 degree Pasadena practices.

For me, the biggest challenge with playing in extreme heat is staying hydrated. I need to drink as much water as I feel like I should drink, and then double that. Last year at Chico, my calves cramped up in the third round (and got me in a rhino highlight video getting pwned). Friday night will definitely include buying some pickle juice, gatorade, and clif bars. I'm going to experiment with playing with a hat again, too. I stopped because I felt like it was impeding my field vision, but sunscreen is just not doing it for me right now.

Before I jump into the teams, I need to make a point: Can teams please pick a name and stick with it! What's up with YR and Santa Cruz changing their name every tournament. It's annoying, it makes it hard to seed you, and you lose all the name recognition that you earn over time. Your team name is your brand, and you have to sell your team to people all the time - in recruiting, seeding, and tourney bids. A team should be an institution, and not named after the inside joke of the week. (Unless you're BCBC, in which case you're named after a joke that you keep telling over and over again...JK Calle)

Buddies

Cute name. Looks like they're a bunch of Davis guys, so they should be a decent. They'll be a good warm up before our SC game. But can someone please explain to me what is the point of this crossover game? Why do we play A4? It's so random.

Santa Cruz

We lost to these guys at Cal States in one of our worst games of the year. Dan Chaizin and Joaq are very, very good when they're clicking. The open division is totally mis-seeded. They're going to blow the doors off of Monster.

We're a different team than we were at cal states, and though it will be a tough one, I think we can take this game. This is our first big test of the the tournament.

Monster

This game is going to be super fun. Monster is lots of young guys from Irvine, Long Beach, and UCLA. Lots of my good friends are playing for them. They're not going to be a pushover, but I think we win this game. They're missing Danny and Steve, apparently, but they're bringing Biclops, Box, Stig, Bishop, Falco, Big Jake... ooh, it's gonna be good. I know you guys are reading this! We're coming for you!

Seduction

International team of mystery.

The way I see it, we'll be playing in the semis against either Condors or End Phase. If we lose to SC, we'll most likely end up as B2. Then, we play the winner of the Condors/End Phase match up. The only way this doesn't happen is if we drop a second pool play game, which i think is pretty unlikely. I think it's probably a toss up between the two teams, though I give a slight advantage to End Phase because of their chemistry. The wild card is Army of Darkness out of Oregon. I haven't got a clue who they are. Oregonians grow sweet beards and play good ultimate, right?

End Phase

These guys are a tough team. They're gritty, and they've played together forever. They never seem to quite break into the ranks of the elite teams, but they always seem to be nipping at their heels. They're very dangerous to a new team like ours, and this game scares me the most of the games I'm looking forward to. They love to break the mark and work the disc with squirelly handler movement, but they don't really have the tall athletes to match up to other teams. Then again, neither do we.

Condors

Ohhh yeahh... I think this is the match up that everyone wants to see. This is the bigger, badder version of the Monster game. I was giddy with excitement when I thought this might be the showcase game, but instead we'll get to see Metro vs. BCBC (fingers crossed, anyway). They only have three returners, but somehow, Santa Barbara always maximizes what it has. Silverman, Ian and Dirty Dan are formidable players, and I'm sure they've whipped their newbies into shape, especially The Arbiter. They've been silent since Cal States, quietly plotting their return in their beachfront apartments. My point is, I don't care who they have, they're going to be good.

We have a very legitimate shot at winning this tournament. I still have yet to win a club tournament of any kind, and I'm hungry for it. I remember the stacked Monster team from 07 losing a heartbreaker to YR in the finals of Discos two years ago. Let's look inside ourselves and find out if we're winners.

DPLP

I've still never been in the river there, and I hear it's awesome. Cheap Sierra Nevada is probably the best reason there is to go to Chico (and still not that compelling), so maybe we'll make it to the party this year. In prior years, the heat has really taken it out of me and I've passed out a sunburned mess.

Last night was Chotchkie's birthday dinner, and we had a blast in Santa Monica. Biking to bars is probably my favorite night out, and I like the Library Alehouse almost as much as Chotch. Here are a few pics:

You can follow Strike-Slip this weekend on my twitter account:

www.twitter.com/danoettinger

Also, keep your eye on the scores from ECC. Should be an interesting weekend.

Game on!

Colorado Cup Recap

2009-08-05T16:09:00.000-07:00

Colorado Cup was overall a good weekend for Strike-Slip, but a little disappointing as well. We played very well most of the time, but we had a few lapses in concentration. Personally, I had a very up and down weekend.

Round 1: Sprawl W 13-8ish

Three times this weekend we took half 7-1, and this was one of those times. We had a combination of forced D's and unforced turnovers we rolled up a big lead. I think they came out pretty flat in the first game of the day, while we were super fired up about our new mandarin-mango colored jerseys. Sprawl was probably one of the better teams that we played this weekend, but at the time it didn't seem like it. They started coming on in the second half and they actually won the half, but our O-line was converting very efficiently and we cruised through for a short game.

Round 2: Blackfish W 13-3

I had heard that Blackfish was a secretly good team, and given the fact that they had flown our from Vancouver, I was ready to believe it. They seemed to be pretty young, and they got their only points from a tall dude that had some sweet skies in the endzone before pulling his hamstring. I think we only turned the disc 3 times during this game. We finished with over an hour before the next round and we took some time to wander around and watch some of the elite games. Dean went and got sandwiches, and I ate most of a Pastrami sandwich during our improvised bye. That was a mistake.

Round 3: Double Black W 14-12

Double Black was a very cagey masters team. We were super sluggish coming out of our break and they were punishing our lazy D with precise throws. We trailed for most of the game, but BOFA called a time out to yell and throw water in our faces to wake us up. There was a lot of egregious call making on their part, and we started to lower ourselves to their level. The arguing and slowing down of the game really played into their hands. They had a couple guys that were surprisingly athletic for older dudes, and they cheated very effectively. At the end of the game, we came up with a huge goal line stand to go up 13-12, and then got a quick break to end the game. It wasn't a feel-good win after all the calls, but a W is a W.

Round 4: 99 Problems L 13-8

By the time this game rolled around, BOFA was in the bathroom super sick with food poisoning and our team was without leadership. 99 problems are a bunch of local guys that aren't playing in the series, so they picked up a few ringers for our game. They had Popes and one or two other ex bravo guys. It was really hot out, and the heat and the elevation really got to me in this game. I had a number of bad huck turnovers, and I definitely hurt our chances to win this one. We should have won this one, but we dropped it and pretty much killed our chance of winning our pool.

One of the best parts about the tournament was that during the showcase game between Fury and Rare Air, they had lots of pizza, ice cream, and beer. The showcase game was a blowout, but it was great to have some incentive for everyone to stick around and hang out.

When we got back to the hotel, we started up a frenzied game of 4 on 4 indoor Pooltimate that was probably more tiring than the entire days worth of games. We shared some beer and after a late night trip to Waffle House (great post tournament food, btw) we passed out pretty early.

Sunday Morning
Round 5: Riverside 1 W 13-8

We came out pretty fired up about our loss the afternoon before, and went up 7-1 to start the game. They were really not very good, except for Spike and an ex Squid dude. Score reporter has the game listed as 13-8, but that sounds much closer than the game actually was, and I don't think that's right. We finished with over an hour before the next round and I got to go watch SD beat Truck Stop in a very close game.

Semis: Prairie Fire L 13-9

Prairie Fire made a splash earlier this season by beating Johnny Bravo twice and is so far undefeated this year. I would like to see them match up against San Diego because I feel like they are similar teams - young, talented guys that have been around for a while but are finally getting their act to together. Half of PF seemed to be about 6'4 or above lanky Kansas boys, so we had a lot of trouble matching up on their height.

They skied us a few times, but I feel like the loss really came from our unforced turns on offense rather than turns they forced. We have entirely too many turns from our dump sets. We really could have used Buhl to keep our offense straightened out, as well as for his solid handling. PF played like an elite team, with fast, devastating handler movement in space and timely hucks to their giants. I think we were down 7-3 at half, and we collectively turned it on to go on a run towards the end of the game, but they pulled away with some big offensive plays.

99 Problems lost their Semis game, and didn't want to play the 3/4 game against us, which we found very disappointing because we only got two games on Sunday. (They also lost to Sprawl in the last round of pool play because their ringers didn't come out.)

Prairie Fire went on to beat Suess in the finals 13-2. I take small consolation in knowing that we were their closest game of the weekend.

Overall, we didn't have a bad weekend as a team, especially considering that it was the first real tournament we've played. We're going to have a hard time beating an "elite" team because of our lack of height and our youth. We're a bit like Smaug was this season, with lots of talent and speed but lacking big play makers that can bail you out in a tight spot.

I'm very disappointed in my own performance this weekend. I had a very good weekend as a receiver, and I came down with everything that was put up to me. I've been working hard in the gym and on the track, and I don't think I've ever ran faster or jumped higher.

On the other hand, I really struggled with bad hucks. I normally think of myself as a hucker, and I don't hesitate to jack it deep, but after a bunch of turns and a lot older guys having talks with me on the sidelines I started thinking really hard about what I was doing wrong and what to I had to do to not screw up. Once I got into my own head like that, it was over. Self 1 took over and I could only fixate on the negative instead of visualizing the positive.

I really wonder what my role on the team should be. Maybe my job will be to catch scores and throw dumps, but I'm not ready to resign to that after one bad weekend. I'll reevaluate myself after Chico, but 70% of ultimate is confidence and I think I need to be stubborn headed for a little bit longer.

I'm very relieved and excited that we got accepted into Chico. YR, SCUM, and Condors will be there and those should be some fun games. I want a chance at redemption for myself and another chance for Strike Slip to get some quality wins before the series.

One last story: On the plane ride home, Bob challenged me to a shotgun race. He hit on the flight attendant with the "polar bear" line (How much does a polar bear weigh? Enough to break the ice!), who then stuck around to watch our race. She was so amused that she brought us a free round of beers! And I won both times. Great end to the weekend.

