Tempe - Guest Author Scoop

Since Will Deaver already did an awesome write up of my team's events from this past weekend, I got his permission to post it here. I'm traveling on business this week, it's easier to do this and it's probabaly better writing than mine too.


Will wrote:

Zippo scoop - Upon arrival at the hotel Friday evening, started partying like stars. Much beer consumed. Funny jerseys made (nice work Rouisse,Kyle, Richter, Andrew). Kyle loses sleep after "modifying" a new teammates jersey with some, what really can only be described as "nippleart", b/c the guy (Stephen Poulos from Tampa) made a bad travel call at a pick-up tournament like 3 years ago. So, if you made Kyle mad withinthe last several years, don't think you've gotten away with it just yet. Saturday morning and day were spent alternately drinking and digging huge holes to teams made up of 8-12 guys ranging from club players from the Desert to the Midwest to Cali and then digging back out of them by the skin of our 20 sets of teeth. Maximizing points played and wearing our opponents down were clearly effective strategies this year, and it worked perfectly as we took our pool and all 20 of us were tired enough to truly enjoy all three combacks. This was followed by continued drinking, hottub, lasagna and s'mores at Sammy's, hours waiting at the bar for a drink at the party (unless you were near Alden, who spent last month's paycheck feeding shots to anyone within arm's length), and cramming 16 people into 2 cars for the ride back to the hotel b/c Kyle left earlywith the van with only 3 people in it without telling anyone. (Note, Kyle and 7 other people claim there were actually 8 people in the van and that they told us they were leaving. However, that would have negated our right to bitch all the way home piled on each other's laps,so we're sticking to the 3 people and no notice story. Sunday we continued to maximize our points in the quarters, then actually played some Ultimate against MamaBird. Hit the finals in stride ready to bring one home for Sammy after 23 years of playing NYF. However it was not to be. I follow up my 2-drop Saturday with the first part of my 2-getting handblocked Sunday to set the tone for a nice, team-wide series of individual gacks. We just couldn't muster another comeback, although there were some nice moments. Richter with the two handed, layout point-block on a Steets backhand huck that you could just feel from 30 yards away. The crowd cheering crazily after a towering hammer is hauled in by Sammy for a goal, only to have the cheering turn to even louder booing after Dugan calls a pretty weak travel on the throw. Chance to take it back and minimize reputation damage is not taken. Corey proceeds to call a travel on Dugan every time he throws for the rest of the game. Classic. Also of note from the weekend, CSU Mickey's sick Callahan catch block on the dump to start one of our rallies, afore-mentioned Stephen Poulos making plenty of plays while also making Parker and Rouisse and Curtis and all the other notoriously far-sighted CU/Bravo huckers look likeMother Theresa protecting the goods, same Poulos doing pushups on the sideline after the day while the rest of us were "hydrating" after a long day, Kyle rallying us against theMonster guys with his very own clutch travel call (oh the irony), andWill dominating on the sidelines, where apparently decreased skill in catching Frisbees is mitigated somewhat by increased skill in wiffle-ball. Also, it is apparently very difficult to catch perfect hammers from me... so I will work to start floating them and try to getat least one if not more helixes in before they drift into the waitingcrowd of players. Hector's commentary on the finals is probably worth hearing, so hopefully Brask can score us the tape. Sammy wistfully states afterwards that we would have killed either half of that team, but since the CA boys don't have enough friends to bring to a fun tournament, they wrangled their way from two 10-person squads (Jam and Condors), into a single, loaded 20-person team at the captain's meeting (Condams...soundsabout right). Chalk up another moral victory for Zippo, who really maximized the fun factor up until the bitter end. Hope that was worth reading. I take no responsibility for the factual accuracy of any of the above statements. As always, Zippo and Tempe continue to be the place to ring in the Ultimate New Year. Looking forward to getting back off my ass and playing some disc.



