Saturday, September 29

Mid-Atlantic Regionals, Day 1

Game Time, baby!

Started the day off with a game against Foss's team, As Good as Advertised.

vs As Good as Advertised, 15-10
More important than what is mentioned in the above link is that they have a 6'7" dude on their team who was apparently almost a member of the Penn State Basketball team. Uh... I correctly mention before the game that their best strategy to win is to throw as many as possible 500 discs into the endzone to this guy. They do. I believe that the tall guy scored 8 goals in this game. There was also a bit of a dustup in this one with some guy laying out into my back after I caught the disc and landing on me after dislodging the disc. I have been informed that I yelled "Get the fuck off me!" before I jumped up while throwing a minor elbow into his chest. I definitely jumped up aggressively as I don't particularly appreciate bids for discs that you have an absolute zero chance of touching, let alone D-ing. After that there was a bit of shouting match and a call for me to leave the field or something. Just good hard, fun, thugtimate non punches, no shoving. "Like being back in the yard, isn't it?" (Ctrl+F Search for that phrase on that webpage).

vs Warriors, 15-13
Well, we take half at 8-4. I had thrown two terrible hucks directly to the backs of Warrior defenders. That was bad. But prior to that, we scored the first two points on D (I seem to remember catching the first one and enjoying some spikage). And after that, we (I?) calmed down and went on a D run to close the half. The O did get broken once in the first half. Second half, I played the first point and realized that I couldn't run at all. My guy ran me downfield and I couldn't stay with him at all. He scored on me easily. My leg just wouldn't move that way. I came off the field and told Dono and Tim that I was done for this game. It looked like we had it in hand anyway. That would give me time to figure out what was wrong. It was a pain shooting from just inside my hip down through my quad and across my knee. It was from the outside to the inside (and it was not the IT Band-- that goes straight down the outside of your leg). Raph took a look at it and wasn't quite sure what it was, but we figured out where the pain was. I stretched it out and massaged it, and that was a little better, but still... it was pretty unpleasant. I carried on like that for the rest of the game while Pike choked away as much as possible of the lead we had built up (maybe even being down at some point?) until the D made a run at the end to win 15-13.

Long Bye. This is so much better than plying 5 games on the first day. I kept checking out my leg and eventually Liz from Wicked came over and told me, after some investigation, that I had pulled part of my quad. If I wanted to play, I would need to keep it ridiculously warm and take note if it started changing the way I ran. I told her that it had already done so, in that I couldn't run forward, and she said I probably shouldn't play. I pretty much agreed and shut it down for the Truck Stop game in hopes that I would be ready for the next day.

vs Truck Stop, 12-15
I was just a sideline cheerleader in this one. Trying to be as loud and as useful as possible from the sidelines. We were up 2 breaks early in this one before Truck broke us back twice to take half 7-8. Boo. We *needed* to score that one to preserve the break through half!! We started to realize the different Stout makes on that team. It frees up their other height (Jack and George) to do what they do. It also gives a guy who can straight up get a D on your best player in open space. As the second half carried on, we traded for a while and then just after we hit double digits, Truck Stop made their move on D to close the game out by 3. I think it might have been as close as 12-13 in their favor, but I'm not sure.

The first day closed, and we got back to the hotel to clean up and then get some Italian food. It was largely uneventful except for the growing, aching pain in my quad which did not make me think happy thoughts about my prospects for the next day. It hurt laying down, sitting at the table, standing up, walking, whenever. Not good times. It was decided that when the morning came, I would get myself to a CVS or some reasonable facsimile thereof to get an ace bandage, some heating pads, tape and the like. I iced on and off all night and used a good amount of ibuprofen.

Whew. Went right to bed at ~10pm. No laying on the pillow for a while, straight to sleep. Dreaming of being able to run/play the next day...

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