Colorado Cup Preview

2009-07-28T13:06:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-07-18T18:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-08T16:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-06T22:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-02T12:05:00.000-07:00

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!

And a Great Idea...

2009-06-29T17:00:00.000-07:00

One more thing... I heard someone saying that they were playing for team Fisher-Clark (I think?) at Potlatch. The idea is, two ultimate players are engaged and they invited all their friends to be on a Potlatch team. Their last names are Fisher and Clark.

One of the days, they are going to pick names out of a hat and have Team Fisher and Team Clark play against each other in an exhibition game. The winning team will become both of their last names.

What a fun idea, and what a story for them to tell. I really want to see the game. I wonder how intense it will get. Playing to keep your last name. Wow.

Huck It Long Beach!

2009-06-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

I played in the Long Beach beach tournament this passed weekend, and I had one of the best times I've had a tourney in a long while. I haven't played in a social tourney since Lei-Out and it was great to enjoy a more relaxed brand of ultimate.

Calle invited me to play with BCBC for the weekend early in the summer and I'd been looking forward to it after the pressure of Strike-Slip tryouts. The team lived up to expectations. Here's the roster:

Fellas:
Jeremy
Dan O
Peaches
Calle
Dean
Nowak
Whitey
Jacuzzi
Adam Slo
Jason E.
Matt Whited

Trevor Smith

Chuck Kindred

Ladies:
Beth
Alice
Astrid
Hawkins (Saturday Only)
Emily and Friends (Sunday Only)
Roswell

It was a luxury having so many guys on the sand because we had five games on Saturday. We had had Strike-Slip practice that morning in LB to learn stopped disc plays, so I was a little tired. You would think that there wouldn't be enough playing time to go around, but I thought that it allowed me to play as hard as I could with no worry about saving anything. The depth of the talent on the team was also very refreshing because you could count on everyone to come up with huge plays, allowing you to not worry about anyone's responsibilities but your own. I also got to enjoy quite a few beverages without worrying about my performance hurting the team. Even though the entire team was impressive, I especially enjoyed playing with Chuck, who I'd previously played against on Revolver and CGNU. He looks unassuming, but the guy is a serious stud and a great teammate. Plus he plays his violin on the sidelines and has a great sense of humor.

In our five games on Saturday, our closest game was 13-5. We absolutely stomped on teams and our games were really short. That game was against a very decent team with Knuckles, Barrs, Milhouse and Concord on it. The team was not only extremely athletic, but very experienced too. There was no teaching necessary. It made me realize the big difference between good college players and good club players. It was fun to be on the winning side of games like that for once. Personally, I played very well and I was really feeling the benefits of the lifting that I've been doing. I pulled down a lot of floaty stuff and it felt pretty awesome.

Saturday night I saw Explosions in the Sky with Fei, Finn, and Lupin. The show was amazing even though my knees were aching from running on the sand all day. They played four about an hour and half and they played all the songs that I wanted to hear. Afterwards we got some bomb cheap thai food in Thai town.

Sunday at 11:30 we played the Cal Poly Pomona team + Jeff Silverman and Norm from USC. We won easily 13-5.

We played Semis against Chik's team who were mostly Last Call guys plus Lindsey Cross and Pebbles. After going up 2-1, we trailed for most of the game, falling behind as much as 10-6 at one point, I think. Up until this point, we hadn't been challenged at all, and they were all super athletic. However, we started playing with fire and brought the game from down 10-12, game to 13, to 12's. On pulling downwind, we got a turn on our goal line and immediately hucked it away out the corner. On their next possession, they threw a dump pass that popped up over the receiver to a laying out Whitey. Callahan to win on universe!

We met a very good Beeeaches team in the finals with a lot of ex-Condors ballers, including Husak, tall Tommy, Welsh, Corey Sanford, Rhett, Sam R and Bofa. It was my first club finals of any kind and I was super excited to play in front of a crowd. The other team had won the last 2 or 3 consecutive Huck It's.

The game started with ridiculous chippiness. We went up 1-0 starting on offense. Next point, Adam caught a tipped hammer that the other down called down even though it was clearly up. We got it back on D and then scored on a foot drag layout that the other team called out. Finally, for the third time, we scored and it was uncontestable. For the rest of the half, we could do no wrong. We carried our momentum from Semi's to take half 7-3, game to 13. The Beeaches had been turning the disc over on sloppy hucks in the wind and bad throws from their women. We knew that they were too good not make a game of it, though.

In the second half, we traded points to 10-5. Then Greg Husak went into Incredible-Hulk rampaging destroy mode. We challenged him a few times with hucks and he made sick plays to bring them down. They tightened up their offense and their defense became stifling. A few more bad decisions by us, and a few lucky breaks for them and the game was at 11's. Somewhere around this time I mis-read a floating huck from Chuck in the wind that I really wish I could have back. The tide of the game had turned immovably against us and it was like deja vu of the UCSD game at sectionals. They put in the next 2 points and the game was over. They played typical Santa Barbara ultimate with lots of fouling, beneficial call making, and bitching. But I have to give them credit for stellar play while they were down big, especially from Hollywood.

It was a bummer to lose the game like that, but overall it was a terrific weekend. We went 7-1, I got to see Explosions, and we had a delicious Indian dinner to end the day. It would be a blast to play with BCBC more, except for the following two reasons:

1. I enjoy the discipline and regularity of team practice, and

2. I still have a lot more improving to do in open and I have an obligation to Smaug to become the best player I can be.

However, if they'll have me, I'd love to pick up with them again.

Strike-Slip (Almost) Final Roster

2009-06-10T16:06:00.000-07:00

Just got word of the (almost) final round of cuts after Cal States. It's gonna look a lot like this:

AJ
Korb
Allen Lai
BOFA
Dot (yours truly)
ATM
Dean Bolton
Concord
Geoffrey Buhl
George Van Pelt
Linux
Laffite
Matt Welsh
The Sultan
808
Orin Moore
Samuel Regnier
Tim Gilligan (SDSU guy)
Matt Mihm
Knuckles
Trogdor
Jerry

There are a few more guys who didn't play at Cal States that are invited out so the captains can take a look at them.

Parrell (just left for Spain/ has a sprained knee)
ddavisson (LB guy?)
DaVinci
Keith Reschke (LB guy)

Notable last round cuts were Big Jake and Biclops; I'm bummed that they won't be my teammates this year. They captains intend to cut the roster down to "low 20s." The last few cuts will be hard to make, but I feel like they're our spots to lose.

Hmm...new team name: Smaugdors?

Strike-Slip at Cal States

2009-06-09T15:38:00.000-07:00

Saturday Morning 8 AM - Sockeye X
Loss 13-9

We had a really tough start to our tourney with Sockeye and Jam in Rounds 1 and 2. Sockeye came as a split squad again, and the team we faced had Trytiak and BJ from U Dub, but that's about all I remember even though they were all ballers. We started the game out on O and I hit Orin with a quick huck score to start the game. The first half was very close, with us going up a break but then giving it back up plus one more with the Fish taking half 7-6.

The second half didn't go as smoothly. Their tight man D forced a bunh of turnovers in our still brand new handler movement and they converted fairly efficiently. It was definitely early season for them, as they had a few unforced turnovers. My main thing that I took away from this game was that I walked away feeling like these guys were not gods of Ultimate, and unlike last year, I thought that our team could really play with them. Last year we with college Monster, we were a little too happy to be on the same field with them.

9:45 AM - Jam
Loss 13-11

Jam plays a distinctly different style than Sockeye. They were running a very similar vert-stack offense to us, but they just had more chemistry and better execution than us. The defense was noticeably less intense than in the first game (not to say it was bad, it just wasn't insanely good). One thing I was really appreciating was how much more physical the club game is than college. My man would regularly push off or try to body me up, and I started to return the favor very quickly. In a college tourney this would lead to foul calls and chippiness, but our Saturday games were surprisingly call-free. Fouls are called basically only for strategic advantage, but almost never otherwise.

BTW, there are some cool photos from this game. Thanks to Simon Margolis. Check out his stuff: http://simonm.smugmug.com/gallery/8485078_uU798/1/558358386_37Jim

Anyway, this was probably the best game that we played all weekend. I was definitely pumped to play the defending national champs. We tore through their zone pretty quickly early in the game. Concord had a visionary cross field deep pass. Welsh had a couple sick skies to steal a few points from them, too. Our defense really was clamping down on their dumps, and they started taking tougher looks because of the pressure. Jerry in particular had a sick layout on an upline dump cut (I think on Bart, too). We came up just barely short, but we were feeling good about our play and heading into a bye.

12:45 PM - SD Streetgang
Loss 13-7?

This was supposed to be our big rivalry game with the other brand new team, but it ended with disappointment for us. The wind had really picked up by this time of day and made running our offense more difficult. Our cutters were also hesitant with the new cutting patterns and SD was playing like a team very comfortable with themselves. I remember Keenan, Dollar, Wormser and Marcos playing great for them. They have a ton of talent, and the SW is going to be a real dogfight between Condors, Streetgang and SS for that second bid to natties. Thankfully regionals won't be in Commerce freaking City so maybe it might actually be enjoyable to watch this time. We traded with them for a few points, but they took half 8-4 or something like that. They cruised on the lead for the rest of the game.

3:30 Santa Cruz SCUM
Loss 13-8?

Santa Cruz is a pretty good young team, but we should not have lost this game to them. Dan Chazin was doing a great job at the handler position breaking the mark all over the place for them, and they were playing fast and loose. We, on the other hand, tightened up in the wind played very conservatively. He really struggled with our handler sets in this game in particular. I don't really remember too much about this game. I remember one play where I turned it on the endzone line, ran the full length of the field and knocked down a swilly huck. Oh well, emphasize the good, I guess.

