ultimate time

i was pretty sure ultimate time had been removed from the sport. it was probably on it's way out in my early playing days (mid-late 90's), but there were still remnants. like the first round of a tournament would be 15-30 minutes longer than the other rounds to account for the fact that they would be started a little later than the schedule said. well, at the davis tournament we ran into it, and it was rather perplexing. here's the scoop...

sunday morning, quarterfinals. we're supposed to play a team that finished 4th in their pool the day before. the team is one of those composed of decent players, with maybe even a few really good players (especially one who i battled with in college a bunch), but they probably don't practice and are really out there just to have a good time and try to have a few memorable moments over the course of the weekend.

condors do our typical warmup and as game time is approaching we notice that there's no opponent. well, it gets to 9am and one guy from their team sheepishly walks over to say he's the only one at the fields. poor guy. he thinks the rest of his team will show up, but they all live in the bay and have families and may have to mow their lawns or something on sunday. so he's not quite sure any of them will even make it. oh, wait...here comes one guy...nope it's two.

a few more minutes pass. i'm looking in my handy 10th edition to see what the formal rules are on assessing points. low-and-behold, i don't think that rule is codified, and it must just be a thing that is written at nationals. bummer. but if i didn't know that, i'm sure these guys didn't either. another car pulls up...maybe that's 6...no, one more running in from the parking lot.

the nice co-captain goes over to them to arrange for the start of the game. it's probably about 10 past nine, maybe even a quarter past. he comes back to tell us we'll start in 5 minutes. "how many points are we assessing?" i ask. turns out the nicer co-captain didn't bring this up. we'll iron this out. i approach and it goes something like this...

me: hey guys, so it's well after 9, and in fact, at 9 you only had 1 guy here, so i think we're going to assess points.

nice guy 1: well, we were at the other field, and the TD told us we played over there

me: really? because that's not in any schedule that was ever distributed, posted or discussed anywhere. why would you be at the other fields? and why wouldn't you tell this one guy who was here waiting for you?

nice guy 2: i really don't think you guys need points. and we just want to have a fun game with you all. and that's not cool. and it doesn't really seem right, you know, because, well...we're nice and all, and i'm smiling but inside i'm actually a little hurt that you would feel the need to assess points, especially since nobody on this team has ever scored more than 7 points against the condors in our lives.

okay, maybe i exaggerated that last part a little bit. but these guys were incredulous at the suggestion of penalizing them for having one person at the fields at the designated start time. furthermore, to have the gall to suggest that they just want to play against us seemed insincere at best given that they didn't really feel like playing that game at the designated time.

in the end we assessed zero points, more because i couldn't find it in the rules than because it was the 'right' thing to do. the threat of points maybe served to get them on the line a little quicker than they would have without that looming, but it probably didn't. the good news is that they can all continue to say they've never scored more than 7 against the condors.

death on the fields

i hesitated to write this column, but i figured that of my 11 readers, maybe 3 weren't at the tournament and it was a very unique thing that happened. everything i'm writing is from my perspective and memory, and may not be the actual facts as they occurred. i had never met ana hammond.

we were at a group of four fields, with the condors being on field 3 all day. the whole team had put their stuff on the sideline between field 2 and 3. we had finished our second game of the day and were facing a long intermission before our third game. i was meandering to and from frisbee central getting some food when i saw a teammate and an ex-teammate talking on the sideline between field 1 and 2. we had been watching a little of the coed game on field 2 and then the game on field one (i can't even remember what game it was) when we started hearing sirens.

it didn't even register that the sirens would be coming to the fields until a women went running from the sideline we were on to flag down the fire engine. i thought maybe a broken bone or something along those lines. then, we hear something like "she's not breathing", i think from the woman running to get the fire engine. at that point i think maybe a concussion with some severe effects. the three of us chatting on the sideline wrap up our conversation as the action on field one had come to a stop and my teammate and i walk back towards our team sideline 40 yards away. the action on field 2 had stopped and as we walked across i looked over and saw a person giving respirations to the person on the ground. as we walked the firemen were reaching the victim, and an ambulance had also just arrived at the field and was begining to drive onto the fields.

when we got to our sideline we asked around to see if any of the condors had seen what happened (still thinking it was maybe a concussion or something). one guy said he had been paying some attention and it looked like the teams were about to begin a point when an observer pointed out to the pulling team that they had a player in convulsions on the sideline. this was when i realized it wasn't an injury sustained in the course of active play.

the paramedics were now on the scene and had relieved the good samaritan who had previously been giving respirations. soon enough they were doing chest compressions and it seemed like things were getting more desperate on the other side of the field. our team pretty much stayed put and watched the proceedings from 40 yards away. after a number of minutes of CPR, and as they seemed to be loading her on a stretcher, field staff came by and asked everyone to clear off the fields. i've never seen a group of ultimate players as cooperative as this as the whole fields were cleared within a 2 minutes. we got off the field just as they were loading up the ambulance and driving off. there were still police there talking with players who seemed to be either on her team or somehow connected to her or the events that took place.

