SFUC Week 6

Sorry this took so long, I might've had a good write-up if it was timely...
We played the top ranked, undefeated team and beat them.
Boom.
I threw one of the best backhand hucks of my life. Caught a few goals. The whole team was rollin.
Unfortunately, I'll be missing the next game because I'll be on a family vacation. Seems crazy that they scheduled a game on Dec. 30, right?

SFUC Week 5

Moral Hazard faced an extremely tough team this Tuesday against the Mudslingers, and unfortunately we ended up with our first L. After a quick perusal of their roster beforehand, I was pretty confident that we would be able to cruise. Unfortunately, there are apparently still a good number of Jam/Brass Monkey/Mischief players whose name I don't recognize. In addition to having a few of those guys, the Mudslingers had a couple Fury women as well.

The bad guys started the game on a quick run, getting 3 easy breaks with a simple zone that we made a few silly mistakes against (i.e. drops). We stormed back with a big run of our own to take a 6-4 lead. I was in my element, scoring a few easy goals on big ass hucks and assisting on another that I caught just on the goalline. I was doing a decent job on Mischief's Adam Leventhal, who killed us over the course of the game.

My decent job was not to last. I got broken up and down the field by his around backhand that he released just next to my right thigh, under my outstretched arm. He also surprised me with a few deep cuts that I released him on, thinking he was out of his thrower's range. They went on another run of their own, bringing the score to 10-8 Mudslingers. As Slap pointed out, it was a game of runs. Unfortunately, we couldn't uphold our end of the bargain by making a final run.

We scored to bring the score to 12-11 Mudslingers, and pulled. They slowly worked their way downfield, with us taking away the killshots but giving up the unders. Somewhere past half field, Leventhal got the disc and looked for that around break yet again. After being on the field with him on probably 80% of the points, I had finally figured out the throw and got all of the throw with my cleat for the D. I did my usual move of slowly trotting to the middle of the field to set a stack and then sprinting deep when I saw Shy pick up the disc out of the corner of my eye. But he holstered it!! Devastating. I didn't actually get too open on the cut, but knowing that he trusts me with that type of look in any game situation I figured the throw would come anyway. Somehow we turned the disc, and they punched it in for the game. Oh well.

Better to lose now than to roll into playoffs with the undefeated target on our backs. How's that for getting ahead of ourselves? Ha.

At any rate, this was definitely the poorest performance by the whole team in general and by me in particular so far this season. I wasn't getting anything on offense; my double moves that usually get me wide open deep weren't working for whatever reason, either because my defenders were fantastic or because my all my toes were literally numb... but I'll blame the former. Because my fingers were similarly frozen, I was hesitant to cut under when our stack was stagnant, as it constantly was this game. It was a frustrating game to look back on and realize that I could have made things a lot easier for the whole team by just running in a straight line to the thrower. Time for some author-reader interaction: How can I keep my fingers warm in the cold? Any cold weather players out there (Midwest, Northeast), I'm looking at you. Hand warmers? anything?

We were also hurt a lot by our roster makeup for the game. We were missing our best player, Jam's Kevin Buchanan (who I didn't realize was still playing for them until I just looked up their roster...), as well as Whit and Claire, two of our strongest players. The biggest problem was that with them all absent, throwing cutters were forced to handle, leaving a cutting corps without great downfield throws. Additionally, we had our best attendance yet from the bottom half of the roster.

All in all, it was a disappointing game, but still fun as hell. I was certainly not feeling down at any point in the game as I might if the Braineaters had been in a similar game.

Bonus feature: Those who know me know that I carry a handkerchief with me wherever I go out of necessity, even on the field. Well, it came in handy on Tuesday in a non-nose function, and I won't be using it again. Figure that one out.

Link I would be remiss in not sharing: Over at Shy's Blog, he has started an absolutely incredible feature called Best of my College Ultimate (lose the acronym, buddy) in which he goes back to some of the Braineaters' most significant and exciting games and recaps them all with the help of his videoographic memory (did I just make up a phrase?). Word on the street is when he regains access to the corpus of game footage that was partially lost in a hard drive crash, these recaps will be accompanied by the relevant footage. Awesome.

SFUC Week 4

Week 4, Game vs. Pork Barrel Projects.
They featured Jam players Ryo Kawaoka and Justin Safdie, the 2000 Callahan winner, and Fury's Erin Percival.
Compared to my first two games with Moral Hazard (I missed one to go watch my Trailblazers lose to the Warriors at Oracle) where we absolutely mopped up a couple teams with ease, this game was tense, cold as balls, and managed to be sloppy and high level at the same time.
The temperature had to be in the mid 40s or so, which is extraordinarily cold when you are used to playing in Southern California, or Northern California in the summer. Additionally, there was dew all over the nice FieldTurf fields, making it tough to change directions and to grip the disc. From tossing with Shy before the game, I could tell that my throws would be terrible this game. I ended up only throwing one turnover, but it was more due to a ill-executed rushed throw by me to a fast break cutter

Catching Up

Loyal readers,
I apologize for having disappeared for a month despite bloggable goings-on going down. Excuse: I had a temp job, which didnt leave much time for anything else. I don't know how real employed adults can find time to keep detailed blogs...
What you missed:

1. Sean Ryan.
Braineaters got 6th place I believe, losing a stinker to SLO in which SLO played great and Claremont refused to make adjustments against a team that was beating them with a strictly open-side offense. On Sunday, they lost a total barn-burner to the Slugs in a placement game. Maniac established himself as the preseason favorite for Claremont Callahan nominee in my eyes. Boo of the weekend: Weston taking my bag to a car from the fields without my knowledge, leading to an 8 hr period in which I was separated from my boys.