When we got back to the hotel we immediately stripped down to our underwear and jumped in the hot tub. Amazing. Bofa showed us a great disc game in the pool which we played very intensely for probably an hour. There was a party with a tab, and I fully intended to go, but after watching Con Air at the hotel for an hour with the team ("I said... Put the bunny in the box.") all I cared about was going to bed.

Sunday 9:00 - Rhino
Loss 13-9

I really like the Oregon style of play. Fast handler movement and aggressive throws makes for a very entertaining game. We were pretty fired up after going 0-fer on Saturday, and we were tied at 9's before they went on a late run to put the game away. They're not as good as the Rhino teams a few years ago, but they're definitely better than last years squad. In particular, one guy in a pair of American flag shorts was killing us deep. I want another shot at Rhino.

11:45 - Journeymen
Win 13-6

I hate playing the Journeymen. It's a lose/lose proposition. It's totally unenjoyable and there's only potential for embarassment if you allow too many points to them. I earlier mentioned that I was loving how few foul calls were being called this weekend. The J-men were the complete opposite of that. They blatently cheat. We almost got into two separate fights because they were intentionally fouling us so hard. Every single D we got they called back, and they called terrible travel calls to bring back our hucks. Alan in particular went crazy in this game and was destroying them all over the field. Their cheating really lit a fire in us and we were getting lay-out blocks all over the field. It was great to see all 7 guys out there giving it there all, and the results were impressive. Still, it's not a satisfying win for us because they're terrible (but just good enough to put up points on you... a Downtown Brown team who won Fool's a month ago almost lost to them.) I hope we never play them again.

It's kind of a bummer that SS will likely only play 2 tournaments this summer, Colorado Cup and Labor Day. Those are two fun tourneys, but it seems like so few for so much time. There's always Potlatch and a few other fun tourneys...

Anyway, I'm still waiting to hear back on the final round of cuts for SS. I thought that Linux, Knuckles, Bob, and Jerry played exceptionally well, and I think they deserve some recognition. All of the young guys played really well, too, and I think it will be really tough cutting the team down to the final roster. It will probably come down to what roles are needed, because everyone who went up is a quality player.

The ride back down (as well as the ride up) was one of the most fun rides I've had to a tourney. We put 8 people in a Jacob's giant van: Me, Concord, Linux, Knux, Peaches, Scarecrow, Jake and Bogo. We played games and had some very funny conversations and the ride flew by.

Hopefully I the captains mail out the final info soon cause I'm getting antsy.

Strike-Slip Tryouts and Alumni Day

2009-06-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

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.

Praha

2009-05-22T01:08:00.000-07:00

You have to enjoy a place where beer is cheaper than water. At most places here, beer is about $1.50 for .5L and water is probably $2 for .2L. It seems almost irresponsible to not drink beer at a meal because it's much cheaper. I can't help but wonder what sort of effect this has on alcoholism, but for my short visit things are great.

In fact, some things here are just much cheaper than at home. A restaurant meal is usually somewhere between $5-10, with much less tip. Other things seem to be about the same as at home (clothes, electronics, etc,) but considering it's Europe, it's amazing. There are a huge numbe of Americans living here, both students studying abroad and ex-pats, and you can see why.

The city itself is beautiful. It's built around a bend in the Vltava river, with a huge castle overlooking things from a hill. Our apartment is half a block from the modern main square, and very close to the historical old city center. The buildings are ornate and very interesting, despite the cities communist years. It's very easy to get lost in the small, cobble stoned streets in the middle of the city, but that's part of the fun.

The language is a major obstacle because it's not really related to any other European languages that I have any experience with, but I'm starting to get the hang things.

I'm here with my family to visit my sister before she comes home from her study abroad semester. Our German family friends drove here to meet us, too, so we've been wandering around the city with all eight of us. It's hard having so many people to please (including a 6 year old) but it's over on Sunday so I'm trying to make the most of it.

Wednesday I took the bus out into the outskirts of the city to meet up with a local ultimate club, the Terrible Monkeys. It was basically how Concord described continental Ultimate. No one really plays in college. Instead, the city has 4-5 co-ed clubs that are more clubs than club teams in the American sense. There were a few good players, but most of the players were pretty novice. I got the sense that their throwing ability was more developed than their offensive system, so it had a more pick up mentality.

We did some tough conditioning work, with some agility/quickness stuff with cones and a much-too-long 3 man mark exercise that I'm still sore from (2x4minutes). I matched up on the coach, Jerry, most of the time and he was fast and tough to cover. I was disappointed we didn't get to scrimmage very much, but I got a good workout in and I'm glad I went out. I also traded my old Anomaly jersey for an old Monkeys jersey. It might be a bit small, but I think it's more interesting.

It's supposed to rain heavily today, so I think we're going to go to a museum or figure out something else to do indoors. No rain, yet, though, and the weather reports seem to have been consistently worn about predicting rain this week, so there's still hope.

I get back to LAX at 2 PM on Monday. Spring league is at 4. Can I play? Will my playing after 24 hours of traveling actualy benefit my team?

Also, college nationals are this weekend in Columbus. I'm following about 20 people on twitter that should be updating live from the fields. I'm feeling some pangs of jealousy for everyone that gets to be there, and I keep thinking about the Tide and Arizona games at regionals. We were 2 points away from the game-to-go, to play against a team that we'd blown a lead on twice. If that isn't motivation for next year, I don't know what is.

Anyway, good luck to BLU and the Hellions!

From LHR

2009-05-17T05:06:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in terminal 5 of London-Heathrow Airport. I've been traveling for over 17 hours now and I have a lot more ahead of me. Being here really makes me miss Edinburgh. I passed through here a bunch of times during my semester abroad. The automated queue system at the news shop, the coins i got, signs and outlets. That semester was one of the best periods of my life, and being here makes me really want to get out and experience the world more.

My travel time has officially become "too long" as of right now. I'm writing mostly just for something to do, because there's not much else to do here that doesn't expend lots of energy or cost money. I saw Gran Torino on the flight over. Great movie, and I really have to respect Clint Eastwood for producing, directing and starring in something like that at his age. The racism is shocking, but it's worth watching.

A-Rod actually got a clutch hit last night. Now there's conclusive proof that the new Yankee Stadium is a strange place. I'm looking forward to the point in the season when every story on the Yankees can stop including the price of everything. We get it - they spent a lot of money. But maybe all this other stuff is taking some pressure off A-Rod. This would be a very good thing.

I don't think it will ever stop being amazing to me that I can be singing Weezer's "Buddy Holly" at the top of my lungs with my good friends at a party one night and the next day be on the other side of the world. It's a shame that when I have the most free time and fewest responsibilities, I have the least amount of money to travel.

Anyway, I didn't bring a power adapter for my laptop so I'll have to call it a day. I'll try to update from Prague if I can. Supposedly our apt has wireless.

School's Out for Summer

2009-05-14T13:48:00.000-07:00

Law school finals are new kind of horrible that I've learned to deal with. The whole semesters grade rides on your ability to sit and analyze a ridiculous problem for 4 hours within the framework of the class. Each one is about 4 days apart, so you have time to study but there's not much structure to your life during that time. I'm definitely feeling burned out and lazy. Now that I'm done, I've been floating around Westwood kind of aimlessly. I really miss regular team practices, and it's been forever since I've played real ultimate. At least Saturday I'm leaving to visit my sister in Prague with the family. Maybe I'll feel rejuvenated after getting out of the country for a while.

The downside is that I'm leaving in the middle of the new LA team's try-outs. I can still go with them to Cal States later this month, but I'm a bit worried about keeping up my fitness and touch while I'm sightseeing in Prague. I've already emailed a team there and they said I could attend one of their practices, so I'm pretty excited about that, but it will be tough to fly around the world and come back and play high level ultimate.

One more topic of complaint: Strike-Slip? That's the name of the new LA Open team. It sounds like paper-work you have to fill out as part of a union. A team name should should be funny, intimidating, cool-sounding, clever, etc. But confusing? That's proabably not the quality that you should go for. I had to wikipedia it to find out that it's a type of fault line. Appropriate, but should your team name really have to have a dash in it? Like most ridiculous names, the team itself will create its own meaning for the name in the long run, but right now, I'm not sold.

Reflections on the Season

2009-04-28T01:18:00.000-07:00

Piggybacking on my last post, our season over. We lost in the game-to-go to the game-to-go. We were beaten fairly by a better team, although if the weather was different or the game had been in another location, maybe it might have turned out differently. Regardless, it was a tough match-up and we met our fate.

Still, I feel great about our season. We were a team in the best sense of the word. Peaches says that he's never been on a team where everyone gets along as well as we did this year, and I agree. What we achieved, we did with positivity and support for each other. We played our best when everyone, 1-25, was playing. We were extremely consistent, too. We never lost to an inferior team, although you could say that we never rose to beat a clearly superior team (except Cal at the tail-end of Stanford, and even that win is questionable given the circumstances).

Linux and The Sultan did an incredible job captaining this team. From everything I've heard, they completely changed the attitude and character of the team. We had almost perfect attendance all year, even our weekly 6:30 AM practices. Their leadership inspired everyone to buy in, and that's really the hardest part. They put a lot of thought and sweat into this year. They complimented each others personalities well, too.

Graduating/Out of eligibility:
Linux
The Sultan
Peaches
Chotchkie
Kiosk
Concord
Banshee
Thor (maybe)

Wow, that is a great line, and they will be sorely missed.

However, this is a perfect year to to build on, even though we lose a lot of talent next year. Our team is deep, though, that I don't doubt that people will expand to fill the vacuum. Peaches made the good analogy of trimming the leaves on a fern so new shoots have room to expand. We gained a lot of experience this year and I think it will pay off very nicely.

I think there are 4 things that we can do between now and next season that will make next year even better.

