Club Sectionals

We took a tryout team to Club Sectionals this past weekend, which is always an interesting time. Since we won't split between A and B teams for another couple weeks, our club sectionals team always has a disorienting mix between established A team players, freshmen who will certainly make the A team, freshmen who will almost certainly not make the A team, and lifetime B teamers without a prayer for promotion. This year in particular showcased a dearth of returning A teamers, as many of our players are playing for other club teams or just decided not to attend. As a result, it was difficult for us to establish any real cohesion on the field and many of our lines contained absolutely pathetic liabilities. Kids who are unable to defend the slowest cutters on the other team and who seem to turn the disc over any time they look at it.

Looking at our roster for this tournament, it was clear that we had to lower our expectations.
We got off to a horrific start against UVM. Our cutters couldn't get open, our handlers couldn't get on the same page, our defenders couldn't stop anybody. I don't know what the final score of that game was, but it was a pretty good drubbing. A highlight of the game, in my mind, was Jeff getting stripped by his mark about as hard as you can be stripped. The mark somehow got it into his mind to contest the call, which was ridiculous. This stip was so obvious that everybody else on the field thought that the stall was going to come in on zero; rather than looking to make a dump cut immediately, I gave the downfield cutters a few seconds to get open before I started to move. Suddenly, I heard the low-talking mark say "8...9..." and Jeff had to throw the disc away into the endzone. I told the mark that he was a terrible player and a worse human being for contesting that call. He tried to give me lip and I just shook my head and said, sadly, "Terrible... terrible...." The man who I was guarding agreed with me, quietly, and we moved on with the game. Shame on Jeff for not raising a stink when that shittard contested his call.
We then played against Chuckwagon, a mediocre club team that's been around for at least the last bunch of years. We got waxed even harder by Chuckwagon, scoring maybe three or so points. We did show some high points, though, with much improved cutting and defense all around. John, my brother, played that game to test out the elbow that should be going under the knife sometime soon. He said that he didn't want to have surgery without first seeing if it miraculously healed itself. John played well for the rest of the day, but it seems as though his elbow is still pretty messed up. Too bad. A highlight of the game came when Alden, Little Steve, and myself managed to put up a pretty good handler weave in the redzone before I tossed a blade to Babbitt to score the point. Somebody had caught a deep throw a few yards out of the endzone and then called time out. After the time out, however, Chuckwagon tightened up their defense and nobody was able to get open in the endzone. Steve, Alden, and I reset and swung the disc over and over and over, never getting nervous or tossing up a low percentage throw, until a narrow gap finally opened and we scored. There were a few other pretty decent plays as well. I thought that I was going to get a semi-layout d on a floater, but I came up short, for example. Nick made a couple disgusting catches, one of which on a hammer that I rifled just over his head. And we had some lines that managed to shred Chuckwagon's clam, though the majority didn't fair very well at all against this defense.
Then we moved on to face Dartmouth. Dartmouth College is having a rebuilding year, having graduated a lot of their experienced players, and they just began school this week. Just like us, they came to Sectionals with a lot of inexperienced players filling key roles, and we matched up very well against them. After a fairly close game, we tightened up our rotation and pulled out our only win of the tournament. I think I probably played 6 of the last 8 points, or something like that, which tired me out pretty well. I didn't really exercise much at all this summer, and I find myself in fairly horrendous condition to start the year. In a couple months I think that I will be able to play a number of points in succession; Saturday, it just burned me out.
We then had a bye, during which we went to watch the end of a Ladyzoo game. Nithya had broken her collarbone earlier in the day and returned at that time. We played flutterguts, John and I against Little Steve and Mitch. It was one of the worst flutterguts games I can remember being a part of, and my team got dominated. Theme of the weekend, I suppose.