2. SoCal Warmup.
Braineaters got 5th place. In Santa Cruz they didn't look especially great in their wins, but San Diego was a different story. Claremont really takes care of business on Saturday, dispatching opponents with ease as the Hodags and refusing to play down to the competition. The Hodag theme was executed awesomely. Markham jumped past an absent Maniac in my Callahan book with his typical break mark throws to space that the cutter isn't expecting but can bring in easily because they are so perfect. And his pulls were ON. Quarterfinals on Sunday sucked big time. USD had few capable throwers, but one little guy that was jacking huge flick hucks with no qualms. I think he was probably literally 9 for 9 or so, with many of the completions coming on huge skies over our guys. We struggled against their basic zone, with no movement anywhere on the field. My prescription: the handlers need to get together and play mini with each other to develop short chemistry.

3. Homecoming
I went home to Seattle with Rachel for Thanksgiving/my birthday. It was dope. Caught a Husky Hoops win, good times with family, and a blowout joint birthday party with me, Greg, Kevin, and Sam. Lost to Greg in 1-on-1 hoops. Fuck me.

4. SFUC Winter League.
I am playing on an SFUC Winter League team, weekly games in The Shitty. My team is awesome; 4-0 so far, and I get to play with Claremont stalwarts Shy, Whit, Claire, Abby, and assorted other ballers. I'll start posting game recaps today through the future, I promise.

5. Cultimate
I here from a little birdy that Cultimate has some more tricks up their sleeves, but I passed on hearing the details for the sake of ruining my night. We shall see.

6. RSD
Slow right now... not much going on in the Fall I guess.

7. Birthday Presents
Wall-E DVD. F yeah. Already watched the movie, and then the movie again with Director's commentary, and the Audio Mixing feature, and the new short.
Allagash Curieux
Chimay Premiere
Bike Lock
Bike Light

photos from Daniel Bobrowsky (Maniac) 's Facebook Albums.

Casino Royale

To those who haven't already made the mistake,
Re-watch Casino Royale before you watch Quantum of Solace.
Trust me

The UPA thoroughly trashes C1, and I agree with everything they say.

One very important thing to remember that I'm afraid some people forget is that the UPA isn't some sinister organization that claims to have certain interests but operates a different way (I'm talking about the NCAA here, that doesn't truly act in the best interests of student athletes). Instead, the UPA is a democratically run body that merely tries to enact the wishes of the electorate. So stop hating on the UPA.

http://upa.org/upa/about/publicstatements/CollegeUltimate

The UPA statement is as follows:

Over the weekend of the UPA Club Championships (Oct 30-Nov 3) representatives of the Ultimate Players Association (UPA), including active college players representing various playing “constituencies”, met with Matt “Skip” Sewell and Cyle Van Auken of Cultimate, Inc. to discuss Cultimate’s proposed plans for college Ultimate for the 2009 college season and beyond. While the two organizations share several elements of a vision for what collegiate Ultimate will ‘look like’ in the future, we have differing views on how college Ultimate should be structured for the 2009 season. The UPA has serious concerns about the feasibility, fairness, and repercussions of Cultimate’s current plans for the 2009 college season, and do not believe that these plans have the long-term interests of a large majority of collegiate players (or the broader Ultimate community) in mind. Therefore, the UPA is advising its collegiate members to forego participation in select competition structures being created by Cultimate for the 2009 college season, including the following:

	The National Collegiate Ultimate Association (NCUA), a college only governing body for Ultimate
	Multiple tiered championship series that include an exclusive top open division called Conference 1 (C1) which includes 25 college open teams selected by Cultimate, as well as other divisions for men and women’s players

As currently proposed, Cultimate’s C1 events would conflict directly with the UPA’s 2009 College Championship Series – which will definitely proceed - and teams would realistically only be able to participate in one championship or the other. C1 teams, concerned about the proposed changes and the potential for conflicting championships requested that Cultimate and the UPA collaborate to find a solution that would serve the college season best both in the long and short run. At the players behest, and because many of Cultimate’s plans coincide with the UPA’s five year strategic plan, the UPA entered into good faith discussions with Cultimate. In January 2008 the UPA approved its 5-year Strategic Plan, which included several goals for the organization that are in line with Cultimate’s plan for the college division including:

	Plan and implement a Division II College Series
	Developing relationships with college club sports administrators
	Implement a UPA College Regular season
	Adjust the sectional/regional boundaries and adjust the bid allocation system for the college division
	Expand the observer's role in competitive Ultimate

You can view a more detailed document describing the timing of these changes to the UPA Collegiate Series (as well as a history of UPA enhancements to college Ultimate and important player feedback data on desired changes) here.

With our Strategic Plan in mind, and the belief on the part of the UPA that many of the ideas espoused by Cultimate were firmly in line with these strategies and would be beneficial to the growth of the sport, the UPA came to the meetings with Cultimate with a proposed framework within which the UPA and Cultimate could work hand in hand with college players. The goal of this work would be to achieve the changes that the college players desire within a time frame that allows the changes to be properly planned and implemented, and that allows third parties such as Cultimate, to provide services that they are best equipped to provide while ensuring fairness for all of the players and teams affected by the changes.

As part of its proposal to Cultimate, the UPA noted that it is already in the process of convening a working group to restructure the college series, and proposed that Cultimate suspend its plans for the 2009 college season and actively sit on the group along with UPA representatives, college players, and other stakeholders to develop the plans for College Ultimate. The UPA believes that the final product that comes out of this work group could contain similar elements to those contained in Cultimate’s current proposal, but with modifications that address the outstanding issues with the current proposal, as well as an implementation time-line that allows for player feedback and sufficient advance notice. Cultimate, as event management professionals, could help ensure the college competition structure would be conducive to businesses that could provide valuable services to college players and the UPA. This work group (which Cultimate is currently invited to be a part of) will be fully formed during November, 2008 and will have developed preliminary plans by December 31, 2008.

