I got to play in an ultimate tournament this weekend which was a ton of fun. Originally I was going to pick up with a team based out of wichita, but they ended up having enough guys, so I picked up with a local group of University of Arkansas students and recent alumni. I had met some of them on Thursday at pick up, so it was slightly less awkward. Like most college ultimate players, they were a fun bunch. They were also very tall, which was also very fun. I'm not used to playing with people who are 6'5', so it was nice to be able to have that huck and hope option that tended to work more often than not.
Our first game was against another local team who's members continued to show up in various states of sobriety throughout the game. We went up on them big quickly, and I came out strong as well, throwing 3 scores and catching 2 in the game. However, the other teams studs showed up in the second half and before getting drunk, brought them back and they ended up winning on universe point 13-12. Our next game followed pretty much the same pattern, we went up big early, decided we didn't need to play anymore, the other team caught up, but this time we got our shit together and pulled off the win. Also in this game I tried to do a layout greatest and failed, succeeding only in landing on a pile of rocks and brusing a bone in my thumb, my kneecap, and taking a chunk out of the skin on my knee.
Our third game was against tourney favorites and actual coed team, Ups. Since they're trying to make nationals, they're pretty good, though were having a fun time and drinking beers as well. We tried to keep it close with hucks to our tall guys, but lost 13-8 or so. The fourth game we decided to take seriously since we wanted to finish the day 2-2. We were so serious about it we split up into O and D lines. I got some entertainment from this as without telling them anything about how I play, just from watching me they had me playing as an offensive mid cutter (the exact same position I play for Dartmouth). The game was tight. We went up a couple breaks, but then they broke us back to take the lead. That sparked us again as we finished the game on a run and won by 2 or so in hard cap.
That ended day 1. I thought I had played pretty well, especially since my bruised knee had been slowing me down most of the day. My cutting was good, I didn't have any drops, and I had maybe 2 throwing errors. I was really tired though, and that showed on defense at times as I'd get lazy. I need to work my endurance (as I've already said) so that I have the energy to continuous play good D as opposed to just in spurts. The party that night was at the apparently infamous Karl Doege's house. Good beer and the usual antics (wrestling, fireworks, really really drunk older people, and hook ups) were on tap. I ran into a couple OU guys I know and talked to them for a while.
The way the 6 team round robin format worked out, we had to play the same team (the team I was originally going to pick up on) twice to open up play on Sunday. One for our last pool play game and again since we were both gauranteed to be the 2 or 3 seeds in a 4 team playoff. The other team had been about as drunk as mine the night before, so we decided to just play one half of our first game to warm up. We won that 7-3. The next game was serious and they went up on us 6-2 before we brought it back to tie it at 10s for universe point. This point was my signature play of the weekend, as I came from no where in the endzone to catch a stall 9 desperation hammer that was thrown to space. I then preceeded to kick spike the disc.
Unfortunately though, that win sent us to the finals which was occuring at the same time as the world cup final. To cheers of "World Cup!" our motivation to win or even try in this came quickly evaporated and we lost again to Ups 13-6 or so. I then rushed to watch the Azzuri win the world cup, which was awesome.
As for my play on the weekend... I thought it was decent. Good considering I hadn't played since Class Wars in early June. I was tired though on Sunday, more tired than I think I should've been even though we only had 8 guys (tourney was 4/3 coed) and was 90 degrees and humid. I'm also realy sore today and my hamstrings are making me dread even the smallest flights of stairs. Still, I threw maybe 5 scores on the weeked and probably caught 6. I had a couple completed hucks, and a couple other attempts that were decent but just not quite on the money. I didn't have any drops, but did have a few throws in my direction I feel I could've put more effort into to try to get as opposed to watching my guy D it. My cutting was also pretty good, though it suffered from me being tired and our offense being a clogged disaster at times. Defense always needs work, and specifically I need to work on pulling the trigger to layout and playing a full point at 100% intensity. The good thing is that I have at least 4 summer league games to work on all this stuff, so we'll see how it goes.
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