First Week

The first week of Zoodisc's Spring 2009 season is officially at an end. I think that this has been a most encouraging week of practice, and I can honestly say that I have never been as excited about playing for this team as I do right now. Hopefully we can make this excitement last through the entire season.

Two days ago school was canceled because of a fairly mild snowstorm. The amount of snow that accumulated wasn't terribly impressive, but there was some freezing rain so I guess that was the school's motivation for closing. The snow did prevent us from doing the plyometric and agility workout that we had planned, so we played snow football instead. We got a pretty big game going (10 on 10 or so, with the addition of Joe, Brent, and a couple B teamers) and had a ball. The players who decided not to show totally missed out on a great time. We ended up exhausted, soaked, and happy.

On that subject, I am dissappointed that some members of our team didn't show up. Some had pretty good excuses - Henry's knee was sore and he didn't want to risk it playing football, Allan doesn't own a pair of boots, etc. - but others didn't really have any reason not to be there. Now, I know that this wasn't the most important practice that we're going to have this season. Frankly, if somebody is going to blow off one practice, I hope that they choose to blow off the practice where we just play snow football. But participating in practice means more than just getting in shape and bettering yourself as an individual player. It means that you are demonstrating to your teammates that you are going to be there every day, no matter what, busting your ass off. Making a committment to be at practice every day helps your teammates to learn to trust you. It makes them understand that you are going to back them up when the shit's in the fan. It tells them that you are somebody they can depend on. Our team needs more of this trust. We need to get to know one another like best friends. We need to Be best friends, so that we can come together and work towards a consistant goal when we are all fucking exhausted and unity is the only thing that we can possibly have left. I understand skipping a practice that doesn't seem as important, but every practice is important in some way or another. We need to have everybody together so that we can grow together.

While I would have preferred to do something else, yesterday we met in Lederle to run stairs. The ground outside was too slushy and icy to really run a sprint workout, and I haven't yet figured out the schedule for the Curry Hicks Cage track (I should try to do this today or Monday). I put together a pretty good stair workout, I think, and I'm pretty happy with how the practice went. I put an emphasis on doing short sets of stairs quickly, hoping that we can build explosive power and footspeed through this workout. The workout went as follows:

Throwing outside.
Warmup of a slow ascent to the top of the building (floor 16)
2 floors of 2 stairs up 1 stair down.
2 floors of 3 stairs up 2 stairs down.
2 floors of 2 up 1 down.
2 floors of 3 up 2 down.
3 floors of singles.
4 floors of doubles.
5 floors of singles.
6 floors of doubles.
3 sets of 10 squat jumps.
5 floors of singles.
4 floors of doubles.
3 floors of singles.
2 floors of 3 up 2 down.
2 floors of 2 up 1 down.
Stretch.
4 sets of 15 pushups, holding leglifts or planks during the recovery.
My ab workout.
3 sets of 20 seconds sitting on the floor pumping our arms like we were running.

This was a pretty tough workout, but it was by no means impossible. Everybody got through it in pretty good spirits, and I think that we're looking pretty good for this point in the season. Afterwards, some people went to Greenfeild to play indoor pickup, and a few of us went to the gym to lift upper body. I'm pretty tired right now; my legs felt like jelly when I woke up this morning. However, I am excited to be going to the gym with a Keenan, Josh, Ryan, and maybe a couple other people at 5. This will be the first day in a week that I'll be able to lift legs (the gym was closed on Monday and Wednesday) and I'm curious whether I'll be able to put up more or less weight than I was able to last week, when I'd been pushing my legs pretty hard.

Yesterday's Practice Was Pretty Good.

We had a pretty great turnout from the A team guys, and a few B team guys were there as well. Overall, I would say that I was pleasantly surprised at the conditioning of most of the people on the team. Clearly, people have been working hard this break. I think I was most impressed with Allan. He isn't the fastest runner on the team (by any stretch) but he was always one of the top few to finish the sprints, especially as the practice progressed.

I was a little dissappointed, however, that the practice wasn't more difficult. When I planned the workout, I had believed that it would be practically insumountable for most of the players on our team. I really intended to use this practice as a wake up call, to shock my team into being prepared to work exceptionally hard. And that isn't to say that people Didn't work hard yesterday - people really struggled and then pushed through their fatigue to finish the workout. But that's the thing: people finished the workout and didn't look terribly sick at the end. Our next sprint workout is going to have to be considerably harder. I think that I'm going to do this by lightening the number of sprints per set (to help people to push their hardest through every single sprint rather than slowing down on the last couple due to exhaustion) and decrease the amount of rest time between sets. I was giving two minutes for water between each set of sprints. Next time, I'll toy with the idea of only giving one and of having more shuttle runs, suicides, and foot fires.

After practice, I ate dinner with the team and then went to the gym. There were some other people there, but I mostly worked with Patuluk and Keenen. Both of them worked pretty hard, but I was surprised at how little weight they were able to lift. Or how much weight they believe they can lift. I really think that a lot of it is in their heads; they think that they can only military press 20 pounds, which intimidates them from trying to lift more. I'm going to have to break them of this in the next couple of weeks to get them up to some respectable weights and build more explosive muscle. All in all, however, I am proud of the amount of work that they did for this first day. I hope that we can all keep it up.

Today is a snow day, which means no classes and the gym is closed (no lifting, bah). Since we clearly can't do the plyo workout and the agilities that we were planning on doing today, we are heading onto the field to play snow football. That should be a good, fun way for the team to get together and bond rather than just working out. Sprints can be tiring and demoralizing. It's definitely good to mix up the workouts to keep everybody fresh and into the program. I'm excited to go play football and hang out with the team.

This year is off to a great start.

First Practice is Tomorrow

And boy am I excited! I put together what I think will be a pretty fucking tough workout for everybody to complete. Do you want to see it? No? Well, fuck it, I'm going to show it to you anyway!

6 100 yard sprints with a 30 second recovery between each.
4 backpedal/sprint shuttle runs.
6 70 yard sprints with a 30 second recovery between each.
2 20 second partner shadow drills.
6 40 yard sprints with a 30 second recovery between each.
2 20 second foot fires.
3 suicides at lengths of 10 and 20 yards.
2 100 yard sprints.
2 70 yard sprints.
2 40 yard sprints.
2 20 yard sprints.
Stretch.
4 sets of 15 pushups.
Ab workout.
30 backhands.
30 forehands.

Looks intense, huh? It didn't seem so crazy when it was in my head, but I just kept coming up with more and more things that I want to do and now I have this gargantuan list. But I'm still excited; this is the first step towards creating the most explosive team that I have ever played for.

I've been swapping emails with a lot of different people. I sent several to the team clarifying what our tournament schedule is going to be. I've also been corresponding with one of our RSO advisers, who is going to try to schedule us gym space as a team. Two years ago, we were able to get Boyden once a week from 10pm to midnight, and that was fantastic. Last year, the only availability was Friday morning from 8am to 10 am, and that was all but worthless. Hopefully we can get some sort of schedule that is more reminiscent of two years ago. Oh, and I also received an email from the captain of Amherst College, who is looking to scrimmage us a couple of times before Spring Break. That would be phenomenal, since we otherwise aren't going to be able to get onto a feild at all before tournament season starts. Amherst College has a nice turf feild under the lights, which would be great to play on. I should email Ben and see if we can get something together to head out to Bentley and play on their feild sometime in the next month or so....

Anyway, as you can see, exciting things are in the works. It was one thing to think about the season a couple weeks ago, when I was building up a solid foundation. The season just felt so fucking long away. Now, though, with the first team practice breathing down my throat, it feels as if we have no time at all. We are going to absolutely slay ourselves at practice this season. There is nothing that I would rather do.

Running Alone Sucks.

That has been a major obstacle to my training this Winter. Lifting alone isn't difficult for me. I don't have too much trouble motivating myself to get down to the nice, warm gym once a day for a lift, even if my workout buddies aren't available. Likewise, I don't have too much trouble sticking to a regimen of pushups and situps. Both of these workouts are comfortable and indoors, which helps me to get them done. Both of these workouts are also fairly regulated. I know how much I can squat and I know how many crunches I can do. These numbers remain roughly the same day in and day out, so I can't easily let up on the workout when there isn't somebody else to push me.