1. Get the A team together early
It took us a long time to develop chemistry on offense this year. This was partly because we were adding me and Concord, two completely new players, to the mix and losing important players from prior years. We need to play together more. Fewer drills, more ultimate. We have all spring to do boring stuff. Everything, including drills and conditioning, should be about simulating in-game experience. And once the team is decided, let us play without constraints. I feel like we did too much thinking this year. Simplify the offense to its bones let us have some fun with it. We can refine it later. I also want to see everyone playing every position, and people letting the disc fly with no repercussions. Wins and losses in the fall mean nothing. Which brings me to no. 2...

2. Throw, Throw, Throw
We all need to be better throwers. We shouldn't have anyone whose throws keep them out of important games. Everyone should be able to put it to an open man deep. Our offense was too reliant on a couple throwers. I think we can push more regular throwing, with an emphasis on being more productive during the throwing session. Becoming a good throwing takes tens of thousands of throws. Our rookies will have a school year to catch up. One thing that's become clear to me is that you don't have to have pinpoint accuracy to be a great thrower. You just need to be able to see and throw to space effectively. This means controlling the curvature, speed, and height of your throw. Direction is not as important. Our legs will do the work, which brings me to no 3...

3. Weight lifting and Conditioning
We were in pretty good shape this year, but I think we can be much better. That is the next big leap in committment that Smaug has to take. You could tell that Tide, Colorado and UCSD were in better shape than us. I think we can take some of the time normally dedicated to field time and get people into the weight room. I dropped off the lifting program in the spring because school was brutal, and I definitely felt a difference. We'll all be better in the air and more explosive to make the exciting plays that we love so much. I want to find out what kind of program a big name program does and use that.

4. Play Club this Summer:
This might be the most important thing on this list. Club is where ultimate boys become men. It's incredibly helpful to get a new perspective on the game, especially for the guys that have played their entire careers in one program. It's like leaving college ball for the pros and then coming back to college again. It just feels too easy at first. Club ultimate is an different, more unforgiving beast.
For the rookies, teams where they will get a lot of playing time would be ideal. They just need time with the disc in their hands and the onus on them to make plays. For the older guys, get on the best team that will take you. Absorb as much as you can from the guys that have been to nationals before. Hopefully we can all come back with something new to contribute to the team.

These things should allow us to really open up our offense and build our athleticism in the fall. Of course, a lot of its success depends on whether the smauggies will be willing to commit themselves. This year we took a huge step in getting people to buy in to the team. Hopefully next year we can take another step further.

SW Regionals '09

2009-04-28T00:08:00.000-07:00

Our season is over. We finished officially tied for 5th, apparently the best that Smaug's ever finished. The results were, in case you live in a cave:
1. Colorado*
2. UCSD*
3. UCSB*
4. Arizona
T5. UCLA
T5. Colorado College

Not the results that we wanted, but I don't think anyone felt bad about how we played this weekend. In fact, I think we played awesome. We peaked at the right time, and lots of people stepped up in surprising and awesome ways. Just off the top of my head - Bishop, Attica, Avatar, Vonage, and Scarecrow really impressed me with their best play of the year, just to name a few. I saw our described as a faceless army in the SW all region rsd thread, and I think that's great. It's a shame we don't have any super ballers, but we are a deep team and I'm very excited for next year.

I guess I'll run through a quick recap of the tourney...

Irvine - 15-5
I love playing Irvine. They're fun guys. They all came out with blue and yellow Braveheart style facepaint which looked pretty sweet. Roeder's throws were on fire and were always threatening to shred our zone. Other people struggled, though, and our zone was pretty efficient, especially with everyone not very used to the mile high air. And it was ass cold. Why did we have to go to Colorado again?

SDSU - 12-11
Props to Splash and Corey. Those guys are awesome players and they make SDSU much better than they would otherwise be. They ran out to take half 8-3 on us. Fortunately, the games and rounds were really long. Their studs were playing almost every point and it was bound to take its toll in the thin air. Our legs got the better of them and we crept back to take the game on universe at hard cap. Our season almost ended during this game, but oddly enough, I was never worried that we wouldn't win. Still, our comeback was amazing. We felt like the team of destiny.

SLO - 15-11
This was the big game of the day. Winner took the pool and had a straighter path to qualifying. (SLO, as it turns out, ran into Colorado College who was super-underseeded. Ouch.) They had taken our last meeting as Sectionals, so we were really fired up for this one. As a side note, though, losing to SLO at sectionals may have been very lucky; we could have ended up in pool D, the clear "Pool of Death" with some combination of Claremont, SB and AZ. Anyway, we knew we had to shut down Bacon, which we did through a combination of straight up marks, physicality and great D by Bishop. He still toasted us deep a few times, our offense connected more consistantly than theirs. For once, a game went exactly to our plan and we came out with a drama free, quality win. And we broke seed to win our pool!

Colorado 9-14
I almost forgot about this game and moved on to Sunday morning. It wasn't very important for us to win, and we decided to really open up the lines and save our legs for Sunday morning. Still, it was freakin awesome to play Mamabird because none of us ever had. They were definitely at a higher level than anyone else at the tourney, and they didn't even have Mac on Saturday. With our nothing-to-lose mindset, we actually played really well. It's amazing what you can do when you don't feel any pressure. Linux told us to relax and challenge them. Avatar broke open for 3 consecutive offensive huck scores. BSOD also had about a 5 minute possession our their goal line because we kept stopping to argue. DaVinci also made a sick catch around his man's head, although it got called back. Finally SOD put up a swilly throw to break side and we brought it down. Attica also played some great dump D.
Anyway, I felt like we really gave them a tough time with our tight man D (and this was confirmed when one of their dudes told us that we had given them their toughest game of the weekend. This was after they beat Squids 15-2 in the finals. Really squids?). Anyway, I think 2 things really stood out to me about Mamabird: 1. They are fast as hell, and 2. They are all great throwers. I'll come back to this later.

Saturday night we ate some BBQ and marveled at Outdoor World near our hotel. It's as close to Disneyland as Commerce City has.

UCSB - 12-14
Tide had looked really shaky on Saturday. Azusa Pacific took them universe point. APU had the disc on the goal line and turned it. After about 4 more turns by both teams, Tide put in the winning point. It's amazing that APU even got that far, but seriously, they couldn't have just put it in? We could have played them in quarters! Anyway, we started throwing a trap zone in the light wind, and it was pretty effective at first. I picked off a few lazy deep passes and we went up a couple breaks to start the game. Tide crept back to take half 8-7. Boutcher absolutely killed us in the air. We didn't have anyone that could go up with him. He and Silverman are Tide. They're great players, but I don't think it will take them very far at nationals. Anyway, we basically traded for the rest of the game. Both our offenses were very efficient, but they broke us once more near the very end as the cap blew. I have to credit them for being tough as nails with the game on the line. They have the big game experience that we don't have yet. It was disappointing to lose this one, but both teams played great. Sometimes, you have to just tip your hat.

SDSU - 15-5
SDSU had just blown a 14-11 lead to the Squids in the quarters game (sound familiar?) although I'm glad they did because I would not have wanted to meet the Squids in this game. They're guys were tired and the wind really started kicking up. We basically had our way with our zone O and the game felt like more of a formality.

Arizona - 9-14
The wind got crazy in this game. We had never played AZ this year, but they have 2 guys that stand above the rest. Austin and Gaffney are amazing players. Austin absolutely killed us with his throws and his skies. We just had no answer. Anyway, it was basically an upwind/downwind game. We traded with them until they figured out that it was more effective for them to run man on our upwind offense and really pressure our dumps. With the deep game taken away by the wind and their athletes, there wasn't much we could do. Austin was throwing huge hammers all over the field downwind, and connnecting a very large number of them. Going upwind, Gaffney would rip it and a they brought down a fair amount of these shots. It was good for a few breaks on us, and that was all they needed.
When it became clear that we weren't going to take this game, we started playing senior lines. It was really emotional with everyone cheering on the old guys playing their last points of college ultimate. They played great, too. They scored up wind and then got a break. Kiosk scored 2 points and Sultan was playing pyscho D and got 2 huge layout D's in the last point. If we had to lose, I'm glad it came at the hands of Arizona because they are spirited and really nice guys. I was really bummed to hear that they lost on universe to Tide. I guess they threw one too many hammers in the wind and rain.

And thus ended our season.

Pre-Regionals Thoughts

2009-04-24T02:06:00.000-07:00

Everything that could be said about this weekend has probably been said twice already. I'm tired of talking about team goals, personal goals, strategy, and whatever else. It's time to go do or do not. I don't feel the nervousness that I felt before sectionals (not yet anyway). I have full confidence that Smaug has the talent to go to nationals; it's only a question of whether we have the grit and desire to grind it out against equally talented teams.

The season up until now has been great. We've had huge highs (beating Cal) and devastating low (losing to the Squids). We've seen beautiful conditions (Stanford) and also the most miserable conditions I've ever played in (Vegas, beating out Denver last October and Edinburgh in January.) We've been in pretty much every situation that a team can be in, and it's time to put all the chips on the table.

Saturday, our must win game is SLO. They are very talented and experienced this year, and we had a tough loss to them at sectionals. However, I don't think that result was necessarily representative of our capabilities. We got the better of them at Pres Day, but this game will be a battle. Assuming that the winner of this game wins the pool, the winner will play Colorado in a cross over game.

We would likely rest our starters in this (relatively meaningless) game so we could be fresher going into the important ones Sunday. If we fall to SLO, every game becomes "must win" as we try to fight our way through the back door.

It's kind of surprising to think that this is my first college regionals ever. I've still never won a game at the regionals level, either. Just at the worst time, I came down with a very annoying cold and, of course, there's a good chance of rain in Colorado. Why would we ever play regionals outside of California, anyway? It's the most efficient in terms of travel for most teams, and it's basically guaranteed good weather at this time of year.

Anyway, gripes aside, it's time to either do or do not. The results of this weekend have already been decided by the months of preparation we've invested. If we can remember why we play this game that we've sacrificed so much for, we can relax and play unconsciously.

Follow us on Twitter!

2009-04-24T01:00:00.001-07:00

We just set up a Smaug twitter account so people can follow our results at regionals.