Any changes to the college division that are both already widely desired by the college division and logistically feasible would be experimented with or implemented in the 2009 UPA College Series. These changes would likely be limited to expanding the observer role (i.e., increasing the types of active calls) and/or minor adjustments to the bid allocation system. Larger changes that require either more player feedback or a greater lead time to players before the changes are enacted will be implemented in the 2010 season. This likely includes regular season games with meaningful impact on the post-season, larger adjustments to the bid allocation system or the regional structure, and additional tiers/divisions of play. The UPA is confident that changes could be made on this timeline that are not only acceptable, but desired by players. At this point, it appears that despite the desire of college players to have a single championship in 2009 and the UPA’s efforts to include Cultimate in planning for 2010 and beyond, Cultimate will continue with their plans for the 2009 college season. The UPA, as the representative of the vast majority of College players, has significant concerns about Cultimate’s current plans for the 2009 season: Feasibility: Cultimate communicated that their current plans would require 8 full time and 5 part time staff. Cultimate would be expanding from 8 college events in 2008 to approximately 20 events in 2009, including three 80 team tournaments in a period of three weeks. The plan is predicated on hundreds of smaller teams that have not typically been willing to attend more expensive events being willing to pay fees of $25/player to attend these events. The UPA is significantly concerned about the feasibility of Cultimate running its proposed events and providing the level of quality that would be deserving of that player fee.

Based on its expertise and experience in development of the existing eligibility system, the UPA believes that Cultimate is not equipped to handle the enormous challenge of verifying college eligibility. The UPA has developed its eligibility system, records and infrastructure over 25 years. Without clear eligibility rules, a robust process to verify eligibility, and an established system for handling eligibility disputes, the UPA is concerned with Cultimate’s ability to ensure that the competition is truly collegiate.

Fairness: Cultimate has announced the selection of 25 teams to compete in its C1 division. There is no clear qualifying structure for these 25 teams and several historically successful teams including Arizona and Dartmouth have been left out. Furthermore, there is no comparable women’s C1 division that would receive the type of VIP treatment that the open C1 division receives in their plan. It is our understanding that Cultimate has promised different amounts of money to each team that commits to playing in C1. Beyond the ethical issues of paying college athletes “appearance fees” in their events, Cultimate has acknowledged that these fees are currently being funded by the player fees from players on non-C1 teams participating at Cultimate events. While the goal of defraying costs for the highest level teams for marketing purposes is not unreasonable, doing so using the dollars of developing programs is neither fair nor good for the sport in the short or long run as it will only slow the growth of these developing teams.

Long Term Impact on Sport Infrastructure: The sport of Ultimate, while rapidly growing, is still small. Pooling resources through a single central governing body Ultimate remains a more efficient approach to grow the sport (it will require the same tools and services to operate youth and club Ultimate). Currently, player dues from all divisions go toward the development of the sport in many areas including coaching, observing, rules, youth and college team development and marketing. As most divisions have the same or similar requirements, continuing to have one governing body provides significant economies of scale when it comes to the infrastructure needed to market and support the sport. The UPA’s fledgling observer and coaching programs would both be significantly hampered if the full college division were split from the remainder of the UPA. Resources invested in growing youth Ultimate create not only a growing fan base for college players, but also directly impact college Ultimate only a few years later by adding to the pool of skilled athletes. In addition, as the UPA is player-governed by an elected Board, decisions about how to spend the organization’s pooled resources is up to players. For example, if players choose to spend association resources to offer financial incentives for participation or to spend additional money on television, they can submit proposals or vote for candidates that represent that position. The UPA is concerned that under Cultimate’s governance, players would at best have a limited role in deciding how their money was spent. Splitting the resources of the community and having a significant portion of those resources controlled or influenced by a for-profit business will have a negative impact on the growth and development of the sport.

Based on the fact that there is insufficient time to confirm (and indeed, doubt about) the feasibility, fairness, and long-term impact of Cultimate’s proposed alternative series, the UPA is committed to running the 2009 UPA College Championship Series within the basic structure that existed in 2008. While College representatives have communicated that their chief concern was that there were not two parallel championship structures, the UPA is sufficiently concerned that Cultimate’s structure is neither feasible nor beneficial to the sport. Therefore, the UPA must continue to host its College Championship Series, even if that means that there are two competing structures, in order to provide all teams with the opportunity to compete in a competitive structure that is sustainable, fair, and most beneficial to the sport as a whole.

Despite the UPA’s efforts to convince Cultimate to hold off on its plans to implement a separate competing championship and work with the UPA to develop a collaborative plan for 2010, Cultimate has decided not to wait.

While the UPA is concerned about the position in which this places the players, it does appear that determination as to whether there will be two competing championships in 2009 will be up to the college players. The UPA encourages college teams to:

	Reject the current C1 plan for 2009
	Participate in the 2009 UPA College Championship Series
	Work with the UPA by engaging in the process to develop a new model for the college division as committed to by the UPA as part of the strategic plan, and
	Encourage Cultimate to do the same

During the meetings with the UPA, Cultimate has communicated that should a critical number of teams reject their current proposed structure, C1 would not succeed in 2009. However, Cultimate WOULD still continue to run the events that it ran in 2008. The UPA accepts responsibility for the fact that we have not done a sufficient job of communicating our plans for the college division as spelled out in the Strategic Plan (please see web links earlier in this message). However, we have clearly heard the feedback of hundreds of College players and captains over the past several weeks and are committed to move forward in an expeditious and transparent manner. The UPA’s continued growth and success over the past 25 years has resulted from the fact that we have largely remained ACCOUNTABLE to the players (because the players are the UPA), and we commit that we will not fail the trust that has been the backbone of our operation since the inception of the College division. The UPA is committed to providing a competitive college structure that serves all college teams who hope to compete in intercollegiate Ultimate in a way that is fair, sustainable, and transparent. The UPA also believes that within its current structure and long term vision for the sport, well-run, for-profit businesses such as Cultimate, VC Ultimate, Ultivillage, Five Ultimate and others that provide valuable services to the players can and will thrive.
Thanks for your time and for your dedication to our sport. Mike Payne, UPA Board of Directors, President
Peri Kurshan, UPA Board of Directors, Vice President
Sandie Hammerly, UPA Executive Director
Will Deaver, UPA Championship Director

Last updated 11/04/2008 - 19:13

In which The Jughead picks every single Open Nationals game

Click the picture for the full-size view.