Running is, in every way, quite the opposite. Running outside in the Winter is cold and unpleasant. It is a workout that I detest, and this makes it difficult for me to complete the workout without somebody else to drive me forward. Unlike pushups, situps, and lifting, the severity of a running workout is almost entirely precipitated on the speed that the individual runs. Because of this, a running workout that would be almost impossibly difficult to complete in a group can be relatively tame for an individual, if that individual does not know how to motivate himself.

If the previous two paragraphs haven't already tipped you off, I am not very good at motivating myself to run.

I would say that I've done a pretty good job attempting to run this break. At least a couple times a week I got outside and did a sprint workout. Recently, I have also been using the treadmill at Gold's Gym to run interval workouts. However, I'll have to admit that I haven't gotten out to run as frequently as I would have liked, and the speed with which I have run has been dissappointingly poor. Without other people to hold me accountable, I find my speed inexorably sinking as I reach the end of a sprint. Or I find myself getting distracted and spending too much time between sets. Or I give up on the final sprint and walk home instead of taking a cooldown jog.

I think that I'm in pretty good shape. I look better than I looked at the beginning of break (which isn't necessarily saying much), and I feel okay when I elevate my heart rate. This first week of the spring semester is going to be an important test, however. I need to demonstrate that I can push myself through a tough running workout when I have a couple teammates to urge me on. More importantly, I need to show my teammates that I can be a leader and that I can push them to achieve more than they ever could before.

I'm excited for Tuesday, but it's going to be pretty fucking hard.

2009 College Nationals Bid Allocation

The UPA released their decisions regarding the 2009 College Championship Series. I was able to view these decisions this morning. As they have previously indicated, Nationals will be expanded this year from 16 to 20 teams. Under the new system, each of the 8 Regions will receive 2 automatic bids (up from 1 automatic bid in past years) and 4 strength bids will be allocated based on last year's results. For 2009, the Central Region will have 4 bids to Nationals, the Southwest and Atlantic Coast Regions will each have 3 bids, and everybody else will have 2. While I personally do not think that it is fair for one Region to have 4 bids (the Central Region will likely send Wisconsin, Carleton, Minnisotta, and Iowa - while Wisonsin and Carleton are deserving teams, Minnisotta is usually fairly average and Iowa... well, I would be suicidal if I were to lose to Iowa, based on what I know of their team) I do think that the UPA is moving in the right direction with these decisions. There is too much year-to-year change on a college team to assume that the number two team in a Region is not better than the number one team from another Region. In past years, it was possible for a strong number two team from one Region to be sitting at home while a weak number one team from another Region blew it at Nationals. That hardly seems fair. While deserving teams will always be left out of the Championship Tournament, giving two automatic bids to every Region will help reduce the number of deserving teams that are not given the opportunity to compete.

This brings me to the reason why the UPA has made these rapid changes: the C1 controversy of this past fall. I don't believe that I have written anything about C1 in any previous posts; I'll have to make sure to write something up about that soon. For better or for worse, C1 seems to be serving as a catalyst of change within the Ultimate community, and it deserves due recognition.

Furthermore, while the presence of size bids has helped our Region in the past, I am glad that the UPA is finally doing away with that particular system of bid allocation. Though we never made use of this opportunity, I always felt funny about the prospect of taking a number two bid to Nationals that is based solely on the fact that our Region has more piece of shit liberal arts college non-competitive Ultimate teams than any other Region in the country. The UPA should be trying to let the best possible teams into the Championship Tournament. It doesn't make any sense to say that a Region deserves an extra bid just because it contains more teams than any other Region. Being the second best of fifty uncompetitive teams is less impressive than being the fourth best of ten contenders. I admit that the strength of the Region in the previous year isn't a perfect way to determine whether a Region deserves an extra bid in the current year. However, this method is certainly superior to the method of allocating bids according to the size of a Region. At least now the UPA can say that they are trying to reward teams for beating quality competition instead of rolling over a rabble of unqualified hippies.

The long and the short of all this is that nothing changes for my team. Our Region has two bids to Nationals, and that's nothing new. The Northeast Region has had two bids to Nationals for my entire college career. However, learning about our bid situation at this point in the season makes it feel very different. In the past, we've had to wait until all of the teams from all of the Regions submitted their rosters before we knew for sure whether we would receive a size bid. Though we were always pretty sure that we would get this coveted second bid, we could never be certain until the UPA officially notified us. One year (two years ago, I believe), the Northeast came within three or four shitty teams of losing our size bid to the South Region. Our potential second bid was always a matter of stress, a distraction as we geared up for the College Series. Personally, I am relieved that the UPA has simplified matters by letting us know early on how many bids each Region would be recieving. We know for sure where we need to place in order to make it to Nationals. We know for sure what we need to fight for.

Nothing has changed since I looked at the UPA website this morning. Nothing is different between this year and last year and the year before and the year before, at least in terms of the number of bids allocated to the Northeast Region. But these new developments do change the way that I think of the upcoming season. They make it easier for me to set goals (personal and for my team) without the chance of having my goals disrupted by a silent uncertainty. Somehow, I feel as though it will be easier for me to visualize the season and think about what I have to do.

Man, oh man, I am fucking excited about this Spring.

The Week Before Spring.

Since the Spring Semester begins in under a week, I figured I'd get my first post of 2009 out there. I had intended to write a lot during Winter Break, but that sort of thing always turns out to be a lot harder than I anticipate. With working out, working at Walker, hanging out with friends, hanging out with family, and spending some quality time with Jesse... well, let's just say that I didn't spent much time in front of a computer. Hopefully I'll be able to turn out more material at school.

This winter, I worked out harder than any other winter of my college career. Maybe it was the desperation of being in my final year and knowing that this is my last opportunity to contribute to the team that I love. Maybe it was the added pressure of being a captain and knowing that my work ethic needs to set the standard for all of the younger players on the team. Either way, I had very little trouble staying motivated to get in shape this winter. I got a one month membership to Gold's Gym and made a commitment to go every day. For the most part, I went with Jake and Jimmy (of Wisconsin) and Brian (of Colorado). We lifted seven days a week, alternating between leg days and upper body days. With such a rigorous schedule, it wasn't long before we started seeing some serious results. Probably our most pronounced results were in the amount of weight that we squatted. We started at a relatively low weight (I think 75 pounds on either side of the bar, so about 195 total) but eventually got to the point where every member of our little group could squat 300 for a set of 8. The most that I ended up doing was 315 on a set of 8, but I'm pretty sure that I could have done a little more. We also worked hard at power cleans, and exercise that I had never done previously but which I quickly learned to love. You can just feel your whole body working its explosive muscles when you do a power clean. It's fantastic.

Additionally, I also ran during break. After talking to a whole bunch of people regarding the right type of workouts for Ultimate, we have decided not to do any distance running this season. Instead, we are going to do a massive amount of short sprints with low recovery time. For instance, one of the running workouts that I have been consistently completing is 5 100 yard sprints with 30 seconds recovery between each sprint, 5 backwards and forwards shuttle runs with 30 seconds recovery between each set, and then 5 more 100 yard sprints with 30 seconds recovery. By the end of this workout, my heart is racing and I can really feel my cardio fitness improve.

Finally, I've been working hard on my core. I do a pushups and a fairly intense ab workout every day. My core is pretty strong right now (though it will certainly improve in the next few weeks) to the point that I can see a light etching of abdominal muscles through the layer of fat on my belly. This is an extremely compelling sign for me. It isn't that I am fat, but I am thickset enough that it is rather difficult for me to develop a sixpack. Perhaps this will be the first time that I get into good enough shape for my abs to push through and show the world how bulletproof they really are. We can only work and hope.

I am in Amherst right now because Jesse had to have some testing done for her ADHD. While I am here, I am trying to get some of my Ultimate responsibilities taken care of. I've been talking and emailing people regarding tournament bids, gym space, uniform orders, etc. Last night, we had a meeting in my kitchen to discuss our training plans for the first part of this spring. I was there, with Babbitt, Mitch, Josh, and Henry. We talked about what sort of training we would be doing and what our general attitude should be. I believe, and I think that the others agree, that the emphisis should be on getting in the best shape that we can possibly get into while working on fundamental skills. This fall, we were plagued by bad throwaways and drops. If we can learn how to throw and catch and mark effectively, and we are all in good shape, we will win the games that we need to win. It's that simple. We also decided to emulate the Wisconsin team and establish a buddy system for the coming season. We randomly paired each player on the team and emailed out the list. Every player is responsible for making sure that his buddy gets into the gym, and each player is responsible for pushing his buddy in practice and during workouts. By making every player accountable, we hope to prevent anybody from slipping through the cracks and not getting into the best possible shape. We need everybody to be working at full capacity this spring, and I really think that we can only do this if everybody is held accountable for their actions by the other players on the team.