Check us out at:

http://twitter.com/smaugultimate

SoCal Sectionals

2009-04-14T01:11:00.000-07:00

This weekend had one of the most soul crushing losses I've ever had playing ultimate. But I'll get to that later.

Saturday-
SLO-B 11-0
Chumps. Bageled.

USC 11-1
I was really looking forward to this game, because I haven't gotten to play against the 'birds since WTOYL last semester. That wasn't with actual Smaug, though. I felt fairly sure we could bagel them and we came really close. Kenny D scored on an upline throw at 10-0. They were just coming off a tough loss on universe point against Long Beach, and to be fair, they weren't playing the game to win it. I think ATM and Parrell wanted to make it as quick and painless as possible so they could rest for more important games. Unfortunately, Ghetto finished 14th (losing to Redlands in the process), 3 spots away from qualifying for regionals. Next year will hopefully be a big step for them, though. It was fun playing against my old teammates, even though it seems like half the team is new. I'm pretty sure at one point they tried to iso me deep with Grant so he could sky the balls off me and they could have some revenge, but the throw was bladey and short and it didn't work out. Maybe next year.

Long Beach 11-7
I think we kind of assumed after USC took them to universe and Smeltzer was hurt that the Stalkers would roll over. I did, anyway. Instead they jumped us and went out to a 4-1 lead. They really, really wanted that game, because winner took the pool and would go to semis Sunday morning. They played super tight lines with Marcos and the handler dude with glasses playing almost every point. We finally got our heads on straight and started playing tight D. I think we took half, but I really don't remember this game that well. (I know some people have suggested that my blog is a little too self centric, but a.) I remember the things I did the most and b.) this is MY blog, not Smaug's blog.) It started getting windy and we both were running zones with a strong cross wind, I think. Anyway, we showed some grit and pulled out a nice come from behind win.

Pepperdine 11-0
I feel like Pepperdine goes to one tournament a year: Sectionals. I don't remember seeing them anywhere else, ever. They were surprisingly bad, actually. After a few points of playing zone on them in the wind, we stopped because it just seemed bad-spirited. The young guys got lots of playing time and the vets got to relax and cheer from the sidelines. Lots of guys had a chance to shine. Falco got like 4 D's by being faster than everyone, and Scarecrow completed the first huck of his competitive college career.

UCSB-B 11-1
They played a lot of Box zone on us. They weren't that bad at running it, but they didn't really have the athletes to do it succesfully. It was interesting because they didn't go to man on the endzone line like most teams but instead clamped down the zone harder. We stayed super patient to calmly put it in again and again. I feel personally responsible for allowing the 1 point that they scored, but I'll just decline to talk about that point.

Overall, a very succesful Saturday. 5-0, won our pool and we were going to semis at a luxious 11AM the next day. We had some Roscoes for dinner and I passed out immediately for a good 10 hours as soon as I got home.

Sunday

UCSD - 14-15
This game was the defining game of the weekend, and up to this point, the most memorable game of the season. We came out of the gate smoking hot. I hit Sultan and Concord early for quick scores and we were playing some psycho D. The sidelines were going crazy with Bro!!! cheers and we were on a motherfucking boat. It was real. The Box that had killed us last time we played them didn't seem imposing anymore, and they stopped running it after a couple points. We were playing super tight lines, and everyone was fired up because we felt like we the Squids in the bag finally. Avatar made a couple of huge layout blocks on in cuts. DaVinci made a huge layout catch on a huck for us to take it to half. People were playing out of their minds. After giving up a break or two, we got some breaks of our own back to go up 13-8. Then things went to hell.
We got a false confidence in our lead and Concord, Chotchkie and I all up terrible hucks which the Squids promptly marched up the field for scores. The wind had picked up by this point, mostly cross wind with a slight downwind. We put another score in to make it 14-11. I remember that guy Biel catching some crazy bladey hucks. That guy is pretty baller. They put up a desperation floater to the tall guy I was on and I went up early and tipped it back to him in the wind. We were receiving going upwind and they pulled a huge bladey flick pull...which we dropped in our own endzone. Quick score for them. Soft cap had already blown, and things were happening really fast. Our starters were pretty tired by this point because we had been playing pretty much every point. We received and worked it down the sideline and DaVinci put up upline throw to Linux but the wind pushed it down and Linux was about a foot short from catching the winning score. They worked it back up the field and scored on some not-very-pretty throws, but they put it in right after the hard cap blew, 15-14.

The next half hour or so I wandered around the field like a stunned survivor after a nuclear bomb, looking at the fallout. There was no outlet that I could find to express how I felt. I wanted to quit ultimate then and there and go home and just be a law student. It wasn't that I was angry or frustrated. I was just in shock and felt like I was suffocating and wanted to throw up all at once. It was one of the most emotional experiences I've had playing ultimate (the remaining list of which would be an interesting blog post).

I think there were 3 things that we could have done to change the outcome of this game:
1. Use the upwind side of the field. During the Squids' run, we forced it down the downwind sideline throw after throw. If we had swung the disc more effectively, we would have had better looks and opened up the field for our cutters and throwers more.

2. Opened up the lines a little. At 13-8 we had a little bit of leeway to get some younger, fresh legs in. Instead, we kept the same guys in and tired us out for the end of the game when we needed to close.

3. Not changing our offense. When we get up in a game, we tighten up too much. We changed the mindset of our offense from "attack" to "don't give up the lead," and this just doesn't work. The problem was exacerbated by problems 1 and 2. This more conservative mindset leads to more bad hucks because we're not getting the same open looks and flow that we're used to, so people are more apt to force a huck under these conditions, too. I think the saying is "ride the horse that brung ya." They way we were playing had put us up by 5 at that point in the game, and then was not the time to change it. People still need to play responsibly, but the looseness and fun needs to stay a part of it.

SLO 13-9
There was no way we were going to win this game. I think everyone, to one degree or another, was feeling the same way I was. They came out fired up after a close game with Tide and they were fired up. We wanted to crawl under a rock. Our sidelines were quiet. I have to give them credit. Bacon is a phenomenal thrower and that guy Paul (#1) in the short shorts deserves to be all-region. They got multiple lay-out D's on in cuts, something that usually doesn't happen to us. They wanted it more and they got it. Props to them for going and beating Tide immediately after the Squids rolled all over Tide in the finals.

APU 15-7
I was really surprised to see APU in the 4/5 game, ahead of Claremont, Long Beach, SDSU, etc. They really don't have much talent, and but they run a pretty effective zone. They asked us if we would agree to tie for 4th because they were tired. They only had something like 12-14 guys on the team. There was no way we were going to agree to that, though. It became clear pretty quickly that they were just going to huck and zone every time they were on O. They're zone was super porous, and by this time we were over the trauma of the Squids game and ready to nut on someone a little bit. I went a little bit crazy in this game, probably as a release some of the emotion from the earlier. In a trap zone on the sideline, I nutmegged my mark to Chotchkie on the dump and the whole B team on the sideline went crazy. I'd like to think that this was when they basically gave up and we rolled through the rest of the game. I threw whatever I freakin felt like and it was a pretty good way to end a terrible day. And we threw in an "Azusa Pacific, that was terrific!" cheer to boot.

So in the end, we finished 4th. As heartbreaking as Sunday was for us, I think there are still some positives that we can take from it. The number one thing is that we are that much saltier. I don't think that it we will ever let that happen again. The that we are lacking is big game experience, and that was about as much experience as I can handle at once.

I'm thankful that our meltdown, if it had to happen, happened at sectionals and not at regionals. Instead of going into regionals as a top seed with lots of expectations, were still the underdog and I think we like it that way. We have the memory of the squids game to remind us how good we can be, and how much focus we need to maintain. What can kill us is if we let that game affect our confidence, but I don't think that it will. We know that we can play with the big boys at regionals.

I want to thank everyone that came out to watch us this weekend, especially the Blu girls, Fei, and the Death Fist guys that were super energetic on the sidelines. It was exciting and helpful to have lots of people talking and cheering on the sidelines. I have a terrible taste in my mouth after this weekend, and I sure could use some of that sweet, sweet beer from Shifter's to wash it out.

Showtime

2009-04-08T15:22:00.000-07:00

http://upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=127&id=5879

It's sectionals week. Things feel different at practice. People have a sense of urgency that may or may not be a good thing. It's kind of funny how the series is the only important tournament we play in all year. Stanford, SB Invite, Pres Day - those were practice for the big show.

I think we have a really good draw for sectionals. We play 5 games on Saturday. The toughest one will be Long Beach, who we haven't played yet this year. They have some talent but I have no idea what to expect from them. I also don't know how healthy Smeltzer is right now, which will be important to their success.

I'm glad we're in the same pool as USC, because otherwise Smaug wouldn't have gotten a chance to play the 'Birds all year. USC played Smaug last year in pool play, and it was a pretty good beat down, 13-3. It should be something similar this year, although USC was looking surprisingly good last week when I went to their scrimmage. They're the 11 seed, so if they can hold seed they'll be going to regionals for the first time since 2004. That's something that I never got to experience when I was there, so I hope they can pull it out.

If we can hold seed and win our pool, we'll face Squids in Semis. If we can pull that one out, we'll face Tide in the finals. We'll have to play better than we have all season to win those games, but it's definitely possible. They're both formidable teams, but we need to get over the logos on their jerseys and realize that we can ball with anyone.

Tryout Season

2009-03-25T22:22:00.000-07:00

To my amazement, more than one person has asked for updates to my blog. So Concord and Diesel, I dedicate this post to you.

We're heading into try out season again, one of my favorite times of the year. The season lies before you like a clean slate. Everything that happened last season seems like forever ago and there's nothing but possibilities. Tryout's themselves are really fun because you get to play with and meet a bunch of new people. It's awesome to see everyone going all out to impress the captains. You are trying out the team, too, to see if you want to spend the next several months with them. Of course, the dark side of it is the possibility of getting cut. You just have to hope that they'll do it in a classy way and give you some feedback so you know what to work on in the future.