Comments:

• Jam is better than everyone is giving them credit for. Just because their roster is somewhat static does not make them "old" like the last DoG teams.
• Sockeye is great, perhaps as good as they've ever been, but they're not invulnerable. I see them losing a game along the line, but not during bracket play.
• Who will get heckled the most? All signs point to Skip "non-profit" Sewell.
• Will Ironside be damaged by their Regionals slayings, or is it a sign of them being fully gelled? I predict the latter.
• The hype of Bodhi isn't enough to get them W's against the best club teams.
• Sub Zero will disappoint.
• Pool E is gonna be ridddddiculous. Power pools at Nationals are insane. In a good way.
• The bottom 4 seeds will not win any games against top-12 seeds.
  

LSAT Results - No Ultimate Content

So I was minding my own business on a balmy Oakland afternoon, sitting in a cake of dried sweat from my first workout in months, when I found out that LSAT scores were being released a few days early. I googled a little to find some message board that confirmed this tip (seriously, who are these people that hang around standardized test message boards?).

I was Facebook chatting with my LSAT friend KD when I got the new message notification in Gmail. From: "LSAC SCORE." Subject: "Your October 2008 LSAT Score." I couldn't bring myself to open it. It was a feeling more intense than waiting to see your semester report card or final exam score in one of those classes where it actually mattered.

I switched tabs back to Facebook chat.
"oh shit I got an email"
"didnt open it yet"
"i feel like i am staring down the firing squad"

Back to Gmail. I opened the e-mail cautiously. I had just started to make a little chart with what emotion I would feel for any of the scores in my potential range. Too late. I scanned the e-mail. The first line with any numbers jumped out at me. It had low digits in it. I panicked for about a quarter of a second before I realized that was just my account number.

Next line down.

"Your October 2008 LSAT score is 169. The percentile rank is 97."

Yyyyeeeaaaaahhhhhh baby! Better than any of the 5 practice tests I took. Higher than approx. 48,500 of the other approx. 50,000 that took the exam. If I had gotten 170 I would've been over the moon. So 169 was a close door prize.

This calls for some Joose!

Chimp+Asian Game Show+Segway

I'm so easy to please.

Suggested Nationals Seeding

Two posts in one day! Neither about The Abomination!
These seedings reflect my power rankings merged with Regionals finishing order.
Note: I personally am against the thinking of the RSD posters who base most of their seeding on head to head matchups, like in the Mixed Seeding post where there are many reasonable candidates for the #1 seed but somehow people decided Hooray was the top choice pretty much solely because they beat Mischief once. If you think Mischief is so great, maybe you should put them first.

1. Sockeye
2. Ironside
3. Johnny Bravo
4. Revolver
5. Jam
6. Ring
7. GOAT
8. Sub Zero
9. Truck Stop
10. Doublewide
11. Chain
12. Condors
13. Bodhi
14. Machine
15. PoNY
16. El Diablo

This seeding obviously leaves Chain underseeded, but they deserve the low seed for not taking care of business at Regionals. Also, I think Bravo "deserves" the 2 seed based on their performance this season, but I am not restricting my seedings by that measure.

This seeding would give pools of:
A: Sockeye, Sub Zero, Truck Stop, El Diablo
B: Ironside, GOAT, Doublewide, PoNY
C: Bravo, Ring, Chain, Machine
D: Jam, Revolver, Condors, Bodhi

C would be the clear pool of death, but I think the other pools are all pretty fairly stratified.

Pre-Nationals Power Rankings

Here are my power rankings among the 16 qualifying teams, along with a few notes.

Tier 1

1. Sockeye. A convincing undefeated Regionals cements Sockeye in the top spot.

2. Ironside. Ironside ran roughshod through Sectionals and Regionals, beating Bodhi 15-2 at Sectionals and beating PoNY and GOAT 15-5 and 15-8. They are definitely showing signs of gelling more and more over time. The only question mark is whether the addition of Kurt Gibson, who hasn’t been playing with them, will help them with his talent or hurt them by disrupting what Ironside has been working out together over the club season.

3. Johnny Bravo. I am still very high on Bravo, but I think Beau being an absentee member of the team can only hurt them. He looked out of sorts at Labor Day, and spending the summer away from Colorado can’t have helped him get better meshed with his team.

Tier 2

4. Jam. Jam lost to Sockeye and Revolver at Northwest Regionals to take the Northwest’s 3^rd bid. However, I still think that they are the best team outside of the big 3. The loss to Sockeye is acceptable; it’s Sockeye. The loss to Revolver is frightening for them, but they have handled Revolver fine over the rest of the season and the blustery weather in Burlington will not be present in Sarasota.

5. Chain. Chain has had some very unimpressive games in the series. The 16-14 Sectionals victory over El Diablo and the loss to a scrappy but not excellent Doublewide at Regionals are cause for concern. It remains to be seen whether their excellent regular season and talent or their spotty series is the more accurate assessment of Chain. We’ll find out in Sarasota.