Great write up Will, thanks!!!

college marking

so i had the chance to watch a fair amount of college ultimate this past sunday. i strictly watched elimination games starting with the men's quarters through the semis and finals. as an expert in winning college nationals, i'm sure there are thousands of people out there desperately seeking my opinion. this post won't be about how the black tide 1996 version would have waltzed through the tourney running backwards and playing upside-down only throws, however true it may be.

the biggest observation i saw was on the mark. i was already focusing in on this because a teammate had commented the week prior about how that was the biggest thing he noticed in the transition from strong college player to bottom-of-the-roster condor player. i guess the thing is that disc skills make all the difference. he noted that in college he was always close to getting handblocks, while when he first got to club he wasn't even in the neighborhood.

from watching this weekend, it seems like the college mark basically requires you to be tight to the thrower and try to limit his pivoting. i would guess that club players are skilled enough to step around or through this mark. of the games i watched, i saw a number of good blocks by upfield defenders called back because of a foolish foul on the mark. at the same time, i saw the few strong handlers on each team throwing behind the mark at will, and frequently getting the free throw while they did it.

i guess this mark is probably particularly effective against weak or panicky throwers, and against this person it will give you a good chance of a turnover (not only will the thrower make a bad throw, they're probably not experienced enough to call the foul). however, the top defenders on each team, who are probably guarding the top throwers on the other team, should figure out how to take a 1/2 step off the mark and move his feet and hands a little better. it'd probably help the team in the long run.

separately, but maybe related, i saw a number of fouls go uncontested by the marker, and even a number of other upfield fouls on defenders went uncontested. so maybe this is just guys going as hard as they can and when they're on the mark they are a little more physical than even they realize is allowed.

The Pre-Season Tour Continues

To me there are three ultimate seasons: the pre-season, the spring season, and the fall series. Usually the fall and spring you play with you club team, but the pre-season is wide open and this year I am taking advantage of it yet again to play with top-level club players from other teams besides the Condors. I always enjoy it. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Condors and I have made life-long friends in my last 7 seasons in Santa Barbara to go along with winning a few titles. But there is something about playing with new people at tourneys, where the whole life of the team is that one weekend, which I enjoy. I've already played in one tourney, the Leiout beach event a few weekends ago with Carbomb. This weekend I’m playing in Tempe with ZiPPo, which will consist of club players from last year’s Condors, Bravo, Ring and Tampa’s Bulge. I played with them last year and we came up 3 points short of a perfect weekend: made new friends, partied like rock stars, got some sweet preferential treatment with our local grizzled vet that got us on the “good” fields all weekend and almost won the whole thing, losing 17-14 in the finals.

I’m confident we will have the same results in everything we had last year in regards to partying and good times. I’m looking forward to playing with classic ultimate icons like Mickey and Jimmy Price. I’m just hoping that we can secure those last 3 points this time, should we make the finals, and bring home the Tempe trophy. A win would be a solid accomplishment with JAM ’06 making their 1st appearance of the year (apparently there is no pre-season in San Francisco) along with other great ringer club teams. And it would be nice to win a major tourney 6 years after the only other time I’ve won there, marking what would be the longest I’ve gone between winning a tourney two different times. I’ll try and get a recap up next week.

Ultimate History Book – Help me get some more press

Sure, Kenny doesn’t like the book, and I found a mistake in less than 1 minute of reading, but I’m pro ultimate and I like Tony a lot, he’s a funny funny guy. So…

According to RSD today, they are going to be getting some upcoming mentions in both Sports Illustrated and the NY Times.

My girlfriend’s dad is a sports reporter for the LA Times. He’s already gotten two free copies of the book from PR reps. He would love to get us in the sports section somehow again(he got the Condors a small mention when we won Natties in ’01), but it needs to be organic to something either relating to Los Angeles or Joel Silver. Apparently, the PR guy wants him to interview Joel Silver. He asked me if I had anything that would make a good question that I could ask him that might make a Briefing item? I talked about how ultimate is attracting more athletes, and talked about how one of the Condors from LA has a brother that was a QB in the Rose Bowl a few years ago and some other LA-centric stuff.

Today, I’m throwing it out there to the blogosphere. Got any other ideas/angles you’d like to see Larry try and explore or ask Joel to help the book? If you do, let’s hear those comments.

rose-bowl

i was fortunate enough to get tickets to the rose bowl this year though patagonia, our team's sponsor. besides it being an absolutely awesome game, i had a number of observations. i'll share two right now:

1. it's gotta be damn hard to find the football with the stands in the background. as ultimate players we rarely have anything but green trees or fairly solid skies in the background. imagine if ultimate got really big time and was being played in a tall stadium and you're trying to pick up the angle on the hammer as it flies through a mottled background of replica white jerseys in the stands. i know a little bit about this from playing goaltimate at halftime of a chargers/steelers christmas eve in 2000. we were playing with a yellow disc and even routine passes were a little trickier to receive as they flew in front of a background of yellow and black steeler jerseys and terrible towels. i guess you'd probably adapt after a while, but it would probably be an advantage to the teams that played in those big games more regularly.