My buddy is Keenan. I hope he's ready to work.

I know I am.

Winter Workouts have begun.

We started offseason lifting last week. This is an important part of our workout regimen, as we need to strengthen and build muscle before we start more aggressive workouts as a team. Not only does this make us better prepared for practice, giving us a higher maximum ceiling, but it helps ensure that we don't get injured right at the beginning of the Spring season. Traditionally, not everybody on the team manages to consistantly make it down to the gym. You can always figure out which players on our team are dedicated workers and which are just posers: the workers breeze through the first couple weeks of practice while the posers pull themselves out of workouts with panting breathes and phantom pains.

I just finished calling everybody on our team to check up on their workout statuses. Really, I've only seen a handful of my teammates at the gym, which is a little disappointing. We've been meeting at 3:30 in the Boyden weight room most days, doing a quick lifting workout and then heading to the basketball courts for some pickup basketball. Anyway, as I suspected, most of the people I talked to hadn't gotten around to doing much of anything in the way of offseason workouts. A lot of them didn't sound too excited, but I coerced a good portion of my team into agreeing to meet me at Boyden tomorrow afternoon. I hope that most of them show up tomorrow, though that's only the first (easiest) step towards a Winter of hard work. It's hard to get started, but it's even harder to stay motivated. I'm really going to put in the extra effort to stay on my teammates and do everything that I can to get them all into the best possible shape.

We had a team meeting on Friday, which was very productive (by our standards). We started by discussing the tournaments that we will be attending this Spring. We are planning on heading down to Terminus in Atlanta at the beginning of Spring Break, hitting High Tide in Savannah during Spring Break, and then stopping at Easterns in North Carolina on the final weekend of Spring Break. The following weekend, we're going to head back down to Washington D.C. for Roll Call. Then we (hopefully) will have our tournament and Yale Cup before Sectionals. A pretty good lineup of tournaments, I think. Mitch ran through the numbers and figured out that we would be able to do all of this for only $250 per player, which we will be collecting as dues in the first week of the Spring Semester. This is much cheaper than any other Spring Season has been, so we are discussing the possibility of either trying to add Vegas or the Stanford Invite to our tournament schedule. Both of these tournaments would be very expensive, so we are only going to seriously consider the possibility if we can get a fair amount of money from the school, but that is certainly a possibility. Babbitt and I need to meet with our advisor as soon as possible to discuss our team's budget for the Spring Semester and see if that is even remotely feasible.

We also voted on our uniform design. I think we came up with a pretty dope look for this season. On our white jersey, we are going to have the seal of Massachusetts with a nautical star in the background instead of the regular old star that usually appears on the state seal. The back of our light jersey will have our last names and our numbers. Our dark jersey is going to have the Zoodisc Z on the front with "Massachusetts Ultimate" and our numbers on the back. Our shorts are going to be maroon with our numbers on the front of the left leg and a Zoodisc Z on the back of the right leg. I think we're also going to get warmups, though I don't really know what the design for that is going to be.

Friday night we had a surprise birthday party for Josh (he turned 22 this weekend) and then we had a semi-formal at our house. There was a fair amount of stupid drama surrounding the semi-formal (which I was not to helpful in preventing), but that's neither here nor there: the party went prety well, overall. I had a bit much to drink, however, and yesterday was a complete wash. I was up all night drinking, finishing a large number of beers and taking whiskey shots in rapid succession until the sun came up. I'm too old for that shit. It totally wrecked my ass, and I'm only really feeling better now. I also jammed my left thumb on a basketball this afternoon, which is just peachy.

Alright, enough of the whining. I need to figure out an ab workout that I can email out to the team tonight to get a more structured workout going in addition to the individual lifting that everybody should be doing. I want to give out a workout that everybody can do twice a day, at wakeup and at bedtime, at least five days a week, but I need to make sure that I don't give them something too time intensive or else not a lot of people are going to commit to doing it. Ergh. Maybe I'll do some abs myself and try to figure out how large of a workout I can tell people to do and have them actually do it.

I'll have to give it some thought.

New Sheriff in Town

So, I haven't posted in quite some time. I've had a lot of schoolwork and I haven't been feeling well, so I've let myself get a little lazy with regards to posting. There were also some big changes occuring with regards to the team, and I wanted to see how everything worked out before I made any comment.

The biggest change, of course, is that I am now a captain.

Henry decided that he was too busy with various aspects of his life to pay due attention to his duties as a captain. Credit him for being able to eventually see this and step down for the good of the team. I am replacing Henry as captain of Zoodisc for the remainder of the year. And a stiff responsibility this will be. I need to find a time in the coming period to sit down and sort out workout schedules for everybody on the team, follow up on individuals to work out and get in shape, decide which tournaments we will be attending in the spring and figure out how much money the spring is going to cost everybody so that we can get money up front, and do all of the other things that need to happen to get the spring season off to the right start. Whoof.

I'm not going to talk too much about the last week of practice for the fall season. It was pretty similar to a lot of the other weeks that we had this year, and I want to devote more time giving an overview of the Brown Trournament that we attended this past weekend.

As the number one seed in our pool, we were given a first round bye on Saturday. This gave us the opportunity to sleep in (we didn't have to leave until 7:15) and still arrive in time for our first game in spite of the fact that most of the team lost their way (the final road had no street sign and appeared to be the entrance to a cemetary). We had a quick and lackadasical warmup, jumping right into our first game against Wesleyan. Our O line played alright against Wesleyan, though our D line struggled to convert their turnovers. This was partially because we started this game playing a stacked O line and weak D lines. When we kept a couple strong D lines in the game, Wesleyan started to crack and we ended with a solid win. I think the score was 13-9 or so.

Babbitt started playing in the Wesleyan game even though he had not been expecting to play at all this weekend. He had recently come back from the seriously sprained ankle that he suffered at Club Sectionals, but he strained his rotator cuff on a routine layout in a practice drill last week. Kasarah made Babbitt promise that he would not play this weekend and boasted that he would not be able to lie to her if he did play. Babbitt played the vast majority of the points that our team played this weekend - and played rather well - after swearing our entire team to silence. However, Babbitt accidentally let his secret slip to Kasarah less than fifteen minutes after we got home Sunday night. I guess Kasarah was right about Babbitt's inability to lie to her, but at least it doesn't seem as though a weekend of playing caused Babbitt any physical harm.

We went on to play Brown Y, one of the two tryout B teams that Brown entered into their own tournament. As expected, this was an easy win in spite of our team's lack of focus. We turned out a 15-3 win, I believe. No problems. In the first point of this game, one of the Brown kids stomped on the side of my ankle. This wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't the same ankle that I messed up last fall, so it hurt quite a bit. I don't think it limited me much on Saturday, but I woke up Sunday morning with a bad bruise right where my cleat brushes my ankle. It was also pretty stiff, which limited my mobility, so I pulled myself off of the O line for Sunday and only played D points. I was dissappointed to have to do this, but I would have been a liability on Sunday if I'd logged the number of points that I played on Saturday.

Our third game was against WPI, and it should have been an easy win. The weather, however, disagreed. A stiff wind came in off the ocean (which we could see from the fields) and, at times, the sky opened into a monsoon. Due largely to my own poor playing, we gave up an early lead to WPI. I dropped the very first two passes that came my way, both of which were in our own endzone and got shoved in for easy WPI scores, and probably played the worst first five points that I can ever remember playing. It felt like things were spiralling rapidly out of control, but I somehow managed to pull it together and ended up playing relatively well for the rest of the game. This was a very frustrating game, but we dug it out for the win.