These are my favorite pieces of advice that I've heard for tryouts:
1. Be an animal on Defense - no matter what your position is, teams always need someone who can go and get turns for them. This is the easiest way to impress your evaluators.

2. Don't turn it over - People tend to remember the negatives more so than the positives. Don't take chances; let the returners turn the disc over.

3. Do what you do well - You know what you're good at. Showcase it.

Anyway, this weekend I'm going up to Santa Cruz to playin Fool's West. The team is "Boso Chulo," or "sweet mustache," and I stole a pretty good fake mustache from my friend Brent last weekend. The team is gonna be ballin. It's pretty easy to say that this is the best team that I've played with so far in my career, and I'm super excited. It's a little early to say it's a tryout tourney, but it never hurts to impress.

Roster (complete with commentary from Orin):

AJ “I skied beau on double game point awhile back” Jacobs

Allen “when my foot is not broken you best recognize” lai

Eric “venom” brach

George “enlightened caveman” van pelt

Ian “I am blond and I foul” meyer

Matt “i have a hat and a laser backhand” mihm

Matt “the cleat hooved gazelle” welsh

Andy “boffa deez nuts on your chin” sammons

Orin “it’s not a travel, just mad rhythm” moore

Dan “UCLA, USC, what’s the difference?” oettinger

Dean “I have a movie star name” Bolton

Jeremy “the mysterious addition” pearson

Jacob “my nickname is zip so I better be good” ?????

Taywaz “the tazmanian” block smith

Lafitte “I will stare through your eyes to your soul” embergo egan

Sam “this is football, right? Because I am good at football” regnier

Part time players:

Markham “I don’t know your last name but apparently you are blowing up the college scene”

Bob “the wiley asian handler we have been missing” Liu

90% in:

Mike “holler at your” kiyoi

I've looked up to a lot of these guys as I've developed in LA ultimate, and it will be sweet to play with them instead of against them.

We're a 1 seed. Down Town Brown is the other 1 seed. 808 posted their roster and they are stacked with ballers. Our first game Saturday is against the Matzoh Balls, who were ridiculous at Potlatch. There will definitely be some battles ahead of us. I'm just going to relax and do what I can do.

Exuberance (Post Stanford)

2009-03-09T01:01:00.000-07:00

Some weekends remind you why it is that you spend so much time playing this silly sport. I'm on such a high after this weekend that it almost doesn't matter that I'm hopelessly swamped with schoolwork.

The fields were worth going all the way to Ripon. They were grassy, flat, and perfect. I have yet to play on fields like that playing Ultimate. The weather was 70 and sunny with almost no wind on both days. This is how ultimate is meant to be played. We had a lot of really fun match-ups, and we made huge strides both on the field and in our team demeanor and attitude.

Anyway, the big news: we beat Cal on universe, 12-11. We went 5-2 on the weekend, but the last game is the one that will define this weekend in for me. Coming into this weekend, I felt like we really needed to take the next big step in our development as a team, and I think we did. The last two games with Cal we lost 13-4 and 13-6. It looked like we didn't belong on the same field with them.

I'll do a full write up of the weekend later. I don't want to toot my own horn too much, but I had a big sky to tie the game at 11's and caught a hammer for the win. It felt amazing.

I'm so proud of how Smaug played this game. We really grinded it out even though we were tired after a long weekend. Granted, a few of their ballers were hurt, but this was still a huge win for our resume and for our confidence. We finally won a big game. Hopefully we can build on this huge win and peak at the right time going into the series. I'm exhausted but completely reinvigorated for the rest of our season. Too bad sectionals are a month and a half away...

On the Eve of the Stanford Invite

2009-03-06T23:19:00.000-08:00

We're at The Curse's parents house in Stockton settling in for the night. I scored a nice couch spot and, no joke, a hello kitty blanket. I've been mentally preparing myself for this weekend all week by watching ultimate highlights and the Friday Night Lights TV (season one is excellent, btw, I'm totally hooked). It's going to be great to get all the stress of school out of my head and focus one thing only.

Our schedule looks really fun:

Sat Rd 1 (8:30) - Washington

Rd 2 (10:25) - Oregon

Rd 3 (12:20) - Oregon State

Rd 4 (2:15) - BYE

Rd 5 (4:10) - Whitman

Sun Rd 1 (8:00) - Pacific Lutheran

Rd 2 (9:55) - BYE

Rd 3 (11:50) - Las Positas

All out of region match-ups and no one that we've played before. Not the best Byes, but I'm sure there will be some great match ups to watch.

This is our last tournament before Sectionals. Let's make some noise tomorrow.

PresDay Recap

2009-02-18T21:05:00.000-08:00

We lucked out with the weather in SD this past weekend - not a drop of rain. It was such a relief to just relax and play without worrying about the weather. I think this was a very good tournament for both Smaug and me personally. I'm really feeling the pressure of school right now so I'm going to make this recap a bit shorter than usual.

I had Kiosk, Peaches, and Concord in my car for the trip down. Just as Peaches predicted, we talked some serious ultimate on the way. At least Kiosk did, and we listened. Haha. We stayed with Arthi and Ruth, Yugo's old Ptown teammates. They were super nice to us, and gave us sleeping pads and blankets and bagels. And they have an awesome, crazy cat.

Saturday -

We played some not-very-good teams on Saturday. Three of our opponents combined to score a total of 4 points on us. Consequently, the day was kind of a blur of short games and hanging out. No complaints here though. It was a nice change to just relax and feel pretty good about ourselves.

Sonoma St - 13-2
They had surprised us last time we played them by going up 4-0 to start our game at Sean Ryan. Not so much this time.

Squids B - 13-0
I think this was the first time I've ever been on the good side of a bageling. It was very short.

Chico 13-10
Chico was the toughest team we played this day. They were a pretty big step up from the other three teams, and it was tough to tighten up our playing after the level of the first two teams. We went up a few breaks on them and let them hang around until the end of the game. It was closer than it should have been. Chico is mostly cool, tho, and it was pretty fun.

Redlands - 13-2
Penguin's old cronies. We finished up early and I got to see the 'Birds beat Cal B on double game point. Woot!

We cheered on the ladies with some Chipotle and caught a little bit of the showcase game, but the Squids were beating up on SLO so we left. Props to Kiosk for insisting on showering in the UCSD gym. We were the first people to Rock Bottom and so clean! It was refreshing to have a few beers and chill instead doing the responsible thing and going to bed early. Bourbon barrel-aged imperial porter made my night, and I slept like a rock on my little couch.

Sunday

UCSD 11-13

It was chilly and perfectly still for our first big match up of the weekend. We came out strong, with Peaches getting a huge handblock on their goal line on the first point of the game. Break throw to Ratchet and we were up a break. Bam. We put in the next one too, to go up 2-0. We traded a few and they started throwing a box on us, which threw a wrench into our gears. They took half 7-6. They had a dude, Biel?, who was smoking us. We didn't have much of an answer to their deep game. We started cracking their box when we realized that there wasn't even a hint of wind so we could have what we wanted over the top. We traded with them until 11's. They put it in on O, and we turned it and they put it in. Game over.

The Squids are good, but they're far from untouchable. I would love to have another shot at them, maybe at Stanford or sectionals. After this game, we learned that Monday was canceled, making the next game basically Quarters. The top two teams from each power pools were advancing to semis, and we and SLO were both 1-1.

SLO - 14-12

The last time we played SLO, they had put a pretty good beating on us. That was last semester, though, and we're a different team now. We took half on them and went up 8-5, but somehow let them back into the game, at 12s. We have a tendency to tighten up when we have a lead, but we need to just keep playing the way that put us in the lead. I had a very good game, and I'm pretty proud of it after struggling to find my rhythm this season. 2 D's and 0 Turns. I also earned my only "Man card" of the weekend in this game. Sweet.

Cal 13-6
Cal is really freakin good. They have depth and serious athleticism. If they don't do well at nationals, I'll be very disappointed. I was pretty tired after playing a lot in the first two games, and their dudes were running hard the length of the field. They broke us all over the field (again), and made it look generally too easy. They loosened up their lines and we did a little better after half, but not much. We could have definitely used DaVinci, Concord, and Flood in this game. Oh well.

North Texas - 13-10ish

The score on score reporter is not right. This game was pretty close. We we're totally gassed after three tough games, and so were they. The scouting report on them was "the taller the guy, the better he is." So true. They had one dude who was just unreal. There was nothing we could do to stop #19. Anyway, the tall dudes were cool, but just about everyone else on the team were total douchebags. One of them pushed over Banshee in the endzone for fouling him. I really wanted to beat these guys, but it wasn't to be. One of their tall guys was smoking a shitty cigar after the game and I asked him if it was a blunt. "No man, I'm on the probation." Awesome.

On the way back I finally got to check out Stone Brewery, which was everything I could have hoped for. They had tons of taps, and I was ready to indulge when Concord told me that he was leaving early and I would have to drive myself home. Blueballed! It was still pretty fun, tho. I ate some tasty sausages and got to hear about the FBI from Secret Agent Jones.

All in all, it was a very satisfying weekend. It was a very good thing that Monday was canceled because it poured and I got to go home and hang out with my family for the day.

We have three weeks of no tournaments before Stanford, which is probably a good thing. I'm pretty beat from back to back tournaments, and I need some extra time to catch up with school, which is insanely busy. Just thinking about it now makes me want to get working. I'll post some more general thoughts later this week, hopefully.

TiV - Recap

2009-02-09T23:17:00.001-08:00

My car left LA around 10 PM on Thursday with Blackout, Peaches, Falco and Eraser. We had a pretty good time on the way, soldiering through some pretty scary fog and rain in the mountains. Luckily we got in safely staked out some good floor space in our sweet vegas house. It was complete with leopard print master bedroom and matching pool table, jacuzzi tub for two (where Scarecrow and Vonage shared a special bromance), and big screen TV - pretty much everything Smaug could want in a house.

