Friday, February 27, 2009

SFUC Week 13 (Regular Season Finale)

The final game of my inaugural Winter League regular season got off to a very inauspicious start on the way to the fields. Just blocks away from Crocker Amazon, Daly City's Finest pulled Shy and me over. Interestingly, we were not in Daly City. Nor were we Ridin Dirty. A young cop comes up to the passenger side window, and tells me that a headlight is out. OK, which one? Well... he forgets. And doesn't go take a look. I give him my license, registration, and insurance, and he asks Shy for his too for some reason. Hm. Maybe we looked suspicious because we were both wearing stocking caps. Before he goes back to the cruiser to check our info, he asks if we are on parole or probation. "Sorry, we have to ask." I did not know that. While he is taking a leisurely 5 minutes checking our info in his car, Shy and I continue our pleasant conversation. Finally he comes back, and tells Shy and I we need to get CA licenses instead of our old ones if we've moved permanently. Fair enough. He says "if some cop is being a dick, he could get you in trouble for driving without a license, because technically that's what you're doing." Then he asks if we are familiar with the area. Weird question. We tell him we are just here to play some frisbee up the road. He gives a serious warning: don't hang around after the game. "You WILL get held up at gunpoint if you grab a bite to eat after the game." Again, those are real live quotation marks. Finally, he sends us on our merry way.

After finally finding parking, we get to the field. It is COLD. And perhaps more windy than any of our previous games here, a pretty stiff upwind-downwind orientation. Luckily, I brought my new gloves, which I promptly lost by leaving them at the fields. We were playing Pajamahadeen, featuring Jam's Remucal, some Brass Monkey players (according to Shy), and a couple former UCLA women.

The game starts with us getting broken downwind, then us scoring downwind and breaking upwind to go to 2-1. The wind gradually died down over the course of the game, but something like 12 straight upwind points were scored by both team's offenses. They were zoning us, but our overheads were cash money, probably 10 for 10. That number is especially impressive considering that our wind-free overhead percentage is much lower. Shy threw 3 hammer goals, two of which were wicked leading throws and one of which was a shitty throw to a covered static receiver who was covered but skied for the goal (Spencer?). At the end of the game we ran off a few breaks to get the 12-9 win, the score when the field lights cut out at closing time.

I was able to really take advantage of the wind on defense. I stuck with my man in dangerous parts of the field, and encouraged a couple crappy throws both in man and zone that I either gobbled up or knew would fail in the windy conditions, especially downwind, when hucks were predictably sailing long. My favorite personal play of the game was on zone D when I was playing deep deep. All game I was playing way under the wings on zone D to force a swilly huck and take away the hammer space. At one point, a woman was about 20-25 yards behind me, in the end zone. They didn't have many huckers so I knew they weren't gonna send it to her unless Remucal had the disc. He got it on the backhand side of the field and wound up. I immediately started sprinting deep, and the throw went up. It ended up being a poor throw that went out of bounds, but it felt GREAT to kick myself into my new 5th gear, courtesy of squats at the gym. I chased down the errant disc and hit it away, but I loved how it felt moving faster than I normally could.

The game was fun, any possible lingering beef between commish and I was firmly squashed, and we closed out the season in first place with an awesome record of 12-1. I like to say we were 14-1 though, because the two weeks we had games canceled, we missed out on playing the bottom two teams in the league, who finished with a combined 4 wins. Last night I told Shy I hadn't been on such a strong team relative to the competition since Sandwich Day, but then I remembered we lost to the UCLA alumni team and almost got beat by a SLO split squad... Airtight in the old summers is a much better comparison.

A little Jughead Media cross-promotional synergy: I'm on twitter, and I'm co-author with Greg on brononxylo.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

SFUC Week 12

We played the 2nd place team, stocked with Mischief men. They were good, we were better.
The game was fantastic. There were a lot of calls from both teams, as is the norm when two good teams face off. I played my best defensive game of the season (thanks squats!) and a fair offensive game.
The awesomeness of the game was negated by an absurd incident involving me and a non-participant after the game. I've thought about the incident many times over the weekend, and it still makes me furious. But I'd rather not discuss it here.
Another big game coming up on Thursday, and unfortunately we'll be missing some players due to Kaimana. But the Moral Hazard train will keep rolling!