2. the texas fans were amazing, and were really focused on supporting their team. we were seated in an area of USC and texas fans. when SC was up their fans were all about heckling the texas fans in our section. it never got too confrontational (largely because the texas fans generally ignored it) but it was very ugly. when texas was up, even after enduring SC's taunts as the game wound down, the texas fans in our section were very loud and boisterous, but only in a way that was supportive to their own team and not at the expense of the SC fans. very classy and given the volume in the stadium, maybe more effective than the SC method. in thinking about how this translates to ultimate, i'm not sure if it is applicable to players on the sidelines, or if i should only think about this as a spectator of a game.

lei-out

played at the beach tourney this weekend. hamstring held up well, started to feel a little weak after the long downtime before our semi and i wound up playing very little in that game.

a few things reminded me why i don't like playing casual ultimate. one big one was at the time when our games were supposed to start on saturday we had only 4 people, 3 men and 1 woman. 20 minutes after the first game was supposed to start it was the same story. ultimate time is definitely far less prevalent than it was when i first started playing, but even still it rears it's ugly head at these casual events. if we're going to say "games start at 10" then let's be there at 10. if games aren't going to start until 11 then just say that. if i was our opponent i would have forced us to put 4 on the line or start assessing points. we're only screwing them by showing up late.

of course, when push came to shove in the semi-finals we showed that it's really difficult to play well when you're out late drinking on saturday night, and that sometimes the things that work when you're sober don't always happen the same way when you're hungover/drunk. of course, we also showed tremendous resilience in continuing to huck even after it didn't work the first 25 times. so after winning the first 2 or 3 of these lei-out events, i now haven't made the finals in 4 (3?) years.

running

so i'm about ready to come back from only my second serious injury during my ultimate career. my first was a broken collarbone (nationals 2000) that pretty much meant 8 weeks of inactivity followed by some range-of-motion stuff and i was back. recovering from a hamstring is a different deal.

maybe i should start with some background. the week before regionals i was at practice and my hammy was having a hard time loosening up. after warmups and even an initial drill i couldn't get it loose. we went into a scrimmage and while some teammates told me not to press, another said he felt a similar thing previously and some tiger balm and a leg sleeve solved the problem. i probably knew that this was a little more serious, but i followed his advice anyways and the first sprint i made i felt it pop up high. i had ice on it within a minute. 4 weeks later it was time for nationals and i thought i had a 50% chance of surviving the tourney, but the first time i tried to stress it at all it tweaked again in a different spot (probably due to a tape job to reduce stress to the initial injury, which resulted in extra stress to other areas). i tried to run on it a little more but there was not strength and nothing could be done. the leg had no power in it. one of the biggest disappointments of my ultimate career, as losses are difficult enough to take, but watching our team lose close games where i felt i could have made an impact was even rougher.

this time i had the luxury of time off. 3 weeks of total inactivity. probably the longest stint of my life. i don't think my heart rate ever crested 100 bpm in this period. then i went to therapy and had a great therapist who pushed me. the fallout from the first week of therapy was rough as my body wasn't ready for exercise. things that would have hardly caused exertion in september were now kicking my ass. a few weeks of therapy and some work on my own and i was ready for the new year. i made a deal with the hamstring that i would baby it until Jan 1, and then i would expect it to be ready. i tested it on monday with some light halfcourt hoops (very casual) and tuesday with a moderate track workout. 880's at a moderate pace. no sprinting, but fast times under some level of fatigue. it held up quite well, although i've been pretty sore for the rest of the week.

this weekend...probably some beach ultimate. my first cutting since september. should be a good test, without too much stress. i was hoping it would take longer to recover so i would have a good excuse to avoid the stupid social tourneys (like the LA beach tourney next weekend) where you have to pretend like you really enjoy hanging out with ultimate players that you don't really recognize, rather than competing against/with them. i think that came out wrong...i keep meaning to write my "ultimate community" piece, but it would take some significant time. so much for focusing my writing.