Pat Bell Memorial '08

This was not our best tournament ever.

Friday night (Halloween), we had big party at our house. I dressed as a guy who got mauled by a bear, easily winning the "goriest costume" award. Or, I would have won the award if that was a real award. Instead of in my imagination. Pretty much everybody from the Men's and Women's teams came to the party, as well as some people I didn't know. Josh got a keg, and the party went fairly well except Jesse's camera got stolen, which was a real downer. Hopefully somebody just took it by mistake, but I doubt it. People are assholes.

Saturday morning, a good part of the team looked a little worse for wear. This probably had as much to do with the late night as it did the drinking. We got off to a slow start against McGill, and though we played a little better as the game progressed we still lost by a good margin. This was to be the start of an infuriating weekend. We then took on Amherst College, and we pulled out a win in spite of sloppy offense and pourous defense. Alan (who had been one of our only consistant offensive players) went down early in the game with, most likely, a fractured bone in his hand. Our third game was against the alumni team. Again, we went down early, but some good playing brought the game to universe point with us receiving. A drop on an easy pass, however, (bane of our weekend) and the alumni threw the undefended goal for the win. Classic. Game four against Amherst High School was a travesty. We were completely stifled by their zone defense and were unable to prevent their deep passing game. We lost several players to injury during this game, ending with only 10 or so active players. Finally, we finished Saturday against Tufts, who beat us in a similar manner as ARHS. Again, we weren't able to get our offense going and played defense like a bunch of babies. It was embarrassing.

We started Sunday against our own B team. We beat them easily, though we didn't look too sharp at any point in the game. Though we didn't deserve it, the alumni team forfeited their spot in the semi-finals so that we could have another rematch against Tufts. They might as well not have bothered. Tufts humiliated us today just as they did yesterday. Our offense wasn't able to get anything done at all against a defensive zone filled with gaping holes. Our players displayed a particular fondness for dropping easy lead passes that hit them in the hands. Our defenders were constantly out of position and rarely challenged a Tufts cut. It was pathetic. Even though we picked it up in the second half, we still lost 15-5 or 6. Unforgivable. I'm pretty disheartened by the way that these games went.

Part of what makes this weekend so discouraging is the fact that I actually played quite well. I had a few throwaways yesterday, but I played pretty good defense and generally made good decisions. Today, I had no turnovers in the B team game and only two against Tufts (none in the first half). One of my turnovers was on a throw to Ryan, when he had a step to the inside on the defender but wasn't expecting me to put it. The other was on a pretty bad backhand into the endzone, when I tried to pop it OI over the defender to Tim and just floated it too high. I forced a bunch of turns this weekend, got a few poach d's, and threw a lot of goals. In my opinion, I played better this weekend than I have at any other time this fall. It's a shame that I'm just not talented enough to take over a game and win one for my team.

One of our biggest problems as a team this weekend was drops. We dropped a lot of easy passes this weekend, and that just Should Not Happen. It is easy to catch a frisbee. Easier than it is to catch the ball in any other sport known to man. When people drop the disc after working it down the length of the field, it is a huge letdown. When people drop the disc on an easy swing pass eight yards out of our own endzone and the other team just tosses it in for a score, it is infuriating. I don't know how many times I threw a great pass to a teammate only to have it glance off his hands or thwack off of his chest. It sometimes felt as though there wasn't anything that I could do to help my team succeed.

Another big problem was defense. So often, players on our team would just let their men run any which way all over the field. Sometimes, we would trail them in, happy to set the mark after their man caught an undefended twenty-five yard in cut. That is unacceptable. We need to make sure that we get good positioning on defense, staying on our toes and taking an intelligent route to the disc to stop our men from getting the disc and to cut off the throwing lanes. I think that so much of this is just team attitude. The players on our team probably think that they're playing hard on defense, but they just aren't. They need to learn how to sprint when they are tired, and they need to see the space through which the offense is trying to move the disc and beat their cutter to the spot. Defense requires being willing to work harder. Always. If you think that you are working hard, work harder. Individuals on our team needs to learn to be personally insulted every time that their man gets the disc, and I really don't think that many people have this attitude.

I think that this same problem pertains to our offense. So often this weekend, a cutter would make a half-assed little cut. When they do this, it is clear that they don't really want the pass. Our downfield cutters often lacked hustle, and this meant that the handlers had all of the responsibility of keeping the disc moving. That doesn't excuse the mistakes that the handlers made, they should have played better as well, but it does make it really difficult to move the disc down the field. Every player on this team needs to get more active on the field, and I think that a lot of this activity is rooted in a lack of desire. If we are going to win, we have to want to win. End of story. We have to want to get the disc, we have to want to shut our men down, we have to want to score, we have to HATE to be scored on.

I'm in a pretty pissy mood right now, but I can't wait for practice on Tuesday. This weekend should show us how far away we are from achieving any sort of goal this season.