6. Revolver. Revolver is a very good, but not great, team. I think they probably hit their ceiling at Regionals. Not to say that they peaked at Regionals, but I don’t see them improving to a point where they can beat more than two of the above teams at Nationals.

Tier 3

7. Ring. Ring put together a strong series to go along with a good regular season, but I can’t see them breaking into the semifinals.

8. GOAT. They had a good series, putting the hurt on Bodhi twice and giving Ironside its toughest test. I think they’ll have a tougher run at Nationals this time around though since all the other teams know the scouting report on them by now.

9. Sub Zero. Sub Zero has a fair amount of talent to go along with the sickest website in the game, but their results have not been too impressive. They were relatively poor at Labor Day, took care of business and nothing more at CHC, and went totally untested through the series. They certainly have a higher ceiling than #9, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see them finish in the 10-11 range either. Best use of flash in a roster since the 2002 Brains site.

10. Truck Stop. Truck Stop will do fine at Nationals, finishing somewhere among these tier 3 positions, no higher, no lower.

11. Doublewide. I know they won South Regionals, but this is a power ranking, not a seeding. They have been inconsistent in the past. I’d like to see them do well but I don’t think it’s in the cards.

Tier 4

12. Condors. Talk about an up and down season. They’ve beaten Jam 2x, Truck Stop, and GOAT, but have lost a bunch of unimpressive games as well. I hope my Condors buddies can take better than 12^th, but I don’t predict that they will beat more than 2 top 11 teams. I do think, though, that they are much better than the bottom 4 teams.

Tier 5

13. Bodhi. Young enough to possibly pull off a couple of big news upsets, too young to finish top 10.

14. Machine. Ugh.

15. PoNY. Ugh. Riding their former Sockeye player through nationals won’t work out so well, considering he was not a big part of their success (from what I saw).

16. El Diablo. Who knows.

Initial Conference 1 thoughts

1. I am fervently anti Conference 1.
2. I am temporarily boycotting 5 Ultimate, which is aiding and abetting a crime against college ultimate.
3. I suspected Cultimate was awful in the past couple years with all the tournament bid bullshit politicking. Now I know they are a pox on college ultimate.
4. I don't know, but am curious about how Cultimate plans to make a profit off of this, with no bid fees. Do they expect that non C1 teams will also attend and pay premium prices for tournaments that disenfranchise them and have not been shown to be a superior product to college-run tournaments?
5. I hope if C1 does happen (though I am optimistic it will not), teams like UCSD and Stanford will still host high caliber tournaments even if they do not play in them.
6. I am disgusted on a personal level with those that go along with this for now, just like I am with McCain supporters. This has passed.
7. Obviously, as I posted on RSD, the selection process was a complete sham. This is NOT a whine about Claremont not making it; it is about shitty non-elite (elite being perennial quarters teams like Wisconsin, Florida, Colorado, Georgia, Stanford, Carleton, Texas, and maybe teams like Oregon and Michigan) teams with no track record, or has beens, like Western Washington, UCSB, UCSD, UNCW, Kansas, Illinois, Minnesota, and pretty much the whole NE.
8. Why does Cultimate insist on lame names for their big ideas? i.e. NCUS, Conference 1.
9. I imagine that Florida's endorsement of C1 will be a warning sign for those teams invited. They don't have a whole lot of social capital right now with Brodie running the team.
   

Not much going on...

except
1. Took the LSAT on Saturday. Had a near brush with disaster as "police activity" shut down the freeway for 40 minutes and I showed up late, but it worked out in the end as everything was behind schedule anyway. Shooting for a 170, but we'll see come October 27th.

2. First Regionals weekend. I had to take the LSAT while my squad was battling the finest teams in the country in terrible weather in the good ol NW. Highlight: Shy handblocks Tim Gehret on one goalline and skies him on the other one all in the same point. Not bad, but not THIS: Anyway, we could only get 9 guys (plus Ollie and Joaq) up to Burlington which is a bummer, but I am excited to get my hands on the sweet jerseys finally.

3. Looking for a job. Any suggestions?

4. Apparently Beau lives in Oakland now. Not that I am excited about running into him at the store or anything.

5. Decided to give Google Reader a chance. I love clicking on the same 57 (literally) links over and over again (truthfully) but perhaps this will take away an excuse to spend so much time on the old comp.

6. Trying to beat Minesweeper with a custom grid: Expert size, 145 mines instead of 99. My best so far is 140.

7. Almost done with the Sopranos. I think I can admit that it is better than The Wire, and while I still am very fond of Dexter, Sops is right up there with it. Hm, that is a lot of violence.

VP Debate Thoughts

Northern California Sectionals Day 2

My apologies in advance for a less detailed Day 2 recap than Day 1, but I guess that’s what happens when I wait a week and a half to post.

Game 5 (Semifinals): Jam (6-15).

Just like the game with Revolver, we were pretty excited for this game. It’s always fun to test yourself against the best, of course. Well, the game started out disastrously, and I’m not sure why. We got broken something crazy like 6 times to start the game. Whether we were running strings, horizontal, or zone O, we kept making uncharacteristic mistakes and Jam was capitalizing on all of them. Jam really brought the defensive intensity on the downfield cutters, making the cuts that had been easy against every other team (including Revolver) ineffective. And when we got a good deep look up, we either botched the throws or the defenders were fast enough to reel in and get D’s. The second half was a little better as we were able to get more offensive flow, but we got totally crushed (as is evidenced by the score). This either means that Jam is way better than Revolver or that we just crapped the bed against Jam, but I’m inclined toward believing the former for now. On the positive side, I had a couple more filthy skies. The first was on zone O. We got the disc over the cup and I had a step on Taylor Cascino who was playing deep deep. The throw went up toward the back of the end zone. Greg Husak came bearing down from one of the wings. I went up early and grabbed it high over Cascino and with Hollywood right on my back. A few points later we were in zone O again, and a throw went up to the deep middle of the field. Cascino was the deep again, and this time I absolutely killed it, just ripped it down over him. That play almost made the beating they administered worth it. HA. As for personnel, they were without Bart Watson (wearing flats) and Damien Scott (not there), but I believe the rest of their roster was playing. I was especially impressed with how good their roster was top to bottom. The guys I didn’t recognize actually impressed me more than the “name” players like Boo, Idris, Namkung, etc. with the exception of Gabe Saunkeah who has got to be their best player. I came away more impressed with Jam than I have ever been before, but I am still skeptical that they’ll be able to overcome the dynamism of Sockeye and Bravo at nationals.