We were in the Clubs bracket starting against some chumpy teams to start out with. I'm actually kind of glad that Merced didn't show up for our game because I think it would have been a waste of both our times. I heard they were learning how to mark, etc. when they finally got to the tourney. I sympathize with new teams, but I don't think either program would have gotten much out of it.

Friday

Georgetown -

Catholic Justice was actually surprisingly good. I'm pretty sure I've played against them with the Birds in Vegas and lost before. By the time we started our game, there was strong cross wind. This entire weekend was all about zone, and it started in this game. I think the final score was 7-4. I don't remember much about them other than their best played had a cast on his left hand and he was still very tough. We had some great arguments over plays with them, with lots of animated gesturing and acting out of plays. There were some up/down calls, but I'm thinking specifically of Ratchet snatching a disc from a dude in our endzone as he was juggling it, him ripping it away and both of them calling strip on each other.

Gonzaga -

They were definitely not as good as Georgetown. It was windier in this game, and the importance of field position became very clear. The team that turned in near their own goal line more was likely going to lose the game. They did a pretty good job of punting up wind, but we played some good deep zone D and knocked them down. I think we won around 8-4 or 5.

We ended Friday going 3-0 on paper. I somehow rallied our team to go to the Palace Station Casino buffet, which was 10 bucks and pretty dirty. I heard some people complaining, but overall I was pretty happy with what was basically a dorm dinner. I tried to go to bed early this night, but people were awake and coming home until about 2. Oh well.

U Conn -

What is up with all the good basketball schools that we played? Anyway, they were very athletic, but very undisciplined. This game was probably the best conditions we had all weekend, with relatively still air and dry fields for most of the time. On of their players had the most ridiculous grabs I've ever seen. Sultan boxed him out hard and he went completely horizontal at about shoulder height over Sultan for a one handed snatch. Both teams went crazy because it was just amazing. We were down by 2 early in the game. They had some big guys and they were in love with the deep shot. Once we figured this out, we started forcing them hard under. They weren't hanging with us in our cutting, maybe because they had a pretty small squad, but we capitalized on their failed risks and managed a comeback to win by 2ish, 11-9 maybe. This was probably our best game of the weekend and probably my personal best game as well.

Saturday

Cornell -

We had officially won the Clubs bracket, something that I'm pretty proud of. Cornell was our semi-finals game in the tournament to go to quarters. Anyway, they were BIG, with lots of dudes taller than me. They also had great wind throws and used the vert stack very effectively to break the mark all over us. It started raining pretty hard in this game and the field got very muddy, which negated any speed advantage we might have had on their big guys. I think Cornell deserved a power pool spot, and they went on to quarters. Good for them.

After this game Arby, Knuckles, Falco and I went to my car and sat in the heat for about 40 minutes trying to get our body temperatures back up. I'm not sure if it worked, but it really sucked getting back out.

Azusa Pacific - That Was Terrific.

We really wanted to beat down on a team after our first loss of the weekend, and APU came at just the right time. They had won their bracket because they play almost exclusively zone, and the weather played right into their hands. We went up big with some solid zone work. I hit Concord with an upwind hammer to the back corner, which was probably my favorite play of this game. It was also starting to get really wet by this point and the wind was kicking up. It had been pretty fun to lay out in the mud during warm ups, but now that we were wet and the wind was blowing it got pretty miserable. At one point, the wind started howling and the rain drops felt like needles in my face. We probably played for half an hour on our goal line. It was actually funny how futile it was. We had a string of ridiculous punts and great grabs to get it up to their goal line, but Scarecrow threw an OI into the wind and that was it. After this point, APU politely asked if we could just cap the game and we were only too happy to agree. I think the final score was around 9-4.

We had another bye after this game, and potentially two more games to play if we wanted to have a back door shot at quarters. We went and huddled together in the 5 tent. It was really pouring at this point and we were just miserable. There were jokes of mutiny that had just a little bit too serious. Some people were physically not able to play another because their bodies were just not willing.

Humboldt -

I'll admit, I did not want to play this game. If we won, it would have meant staying at the fields til like 6 or 7 PM to play Cornell again. Every square foot of the field was chocolate pudding texture. We were running open lines and I think I only played about 3 points all game. Carlton and Florida were playing behind us and they were absolutely at each other's throats. My general impression is that Florida was really douchey, but I loved the intensity that Carleton plays with. Anyway, this game would have been a waste had some people not brought the intensity after the half. Thor got an absolutely disgusting layout callahan grab on some fool. Thor and the Flood were head to toe caked in mud by the end, and it was freakin awesome. But I was happy to leave.

The highlight of my entire weekend was, without a doubt, the buffet at the Bellagio. People had been hyping it all year, but I was still impressed with the quality and variety of very GOOD food. I started light, with seafood and sushi and worked my way to the red meats, which were plentiful. Everything was several steps above what you would expect from a buffet. If I were served any of the dishes in restaurant, I would probably be pretty happy, but all you can eat after the day we had just put me in rapture. The highlights for me were the spicy tuna hand rolls, crab legs, seabass, venison, pesto mashed potatos, creme brulee and apple cobbler. I had at least 5 heaping plates of food. I ate like it was my job.

Afterwards we checked out the party (see below) and then went to play/watch some craps at the Flamingo. It didn't turn out to be the crazy night that I had hoped for, but it was satisfying.

Sunday -

Colorado State -

We showed up about 15 minutes before game time, which I really loved. I hate the really long warm up process. This would be an interesting topic for another post actually, but I think that anything more than 15 minutes of warm up is just wasteful. Anyway, I ate a donut, did some plyos and we went to work. We were trying to play loose relaxed, and we were winning for most of the game. They were definitely very tired, and their zone was super loose. I took a few impatient shots that I shouldn't have, but on the whole I played pretty well until the end.

Anyway, somehow we ended up at universe point, receiving on O and working upwind. We marched it up on zone O and Sultan sent me a bladey outside throw towards the back of the endzone. Passed over the defender and sat in the wind. I could have stood there and waited for it to come down into my lap, but no, I went up for the sky and BOUNCED OFF MY HAND. It was just a momentary lapse in confidence, but I'm still too upset with myself over this one moment. People heatedly discussed this play for about 20 minutes after the game, with me and Sultan defending it as a good look, and other people saying that it's not the chilly endzone O we want.

I'm sticking to my guns that it was a good look. It took two execution errors to make it a turnover. It was a high reward look to an open receiver to win the game, and I think we should take it next time it presents itself. We could have let the defense catch up and set up their goal line D which would have taken us a lot longer and maybe ten more throws. I think the probabilities go with the one throw in this situation, especially when it's two of our more experienced players. I don't remember how, but we got another turn and worked it up to their goaline again. I looked off Linux wide open deep on the next drive because I was trying to be extra chilly. Banshee took a risky cross field bladey look to Linux which bounced off his hand as he layed out for it. They marched down the field. Game over.

I like the idea that you should play universe point exactly how you should play any other point. Once you change your system and tighten up, and you will get in your own head. You should just relax and do what you know how to do. The other idea here is that you should be playing every O point as if it were universe point. If you are changing your mindset that much, maybe you are taking too many risks in your normal offense.

Northwestern -

Nut is a very solid team, and being from the windy city really must help them out in conditions like this. Paul Sohn is a baller and played very well for them - RoSham alumni represent! They beat us by a few by using a killer trap zone and better punting strategy.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how we played this weekend. Winning our bracket is something to be proud of. I wish that we had stayed a little mentally stronger for the Humboldt game, and I wish that we had pulled out at least one of the Sunday games. We definitely improved and and I feel like I got to know my teammates a lot better, so I guess it wasn't such a waste of a weekend after all. I can only pray that it doesn't rain next weekend. I will cry if it does.

I wanted to stick around and watch BLU in semis and the men's games, but my car was pretty desperate to get home, which in retrospect was probably a good idea. I had a ton of work to do Sunday night/ Monday morning and I barely finished it. Ultimate is definitely effecting the quality of my school work, but I knew that it would coming in. What I need to remember is that, if I'm going to be making this sacrifice, it will be a waste to play anything less than as hard as I can, all of the time.

TiV - The Worst Idea Ever

2009-02-09T22:39:00.000-08:00

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.

The Honey Moon is Over

2009-02-05T02:00:00.001-08:00

The euphoria of the beginning of the season has past. Our practices aren't quite as intense and things are starting to become routine. Now it's time to get down to the grind. Here are a few ideas that I wrote up of ways to get us through this first challenge:

1. Competition

I think we can compete more in practice and on the track. It's so much more motivating to try to win something in a drill than to run in circles by yourself. We already do this to some extent, but maybe we should try to add an aspect of competition to as much as possible. I liked the idea of mini-games to put in action what we've been talking about, either full field or 3's or whatever.

Emphasize winning the details.

2. Shake Up the Routine

Familiarity can be good, but it can be a real problem, too. As the season goes on, it's going to be harder to break us of our habits, both good and bad. We should try to think of some interesting ways to make us a little less comfortable with ourselves. New surroundings, new games, new rules for scrimmages, new opponents.

I'd like to see us do some more modified rules scrimmages, like stall-out on 4. Maybe something with added incentive to stretch the field.

I think we we're practicing better earlier in the season because we felt like we were competing for something, like spots on the roster, playing time, etc. Everything was new and exciting. I think we can try to think of some things to bring both of those ideas back to practice. Incentives. People love a carrot dangled in front of them.

3. A few random thoughts:

I still feel like our game would benefit by being opened up. Opposing defenses seem to get a little bit too comfortable once they catch on to our small-ball game. Even if we don't take very many shots, the fear of the deep throw is more important than actually gaining lots of yards and scores by throwing deep. It just the other team more honest and we'd gain more on the in cuts.

