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.