The wind calmed down a little bit (though it was still rather imposing) for our final game of Saturday against MIT. Our win against WPI had already sealed our status as the number one team in our pool, but we wanted to end with a win. We got off to a pretty nice start against MIT, taking half 7-4 or 5. However, we waned a little after half and gave up the lead. We pulled ourselves together, stormed for a comeback, and won by two after the soft cap. I think that fatigue was a big reason for our near-collapse in the middle of the game. I played every single point in the WPI game and every single point of the MIT game up until four or five points before the end when I started to cramp. Several other experienced players on our team (Babbitt, Henry, John, Mitch, Ryan) were in very similar situations. We pretty much ran out of gas during the MIT game. Our subs, however, did a fantastic job filling in and putting fresh legs on the field. This allowed us to run through the end of the game and gave us the spark we needed to win.

I really do not believe that we would have won the MIT game without the players who came off of our bench. They say that the pinch hitter is the toughest position in baseball. Pinch hitters spend an entire game getting tight and out of focus, entering only at the biggest moment. They are set up to fail, and the situation is not much different for ultimate players. Playing off the bench in an ultimate game is really hard. Believe me, I have been there many times, it sucks. I am very proud of our young players for being able to come in at the end of the MIT game and contribute.

As soon as our MIT game ended, the skies opened into pouring rain. We drove to the Brown campus and set up in a lounge for the night, using dorm showers and "borrowed" shampoo to wash up after an extermely muddy day. Zach, Josh and I bought some beer at a liquer store, and they gave us free frozen drinks ("It has Alcohol in it!") because they hadn't been selling. Awesome. Each team was given two party pizzas, we got pretty drunk, and then we went to the tournament party. It was an alright night. During the walk home from the tournament party it rained incredibly hard, but it was warm out so it was actually kind of fun. Brown was having some sort of gay orgy/dance called "SexPowerGod", and a lot of guys and girls were walking around campus wearing nothing but the most revealing and provokative of undergarments. SO that was fun, too.

Sunday morning, we started against Dartmouth, who had shared our lounge the previous night. We got off to an early lead against Dartmouth and never looked back, beating them from both sides of the disc. This was an easy win, but we maintained intensity, which was nice, and stuck it to a frustrated Misha (who transfered from UMass to Dartmouth a couple years ago), which was even nicer.

We switched to a field that was running in the same direction as the wind for our next game, against URI. This sucked, because the wind picked up significantly at this time, making this an almost entirely upwind/downwind game. We got a break early on and were scoring easily on our downwind points, so it appeared as though we would trade for the win, when a tipped disc and a sloppy grab allowed URI to break back late in the game. With the cap on, we buckled down and broke back to assert our dominance and take the win.

Bringing us to the finals, against Harvard. The wind was really screaming for this game, so it took on similar upwind/downwind characteristics as the URI game. Playing in these conditions really isn't very fun. The offense fires the disc into the endzone, usually for a turn, and sets up a zone defense to get a short turn for an easy score. No matter how well or how poorly you play, it is so difficult to work the disc upwind that it is hardly even worth trying. Games like that are pretty worthless, and both teams understood that this was not an indication of the matchup that our teams will be in the future.

I broke my nose at the beginning of the Harvard game, which is one of the only longstanding results of this farce of a final game. I was covering my man in the endzone when George Stubbs tossed a scoober over my head. I turned and sprinted towards the back of the endzone to try and make a play on the disc when I ran full on into a Harvard player cutting towards the front cone who seemed not to have seen the disc go up. He did, however, see my in time to lower his shoulder and smash the bridge of my nose. I don't really hold it against him, accidents happen, but it does really suck for me. I spent most of yesterday laying in bed, as the injury just exacerbates the illness that has bothered me for a little over a week, and I still feel pretty hard off.

Anyway, I'll try to post more detailed thoughts about the fall season and the work that will be necessary as we head toward the spring. Sorry about being silent for so long. Hopefully it won't happen again.

Westfield Scrimmage

Ah, yes. Today's scrimmage against Westfield State College. Totally more worthwhile than an average practice.

Not. Most of the team who was actually able to go (11 or 12 players) left by 2:30. I however, have a class that ends at 3:20 on Wednesdays, and today we had a guest lecturer that I couldn't miss. I took Babbitts car and got out of here at 3:30 with Josh and Tim. With traffic, we didn't get to Westfield State until just after 4:30, and the scrimmage lasted until about 5 when it was too dark to see. Fantastic. Westfield State is also not the strongest opponent that we could have found. Scrimmaging them was pretty similar to scrimmaging the B team, but with more driving. I think that I can safely say that we didn't improve one lick by playing Westfield State. It was just one more day of non-ultimate in our pathetically short season. I feel extremely embittered that we don't even get to play this weekend.

Fuck Henry.

Yesterday and Henry is a Bad Captain.

Another weak turnout at practice yesterday. Which is beginning to just feel rather normal. We managed to be pretty productive, though, running go-to and break mark drills before a scrimmage cut short by impending darkness. I don't feel like I really need to talk about that.

Before practice yesterday, Babbitt clued me in on our status for this weekend's tournament at Yale. We had been planning, as we do every year, to play at the Yale Coffee Cup. Henry told us that he had submitted a bid for this tournament. As it turns out, he did not.

Apparently, Henry's first contact with the Yale captains had been through his personal email account instead of the team's. Why he did this is anyone's guess. It does appear, however, that he eventually decided to forward the string of Yale/Umass communication to the team email account so that Babbitt (the other captain) would be able to see what our team plans are. Things seemed pretty wrapped up until Yale changed the weekend that they would be holding the tournament and asked teams to resubmit their bids. Henry hit Reply on the forwarded email, which sent our bid to his personal account rather than to the Yale captain. Not hearing anything else from us, Yale left us off of their tournament list and it seems like we may be out of luck. Babbitt wouldn't have even known about this problem if he hadn't checked the tournament page to see what Other teams would be attending Coffee Cup. When he didn't see our name on the list, he checked the string of emails and deduced that Henry had completely fucked us in the ass. Babbitt emailed the Yale captains and said that we would love to play if anybody dropped, but I don't know the chances of this.

Henry has stunned me with his lack of commitment as a captain. A captain should be the team's most dedicated player. Henry, on the other hand, seems to among Zoodisc's least dedicated players. He routinely skips practice, and has rarely participated fully even in the practices he has attended. He has, maybe, been a full contributor in five practices this fall. That is unacceptable. Henry seems much more comfortable standing on the sideline, flexing his political muscle by ordering everybody else around. When he has played for us, Henry hasn't demonstrated any desire to play well. In our scrimmage against ARHS, for example, Henry literally had ten or eleven throwaways. Again, unacceptable. He makes some of the worst decisions that I have ever seen out of a player of his caliber, and has the nasty habit of getting on his teammates for failing to succeed on plays of a much higher percentage.

From an organizational standpoint, Henry is a complete failure as a captain. He claims that he wants other players on the team to give input and help make decisions, but he is generally unavailable or unwilling to listen to anybody else. He moves forward with wild plans, only to decide halfway through the process that he doesn't want to finish the job and dumps it off on Babbitt. Several times in this young season Henry has handed Babbitt the daunting task of cleaning up cleaning up the mess that he has made of team affairs.

Take, for example, this current situation. How the fuck did Henry not realize his mistake as soon as our bid arrive in his own Inbox?! How did a lightbulb not go off in his obtuse skull when he received an email addressed to another man? I don't even want to start getting into how stupid Henry must be to make such an inexcusable mistake.

Or how about our own tournament, which we hosted last weekend. Henry handled everything to do with this tournament until four days before the fact when he shoved the whole deal off on Babbitt and gave him the complete responsibility of handling the affair with little to no knowledge of the decisions that Henry had unilaterally made. It was only when teams began dropping from our tournament that we realized that Henry had made absolutely no effort to collect deposits from the teams that had announced an intention to come. Without deposits, other teams had no incentive not to drop out of a tournament scheduled for Halloween weekend.

Or how about Purple Valley, when Henry illogically thought (without consulting anybody) that we would like to stay for the tournament dinner even though we were not staying overnight or attending the tournament party. Had he asked anybody, he would have learned that it was ridiculous to assume that anybody would want to stay at Williams for three or four hours after our game just to eat some shitty tournament dinner. Any reasonable person would want to get home and shower and go to bed, but Henry didn't think of his because he was Skipping The Tournament. Commitment? That word is meaningless to Henry! He then paid for a tournament dinner for 25, which is eleven people more than we actually brought to Purple Valley. Henry just through our money away, but this was no problem for him because he wasn't playing with us anyway.

