III. M.U.T. @ PADA MOSH
PADA MOSH this past November marked the 7th time Mike's Ultimate Team, a.k.a. M.U.T., has gathered to play ultimate together. While I have only been back to Dartmouth once since graduating, these yearly gatherings have turned into my de facto mini college reunions, and also a chance to play great ultimate. M.U.T. entered this weekend on a 3 tournament and 20 game winning streak. And you could consider it a 4 tournament winning streak since M.U.T. was the only team to show up to the cancelled Frozen Disc of Death in 2007. It's really amazing to consider how far we've all come as ultimate players from when we first got together. None of us were the players we are now when Mike first pulled us together, we were just friends who loved ultimate. But now members of M.U.T. include all-region players, club and college nationals qualifiers, and multiple team captains, presidents, and coaches. It's amazing not only how much we have each improved over the years, but also that nearly all of us continue to play at the highest levels that we can.
In addition to PADA MOSH serving as a mini college reunion at Mike's place in Philly, we were putting our winning streak on the line against the toughest competition M.U.T. had ever faced. Saturday was cool and slightly windy, and we breezed through our first two games, and comfortably beat a talented Swarthmore alum team that would go on to win the B bracket. After playing primarily with the Pimpdags and random pick up mixed teams in Colorado and Montana the past couple of years, I was again amazed at the ease with which we play good ultimate together. There was no real strategy or focus on the game, we'd just go out, play hard, then return to the sidelines and continue joking around and catching up with each other. Eventually we'd find ourselves at the soft cap up a few breaks. It was effortless.
Sunday was different, it was colder and much windier, and our usual underseeding by the T.D. had us playing our first game against tourney favorites Horned Melons, who had their own stock of nationals players. M.U.T. would be subbing competitively and thinking strategically this game, and though I was less than thrilled with my play so far that weekend, I was excited to reprise my Dartmouth role of zone offense hammer catcher.
I made the most of it too. I sat out the first couple points, letting our better players try to get us an early lead with an upwind break, but it didn't happen. We went down 3-0 and then had an O point going downwind. If we let the melons get another upwind break we'd essentially be out of the game. So I self-called myself and stepped onto the field, telling myself it was time I made a play and stopped sitting around letting our nationals players try to win the game for us. M.U.T. wins because every single one of us is good, not just because we have a couple all-region players on our roster.
Sometimes life gives you opportunity to immediately back up your own bravado, and this was one of those fortuitous moments. The Melons came zone to prevent a good downwind punt, and Crew quickly found himself trapped on the sideline as I found myself with about half the field to myself playing the cross-field wing. Crew wound up and threw the most incredible blading hammer I've ever seen in my direction. The wind was pushing against the flight of the hammer and as the disc flattened out it was pushed back to midfield. I took off sprinting to intercept it's path and I remember thinking it resembled a jet skimming the ground as it flew downfield. The disc was moving too fast for me to run down, so my only hope was to cut its path at the perfect point. As the disc crossed in front of me I bid as high and as far as I could, and with a loud 'thunk' it stuck in my hand. Being fully aware of conservation of greatness, I quickly dumped the disc to Mackey and a couple throws later Mike hit me with a scoober for our first point of the game.
I immediately took a sub and received just as many 'sick catch' comments from the Melons as from my own team. Some older guy came up to me and said "I've been watching ultimate for years and that's the best catch I've ever seen". The game was even from there on out, we scored all of our downwind points and our upwind line was able to get a couple goals to tie the game at 10s with hard cap looming. However, with their back to the wall, the nationals-caliber players on the Melons did what they do best and scored an up wind O point to go up 11-10. Hard cap came on during the next point, but we weren't able to score our upwind O point and M.U.T. finally lost, 12-10.
The winning streak ended at 23 games spanning 5 tournaments. The Horned Melons would go on to win the semis by 6 and the finals by 4. We would win our consolation game and get 5th place by forfeit. We knew though that our quarters game was the game of the tournament, and had been played at a different level than any of the other games that day, and that was something to be proud of.
I can't wait to do it all again.
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