Game 6 (Backdoor): Berkeley Y (15-5).

Uh, we won easy. If anything memorable happened, I forget what it was. Instead, enjoy the smooth moves and smooth grooves of The Chi-Lites!

Game 7 (2^nd Place Play-In Game): YR (8-15).

YR proved once and for all that they are the superior team, taking the rubber match in a 3 game series of blowouts. The game came down to battle of O lines vs D lines (naturally). I think that with us, our top players play on the O line and then whoever is fresh ends up on the D line. This works out fine when our O line is scoring all our points and the D line only needs a couple breaks to win. Unfortunately for us, I think the opposite is true for YR. In my mind, their D line is superior to their O line AND to our O line (at least during this game). They kept getting breaks, so we weren’t giving our D opportunities to break for us. Our D was doing a decent job of getting turns but didn’t have the personnel necessary to punch in breaks. On the other hand, their D line was in so much better shape than our O line that once they got the disc it was off to the races for them. It was tough for me to go out with a loss to a rival like this, but the blow was softened by knowing that they definitely deserved the victory—not just because they outperformed us, but because they have all clearly invested more time, work, care into their squad than we did into ours.

Wrap-up

And so ends my 2008 club season. Though SCUC will be making the trek up to the Great Pacific Northwest to fight the good fight, I will be sitting in a cramped desk somewhere in Hayward taking the LSAT. Too bad the regionals date wasn’t announced until after I had to decide which sitting of the LSAT to take…Perhaps I am cursed as a club player. My freshman year the Brains played at sectionals, and I had a sprained ankle and couldn’t play. My sophomore year I finally had learned how to throw a flick, and we were HOSTING club sectionals. On the first or second point of the first game on Saturday, I laid out for a deep goal and jammed every one of my fingers on my right hand into the ground, tearing ligaments in my ring, middle, and index fingers. There went that sectionals, and that flick. Junior year I played! And we almost beat PBR Streetgang, a nationals team! My senior year was my first playing with a real club team, Monster. I had been fighting various injuries all summer – knee problems, Achilles problems, and a dull ache in my foot. None of it was stuff I couldn’t play through, but I went to the doctor to make sure there was nothing serious. Well, this quack told me I had a stress fracture in my foot…but refused to give me a bone scan. I dutifully stayed off it at sectionals and regionals as I had to watch Monster not play up to our potential. Soon after, I saw my uncle, a great doctor himself, at some family function. He took a look at the foot and told me it was metatarsalgia, which basically just means that one of your metatarsals hurts. The cure? Wear a little pad in my cleat under the ball of my foot. Problem solved, infuriatingly. And now this year, playing with a fun group of guys who are all ballers, I have to miss regionals in my own backyard.

Bop City.

Foreshadowing....?

Day 2 Recap coming soon

Northern California Sectionals Day 1

The pressure to post about Sectionals has come to a head thanks to a shoutout from cultimate.blogspot.com, which means I’ll be getting vicarious Ultimate Talk hits for the first time since DLK’s blog went under. Although perhaps those readers might be more interested in the Labor Day post below than in reading about SCUC/the Scum Bags…

Game 1: Berkeley Y (13-5). What a delightful way to start a tournament. Not being too concerned with my immediate impact on this game, I took the slow cleat-up, slow warm-up that has been my modus operandi for the club season. I suppose this stems from the fact that I don’t have the same level of motivation with this team that I did with Claremont where I was a leader both on and off the field. Anyway, we lost a Bear Ninja Cowboy battle for jersey color meaning that we didn’t get to sport our new jerseys white t-shirts with ScumBagz (or was it SamBagz? SourBagz) stenciled on them by an intoxicated Yeager the night before. Incidentally, Bear Ninja Cowboy is one of my least favorite things in ultimate, right up there with 1. People fouling intentionally, 2. People not knowing the damn 11^th edition rules, and 3. People on blog comments who bash others for posting anonymously even though no one knows who the hell you are just because you put some nickname or even your real name out there (looking at you here “Handy”). There are usually 1-2 people on the team that suggests BNC that are in to it, and usually 0 people on the suggestee team who are. Whoopee. Even worse, they declined Shy’s offer to play Dick or Balls! The game itself produced only two memorable moments for me. The first was Shy getting a huge layout D near the goal line on the first point of the game. The second: even though Berkeley had one the BNC in order to go white, one of their kids was wearing Cal yellow. Our team was wearing all sorts of darks since we have no real jerseys yet, so it annoyed me a little that this guy was wearing a dark. I borrowed an identical shade of yellow jersey from Gomez and ran onto the D line specifically to guard this guy. I figured I would get to show this guy who is yellow boss and shame him into changing by shutting him down. Besides, I think he was a B-teamer. We pull, they come out in vert stack, my man at the front of the stack. We are literally wearing the same color jersey, everyone on our sideline is having a good laugh, and I am feeling pretty good about how clever I am. I front the guy because I don’t want any short breaks going to him from the handlers. He immediately sprints deep. Burned. Huck actually hits him in stride, easy goal. I shamefully walk back to the sideline and take off the yellow when no one is looking. In retrospect, I guess it WAS hilarious. Just not in the way I had planned.