To help promote this, I think we can all do a much better job when we throw in the quad. I'm out there pretty often and I feel like people don't stretch out their throws enough. We can all become better throwers if we get better at controlling our OI and IO big throws in addition to the bread and butter flat throw. Even if we only throw flat in games, hucks and throws in the wind will really benefit.

Lately our stack has been drifting too deep. I think it might be a result of people stretching their deep cuts way too far. It's a systemic problem. Handlers don't have good looks down field, and viable longer in-cuts get cut off. Continue looks get clogged. This killed us in the second half of the Davis game. Maybe there are ways to use rules within a mini-game to promote this goal.

4. One last note about our mentality:

I think we need to loosen up a little bit. We've acting like we're the shit, but really we're a team with everything to gain and nothing to lose. The best way to start believing that we're winners is to actually do some winning. Once we believe that we're winners, we're that much more likely to make reality match our perceptions. I think Vegas will be a great chance to refresh ourselves and remember why we play this game in the first place.

A Great Weekend for Sports

2009-02-01T20:15:00.000-08:00

I have a memo due on Monday, so of course I've taken every opportunity this weekend to watch sports on TV that I possibly could. The obvious one is the Super Bowl, which was a great game. Larry Fitzgerald is unstoppable, and I don't understand why the Cardinals took so long to start throwing to him. It hasn't really mattered who or how many people are covering him. It's always amazing to see an athlete that is a level above every one else around him. Lebron right now comes to mind, too. The Steelers were clutch, though, and they deserved to win this game.

What I might remember more from this weekend was watching Nadal v. Federer in the Aussie Open late last night. I've never really watched tennis before, and I thought I would check it out. The level of focus and intensity that they play at is unreal. I never realized that matches could go for four or five hours. It actually reminded me of Ultimate in the combination of physical exertion, finesse and length of of play. It's also all about getting breaks when you're not on serve. It was impresive seeing the mental strength that both of these guys bring to the court. Both maintained their composure when they were down in the set and just played one point at a time.

Time to bite the bullet and get back to work...

The SB Invite Recap

2009-01-28T23:47:00.000-08:00

We started the season up in Santa Barbara this past weekend. I had heard some people saying that we were in the "pool of death" with Tide, Davis, and UGMO. This turned out to be true, but I'm glad that we got to see the competition that we did on day one. It's always fun to get to play inter-regional match-ups, especially at a SoCal tourney. We had a pretty cushy start time of 1 PM, and to our amazement, it didn't rain on us once all weekend despite a storm on Thursday and Friday.

We spent the night in The Sultan's church rec room, which was way more awesome than it sounds. There was pool, ping pong, air-hockey and Ultivillage playing on a laptop. It was probably one of the best places I've stayed at a tournament. We slept in, went to cheer on the women, and check out the competition. We had a long day ahead of us.

Game 1: UCSB

Both teams were playing surprisingly efficient offense for the first tourney of the year. There were not very many turns and only one or two breaks in the first half. Tide may have lost some of their ballers from a year or two ago, but they have a great system in place and they are always competitive. Jeff Silverman is a pretty unreal athlete. He seemed to really carry SB over Cal in the showcase game. We did our best just to contain him.

As usual with SB, the game was chippy with lots of spikes and foul calls. I had a questionable huck to Linux where he skyed two guys and looked pretty awesome. In the second half our offense faltered a bit and the Tide D stepped up. Tide went up 12-10 (games to 13) with a 2 minutes left before hard cap. We went into panic mode, and Tide did their best to try to slow us down. Somehow I slipped through their poachy D and caught a full field lazer down the line from Da Vinci almost unguarded in the endzone. Then the hard cap blew. We pulled out a clutch D and some chilly endzone O for the score to bring it to 12-12 universe. I took a gamble on a big OI forehand pull with the downwind trying to get the roll with the wind. In retrospect, I should have stuck with the floaty pull that had been money all game. They knocked it down and someone, I think Silverman, got open downfield for a big huck reception and a quick score. Very anti-climactic for us, but it was still one of the more exciting games I've played in.

Game 2: Cal

We moved fields from the sweet rubberized turf to a terrible muddy pit of a field for this game. there were two giant puddles that were in play that were at least 10x10. I only had to wade through them once, to pull out a wet, disgusting pull. Anyway, both teams came out sloppy. Cal had a lot of turns early, but we looked sluggish coming off our intense game just a few minutes before. UGMO's returning some serious ballers, a few guys from Jam and Revolver and a mixed team I think, and of course Andrew "Cougar"Hagen. That kid has springs for legs and plays some great D. The point: Cal looked really good. They won the tourney beating Stanford big in the finals.

Anyway, the field was sloppy and so was our play. I hit Linux with a sweet backhand shot deep, but I had at least 3 turns in this game. They eventually tightened up and started tearing us apart with IO breaks and hucks to their studs. I think the final score was 13-6 or so. We were never really in the game, and I would like another shot at them. We might not beat them, but we can certainly do better than that.

Game 3: Davis

Davis did really well at Sean Ryan, and they were seeded pretty highly in the tourney, 5th I think. They're a well coached team. I don't really know the guys, but I had fun with the guys that I was matched up on and they were pretty spirited. We came out ready to play after a lengthy break from our last game and took half, 7-6. They came out really fired up, like we knew they would, and tightened up their O. We traded for a few points, during which I got terrible calf cramps and was out for the rest of the game. I watched from the sidelines as the game slipped away from us. Final score was something like 13-10 them.

After some delicious Freebirds nachos, I forced my car to go watch the showcase game, which was surprisingly entertaining. Cal was bombing it to their deeps and Santa Barbara was playing smart O. Cal went on a run down 12-8 or something like that to bring it to 12-11, but SB punched it in for the win. We spent the night watching the Miss America pageant at Sultan's. I ate about 6 snickerdoodle cookies and passed out on the floor.

Day 2

Game 1: Irvine

Our first game was at 11:30, and it was Windy. There was a pretty stiff cross wind that was changing directions so neither end zone had a big advantage. I really like playing Irvine because they are fun guys and I like matching up with my teammates from this summer, Box, Roeder and KG. Their receivers Stig and Fish are athletic and becoming good very fast, and they have Miller and Eeyore, but beyond that, they didn't really have the depth to keep up with us. The game was even until about 6-6 when we started throwing a flat cup zone and went on a 7-1 run or something like that. It will be interesting to match up against them when the wind will expose their weaker throwers less, but today, we had the upper hand. Anyway, it was fun game and I got into Box' head talking shit to him on the field. Maybe.

Game 2: Colorado St.

We played the Colorado St. alum club team in October and they had some studly receivers. Thankfully, they were not around on this years team, but they are still a very athletic team with good wind throws because they are from CO and not CA. They were running an interesting O with 1 guy iso'd and 3 guys chilling and waiting for continues. We were hesitant to run zone against them at first because we thought they would laugh in our faces and throw hammers all over the place to pwn us, but that didn't happen. We found ourselves down 10-6 when we finally started sticking with our zone in the heavy wind. Chotchkie's bladey flick huck was on fire and pinned them in the back of the end zone every time for easy turns for us when we were playing upwind D. On O, we managed to work it up with a combination of handler movement and choice hucks. * Luckiest play of the weekend: one of our cutters was stuck on the front corner of the endzone with a high stall count and throws a swilly hammer into a crowd. The disc gets macked, flutterguts style, towards Arbiter who jabs out his arm sideways and snatches it for the score. Wow. At some point, Thor decided that he had enough of this bullshit and he was going to single handedly win us the game. I remember during the soft cap he had a full extension lay out at the front corner of the endzone for a score, a sick upward layout deep D, and he broke open for a full field downwind bomb to take the game to universe. Universe point had a pair of turns for both sides, but we put it in upwind to take the game. It felt good, but it also felt like we stole this one. Most of our comeback came during soft cap. Oh well, it's a long season.

Game 3: Davis. Again.

Our last game was a rematch on the same field with the Dogs. It was the Beer bracket championship, so we were playing next to the Stanford/ Cal final, which was pretty fun. It looked like people were giving out some absolute bitchings in that game and it's a shame I didn't get to watch. We were determined not to let the same thing happen with this game (that was to 15, with shorter rounds than Saturday for some reason) as had happened the day before. But that's exactly what happened. Deja vu. We took half 8-5, and they came out fired up again. I didn't play very much during this one. My left contact lens had gotten something cloudy in it (sunscreen?) and I was struggling to overcome the distraction. I threw a few bad hucks (and 1 good one! hah!) and got taken out of the handler rotation by the coaches. I played a little bit on D, but by the second half our D line wasn't playing much because we kept getting scored on. I watched the game slip away from us on the sidelines again, 13-9ish, capped.

Overall, I'm really happy with the weekend. I was bummed that we didn't win more games, but we definitely improved as a team.

Personally, I played alright, but I could have played a lot better. Consistency is the name of the game for me now, I think. I had entirely too many turns for an offensive handler, at least a couple per game. The coaches talked with me this week and I think I'll be cutting more in the future, which is something I'm more comfortable with, but we'll see how it works out. Whatever helps us win. I can only remember 1 solid D that I had all weekend (in the CO St. game), which is disappointing to me, although I played mostly O-line.

These things were bothering me a lot until I remembered that this was my first real tournament with this team, and my first tournament in the role of offensive handler. There are big improvements to come in the future, and now I know more clearly what I need to work on. I need to get out of the Ghettobirds mindset of forcing something to happen and relax and put more trust in my teammates, because they are ballers. It will come. I can't wait for Vegas.

Why start a blog?

2009-01-26T01:25:00.000-08:00

They say you should write about what you know. If you are a chef, you should blog about cooking. If you're a designer, you should blog about design. Well, I happen to know a lot about making bad decisions. They mostly fall under the following categories:

1. Playing Ultimate

2. Going to Law School

3. At UCLA

I spend so much time thinking about these things, I might as well write them down somewhere. And I'm just kidding about the bad decisions. Sort of.

I'm planning a write up of the SB invite in the next day or two.