Or how about two nights ago, when Henry agreed to swing by my house to discuss plans for the team with Babbitt. He said that he would come at midnight, after he got off of work, and Babbitt waited up for him. At one in the morning, Henry called Babbitt to tell him he wasn't actually coming. Is this a considerate thing to do? No, it is a Henry thing to do and Henry is anything But considerate. Or respectful. Or punctual. Or reliable. He is egotistically incompetent, and it is going to be difficult to stop myself from hitting him in the mouth the next time that he deigns to actually show up to a team event. If he escapes physical violence, I should be lauded as a saint.

Henry barely deserves to be a player on this team, let alone a captain. The thought of my impending graduation makes me mourn the end of my Zoodisc career. It does, however, make me rejoice at the fact that I will never again be forced to play on the same team as Henry Brecher.

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.

Rough practice day

We didn't exactly have numbers for practice today. Only twelve players showed, including a B teamer and several guys with injuries who played anyway. It was cold and windy, and the field was wet. On the whole, we had a lot of trouble concentrating and playing through the adversity, and I would say that effort was lacking in our scrimmage. Everybody just seemed resigned to fail. It was just a day of bad attitudes.

Seth layed out and got a bloody nose. I gave him my shirt to stem the bloodflow, since it's the shirt that I'm wearing for Halloween tomorrow (I'm going as the victim of a bear mauling, so blood will not be out of place). Other highlights include a huge layout that Christ had on a hammer that I threw him for the final score of our scrimmage. I think that it was a pretty excellent hammer, but he took a bad line on it. He layed out huge, snatching the disc's trailing edge coming down on it from above with his thumb under the disc rather than simply putting his thumbs below the disc and catching it more easily. The kid made it tough, but he made the catch. That was pretty sweet.

Tomorrow we're going trick or treating and then having a Halloween party. Josh is buying a keg. I don't really support this sort of thing, since we have a tournament Saturday morning, but I guess I'm just going to go along with it and have some fun. I guess I am sort of excited about the party but, well, I dunno....

Canes on the Brain, etc.

Sorry that I neglected to write all this up earlier. Frankly, I just didn't feel like it.

Friday afternoon we played a scrimmage against Amherst High. Our vaunted O line started the game by giving up a few breaks, and our D line didn't have the firepower to break back in the first portion of the game. Rather than trying to break up the lines more equally, we put all of the experience on the O line and none of it on the D line. When we got turnovers, we just weren't prepared to set up a good offense and march it down the field against Amherst's zones. It was ugly. We finally put in a good number of the O line players on Defense with the rest of the D line spots being rotated, and we came back to win the game. As often happened, we gave ARHS a due opportunity to win and they simply refused to accept.

I didn't play too well in this game. My legs felt tight and weak for the second half of last week, after Purple Valley and a succession of hard, shorthanded practices in which I shouldered a lot of the D line's burden. I really, truly wish that we could get better numbers at practice so that I wouldn't have to run so damn much. I think that I was probably at about 75% of my meager speed, and I was pretty ginger on the field. I played alright on defense, not really getting burned anywhere in spite of my physical weaknesses. On offense, I had two turnovers. One was a poorly placed hammer that I threw at the beginning of the game when we couldn't get our D line offense out of our own endzone against the Amherst zone. The second was a poach D by Henry's man later in the game. I should have seen Henry and his man standing in the force-side lane and holstered it but, frankly, what the fuck was Henry doing there, anyway? It was an outrageously bad place for Henry to have placed himself. Even if I Had seen him, it would only have obstructed a completely open Ryan coming in on a twenty-yard in cut. For being one of the supposedly "best"players on our team, Henry sometimes sure does play poorly. I think he probably had ten or eleven turnovers during our ARHS game on Friday, and that isn't even an exaggeration. Henry makes some of the worst decisions that I have seen on an ultimate field; he makes them unapologetically and gets on his teammates for attempting to make significantly higher-percentage throws. I'm getting tired of Henry's bullshit.

Yesterday it rained pretty hard, so we didn't have practice. There was still standing water on our field today (and it is Fucking Cold) so we didn't play today either. We were told to all go to Boyden to lift or to play basketball, but only a handful of us seem to have done that. I question the devotion of almost everybody on our team right now. Day by day, frustrations grow and there doesn't seem to be anything to do about it. Like Josh, who claimed that he "had plans already" during practice time. He claimed to be sore from lifting legs yesterday, but couldn't give me an explanation as to why he couldn't go to the gym to lift arms. All I can say is that his committment level is not what I expect it to be. What I expect it to be for all of my teammates.

I don't expect perfection from my teammates. I merely expect that they try. And that is not what I'm seeing from a lot of people who supposedly "care" about Zoodisc.

Seperating O and D lines with limited numbers is Stupid.

Today we had limited numbers. Again. We split into O and D lines for practice, but we had to move a couple D liners to the O line just to make numbers even. The isue is that Henry chose to put a couple of the most athletic and experienced D liners to the O line, leaving the D line with a definite skill disadvantage. The Defense was left with me as the only handler and six inexperienced cutters. We were overpowered on every single matchup, so it was no wonder that we got destroyed in our scrimmage. To add obnoxious to insult, the O line decided to throw a zone on us whenever we received the disc going upwind. Without any real zone-line handlers( and no, I really am not one; I'm a pretty decent second handler in a line, and I can work with another handler who equally shares the burden, but I can't really take over a point), it was impossible for us to work the disc against the zone. Seriously, impossible.

Practices like that don't make any sense to a rational human being. The young, inexperienced players on the D line don't get any better just being tooled on by the O line. Young players only get better by playing with guys who know what they're doing, opening up space on the field to cut and telling them what to do. The O line doesn't get any better cutting on guys who can't possibly defend them. All that it does is add to the arrogance of our Offensive players, who are never actually tested until they're thrown into a game and are suddenly surprised to give up five breaks against a team who is actually playing DEFENSE on their pompous fucking asses.

Anybody who put an iota of thought into the lines would have seen that splitting up the way that we did was worthless, but Henry was too wrapped up in his assinine self to think about it at all. That kid love playing against the least experienced player on the field and abusing him as much as possible. This reached a culmination late in the game when the O line was probably up 12-3 or so on us. Henry was marking Chris, one of our least experienced freshmen. At stall 7 or so, Chris tried putting up a dump to me when Henry hacked him unforgivably across the mid forearm. Chris looked like he didn't know what to do, so I said, "Hey, call that foul!" Henry responded by snapping, "Oh, great Dave, fucking great." I just wanted to kick him in the fucking head.

Henry is acting a douchebag, and he isn't helping the team get any better through his bullshit. That fuck.

Cold Weather continues unabated.

Today's practice was even colder than yesterday. It was a little miserable, but still fun for the most part. Sadly, we did not have very many players - again. When we split between A and B teams, we only had enough for six on six or whatever, and then John Sheyer hurt his foot and had to go to Health Services. Part of the reason that we're having increasing trouble getting numbers, it's becoming increasingly obvious, is our high injury rate. This is partly because of people being absolutely bitches and nursing injuries far longer than shoulde be necessary, but it certainly also has to do with some serious bad luck. I mean, John hurt himself planting too flat on the sole of his foot. That shouldn't hurt him! Ridiculous.

We ended up playing three-on-three across the width of an endzone, which is an incredibly tiring way to play. It also was rather uncomfortable for my knees, since this style of play is just little squirrely cuts. In a normal game or scrimmage, there are points where I can make longer cuts (or run down on the pull) and really lengthen my stride, which helps stretch my legs out and keep my knees feeling alright. Without any longer runs, especially with the biting cold, my knees really took a beating.

We finished practice off by scrimmaging against the B team, which I consider to be a worthless waste of time. You don't get better by playing sloppy ultimate against lesser players. But, I guess, our choices are limited when we don't have numbers. Those fools who started the game from our side gave up two breaks to open the game (fucking O line), but we managed to straighten out and won 15-4. That doesn't mean that we played well, however. We had a lot of turnovers. It was an ugly game. But I guess that's to be expected, to an extent, when we our competition doesn't make us work to beat them.

Yesterday's Practice.

Sorry I didn't write about yesterday's practice last night. I took Jesse out to the House of Teriaki for Sushi instead. Delicious

Yesterday was cold and wet. It rained earlier in the day, but stopped a little before three. I sent out an email letting everybody know that practice was not cancelled and implored people to fucking show up. Not too many listened. I think that we ended up with 13 A teamers who could play, which is utterly indefensible. We can't get anywhere as a team if the team doesn't show up. But I don't want to keep on that rant right now; I don't have much to say about it that I haven't said already.