After the bye, we had a lot of trouble getting motivated to warm up for our final game of the day against McGill. McGill is from Canada, and Canadian College Regionals are coming up, so they are well-conditioned, well-practiced, and at the peak of their season in pretty much every other respect. That said, they aren't the most dominant ultimate players in the world, but they were ready to go against us. With out lackluster start and a decision to give equal playing time to everybody on our team, McGill lept to a pretty big lead against us. 11-5, I believe. At that point, I guess we decided to try to win. We completely tightened up our rotation, and a few of our most experienced players played the rest of the game without rest. With a couple big blocks and a resurgance of energy, we quickly closed the gap. A couple of our players had pretty big sky d's and layout d's, and I had one of the most savage point blocks of my life (I flexed and screamed "FUUUUUCK YEAH" as I frolicked down the field after the play, suitably demoralizing my opponent). And we had some big plays in the endzone. Mitch and Babbitt made a couple huge catches, and Nick finally seemed to start using his size and jumping ability to rip some discs out of the sky. Babbitt had a big d, leaping in front of his opponent to snatch the disc out of the air, but the McGill kid fell into his ankle and broke a chunk of bone off of his leg. Babbitt is almost certainly done for the fall and could require surgery, we shall see. We did continue our comeback after his late exit, though it is obvious that we started it a bit too late. McGill only needed to score two points, and they finally did this in spite of our effort. They floated a disc over the heads of three of their players and one of ours about five yards out of the endzone. I poached off of my man and elevated over the entire pile (big surprise, I have no idea how I did that) and spiked the disc with authority as I crashed through a couple McGill players. However, one of them was already on the ground and the disc landed right on his chest. He clutched it tight to his breast and threw the winning goal. Final score 13-10 or 11. That play was very similar to a play that Alden would be involved in the next day, when he spiked a disc right into the arms of a random Amherst High player. Luckily, in Alden's case, the Amherst High player had a foot on the line, but it still seemed marvelously unlucky.
Saturday pretty much killed me. Like I said before, I was in laughable condition going into the tournament, and I was wholly unprepared for a rigorous day of playing. Sunday got off to a pretty abysmal start. With our key players feeling the fatigue of the previous day and a couple of our stars unable to play Sunday, we didn't have very much hope. We had a pretty terrible warmup and got dominated by Amherst High. We all had a couple bad throwaways and drops (Jeff dropped the pull on our first O point) and several members of our team seemed unable to resist the temptation to let their man score unopposed. It was pathetic. I had a couple bad throwaways, but none of them were bad decisions. The worst, a slow toss right to a three foot tall teenager playing in their zone's front wall, was a wide-open pass that I threw really, truly poorly. Oh well. We were all ill-prepared to play tired, something that will change as the season progresses. Halfway through this game, I learned how slow Jeff really is. I mean, I didn't think he was very fast, but.... I threw him a pretty easy leading pass into the endzone, a pass that I expected him to be able to stroll onto. Instead, he made a huge layout that seperated his left shoulder. He went to the hospital, was given a spiffy sling, and learned that he would be able to start playing again in a week or so. About as good as we could have expected.
We then lost big to Double Dragon, a club team. But they were pretty nice guys, so it was a pretty fun game. I made a couple nice throws and played alright defense, and we threw some guys into roles that they had never played before. It was an interesting game.
Finally, we went on to play Middlebury, who I cannot stand. Fuck them. Like most of the other games we played this weekend, we gave up a big lead to start. Still giving kids different roles and mixing things up, we actually managed to close the gap, but not enough to win. Again, I felt like I played alright. Highlights of the game included a couple of layout d's by Sam, who really looks like he's starting to get it. Nick was also a pretty dominant cutter, and the other Nick did alright handling - he always got open on the dump (though didn't seem to understand the optimal places to cut to; we can teach that) and didn't throw it away too much, though he didn't really make plays with his throws. At one point, I picked the disc up on the sideline and saw that Tall Nick would be able to get to the endzone with just his defender and little chance of help. Even though the mark tried to stop me, I hung one about ten or eleven feet over the endzone and Nick made his man look the fool. I was pretty pumped. The second to last point of the game, the wind turned against us and started gusting hard right as somebody else was catching the pull, with me to get the centering pass. As my man was approaching, I casually noted, "Looks like God doesn't want me to throw this deep." He set up his mark and I continued, "What God doesn't know is that I don't really care what he wants right now." My mark instantly understood and went straight up against me, but I got the throw off anyway and it went pretty well. Nick caught it on the goal line and threw a stupid floater to Ramsdell to turn it over in a terrible manner. We got it back, though, and I fired a strike to Sam to score the point. The other line then gave up an easy score to end the weekend.

That's more than enough for now. Maybe I'll offer a couple concluding thoughts with my post tomorrow. Boy am I tired and sore....