Purple Valley Day 1

Today was the first day of Purple Valley, and Zoodisc played fairly well. We went 3-0 on the day, with wins over Harvard, Wesleyan, and Williams C. I think the score in the Harvard game was 15-9, the Wesleyan game was more like 13-10, and the Williams C game was 15-2. All in all, not a bad performance, though Harvard was missing a lot of their more experienced players and Wesleyan was missing Phil, their only player of worth. Regardless, our boys gutted it out and came out with three W's. Like Mitch's dad said, the scorecard doesn't include a photograph. We have to beat everybody, no matter who plays on their team.

Harvard started off a little close, though we soon pulled ahead. The D line managed to get a couple breaks that the O line frittered away (classic), but once we got going the Defense started grooving and didn't relinquish the field very often. As often happens, this helped break Harvard's spirit a little bit and gave the Offense a little room to find their own rhythem. We did let off a few swilly completions that should have been easy D's, and I remember a couple times where a defender on our team macked a throw into a completion rather than simply catching the disc, but we looked pretty good for the most part. Mitch dropped a Calahan goal and had a couple of layout D's - he isn't the best shutdown defender, but he has great reactions and is learning to be rather opportunistic on defense. We had a bunch of other nice D's, threw some decent hucks, and didn't turn the disc over very much at all towards the end of the game. I played pretty good defense on this teensy Asian handler who was playing for them. He was pretty fucking quick but didn't really have all that much else going for him. I forced a couple turns and Almost had a big layout D on him in the endzone, but bid a half step too late - my hand hit the disc right as he snatched it away. Even though we knew that Harvard wasn't at full strength, it felt great to win this game because We certainly aren't at full strength either. Missing about half of our roster (and some of the most experienced players are included in that half) for this tournament, we have to believe that we are going to be ten times as good once our team gets playing together. IF the team ever gets playing together, but that's a topic for later.

Against Wesleyan we came out rather flat. We sort of goofed around during endzone drill warmups and weren't very fired up for the game when we received the first pull. Wesleyan broke us a few times in a demoralizing manner - it didn't seem as though our O line was really ever running all that well, and our D line was just conceding throws to the force side. But then the D line clicked into gear, and we thundered right back into it. We had a few hiccups that resulted in looonng long points, but our players kept digging deep to get the turn and eventually punch it into the endzone. Alan really started to stand out during a couple of these points, which really excites me. Ten minutes into one particularly arduous point, we checked the disc in on the corner of our own endzone. Nobody moved. Three seconds later, Alan was breaking in wide open. He caught the pass, dumped the disc, and moved upfield. Three seconds later, Alan was breaking in wide open. He isn't particularly athletic, but he is fundamentally very sound and works very hard. Alan has some great instincts, and I think that he will develop into a regular contributor on the O line by the end of the year.

One of the biggest differences between our team and Wesleyan's was our ability to adapt mid-game. We got off to a bad start, but we had the confidence necessary to get ourselves out of our funk and start really Running. Wesleyan could not build on their early enthusiasm to keep their energy ahead of ours. They had a couple decent plays that worked for them early in the game, but they seemed unwilling or unable to try anything new when we changed our defense to eliminate the effectiveness of these plays. For example, Wesleyan loved running this one set play out of their ho-stack when the disc was on the sideline. The nearside wing would clear to the middle of the field, and the closest mid would fill the space, giving him a clear look for a deep throw. This play worked pretty well for us at the beginning of the game. However, after they ran it on us several times, we altered the way that we defended against it. Our man covering the nearside wing would start to run after him, but instead would turn around and sprint back into the cutting lane. Believing that the defender had been cleared out of the lane by the wing, the thrower rarely even looked for the poacher and just threw the disc away. After we started poaching in this way, we seemed to get an easy turn every single time they tried running the play. I, personally, got two poach D's against this play. And this poachy D wouldn't really work if the Wesleyan players simply identified that we were poaching and threw to the wide open man in the middle. For whatever reason, though, they seemed utterly unprepared to deal with our poach, and we just kept getting free D's. Idiots.

The Wesleyan game was also interesting because it was our team's first experience playing against a team that is willing to foul excessively in an attempt to beat our talent and athleticism. Though some of the Wesleyan guys play cleanly and with great sportsmanship, a lot of them set up rough marks or hacked when we tried to throw. Our team handled this adversity with a tremendous amount of poise. We refused to really get angry, merely using their cheating tactics to our advantage whenever we wanted, and refused to sink to their level and retaliate. There will be times this year when we play a team that cheats or does something equally infuriating in a weak attempt to throw us off our mental game. By passing the Wesleyan test the way that we did, I think we demonstrated that we can handle a bit of competitive stress without our mental game completely crumbling, something that you can't always count on with such a young team.

There isn't really so much that I can say about the Williams C game. They are terrible. We knew this going in, they knew this going in, and nothing happened during this game to make me think otherwise. It looked like we were going to be able to shut them out, but two misread floating hucks (one to Tall Nick's guy and one to Ryan's - our two tallest, jumpingest players) let Williams C onto the scoreboard. Too bad, but I truly don't care.

I played pretty well today. I played good defense, mostly, and didn't have too many turnovers. I got a few D's, threw a few goals, and felt pretty good in most ways. My pulls, however, were atrocious. I threw the pull out of bounds countless times today. Which is bullshit. There is really no good excuse for it, but I guess I got into my own head and couldn't think my way out of it. It's just another sign of the mental weakness that I'll need to expunge before before the season really gets going.

I'm not sure what time we have to be there tomorrow morning or who we're playing. I'm hoping to get to play a higher quality team than we saw today. I'd like to see if our team can handle the pressure of playing against somebody who isn't going to collapse when we start running at full speed. I'm excited about tomorrow, but who knows how it will actually turn out.