at this point nobody really knew the severity of the situation, but i figured it was a pretty bad thing to be doing CPR on somebody for as long as they had been doing it. a captain's meeting was called and the timing for the remainder of the day was laid out. the show must go on, i guess. after the 'showcase' game that night we heard that she had passed away, and i thinke veryone was pretty much in shock that such a thing could happen. it it was an extraordinary and extraordinarily sad event to witness.

davis...one aspect

it seems like there is suddenly an overwhelming amount of topics i could post on, thanks to the first tournament of the spring season. things such as the condors prospects for the season (i probably won't post on this), the shakeup in the bay area teams(i may post on this), a player dying on the fields (i may give my perspective of the events, since it doesn't seem like anyone has written much, and it's a very unique thing), how to improperly assess points to a team that isn't there for quarters, potentially being the second oldest condor this season (is 31 really that old?), and my personal play (this post).

i've had a very unique offseason, and it didn't prepare me for this tourney at all. my typical pattern is to take off from after nationals until sometime in mid-to-late december, and then get back into training for the upcoming year. however, with a pulled hamstring at nationals, i took all of november off to heal, did rehab for december and early january, then spent the last few months doing nothing. i think i've had 2 frisbee specific workouts in the last 3 months.

it turns out that having long breaks between each game on saturday was not the best thing to help my body get through the day. long warmup after a 1st round bye on saturday saw my hamstring feeling great, but my whole lower-body was sore from the previous week's weightlifting and workout. quick game, 13-4 or something. 2-hour bye. long warmup again, slightly longer game, 13-6 maybe. long bye including health emergency which happened on the adjacent field to ours. slightly longer game again, 13-7?

my legs were shot. the warmups before the 2nd and 3rd game were much shorter than the first two, but it was still a lot of energy to get the engine revved up and the legs didn't want to loosen up after being shut down. additionally, i forgot to take any ibuprofen, so i felt all the pain...quads, hamstrings, calves, feet. when i'd play i could usually follow my guy around for one or two cuts, and then i'd start trying to cut my losses. my mark had dramatically deteriorated as i couldn't muster the strength to move my feet.

then the big matchup of the day against a team composed of a lot of players who played jam last season...let's call them 'project X' for short. just in time. i was not so secretly rooting for my legs to cramp up so i'd have an excuse to stay off the field, but instead they stayed under me just enough to allow me to make a number of mistakes. we started out strong as a team, but as we lost more guys to injury (we finished with 13) jam wound up capitalizing on mistakes that we were getting away with early on. my fatigue led to one terrible decision (a hammer on the goal line for a TO. i maybe throw 5 hammers in a whole season, but i thought i could end the point quick with this one), two poor executions (one an overthrow which caused two of our guys to take an injury sub, another underthrow) leading to turns, and another quick throw which was where it should have been, but was a bit unconventional and led to a drop. final score, 15-13 bad guys.

sunday starts early, but again we get the old game-bye pair to start the day. so after playing a team that stayed with us to 2-2, we got to sit around for a few hours until the semis. a rematch of the second game from saturday, with similar results, although they kept it close a bit longer, and we were playing project X in the finals. the first point saw a patient X work it up against our man with about 40 passes (so much for the huck and hope). i diligently chased my man around for most of the point, but took everything out of the tank in the process. then they get the next 3 after a miscue, a pointblock and an errant huck. poor/lazy defensive poaching by me sees me get burned for a huck. we lose half 8-2. trade for most of the second half and wind up losing 15-8 or something.

this is probably the most out-of-shape i've ever been coming into a spring, and it showed. the good news is that it reminded me that i can't just go out there and perform how i expect without putting in at least a minimal amount of training. the small roster and scheduling wasn't doing me any favors, although i was helped by the fact that there were few quality opponents to force us to expend more energy than necessary. hopefully some diligence over the next few weeks will help correct some of this and at least get me prepared for what lies ahead.

going hard

i played in a men's only, invite only beach game in santa barbara a few weeks ago, and there was a play that stuck out that at least generated a little talk, but no real controversy.

my team is on defense and one of our guys poaches into space at a high stall count. the throw goes up in his neighborhood and he commits to going hard to the disc. the intended receiver, who was going with a full head of steam has to adjust a little to get a hand on the disc. both players arrive at the disc around the same time and the disc winds up on the sand. if i'm on the offensive team i probably ask the receiver why he didn't call strip (actually, i guess i asked him this anyways, but after the game was over), but being on the defensive team i clearly saw a block.

as i was thinking about it afterwards, the defender would have had zero shot at the disc if he hadn't committed as soon as he did. if he hesitated a little, either at the begining or possibly sensing contact at the end, it probably winds up looking really ugly with a collision and a 'late' bid.

it's a very fine line between playing hard (and committing to making a play on the disc) and being a hack who winds up barging into everyone on the field. i suppose if you are a little late once or twice in a day, maybe you have to reevaluate what plays are in your range, but there's really only one way to find out what you're captable of and that's to go after the disc.

side note: first CA tourney this weekend, maybe there will actually be stuff to write about next week.