LiveLogic, Day One

"What the hell is that noise?"

"That's my 'sport' ring. It came with the phone."

And that's how we started our morning on Day one of Livelogic. Brought to coherence by my stupid phone's irritating (but very 'active') alarm at ~7:15am. We were pressed for time already. This is no good. We're supposed to be at the fields at 8am to warmup for the 9am game against... well... someone from Texas, I'm sure. Aha! Grit! Not grits, but Grit.

We've got Ian now to join in our car with Malcolm, Heng-Scheng, Jamie and yours truly. What a car of idiots. We need to stop at a grocery store, but can't find one because we were naively expecting to find one on the way to the fields. This, of course, is after Ian has tossed my carefully printed directions out in favor of his GPS. Into this crazy contraption he looks for grocery stores or something and we end up at a cut-rate place of some sort. The fruit guy assured Jamie that the cherries were fantastic.

I purchased grapes, nuts, jerky and water. The rest? I don't know what those fools bought. ecept for Heng-Scheng. He bought Jeff Foxworthy Beef Jerky. Excellent choice. Back to the fields! commence the back-seat driving!

We get there before anything major has happened, but we miss out on time to throw in favor of applying sunscreen. Bad omen. I really like getting to know the air (so to speak) at fields before I play my games there. Lots of blades in warmups helps me get a feel for what the day will be like. Jog, active warmups, dynanics, quick drill, gametime.

The team for the weekend was: Dono, Trey, Brandon, Malcolm, Ian, Heng-Scheng, Jamie, Vlad, Raphael, Schmucker, TC, Tim Johnson, Spanish, Jon Fink and I. Depend on how the roles break down this year, that leaves us with 2-3 O players and 13-12 D players. Can you say "broken pull play?" The other thing that sticks out about this group is that there are only three players who have been with the team for over 1 season. Trey has been with us since 01 or 02 (I don't know which) and Dono and I have been with the team since 03 (the last time he got a D on me was that first practice back in 03) The rest of the list contains 3 tryouts and 9 players whose first season was 06. Big changes from way back when... Wait a second... I'm sounding old. Fuck that.

Game One vs Grit from Dallas:
This team loves to throw deep. We adjusted slowly, when at all. I think we got out to a couple point lead at some point, and I know that they were ahead for a point or two. Eventually, we rallied the troops and pulled out a 13-12 victory. This is exactly the sort of game that you do not want to start a 5-game day with. 25 points? If we had played with a little less risk on O and actually recognized/adjusted to their strengths/weaknesses on D, we would have played closer to 20-22 point range. We just had some unbelievable turnovers and many of their completions had a surprisingly high degree of difficulty.

Game Two vs Doublewide X:
The first thing that I remember from this game was being down at half 6-7. That's bad. After losing to halves of Boston, this was frustrating. I also remember this game containing the first of many impressive Ds by Spanish in his continuing campaign to make Pike 07 from a powerhouse like Lehigh. Offense intended, Mullen/Felt/Gimp et al. I got in at 8-8 launched a slightly floaty flick huck to TC to put us up 9-8 and then converted the D on a backhand huck to someone really open. 10-8, us. I know I got back into this game at some point, when we closed it out 13-11. This was a good mental victory for us, as we were down going into half and worked hard to get the win from behind. There's a slight here against D player-mentality if you look hard enough. DWY was very athletic and it seemed like they had a ton of college-aged kids with them. We also heard rumor that this was their first tournament of the season save for some goofball affair earlier in March. Not too shabby-- y'all are looking good for 07.

Game Three vs Turbodog:
During the game before this, I glanced to the sideline and was sure I saw Dan Sage (ex-Pike) standing there. I had this same feeling a couple of weeks ago at some other tournament too. The rumor was then confirmed by Dono and Trey. It was, in fact, Dan Sage. Apparently, everyone on Turbodog was convinced that he never actually played for Pike. Not sure why, exactly, but that's what they said. Anyway, they had fewer people than us due to both traveling and injuries from earlier in the day. Not sure that this one was every really in question with a 13-5 victory. nice to get a break after this one.

Game Four vs DeeDubEx:
Met a short guy named Max early in this game. He fouled me a couple of times. Seemed like a good guy regardless. I hope the calls that got a little testy in this game didn't rub Double the wrong way. The call game a two-lane street and both teams agreed to travel it. They came out much stronger than we did and took a pretty good lead into half, if I remember properly. We waited until later in the game and made a decent, but ultimately useless, run to lose 12-13. I had two travels called on me in this one. The first I had no argument for as that is a particular throw that I sometimes travel on. I asked the player if he was sure and he said yes. No argument from me-- I just wanted him to replay it in his mind before he brought the completed huck back. The second was a couple of throws later when I launched another huck to Trey. This was a backhand caught off of a swing pass to the backhand side. The travel was called for a very clear reason: In continuation, I established a pivot with my right foot to get the huck off.

To attempt a clearer description: I was being forced flick. I completed a backhand dump and ran the give-go to the other side of the field. The thrower led me beautifully and I caught this disc running to my left, perpendicular to the sideline. I knew that I was going to huck, based on where Trey was when I dumped it-- he was going to take it to the house. As such, I purposely caught the disc in motion and hucked from the wrong pivot foot. Specifically, caught the disc just as my right foot left the ground, stepped with my left, started the throwing motion and completed the throwing motion with my right foot planted instead of my left. When you complete this sequence, you, essentially, pull the disc instead of huck it. It is entirely legal and always starts an argument. On the other hand, you cannot stop (unless you jump stop, which is a whole other conversation) and then throw, you need to throw in motion. This also helps get around the mark as he tries to slide and stay with you and seal or get further separation from the mark as he stays to stop the flick break.

A small, civil discussion ensued as I explained this to my defender, and he recanted the travel. Pointless argument, as it turned out, because Trey was tackled by the turf monster on the way to the disc and it was an TO. Shoot. First one on the weekend.

This was a good game, but s shitty game all at once. We worked hard late, but why not do that from the beginning? We made some strides on O and D in this game as we worked on defending the aggressive DW ho-stack. I was happy we got to play this one.

Game Five vs Johnny Bravo.
Well, uh, we got stomped. Our sideline and on-field players lacked the desire or the energy to put forth effort in this one. No matter how frustrating those other games were on a "too many needless points" level, this one was more so. I felt like our team was throwing in the towel and bitching about playing the fifth straight game in the (admittedly disgusting) heat instead of rallying everything we had left to challenge Bravo in this game. Sure, we would have fared better in this one if we had played it in, say, the second round, but that's no comfort when you let the other team dictate on both O and D. I tried just about everything in this one to get my team up, but it wasn't going to happen. What a waste of time this game was for both teams. At least I got to run JD around until we both wanted to crawl off the field.

After the game, we stretched and went to Barton Springs and then directly to the Green Mesquite BBQ. Someone had chicken-fried chicken. Wow. I had the Jambalaya, which was excellent. Then we tried to get back to the hotel, but we got cut off by the Austin Pride Parade. You'd imagine that an event planner or a cop or someone would have the foresight to block the roads off before you end in an alley at the parade itself. Not the case. So, after sitting for ~20 minutes, Malcolm had the bright idea to get all of the cars behind us to go the wrong way on a one-way street in order to escape. It worked like a charm.

Back to the hotel, shower, pass out.
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Workout Total:
8 hours of ultimate