Pike Invite, Day One

As expected, the weather was beautiful.

But before that experience, Julie (the official unsponsored and sparsely thanked Pike Photographer for the weekend) and I had to get to the fields. This meant getting up at ~6:30, packing (I would have done that the night before, but I couldn't stay awake during the GS/Utah game) and brewing some Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee from McNulty's. Very tasty, but more wine-inflected in flavor than the previously mentioned Mexican Altura Coatepec, which has more of a chocolate/toffee flavor.

Then we got on the PATH train to go into NYC so that Malcolm could give us a lift to the Mercer County fields. While waiting for Malcolm on the ride, we tried to get some passable breakfast (I was too lazy to cook this morning and Johnny L's Bagels was not yet open) at the Dunkin' Donuts on 33rd and 6th ave only to learn that they didn't have anything that required cooking. That is, they had donuts, bagels, muffins and cookies, but no eggs, sausage, ham, bacon or cheese. What the hell kind of Dunkin' Donuts is this?

Move on, get on the road. Grab food at Dunkin Donuts on Route 1 in Jersey.

Got the fields pretty well ahead of time to get throwing and all of that. Someone conned me into leading warmups this year. I blame only myself. We did a slightly abbreviated active warmup, into some drills into extra throwing/pulling time, into Game 1:

We came out pretty strong against Truck Stop X, going up 2-0. I think I threw the second goal (an upwind flick to tryout Eddie Peters from Pitt). Sweet. Pulling downwind. I came out and soon enough, we were down 4-6. I'm not that good at math, but I think this means they went on a 6-2 run. And, by my calculations (and spotty memory) that means that TSX scored ~4 D points and 2 O points while Pike scored 2 O points. That's the pain of playing on the D team-- sometimes you watch your O team hemorrhage points. We then stopped the bleeding and went on our own 3-1 run. I'm pretty sure I threw the last goal of the half (also to Eddie) as well, but I could be wrong.

At half, I noticed that it seemed that TS had pretty much broken into E-Pig and Vault/TS05. I suppose that rumor about Boston was true, just not about Boston. We seemed to be playing against the younger, somewhat more athletic half of TS in this one. We came out in the second half going on a 2-0 run (One O point, one D point) to be up 10-7. Don't remember much at this point, but it looks like we essentially traded out (5-5) to win 15-12.

Second game was against PoNY (including Pike alum/Tight Ass Country Club member Bailey Russel and Kaimana Teammate/Upper West Side Tower of Pain owner/operator Josh Weisstuch). We opened up trading to 2-2 and then pulled ahead to a 4-2 lead. In one of the first two D points I ended up on Josh after a transition and as he started making an in-cut I thought to myself "This will be exciting!" As I was on his hip coming in, the disc was released and both Josh and I realized that the disc was sailing over our heads into the endzone for a goal. Of course, we should have known better. Bailey had the disc. I may have thrown two goals here, but I'm not sure. We focused work on some new zone D looks and trying some new combinations/positions for established players as well as getting tryouts in the game for an opportunity to shine. We maintained the 2 goal lead to take it to halftime, 8-6.

Coming out of half, we got broken immediately, then scored, were scored on and got broken again. 9-9. The rest of the game is a bit fuzzy and the notes are sparse (Which is surprising because I remember Josh asking me if I was even playing in this game, which meant I was spending a ton of time on the sideline. Perfect for a tryout tournament), but I do recall that we continued working on varying zone looks and getting younger players matched up on strong players and seeing how they fared. We ended up with a 15-13 victory.

Of note, today's food included oranges, fresh coconut, nuts and the ever-present Ultima Replenisher. Went pretty well. Fresh coconut seems to give me a slight throat irritation though. Small price to pay for that tasty treat. On the other hand, opening those things is dangerous, as I learned the night before. I'm lucky I still have 10 fingers and 2 hands. Goddamn coconuts always trying to protect themselves. I'm working on narrowing down what combination of actual foods (NOT bars or other processed foodstuffs) works best for me during a tournament. Gotta find the right mix of protein, fat, unprocessed sugar, water and other assorted properties that work best. Pineapples, mangoes, grapes, oranges, berries, assorted nuts, beef jerky, avocados and coconuts all pass the mustard, so to speak. Apples and bananas don't seem to do as well for me. I want to stay away from breads/crackers when possible. If I need sugar to hit my bloodstream really quickly, some chocolate seems to work really well. Thus far, though I've been playing fewer points than I anticipate later in the season, all of this has worked very well.

Next game was against TSY. This seemed to be the older TS guys including evelKeven, Damon and AJ. Not sure entirely what happened in this game, but we continued working on the same things and trying players out with different combinations of players on the field. We took half at 8-5. I remember at least one thrower asking if I was within 10 feet (could have bene AJ) when I was likely within 4 feet. I think that the new disc space rule is freaking out some throwers who are used to being impregnated by the mark. During this game, like many other, the new pick rule came into play again and again. It is still really irritating. At some point this weekend, a thrower did not acknowledge the pick, threw a turnover and somehow got the disc back. Not only is the rule irritating, no one plays by all parts of it, just the parts that they can remember at the time. For the love of god, give me a ref who knows the rules instead of a group of 42 players and spectators watching the game who don't. Not sure what the final score of this game was, or how much I played in it, but we won. 15-11 maybe?

Final game was against half of Boston. BSX, I think. Team included Doug Moore, Ryan Todd, Micah Flynn and Jasper Hoitsma. I think they had ~10 dudes. Interestingly enough, I played on D point and found that our team was down 1-7. Not good. Played an O point, caught a goal, played a D point, threw a goal, played a D point, got out-positioned by Doug in zone and they walked up the field for an 3-8 halftime lead. Talk about lack of focus. This was craptacular. Jasper killed us with quick breaks, the Toddinator put up some great hucks(!), Doug kept playing smart (damn him) and it seems that at some point in the last year or so Micah learned how to throw. In the second half, I was playing an O point and, made a deep cut, started to come back under and found myself on the ground in pain. Confused, I looked for an entry wound from a stray bullet while one of the two Boston guys in red (can't remember if it was "The Flash" or the other guy) was kind enough to call a timeout. Turns out there was no stray entry wound. I had just been tripped up by one of the rolling hills on the fields of Mercer County. Aw hell. It hurt, but I was sure that I'd be fine by the next day. I walked over to the sideline, sat down and got a quick visit from my parents to check on me, and mom the doctor said I just tweaked it, nothing major. I decleated and sat out the rest of the game, which was painful both in terms of the ankle and watching us suck. 8-15 loss.

After the day, Jon Fink was kind enough to host a BBQ at his place in Philly. Jamie and I decided to attend. The food was tasty, the beer was beer, the company was Pike, the house was nice, the rain was light and the brownies had flax seeds in them. I know the last one is odd, but it is true. The brownies were no worse for the healthy addition. They still tasted like brownies.

Went back to the Rhodes family compound for the night and fell asleep watching Suns/Spurs. I think I was tired. Didn't sleep too well that night.
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Workout Total:
8 hours of ultimate