Game 2: J-Men (15-9). This game was ostensibly a grudge match for the blip that occurred in Chico. This time we didn’t play like idiots and release their cutters deep when their huckers had the disc. That one simple move led to an easy victory. Now, allow me to rant about a certain J-Man. I considered devoting an entire post to this guy but decided that might be excessive. I am talking about #44. My first encounter with this guy was at the Stanford Invite Qualifier in 2006 (which we won, and subsequently won 2 pool play games and made quarterfinals at the Invite… sound familiar?). The details are mostly hazy, but he managed to turn our whole team against him. First he ridiculously undercut Stout on a huck, leading to the famous exhortation “YOU need to learn some body control!” Later, he did something (I forget what) that caused the SMIN (Sweetest Man In Ultimate), Gordy, to curse at him. An incredible feat, to be sure. Flash forward to this summer… We are playing the J-Men at Chico, and this guy keeps bulldozing people. They love to put him in the cup and on swings he works up his speed and just bowls into the thrower. Everyone’s upset, and on the sideline Shy tells the story of this guy from the Qualifier. Well, the floodgates open and all sorts of people from different playing backgrounds have angry stories about this guy. Then, the Rhino highlight video from Chico comes out . There’s the one shot of him SHOVING a Rhino player (at 1:00), and another of a really dangerous attempted tripping (at 1:24). Now imagine this: game point at sectionals, somehow this guy is guarding me and I burn him deep. The throw goes up and is floating down near the back of the end zone, meaning I have to slow down to avoid running out of bounds. The disc is floating up there right in my peak jump range, with #44 bearing down on me from behind. Needless to say, I am terrified of getting my neck broken on the way down as I get rammed. Instead of jumping high and snatching it, I take a little hop, grab the disc at the last second, and brace for impact. Luckily I caught the score just in time, so #44 opts to merely run into me and bump me for a few yards instead of wrecking me in the air. Success! I was going to end this tangent by saying ‘I don’t actually know the guy, he must be alright,’ but then I re-watched the tripping in the Rhino video at 1:24. What a sack of shit.

Game 3: Revolver (9-15). This game was a LOT of fun for our team. I was worried that we might come out and crap the bed since the SC guys are so into Revolver, but we came out very strong. Our offense was doing pretty well and our D was fantastic, getting layout D’s and scoring breaks. We were as close as 7-6 before they pulled away. Highlights: Jaycuzzi getting a sick poach layout block near their goalline on one of the first points of the game; me just roofing Ian Ranahan on a huck. I’ve gotta say, it was one of my dirtier skys; getting to matchup against some of the players I look up to like Seth Wiggins, Martin Cochran, etc. Lowlights: I am always surprised when people at such a high level make the same types of bad calls that low level college ultimate players make. I threw a goal, but I had to contest a stall on Sherwood when he pulled the classic “Seven, Eight, Nineten! Stall!” Luckily the proceeding swill I threw up on the restart was sooo bad that Revolver didn’t see it coming and we scored anyway. Another example: I’m marking Seth force flick at mid-field. I’m a little too close so he calls disc space and I drop a count. He pivots into me and we make solid contact, then he pivots back to flick and calls the pivot foul after looking upfield for a whole count. Sure I fouled you earlier, but you cant go back later and call when it’s no longer affecting you. No big deal, but I was just surprised. This game made it clear that the difference between a team like SCUC and a team like Revolver has more to do with fitness and game pace then skill. I felt like we were matching them in defensive intensity and in throwing, but we weren’t proficient with the disc when guarded by such good athletes, and forced bad quick throws. To me, this means for next year working on plain old conditioning and on being comfortable with the disc with an elite mark on while cutters and dumps are all well defended.

Game 4 (Quarterfinals): Missing Little White Girls (15-12). This game was against a bunch of retired Bay Area players (or so I was told. I don’t yet have face and name recognition with Bay players as with NW and SW players). They definitely had the throws, and were good athletes if not in shape. I recognized Jason Seidler, but no one on their team was in domination mode. I don’t remember many specifics about this game, besides that it was good and clean.

TD Critique: The tournament left some things to be desired. I’m not sure who ran it, but when I attend a tournament, these are some things I expect: food (bagels/bananas), water (there was water on day 2; not sure if there was on day 1 but if so it wasn’t publicized), cones (Joaq had to put up his own cones on day 1), and an airhorn or at least some time of round notification system. It was strange that despite lacking all these amenities, there were port-a-fields for all. Let them eat cake! Still, I appreciated the 2 hour per round format which allowed for full games and breaks between each game.

All Star series teams are the new black

We've all heard about Thompson High, ladies and gentlemen. The story goes that the vast majority of Rhino from last year decided to take a year off from the intense dedication required to make an elite club team, and to play for a new tournaments-only team.
Apparently their model has been copied. I bring you: NPR. Their roster is stocked with Black Tide's best players from the near past (Rory, A-Bomb, Jameson, Ethan, Tyler, Charlie) as well as Old Man Brown. I predict they give SDU a big fight in the first round with SDU pulling out the game by virtue of their pickups of the Smith brothers and old favorites like Kubiak and Big Mike. They'll crush everyone else in the pool and lose to Condors in a close game in semis.
You heard it here first.

Labor Day Ruminations

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NBA 1989 All Star Rap Video

Discos Calientes Recap

This post will be split into 3 parts: Part 1, The State of the Jughead; Part 2, Discos the Bad Half; and Part 3, Discos the Good Half.

Part 1: The State of the Jughead

This section is both a bit about me and an awesome set of excuses about why I stunk up the fields at Chico. At first I didn’t want to make any excuses for my play, but in the past few days since the tournament I’ve realized that this time, it’s fair to make excuses because of the specific circumstances.

