The Frisbee Week II: The Draft

I partnered myself up to captain with Genevieve, an Ultimater Extraordinaire who just came here from Colorado about six months ago and knows my buddy Dave Samuels from the Rice Ultimate days. We played together in a league this Spring, and she is supergood at Ultimate and a supercool individual besides. She is also doing a post-doc fellowship in CSPO, the Consortium for Science Policy and Outcomes, on campus - we ran into each other at a HSD / SoLS B&S / CSPO barbecue a couple of weekends ago and both had the "Don't I know you?" experience, very common to Ultimate players (when you only ever see someone in shorts, t-shirts and sweatiness, it's kinda hard to recognize them in civvies. You think I'm kidding, but really, it's jarring - I ran into Ultimate bud Eric in the MU a week ago and was barely able to remember his name. Odd). So we're teamed up, both relatively new to the area, determined to pick our team on Wednesday, only we barely know anyone in the area... and we have to draft by name. Whoops.

Enter saviors Nicole and Eric - I consulted with Nicole pre-draft to get an idea of who people were, and Eric helped me out during the draft. Thank goodness. I went in with the goal of picking a well-mixed team, hoping to grab at least one of three guys whom I had scouted as ringers of sorts (ringers in the sense that they were more valuable than the round in which I could get them on the basis of their unknown-ness). Things turned out pretty well - on the women's side, Genevieve grabbed an all-around solid squad, not too much handling / not too much runners, and ditto on the men's - and I got two of my three guys, and would have gotten the other if a certain butterfly hadn't spread the word about Damon. Drat. Oh, well, you certainly cannot win them all.

Here's the team:

Nyet - The Balladeer
Genevieve - The Awesome
Wade - good handler who recently broke his arm. Hopefully it's healed, and if it has, he was a steal where I drafted him.
Alex - Don't know much, but Nicole told me he's FAST, and with inexperienced players that's huge.
Brenda - Super solid female mid-type. Played with her in the spring.
Chunlang - Veteran player who can throw / catch - again, better a known solid than an unknown could be terrible.
Amber - Athletic mid-round pick, heck yeah.
Justin - New to the area, and obviously a former club player. May "shock the world."
Nate - Ned's son, young guy who is learning well. Another solid late round entry.
Ned - Older guy who is still super quick and makes excellent decisions.
Patrick - Supposed to be tall, fast and "unstoppable on offense" according to Eric. We'll see.
Paul - Another one of my steals - he's raw, but athletic / aggressive and already has throws. Ha!
Alex - newbie who, at least based on her e-mails, is tres cool.
Josiah - experienced handler who plays for Sprawl. Good times.
Drew - new guy about whom I know nothing.
Teri - very good all around woman.

So yes, good all around team. I am excited. Fun times ahead. G chose us very, very PURPLE shirts, and so I had no idea what to name our team - Ultimate crowds have a bad tendency to go with obvious and overused ideas like "Purple People Eaters" or "Grape Ape." So I looked up purple on wikipedia and it said: "purple is associated with royalty, imperialism, funk, nobility, and upper class." Hmmm, one of those things is not like the other... so clearly it has to be the center of our team name. I put on Parliament, listened to the first track on mothership connection and came up with:

The Royal WEfnuk*

So groovy that I dig me. Gonna be a good season, looking forward to it.

* - Pronounced "Wee FUNK!" The explanation for the misspelling gets its own post.