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.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
What does this say about law students?
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
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
Friday, March 4, 2011
I'm going to Vegas!
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.
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.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Work on Your Jump Shot
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.
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.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Kaimana Klassic 24 - Off the Field
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...
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...
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Lei Out, and Life After College Ultimate
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...
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...
Monday, November 1, 2010
Thoughts on Nationals
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.
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.
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