In spite of low numbers, we had a pretty good practice. We had some drills that we ran pretty hard, and I'm feeling rather sore right now as a result. With lower numbers, our lines were shorter and we had much shorter breaks. We ran the endzone drill, but practiced holstering throws when a man at the cone put a hand up to symbolize a poaching defender. I laid out for a big catch at one point and really knocked the wind out of myself, to the point where I felt nauseaus and had a headache for ten or fifteen minutes after. We ran two five pulls, with limited success, and then did a full field huck drill that was a lot of fun. I didn't throw all that well in the huck drill, but I think that was because I was overthinking my throws instead of just cutting myself loose and going for it. At the very end of this drill, Jeff laid out and hurt himself in some way (his shoulder?). He couldn't move his hand, so he went to Health Services. I have no idea how that turned out, but I hope he's alright.

We are going to start having the injured people not show up to practice. Presumably, they will be working out or going to a doctor or something rather than sitting on our cold sidelines, but I really don't trust that too many people will do this. If I can't trust them to show up for practice, how can I trust them to be working hard when their team isn't even present to hold them accountable? Either way, the idea behind all of this is to prevent them from distracting the players who actually Are working hard. It does really suck to be running your ass off only to look towards the sideline and see eight of your teammates joking around about something stupid. I don't know how this new system will work out, but hopefully it'll be alright.

Purple Valley Day 2

Today... didn't go nearly as well as yesterday.

We got to the fields and actually had a pretty good warmup this morning, but we never seemed to really get going in the actual game. We started against UConn, and things just didn't turn out well. As a team, we played poor defense, letting them just march down the field on the force side and letting up a lot of IO breakside throws. UConn also really liked having the handler throw upfield and then sprint upfield for the give and go, and we really got burned by that play. As a mark, it's difficult to turn and run right after the throw. We couldn't seem to find any players to simply man up and get it done, tiring though it may be. We also had an unforgivable number of drops and poorly thrown passes. And it seemed like the same players were guilty of these offenses over and over again. It was clear that they were getting into their own heads, thinking too much about their mistakes, and not being able to focus on the next play. It was depressing watching so many players crumble mentally, but I guess that it's really a good sign of our team's youth. As we gain more experience, hopefully these mental failings will dissappear.

Anyway, we ended up losing the game 15-12 or so. UConn beat us handly, but really didn't give us the beating that our poor performance deserved. This was in spite of the fact that they were playing with several quality pickup players who significantly boosted the talent level of their team. Unlike Harvard, Wesleyan, and ourselves, the team that UConn fielded for this weekend was significantly stronger than the team that they will have for the rest of the year. And we definately should have stuck it to them. Personally, I walked away feeling very frustrated about my performance this game. I had two turnovers: a drop that went right between my hands (Unforgivable!), and a throwaway that was a good decision but an utterly horrendous pass. I tapped the disc in on the front corner of our own endzone and the first cut didn't get open. Jeff cut up-line covered, and Ryan filled into the backfield for the dump pass. He was open, and I went for the around forehand break, but for some reason threw the pass ten feet into the air. A defender tore it down on the goalline and made a simple pass for the score. I've thought about this pass a lot, but I still can't figure out what I did wrong on the throw. I guess I must have fucked up royally, but I have no idea how. Which is annoying. I also got burned twice on defense, which is no good. Other than these mistakes, I actually think I played pretty well, but my four mistakes were so glaring that they left a horrible taste in my mouth following the game.

The Williams game was next. We ran a little better in this game, but still couldn't get our shit together. We had a lot of the same mistakes in this game as in the UConn game - poorly thrown passes, easy drops, bad defense. Oh, and a lack of going to the disc. I don't know if I mentioned it in the UConn write-up, but we had a lot of trouble going to the disc in that game, and this problem continued through our Williams game. I don't know how many go to D's we had against us, but it was a lot. And it is unexcusable to get D'ed like that. We also didn't play very good defense as a team, and a lot of this has to do with positioning. I think that Ashton would have had at least two or three D's today if he had just positioned himself in such asway as to allow him to see both his disc and his man at the same time. Because he didn't do this, his defense was really inneffective and he gave up a good number of scores on the day.

Again, I think that I played well, but I had a couple totally egregious errors. I got point blocked on our own goal line, and threw the disc away to a well-covered Mitch. I think I could have completed the throw to Mitch, but I just didn't lead him by enough. I think that I played pretty good defense in this game, though I did get scored on twice (once on a blade that I almost got to, the other on a well-thrown breakside huck), which is really no good. Williams didn't cough the disc up as much as UConn, though, so they didn't keep us in the game in spite of our misplays.

Today was dissappointing, but it really is only the beginning of our season. It shows us a lot of the things that we did wrong and what we need to work on in the coming weeks and months. We have a long road ahead of us as a team, and I really do believe that we will end up being pretty fucking good when all is said and done.

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.

We're playin' Bas-ket-ball...

Today was pretty rainy. Not wanting to destroy our sodden fields, we went up to Boyden and played a few games of five on five full court basketball. Our performance can be summed up in two words: We Suck.

I guess ultimate doesn't necessarily translate into basketball skilz. I don't think that I played too poorly, generally playing alright on defense, but I am lost on the offensive end of the basketball court. I think most of my teammates felt the same way. It was a sloppy show from all of us.

Patuluk played today, the first bit of physical activity he's had in a little bit (he retweaked a hamstring a week and a half ago). In spite of that, he looked good and says that he feels alright. Patuluk should be good to go for Purple Valley, which is good because of the number of players we will be missing this weekend. As of now, I'm not sure what our complete numbers are going to be, but I doubt that they will be very good.

A matter of concern has been the recent announcement of the C1 Ultimate League that is planning to compete with the UPA College Series. I think that such a league makes sense, but their attempt to snag the top twenty-five teams college teams in the nation falls flat. Looking for representation from every region of the country, C1 seems to have arbitrarily chosen some teams while excluding other teams that would be just as competitive if not better. Such a league increases the competitiveness of the top few teams while totally swamping the hopes of everybody else. I don't think it's fair to put some teams over others without even giving them an opportunity to play for the honor. With the annual turnover in college ultimate, it is impossible to predict which of the mid-level competitive programs are going to be good and which are going to be busts.

I'm going to take a shower now. Sometime tonight or maybe in the next couple days I'm going to post a more complete analysis on my thoughts of this C1 jingo-jango.

Sam is Dead!!!!!!!

Well, not exactly. But he does seem to have one doosey of an ankle sprain. UHS thinks that it probably isn't broken, but Sam needs to go back tomorrow for an Xray.

Sam had been battling with a strained quad all practice, which had limited his mobility. Unlike some of his pussier teammates, Sam played through his pain in order to better his team. As a result, he was slowed and less effective than usual (which had been frustrating him all day), but at least he was on the feild.

After scoring our last point of the game, Sam seemed pleased with the way that his quad was feeling. "I don't know if it's the ibuprofen or if I'm finally warmed up," he said right before I pulled the disc, "but I can suddenly run!" Sprinting down on that pull, his foot rolled over his ankle and made a loud popping noise. That was the end of the scrimmage.

Sam's ankle swelled up pretty quickly. It isn't often that you can look at an appendage and watch it swell up, rapidly, before your very eyes. The speed of his ankle swelling definitely made me nervous. I drove Sam's car onto the field, helped load him in the backseat, and Ryan and I accompanied Sam up the Health Services. They saw to Sam very quickly, concluding that it probably wasn't a break, and fitted him out with an aircast brace and a pair of crutches. The three of us went to dinner at Franklin, then I parked Sam's car in his parking lot and walked home via the rape trail.

We had low numbers again at practice. I don't know where the fuck everybody is, but this is exactly what we were looking to avoid when we took the largest A team Ever. This is absolute bullshit, and I'm completely tired of it. If people want to play for our team, they should be there to play. I'm not going to get into this rant right now farther than saying that I'm tired of it. Anybody who wants to be considered one of my friends should be adviced to start showing up to practice. And not just every so often - they all should be there every single fucking day.

Fuck this game.

Practice again.

