Summer League Finals

In the end, we weren't good enough...

But it was a blast nonetheless.

Pregame: Got up to drop by Johnny L's this morning, only to discover that Johnny has found this website and now wants to know what "Pike" is. I didn't anticipate that! Regardless, the ham egg n swiss breakfast sandwich was perfect as usual.

Eventually got the fields with Jimmy in time for a good, though not exhaustively complete, warmup. Got a *ton* of throws (blade after blade!) in with the wind, and felt great for game time.

First Game v Purple, 15-9
This game was in the bag from jump street. I think we were up 6-0 before Purple realized what was happening. They tried zone and man and everything in between on us, but really had no shot. The team stayed positive and kept on cutting hard in man, and kept sitting in the soft spots in their zones. They made a predictable second half comeback to keep it close. I think I threw ~10 goals in this one as there was a significant wind for this whole game. This puts me at a huge advantage in summer league. Why? Well, the defense plays like the wind is overbearing, but it isn't. At all. This leaves players open everywhere. This might have been the best summer league game I played all season.

Second Game v Black, 15-13
This game sucked. We played 7 on 6 the whole time and kept getting scored on. It was a sign of bad things to come, but I didn't take it as that. I just played passive O (Get their best defender out of the play!) and solid D. Evan took me deep twice (one he skied me hands down, another he caught .3 seconds after I D'ed) and some other guy (Micheal?) skied me as I got my fingers on the disc too. He was also tall. This game sucked both because we didn't do a good job taking advantage of our extra player (who works on that???) and because 7v6 ultimate is no fun at all. The other team should have just forfeited so we didn't have to play. I mean... really. Who is that game fun for? In playoffs? C'mon.

MVP Presentation
They lined up all of the still-present MVP candidates and took pictures. Yes, I was nominated from my team. As for my predictions, Will Reed did win the Open MVP, but Tucker did not win the Coed MVP. That honor went to Seth "But I look so innocent!" Cannetti. The darkhorse candidate!

Finals v Moss, 10?-15
I played slightly above average in this game. Our downfall was the depth of their men. They had enough good men that I couldn't poach to help that much and the remaining men were matched up well to run the offense without whomever I was guarding. Frustrating. I did ahve a couple of nice deep grabs in this game. One I had a better read on than Ramsey did and got to the spot first to box out, the other I just went up excessively early because a really tall guy was on me. That was a pretty sweet feeling, to go up knowing that the 6'2" (taller?) guy guarding you hasn't jumped yet and come down with the disc in your hands as he says something to the effect of "Shit..." I've got to relish in it, because with the amount of time I've spent handler of late, I haven't gotten the opportunity very often. If we were going to win this game, we would have needed to either A) Find Success in Zone D B) Throw deep to me more often because our dudes were really tired C) Have wasted less energy on beating the team with 6 players

Anyway, the day was great fun, our team stayed positive, and despite dragging our a 7v6 game far too long and eventually losing in the finals, there is no other team I would have wanted to play for. All kidding aside, Julie is one of the best summer league captains in the biz. I'd put her up against the SL captains round the country.

Pike Practice tomorrow. I bet my arm will be sore.
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Workout Total:
6 hours of ultimate