So, I returned from my trip to Central America last Friday night. The trip was a blast, etc. Our flight from Miami to SFO was delayed a couple hours, so we ended up missing the last BART and having to beg our housemate for a ride. We got back to the house around 2:30 AM, unpacked, and went to bed. I didn’t end up falling asleep until 4:30 AM. I woke up at 6:30 to get a ride up to Chico with Joaq and Shy (Joaq, my oatmeal bowl is still in your car and I need it back!). So there’s my first excuse: 2 hours of sleep following a day of traveling.

I also had a cold. Big deal, you might say. Well, this one is a doozy. All week long I have been blowing my nose constantly. The insides of my nostrils burn from all the wiping I have done. That’s my second excuse.

The final excuse is the most legitimate of them all. I seem to have acquired an intestinal parasite in Latin America. Want to know about it? It’s called Blastocystitis. I’ll save you the trouble: even Google doesn’t really know about it. A search brings up 570 results with not much information. But I’ll tell you what I know about it: it makes you crap your pants off. I was bad enough at the tournament, having to go all the time throughout the day. It’s been even worse this week. Every meal I eat only stays in for a few hours. Because I can’t absorb enough nutrients, I eat even more. Needless to say it’s a nasty cycle.

So that’s that. 3 excuses for my poor play in Chico. Oh, and I had Scabies too.

Part 2: Discos the Bad Half

Game 1: Last Call. I think most of the players on our team hadn’t heard of Last Call and looked past them a little bit. We came out a little bit sloppy on offense, throwing Casper hucks to no one, and our defense wasn’t generating turnovers. It was a decent game, but Last Call just out-executed us to take a 13-9 victory.

Game 2: YR. This was one of the most pathetic games I’ve participated in in recent memory. Even worse than Darkhorse v. D’oh at Potlatch. Worse than anything from this past college season. I really was in a daze during this game. I absolutely dropped an easy huck, and was playing pathetic defense. I think the 95 degree heat combined with my dehydration from the parasite and cold came to a head here, and I shouldn’t have been playing in retrospect. After slogging through one hell point midway through the game, I didn’t have anything left in the tank. I collapsed under our tent and laid on my back for the rest of the game, breathing heavily the whole time. I felt my body temperature must have been through the roof. The rest of SCUC wasn’t as bad as I was, but the whole team was extremely sloppy and YR dispatched us without much trouble, 13-7. Two personnel notes: 808 claims to have thrown 0 hucks and 0 turnovers over the course of the whole tournament. Bob, my heart breaks for you. Also, I have been impressed by Greg Marliave these two times we have played YR. I hadn’t previously noticed him play, but I like the way I have seen him play this season.

Game 3: J-Men. This was one of the strangest experiences I’ve had at an ultimate game. Still feeling week from the previous round, I mailed it in for this game, expecting a quick and easy victory. Both offenses came out really hot, throwing huge hucks to wide open receivers. I wasn’t paying close attention to the game, and neither were my teammates who were participating. It was clear that the SC boys who have seen the J-Men so many times had such little respect for them that they wouldn’t deign to try hard against them. Before anyone knew what was happening, hard cap was on. TomTom almost caught the game-winning score on a bid in the corner of the end zone, but the disc slipped off his fingertips as he cramped up. Despite the fact that the J-Men were hucking every possession, we left one of their biggest guys in the end zone. Huck, score, game. Besides being a travesty of an effort by SCUC, this game was further marred by our attempt to cheat the caps and extend the game when it was clearly over already. This game was a perfect way to close out “The Bad Half.”

Part 3: Discos the Good Half

Game 4: Monster. By the final round of day 1, the temperature had cooled somewhat. After such a long break, I was feeling good again, and somehow the boys were able to put the previous 3 games behind them and come out strong. The game was very reminiscent of good ol’ Claremont-UCLA games of the past. We came out fast, put a big hurting on Monster, and coasted to a blowout victory. 13-4, I think. It was fun for me seeing a few of my former teammates like Peaches and Biclops, but I am frankly shocked that this team chose to call itself Monster. I believe there were 3 or 4 returners from the previous season, and the team transformed from being adult studs to college players from UCLA and Irvine, most of who I didn’t recognize at all. Highlights of the game were me throwing two really nice flick hucks to Steve Scardato, who did his part in absolutely flying to pull them out of the sky. Good way to put the Bad Half behind us and move on.

Game 5: Rhino (only day 2 game). This game was pretty awesome. Our game plan did a great job of getting them out of their comfort zone. Our offense, led by Yeager at his best, came out really hot. Incredibly, by the time the score was 5-5, there hadn’t been a single turnover by either team. We took half up one break, 7-5, as Dom Captain of Slocore fought his way upline for the score. We maintained our lead for a few coming out of half, but then Rhino came creeping back. Come the endgame, there was a score dispute. Unlike the J-Men game, this time we were right, but somehow we went with Rhino’s claimed score. So it was universe point, and we were on D. Unfortunately (in my eyes), we had been going with a very open rotation the whole last quarter of the game, which might have contributed to Rhino’s comeback. We took the line with the score at 13-13, game hard to 15, with an open line. Before the pull, both teams agreed that the score was actually 14-14 (incorrectly). When I realized that this was universe point, I asked Yeager if we could put a true universe line on, but he declined. So in the end Rhino beat us by one. More important than whether we won or lost, though, was reminding ourselves that we are members of the second tier of NW teams, behind the Sockeye’s and JAM’s, together with Rhino and YR. When we aren’t playing like assholes (v. YR at this tournament), we are a damn good team (YR scrimmage, game v. Rhino). I am very confident about our chances of doing well in the series. Assuming we ever get an official date for sectionals.

Now that I have gotten this recap out of the way, I can finally get back to my routine of watching TV, eating, and pooping.