This weekend was pretty good. I didn't play at all, but I did go to Boston on Saturday night to watch the first Umass hockey game of the season with Jesse and two of her younger sisters. Umass won. We also watched the BU game that came later that night (BU won), and Jesse's sister's hockey game the next morning (who also won). We then watched the finals and the game-to-go of club regionals. Ironside, the Boston team, came in first, followed by Goat, and then Bodhi in third with Pony in fourth. Let's pause for a moment to reflect on how ridiculous it is that the Upa allotted four bids to the Northeast for the club series. No way do we deserve four bids. No way.

Congratulations to those friends of mine who made it to Nationals. I'm really happy for all of you. It's too bad that the Son's of Liberty didn't manage to unseat Pony in the game-to-go: they looked pretty close for a while but weren't able to pull out the upset. Ryan Holmes had the bonehead play of the tournament, laying out for a gratuitous defensive layout catch out of bounds only to throw the disc down, thereby giving the disc back to Pony. He didn't mean to, but it was really a letdown.

Columbus Day was yesterday, which meant no school (good!). This also meant that today, a Tuesday, was on a Monday schedule (bad.). Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, my final class gets out at 3:20. This is usually only an issue on Wednesdays, when I have to run down to practice and miss warmups. Since today was a Umass Monday, however, I have two practices this week that I need to be tardy to instead of one. What a pain.

We had a decent practice today, which is a little surprising considering there was a lot of wind and a lot of A teamers sidelined. Some of them are out on legitimate injuries, but others are just being total bitches. I think there were at least three players who sat out of practice today because they played in club regionals this past weekend. Week fucking sauce. And they didn't even look too glum to be out of practice, either. Rather than focusing, yelling out onto the field and helping out with the people who Were playing, they sat on the sideline and talked amongst themselves or played semi-retarded games. I tried to ignore them, but that bunch of fucks really pissed me off.

We didn't split between A and B teams today, since we wouldn't have had enough players to run a scrimmage. I suppose that this isn't only the fault of the guys on the sideline, since there were a bunch of people who just plain didn't show today. So fuck them too. I suppose that means that I want to give a big "Fuck You" to about ten A teamers right now.

In Spite of all of this, we managed to have a pretty decent practice. We played a lot of zone, which was sometimes frustrating due to the number of players who had absolutely no idea how to play their position, but we managed to work through it. I ran pretty hard, so I'm rather exhausted right now. I also made a point to take some chances with the disc, trying to make some throws that I wouldn't usually go for. This resulted in too many turnovers, but I did succeed in making a good number of plays. I would say that, overall, my throws were pretty good and I did a decent job being where I needed to be on both offense and defense.

Hopefully we can get better numbers for tomorrow. We're closing in on Purple Valley and I want to make sure that our team is good to go.

Good practice today.

Which is nice, because I really didn't think it was going to be when it all started off. I was feeling slow and tight, and we didn't have great numbers at the outset. Especially with Henry, Mitch, and Patuluk sitting (Mitch was fasting, Patuluk has a hurt hamstring - though that doesn't excuse his drinking a couple beers before practice - and Henry was... resting for Club Regionals, maybe? Which I feel a little critical of, but whatever. I would feel like a total bitch if I sat for no good reason on a day with short numbers, but I suppose that Henry isn't exactly me.). After a few drills, however, things seemed to be going alright. We played a five pull, which didn't go well for the D line, and then went straight into a scrimmage.

We're really fortunate that the likes of Brent, Joe, Trevor, and today Darden have been showing up to some practices and playing. They really add a lot of experience and ability to scrimmages that are dominated by youth. I've noticed that a lot of the young guys start to sub out and sit on the sideline when they start to feel tired, reluctantly subbing in when we call them out. They need to learn how to play tired, and having older players around could teach them. When it's been a ten minute point and all you want to do is put your hands on your knees and quit, you have to realize that your man is feeling exactly the same way and it is a perfect time to force a turnover and sprint into the endzone for the easiest score of your life. Playing tired is the way to play ultimate. They say that a good running back gets stronger as the game progresses, starts to pound linebackers when they're sucking too much air to fight back. Ultimate is exactly the same. Excellent players play excellently when they are tired. End of story.

Neverless, I tried to give the alumni smaller roles on offense so that our new guys can learn how to handle the load when said alumni aren't present. This wasn't always possible, as the other team sometimes threw zone (forcing Brent to fill in as the third handler) or the other cutters on our team sometimes weren't able to make the cut and an alumni had to fill the space, but I did it as much as I prudently could.

My team lost the scrimmage, but we ran our asses off. Sometimes we clicked, sometimes less so. Overall, though, I'd say it was a great practice.

Today: the B Team! Tomorrow: the Women's Team!!!

Yes, sir, you heard it right: today we scrimmaged the B team.

We beat them 15-0, but we really did it more on their errors than our success. We played spotty defense (actually pretty decent for short stretches, but lax at other times), and threw the disc away a Lot. Much of our throwaways were just the result of us trying to make things happen too much, believing that a defender who was in pretty good position would not be enough to stop a superior athlete from going up and getting a floater. That was a stupid way to play, and a better team is sure to take advantage of such mistakes at some point this season. Let's just hope that it's sooner rather than later so that we have the opportunity to make the right adjustments. We were all guilty of it, too, so it's not like I can put the blame on a couple of players and leave myself looking innocent. I threw the disc away today. I threw the disc away several times today. I threw the disc away several times today in situations where I should not have thrown it at all, or should have found a different target. I disappointed myself today.

There. I said it. Let's move on.

We had a huck drill that went alright. Not a high completion percentage, but a lot of throws that went just past where the receiver could get them. I think, at this stage of the year, that an overthrown huck is a much better sign then an underthrown huck. We just need to get our connections clicking, and suddenly throwing to a receiver in stride is going to be unstoppable.

We really don't get all that much out of playing the B team, but it is nice knowing that we are capable of putting a total shellacking on somebody even when we aren't playing our best. We had a lot of turnovers, but we also had a lot of players buckle down and say "this man will not score on me" and then back up their language with some actions. It is incredibly difficult to keep a team out of the endzone for an entire game. One mental lapse - especially as the game gets out of reach and the winning team starts easing up on defense right as the losing team starts getting really aggressive on offense and taking some chances - one mental lapse is all that is necessary to give up a point. The fact that we refused to do this even once leaves me feeling very optimistic about the attitude of our team this year.

The weekend and today.

We didn't have any tournaments or practice this weekend. Sunday was my birthday, though, and Jesse invited a bunch of people over here Saturday night for a surprise party. It was a pretty good time, and really special that so many of my teammates managed to come out to wish me a happy birthday.

Sunday afternoon a bunch of us got together to decide who should make the cut for the A team. It went pretty well - a few arguments, but we were eventually able to come to a pretty reasonable consensus. Henry didn't come, which was weird, but I think we were able to put together a pretty solid team without his input and I don't think he's too put off by it all. We decided to go with a 26 man roster this year, which is a gigantic team. However, with a couple players not here for the fall and a few other players who are hurt, a big team is good for making sure that we'll have adequate practice numbers. There were also a good number of promising, athletic freshmen who are all around the same skill level, so it was difficult to differentiate them enough to cut some and keep others. So (drumroll please) the 2008-2009 Zoodisc A Team goes as follows:
1. Matt Babbitt
2. Henry Brescher
3. Dave Barker
4. John Barker
5. Ryan Holmes
6. Jeff Kelly
7. Chase McCann
8. Steve Oleski
9. Josh Patulak
10. Jon Schneyer
11. Zach Smith
12. Robin Stewart
13. Steve Taylor
14. Mitch Weiss
15. Micah
16. Alden Gassert
17. Sam Gaddes
18. Branden Steinberg
19. Jeff Steeves
20. Tall Nick (George Bryant)
21. Rob Brazile
22. Alan Stebbins
23. Ashton
24. Keenan Kelly
25. Chris2
26. Tim McSweeney

I'm very excited about this team. A lot of youthful excitement tempered with veteran experience. I honestly expect our team to be very successful this year. It is going to be a Lot of fun.

