Chesapeake, Day 2

Woke up easily at 6:45 this morning.

Got in the full morning ritual of stretching while taking a hot shower and catching some Sportscenter. Those three things are the constants with which I start my tournament mornings. No matter where I am, it gives me a center. The first two give me some time to focus before the day really gets going (waking up teammates and figuring out where to eat and finding the directions to the fields and all of that) and I have yet to have a teammates complain about Sportscenter in the morning while getting up. Sure, I can definitely start the day without these things with little to no deleterious effect, but y'know what? I like it better when I start the day on my terms. The start of the day goes from "pretty nice" to "awesome" in such a short time.

This morning I was lucky enough to find some mystery bruises on both quads. That's always fun. These are one of the ways that playing ultimate is like a night of drinking. You wake up sore and discover that you have unexplained injuries. Well, at least at first. Soon enough, you can replay the tournament/night and recollect vaguely when these things were likely to have occurred. This morning, however, I was entirely unable to determine from whence the bruises came. I wondered for a second if we had stayed at the bar with some of Ambush (Yet another out-of-date ultimate site) until someone did something dumb and I joined in. If so, I must not remember it. It must have happened while playing. That's good, I think.

Apparently, even with the much-ballyhooed snoring of one of the Dans, I was the big winner at night. At least according to my brother. We'll assume for now that he's trustworthy enough to make that call. We gathered our belongings and waited for Dan Yi, who apparently folds all of his clothes at ultimate tournaments. Or, to borrow Jamie's words, Dan "Packs like a Woman."

We roll down to the Einstein Bagel place where I am roundly mocked for suggesting that it will be packed. Well, as it turns out, it was packed. But not until after we had ordered and started eating. We're apparently trendsetters. I did break down and go to Starbucks about 300 feet away to get my coffee because when I can, I like to get really good coffee. I'm just a snob like that. Before we can get to the fields, we stop at a supermarket to get ice and the the like. I knew we were going to be late (Dan's girl-packing set us back) but I also knew that stopping there for ice and such would pay big dividends again. Speaking of big dividends, the cleat dryers were clutch for day two. After sweating buckets into them for a full day, they were perfectly dry and non-stinky on day two.

Once we got to the fields, it was patently obvious that we were late. Shoot. When this happens, I feel like a heel, but I know I'll still be ready for game time. The problem is that I'm supposed to lead warmups for Pike 07 and now I know that I'm letting my teammates down. That sucks. Get in my abbreviated warmup and then jump into our drills. I'm feeling pretty damn good for day 2 of a ridiculously hot tournament...

vs Madcow, 12-15
We come out on D and immediately go up two breaks. We have the disc after a third turnover and completely fail to capitalize (some terribly high degree of difficulty shot is taken here) and as such, hand the keys back to the O team up 2-1. The next thing that I remember is thinking, "Wow, it has been a long time since I played." At this point, I think the score is 2-3 with Madcow winning. The D team comes in and scores on O to make it 3-3. After this point, I think the D team only generated one more goal (2 maybe?) and the O team gave up a couple more breaks over the course of the rest of the game. That's not good ultimate. I had the misfortune of matching up on Pallaver early in the game after I tried to no avail to explain to my teammates that he would be cutting downfield. Not a terrible matchup for me, but not exactly to my advantage either. This game was a contentious early on as there were a number of strip calls on our part that Madcow did not agree with. I didn't really have a good view of any of them, so whatever. Pulls were good.

vs New Noise, 15-7
Well, we came out hot and stayed that way. I had a couple of dumb turnovers in this one, precipitated in large part by ex-Skidmore ex-Metal Micah playing a particular type of poachy D. I turned it around in the second half though and took advantage of those same defensive decisions and turned them into goals. This game was a little testy, especially after a ridiculous D by Spanish that came back on a strip or foul or something. Anyway, we notch our first win on the weekend (how depressing that it came in consolation) pretty handily. Pulls were pretty good. Our O got broken either zero or once in this one.

vs Burgh, 15-10
We traded for the first 4 or 5 in this one, then the D got a break or two right before half, followed by a break or two just out of half. They were connecting on covered hucks for most of the game, which was frustrating to watch. I don't think our O got broken in this game. My pulls were a little too linear in this game. That is, they were going the distance, but they were also getting down waaaay too fast. Just have to dial that in late in the day at Chicago to see where I"ll be at for the series. Also, I won't be pulling quite as often once Tim's back in the lineup full-health.

2-5 is a pretty awful tournament record. I mean, we did poorly here last year too (also 2-5) so maybe us Jersey Boys just ain't built for the heat, who knows. Actually now that I look at the Score Reporter from 06, the only difference on the first day (06 v 07) is that we lost to Clapham instead of Chain in pool play. We have a ton of stuff to work on as a team, but I won't get too into that here.

Personally, (and that's what this blog is about) I actually had a solid, if unspectacular weekend. I got some Ds, marked well, rarely let me guy get the disc in useful positions and even during the half where I threw 3 TOs, I didn't make terrible decisions, I just made them too slowly or didn't accurately anticipate what would happen next. Pulling was good, but it can be better. The legs felt great all weekend, and I stayed positive, on the whole. I think I even caught a handful of goals (Including one on a pull play when I was in on O. That was pretty sweet.). Some of the negatives were that sometimes I got too dialed in on handler-movement and the like at the expense of looking downfield which did not help our D's O and that once or twice I had complete positional lapses when covering guys downfield, even though most of the cutters didn't recognize/take advantage. I could also, verbally and on-the-field take a little more charge of the D team's O when we're having difficulties.

Anyway, the weekend sucked, but I think that we learned about the team and I know I learned about myself as a player, so it wasn't a complete loss.

Practice this weekend, Chicago next weekend.

And, possibly more importantly, the NFL season is nearly upon us!
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Workout Total:
3 Games of Ultimate