Huck Finn

Tourney recap week concludes today with Huck Finn, held last weekend in St. Louis. I was originally annoyed we were left out of the power pools, but as it turns out that was a good thing, as we took a skeleton crew of 17 that included only 5 people who will start for the Pimpdags in sectionals next weekend. We were short handlers (with only 5) and even shorter on experienced cutters, but it was a great weekend of progress for the next generation of pimps.

Saturday:
This day started out with Davidman and myself taking bets on how many points we would play. The weather was windy upwind/downwind with occasional sprinkles. Our first game was Illinois B, and it was close at first before we started figuring out how to get upwind scores (and Illinois started giving us the disc) and cruised to an 11-5 win. We then lost to Wheaton, our inexperience showing greatly as there were numerous turns on miscommunications, poor throws, and drops. The same was the story later in the day against Missouri, a game characterized in my mind by a turfed backhand on my part giving Missouri an easy upwind score right as we were trying to make a run and get back in the game. Our other two wins were easy, but were also very sloppy with lots of turns. At the end of the day I had played 62 points over 5 games to 11, or 74% of the points, and our rookies were coming along nicely. While some of us went to the party that night, I stayed in, watched basketball, and went to bed early.

Sunday:
Our first game was against some group of Carleton players that went on to win the tournament. We lost 14-2, but it was fun to play against these guys and really focus on playing good defense and making throws under pressure. Our next game was against Western Illinois (who?), which turned out to be a respectable team. The collected a lot scores off of transition hucks, as our D after turns continued to be poor at best. I played every point I could in this game, and probably more than that, as an injury one of our 5 handlers and stomach problems for another forced 3 of us to play about 8 points in a row. We were playing better in this game, but exhaustion was showing among our best players, and defense was slack as times and mental errors were all too common. Notable plays in this game were me going ho feet first after catching an O2 (babytalk) to toe the endzone line for the score, and me throwing a technically perfect huck to Dave, only to have him brutally misread it, running towards the 4 defenders on the open side trying to D it instead of going breakside where the disc trailed off nicely and landed calmly in the middle of the endzone. In the end we lost 13-10, simply losing steam at the end. I ended up with a pretty good statline: 2 goals, 4 assists, maybe 3-4 turns, but I too was exhausted as the winning goal was score on me, my guy running towards the back corner of the endzone and me unable to follow. Total points played on the weekend: 90.

Coming Up: Sectionals Preview.