Nationals, Day 2

Got up, made coffee, realized that we were running late again.

I had managed, yet again, to sleep through my alarm. That's so strange. I rarely sleep late. Oh well, no omelet this morning. Back to Dunkin Donuts. Only this time we'll go to the other DD. That way the employees won't recognize us. Or something.

On one of these mornings, we found out that Mio would "eat anything with a pumpkin in it" and on the other, I hit a parked car with the pointy grill of the Charger (not that we had a police car, just that it illustrates the pointy nature of said grill) and was greeted by a reader from Zero. I didn't tell him that I was born in the Twin Cities because I wasn't sure if that was a good conversation piece or not. I mean... where does the conversation go from there? Does he just say "Cool?" Does he then tell me where he was born? Do I care where he was born? Would he have cared where I was born? This is why conversations with me are always strange. I'm rarely thinking about what I'm saying, but often thinking instead about why I would say it while forgetting what I actually said. I think it ended with mutual good lucks (seriously because we have no shot at playing Zero save for if we make it out of the loser-pools with one loss).

Speaking of which, I don't think that my team fully grasped how awful it is to go down to the bottom pools with one loss. It's devastating. So much has to go right for you to make it back out to the pre-Q's that your team needs the stars to align behind a full moon in order to pull it off. That is, I don't think we fought nearly hard enough in that Rhino game yesterday and I was still pissed about it this morning. That was the game. That shit counts *double.* Or, in our case, the last round on Thursday was actually just the first round of Friday, since Sockeye and Boston had already assured themselves Power-Pool berths. Ah well.

Leg felt terrible this morning. Warmups were prolonged and I had to get everything just right before I could really get any acceleration or explosion (not that I have that much of either) and that sucked. Get your painkillers going, boy, this is The Show! I got in a ton of throws though, as I knew that in order to have a shot at all, I would need to be on point as a thrower today. Live play kinda sucked, but that will happen from time to time. You just need to focus on getting your body/mind awake in those drills. Blood flowing, desire to win boiling and the like...

vs Truck Stop, 10-15
This game started off perfectly. We were going downwind on D, I got a huge pull off, and they turned the disc over in the endzone. I picked it up, walked to the line, and threw a goal. Sweeeeeeet! I don't remember exactly what happened for the rest of this game (although I did fucking get stalled in my own endzone because my brain locked the hell up like something that really gets locked up and THAT killed us) abut I think we took our first half, 8-6 or 8-7. And then Truck Stop pulled away. They capped the win with a HUGE grab from Stout over our two tallest dudes. By the way, our tallest dudes are like 6'1" or 6'2" which is far smaller than the size of that fucking Stout, who made a huge difference for that team over the season. I never thought I'd write the sentence "Truck Stop pulled away" but even more surprising is the fact that after they beat us, I wanted them to win. Call it regional pride, call it knowing when your run is over, or whatever, but that's the way it works for me.

Well, now we get to sit around and wait to play Furious. Of the teams at Nationals, they're one of the few that I haven't yet beaten. Bravo is on that list, and depending how you slice "Boston" they might be on the list as well. I was excited for this chance for two reasons. The first was listed above, and the second was that if we beat Furious, we could push them down below us in the standings. This could be extremely painful for the NW is terms of strength bids.

vs Furious, 11-15
I know I got off some more big pulls in this game, and I think it stayed close for most of the game. We moved the disc well, and capitalized, but their D team eventually overpowered our O. Constant pressure eventually made us wilt. I love matching up on Mauro, and our little tilt here was fun as always. At some point after we got a block on D and then turned it over somehow, I got matched up on Mike and he just straight up took me to the house. That still sucks. I guess he, unlike many tall dudes who can throw, just took advantage of his5 inch height advantage and basically dared his teammates *not* to throw it. I mean hell... if I saw some midget handler covering one of my best deep receivers, I'd put it up without a question too! This game ended poorly.

On the day, I was very pleased with my play, even though I could have done better. Pulls were good upwind and down (though upwind could have been deeper and could have hung longer). Throws were good. Cutting downfield and as a handler was good. Positive energy was present. Not much else to do. I believed through both games that we would win. Sadly, either not enough of my team believed with me, or I didn't believe strongly enough. If you don't believe you'll win, no matter the score, you'll never fight as hard as you can for every inch because you'll think "What's the point?" Believe that you will win gives your actions weight. It gives you a reason to push on forward in the face of almost certain defeat. Almost certain. You must latch on to that sliver of hope and use it to push yourself ahead. You must believe. I always believe.

Well, after two days, we've gotten into tussles with Rhino and Furious (though not, surprisingly, Truck Stop), lost all of our games, and generally started to fold. Nationals is a true test of your belief in yourself and your teammates. Even after you lose, you will have more games to play and those teams will still be teams that you would regularly travel to face. It isn't the boys from down the road, or the 5th place team from your region, every one of these teams fought to get to THIS tournament. They have proven themselves to be worthy competitors. I love this environment. I suppose if it is new for you, you could get a little overwhelmed, but I mean... you gotta love it, right? You've just got to, or you should retire now. This is why you play the game!!!!!

We went to watch some Pre-Q action and I started drinking pretty heavily with Jamie. Fuck this. I'll be ready to play tomorrow, but if I don't get some beer in me, the world will not be an okay place to be. Eventually, the rains came and we didn't have the patience to stay. Sorry, MA teams. My heart just wasn't in rooting for you any more. It likely would have degenerated into terribly mean-spirited heckling before long. To recap, Boston took it to Ring and Truck Stop (somewhat surprisingly) outlasted the Condors through the lightning delay. Well, instead of the top 2 MA teams making quarters, we had one MA team in quarters. At least that isn't totally embarrassing.

That night, we went to Brandon's family's place in Sarasota (or was it Bradenton?) and had a nice team time, although there were apparently more teamamtes there than I realized as the house was big enough that I didn't ever find all of them. More beer was had, and I think I passed out. I had nothing left at this point in the evening. Exhausted, beaten down and drunk. Someone, thankfully, peeled me from the spot at which I had passed out and got me into the car for a fun ride back to the Palm Bay Club... Shitbox tomorrow, boys! Maybe we'll eke out a win against someone else who is as hungover as I'll be!!!