Anyway, Sunday night I was sitting in my living room with Jesse, Robin, and Babbitt. Babbitt mentioned that he was writing an email to Henry, letting him know which players we had decided to place on the A team. Suddenly, Babbitt started swearing. In his attempt to write the email to Henry, he had responded to an email that Henry had sent the day before, not realizing that hitting "reply" for this email would send it out to the entire Google group. Luckily, Babbitt had decided just to copy/paste the list of players into the body of the email, rather than include the Microsoft Word file that included all of the disparaging comments that Babbitt had made about each of the players under consideration. Though this wasn't the way that he wanted to break the news about cuts, at least he didn't alienate thirty or so people by sending them vicious critiques of their playing abilities.

Yesterday afternoon I went to the gym with Jesse. She hadn't seemed into the idea of working out in the morning, and after class I hoped that her attitude would not have changed. I went to bed for a nap, hoping she would call me to say "Uh, well... I hope you don't mind but I'm really not feeling the gym today...." No dice. She was pumped about exercising, and it really wasn't so bad after all. We did chest, shoulders, and some arms, and then I hammered abs. I did leg-lifts while benching just the bar, which my abs really weren't ready for. I plan to build them up, though, so that they can eventually withstand some significant weight.

Today I didn't lift before practice, mainly because I have a big Spanish exam tomorrow and almost no understanding of the Spanish language. I'm going to cram like crazy tonight and hope to pull off a mediocre grade. Practice was fun, though. With the A list already sent out, there was no reason not to split for practice today. The D line is really young and inexperienced, but these guys all seem ready to run (even if they don't always know Where to run). We got some good plays put together at some points, and some not so good plays at others. I'm excited that the youth of our A team really opens up the opportunity for me to play a big role controlling the situation on offense after we get the turn. I think that I did try to play too big of a role today, though, thinking about it too much and suffering as a result. I had a couple drops, which is really uncharacteristic of my usually sure (but slow) hands. The mark also got a good peice of my throws twice in a rather short period of time, which really isn't good, because I was fixating too much on the downfield cutters and not faking or pivoting. But I also threw a couple very pretty throws, cut pretty well for the dump, and played alright defense, so I guess my performance wasn't a total wash.

Either way, though, I'm really looking forward to practice tomorrow. D line, baby!

Hit the weights.

I went to the weight room yesterday - the second consecutive day of working out. I mainly focused on legs. I warmed up on a stationary bike for 15 minutes at increasing resistance, used the calf, hamstring, and quad machines, did some squats with the bar on my shoulders, squats with the bar across my folded arms, jerked my hips up to lift the bar, did lunges, held a 45 pound weight in one hand and bent to the side and up, did leg lifts lying on a bench with my ass off the end, and did crunches on the declined bench. It was a pretty tough workout, but I'm looking forward to making it tougher and increasing the weight.

I am going to be ripped by the spring.

I just don't want anybody to be able to deal with how physically prepared I will be. Every hourI work brings me one hour closer to dominance. In the spring, I want people to take one look at my body and realize that they didn't put in the work that I did. In the spring, I want people to take one look at me and realize that they can't score on me, can't get open on me, can't cover me. In the spring, I don't want anybody to have an answer for how physically I can play.

This is my last year. When all is said and done, win or lose, I want to look back on this year and know that I there wasn't anything else that I could have done to succeed.

Two days, not too much to say.

I'm sorry that I didn't get around to posting about yesterday's practice. I had a lot to do when I got home and just kept procrastinating. But that really shouldn't happen that often, and I'll make up for it when I do.

Yesterday's practice was a lot of fun. Like Tuesday, we managed to keep the majority of good players from each team on a single line, minimizing the amount that the bad players could hurt our offensive or defensive efforts. We mostly had the bad players playing D points, and the better players played O points, which really showed us how easy offense could be with competent players at every position. It was also rather pleasant to have such a calm and humid day; with almost no wind, we all felt like absolute snipers. It was a good day.

It is at this time that I think I should say that I'm going to stay away from writing about personal problems that I have with other members of this team. Last weekend, I got into a spat with a certain one of my teammates, and I almost wrote the details of this incident into this blog. I thought, "Hey, it was a team interaction, it affects the team, it belongs here," but it really doesn't. I'm not looking to create rifts by writing about things that could much better be dealt with or buried. Personal matters will only rear their heads on this blog if they significantly affect the team dynamic or represent a team event.

I decided that today would be the day that I would start lifting before practice. I've been meaning to do this since school started but honestly haven't been able to find the energy. I'm glad that I hadn't started lifting until today, but now that I've started I am feeling so excited about the amount of effort I am going to expend towards our team's success this year. Every drop of sweat is an investment towards winning, and I just love saving up. I mostly did chest, back, and shoulders with an ab workout to finish it (I do abs every day - nothing is more important) and then ran to practice. Working out beforehand makes running a little more difficult, but I think that it's worthwhile in the long run to be ready to deal with that fatigue. I also think that it's a good thing to build up a strong foundation now, even if the muscles I built today won't be the same muscles that get D's at regionals in 7 months. The stronger I am now, the harder I can work tomorrow and the harder I can work the day after that. Every day counts, and that's never been clearer than it is right now. I'm in my final year and I'm not going to waste it.

Today's practice was night and day different from yesterday. Rather than thick, humid air sitting dead with nary a breeze, we had wind whipping around us the entire time. The direction was pretty consistent, though, so it wasn't That hard to deal with even though it gusted up at some points. It was a real pain, however, to run in the wind. I hate running in the wind. I am slow enough when it's calm. The wind knocks me off balance and rushes the oxygen away from my mouth. I always feel like I'm moving in slow motion and sucking air the entire time that I'm running on a particularly windy day. That sucks, but today was still pretty fun.

Willworth managed to score 8 or so goals during our scrimmage today, which is a travesty. This kid is a total liability to every offensive effort. He stands in the endzone, preventing any of his teammates from making deep cuts. He turns the disc over when you throw it to him on an in cut, either dropping it or throwing it away stupidly. His defense... well, he might as well not even pretend to cover his defender, cause what he's doing isn't working. But he scores a lot of goals. This, largely, has to do with how ineffective the rest of his game is. His defender doesn't pay him too much mind, looking to poach off and help out with another offender, and a lot of times he is being covered by one of the chumps from the other team. But it mostly has to do with the fact that players like Robin find it funny that Willwerth scores so many goals and start to make an effort to give him a lot of chances in the endzone. Which is really annoying, because Robin sometimes refuses to move the disc in a quick and strategic way, hanging on to it excessively long instead and hoping for something deep to open up to Willwerth. The most obnoxious part of it is that this strategy works surprisingly often - not because Willwerth is making good cuts but because Robin is an excellent thrower who can put it on his hands over and over and over. And since it works, it's hard to tell Robin to stop and try to take practice a little more seriously. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I look forward to cuts so that these things don't happen as often.

And cuts are happening soon. Returning A teamers are meeting on Sunday to discuss who should make the A team and who should be relegated to the depths of the B team. An official decision should be shortcoming. I can hardly wait.

Brand New Week.

After the weekend's break, this week's practices started off right this afternoon. For what seems like the first time in a while, I had fun at practice! I started warmups to discover that, though my shins were still a little tight, my legs no longer felt too tired to reach a full sprint or pivot with any real conviction. Being able to extend my stride without feeling like I was about to collapse was an absolute joy and I really made the most of it. This feeling of well-rested happiness was coupled with an uneven division of teams for our scrimmage. My team (the dark team) had much of our experienced talent, and we had enough players to split into an O and a D line (loading the O line). Words cannot describe how much more fun it is to play with guys who know where to cut and don't drop or throw away the disc over half the time that you throw it to them. And guys who actually play defense after we turn the disc over. It was great. We routed the other team and I managed to go the entire practice with only one turnover. That single turnover was a stupid one, but I managed to shore up my game after that and played well for the rest of practice. We were doing a 5-pull with the defense playing zone and I was trapped on the sideline. I saw Henry open on the far sideline, so rather than dumping it to John so that he could swing it to Henry I stepped around the mark and tried to hit Henry directly with a skip pass. I forgot that the wind was directly behind me and tried to snap the throw off quickly to Henry. The result was a throw that went well over Henry's head and out of bounds. But, like I said, I didn't turn the disc over after this.

We've been having some serious discussions over who should be put on the A team. I believe that the tentative plans are to have the team divided out for the beginning of next week or so. The angry little man inside of me is clamouring for the split to come immediately, but he can be subdued for the next few practices, I think. Especially if we can have a few more practices like today's.