GAME ON. But before things could get going, an annoying set of circumstances. Only two of the eight light stations were operational on the field where we were supposed to have finals. Crap. The fields had bright light on about a 20 by 90 yard swath, but darkness everywhere else. So we moved over to another set of fields that technically were not ours. Those fields were not a whole lot better: there were only lights on one side of the fields, and only about half of those were working. So with the finals were starting at 5:45, we got ready to play on some sketchy fields in the borderline dark. Less than ideal. AND we had no idea who actually had the rights to the fields on which we were squatting. Uh-oh.
But with a huge crowd and not really a whole lot of other options, we got going. Roland, Pauline, Genevieve and I met out at midfield to flip for pull and get things going. Everything was VERY HAPPY at this point (that is called CAPITALIZATION for FORESHADOWING EFFECT), hugs all around and wishes of good luck to both teams and to all players. We lost the flip, but R/P insanely elected to receive. (This, for the record, is completely stupid; unless you think there's so much wind that no one is ever going to score (and you might not ever reach halftime), you should ALWAYS elect to pull. This way you get the disc first to start the second half, and there's a good shot at getting back to back goals (if you score to take half and receive to start the second). There's no reason to elect to receive. How can people not know this?). So we gathered up, gave a ever positive pregame runrunrunrunrunFNUK cheer, and took it out there.
They scored after working it a bit on the first point, then we ran off two with some good hucks and a toss to Alex. They responded with a deep shot to Eric. So it was 2-2 when...
DRAMA!!!! A bunch of soccer players showed up who had the rights to the field at 6:00. Uh-oh. Jose debated with them a bit, but they were unwilling to swap fields, as is completely reasonable because THEY HAD RESERVED THE FIELDS.
(It bears mentioning that a lot of the soccer guys were Hispanic, and unshockingly a lot of the Ultimate players are Caucasian. And a subset of these Ultimate Caucasians, it turns out, are kinda racist jackasses. I was highly disappointed to hear a few "Call INS" type statements muttered around the crowd. That is just bullshit on an epic level. Maybe I have an upbringing in San Antonio, a Hispanic childhood great friend, Clark football played alongside Hispanic kids, etc., to thank for a certain lack of idiocy, but OMFG what is up with a bunch of educated middle class whiteys immediately resorting to epithets? Like I said, this was just unnecessary and embarrassing from my standpoint. It's also why all the statements of "colorblind generation" and "yes we can" blind optimism should be taken with a grain of salt. Sheebus. End cynical rant now).
So getting back to the non-racially-motivated drama, we had a problem. Tempe representatives were reasonably apologetic, and offered us a softball or hopefully a vacant soccer field over at the Tempe Sports Complex. That was the best they could do, as no light engineer types were working that night. Our other option was to stay here and play in the dark on the aforementioned unlit fields. Before we got together to make a decision, Genevieve and I consulted with our team and got basically two comments: "We're not going to play in the dark, are we?" and "We have to play finals tonight!" I had no interest in playing in the dark - the fields we were on were already questionable, and playing on a half-lit swath of field with the other end in shadows struck me as idiotic. I told this to Genevieve, and we went into the captain's meeting with a preliminary condition that playing on the dark fields was not an option.
So Jose, G, Pauline, Roland and I met at midfield. And the very first thing I said was, "I am absolutely not comfortable with playing on those dark fields. It's not safe, it makes for crappy Ultimate, and it's just off the table. I'm not budging on this." It was probably more benign than that, but I feel that I emphasized that it was just not up for discussion. People get hurt playing in the dark, and I wanted no part of being responsible for someone getting hurt just so we could have a crappy finals game in the dark.
So, long story short, Pauline goes APESHIT. Mind you, I barely even know this girl, have played a grand total of one game against her and interacted with her not at all. But she starts screaming at me. Yay. So we try to discuss it, and she storms off. She grabs a bike and rides down to the unlit fields, then comes back and yells that it's "not that dark." I reply that she's missing the point, the fact that it's dark at all is the problem. I'm arguing for safety, and she can't trump that for convenience.
Genevieve made the excellent point that this is the equivalent of playing when there's lightning out - you hate to be that guy who says "stop playing" when all the little kids want to play, but you know what? People get hit by lightning. And people in the dark twist their ankles, twist knees, run into one another, etc., much more often. Plus on top of that, IT MAKES FOR CRAPPY ULTIMATE when you can't see. So I was arguing a severe minority position of "let's go to TSC," but it was really one in the interest of player safety and good Ultimate.
The obvious problem was that the crowd was not necessarily going to be willing to trek over to TSC. And the *completely unstated* other problem was that Pauline et al had brought a grill and didn't know how they were going to get it over to TSC. If she had even mentioned this AT ALL, she would have garnered a lot more sympathy from me. I had no idea that this was what she was so freaked out about. Instead, she elected to yell at me repeatedly, and then when I just kept repeating 'Sorry, we're not playing in the dark," she pulled the awesome third grader move of turning to the crowd and saying "Sorry guys, finals is canceled and it's all Nyet's fault! Nyet decided we can't play." You stay classy, chica.
So she walked away before we had finalized anything and was being, sorry for the sexist-historied language, Hysterical in the psycho-hose-beast since and not the more acceptable Def Lepard one. So she walked off. So Genevieve, Roland and I looked at each other and said, "Okay, let's just go to TSC." (Actually, at one point Roland and I were just going to rosham for the championship; I have no idea if anyone in the Southwest knows about throwing your fire, which I still have not done, so this could've been mad controversial). So we made the decision, Jose made an announcement, and we all grabbed our bags and headed for the cars.
Pauline, natch, throws a fit because "she didn't get to vote." At this point, I had really run out of descriptors. What's past pscyho-hose-beast? Rock-of-Love hose beast? She was out of control. Jose took the brunt of this screaming, calmly replying "You walked away, Pauline" for the bulk of it. We all headed to our cars...
Genevieve rode with me over to the fields, and I'm extremely glad she had my back on all of this. She didn't feel I was being unreasonable, and she said that this wasn't the first time P had lost it like this. But the wheels had been set in motion for me personally, and a nasty little thing that Mike 'Verbal" coined called "THE HATE STICK" was vibrating within me. P is an elite, nationals club level player. She's good. She gets no sympathy from me with regard to her Courtney Love on eightball behavior or her femaleness. If she wanted to escalate things and call names and scream and try to call me out in front of the entire VOTS crowd, more power to her. But she's gonna get a HATE STICK beating*.
* - Note that HATE STICKS are metaphorical. I would not beat Pauline with an actual tree-sourced stick. This is more of a "wake your inner demons, play out of your head" kinda stick. And take no prisoners. And... see below.
So, to clear all of the Pauline stuff out and get on to the finals, there were four things on the field. One, I poached off on someone at one point, and so I was outside of ten feet of my guy. I turned and sprinted downfield to catch up, and Pauline decided to jut out into my lane to try and stop me. I don't know if this was an intentional pick or what, if she's actually savvy enough to know that I was outside of ten feet of my man, but regardless, I had about 0.3 seconds of warning; she jumped out into traffic. So unsurprisingly I hit her and she went flying. But I couldn't call a pick, so i just kept going. Sorry. In my mind, that's a foolish dangerous play on her part. And she's an elite player, so she pretty much knows what she's doing if she chooses to play that way. Whatever. I am not down with letting aggro ladies play their "I'm just a girl" card.
Later, she threw a terrible backhand, just a terrible decision that would have been a turnover regardless, got touched on the hand and called a foul. This was a dumb call, and I just joked "don't worry, I call fouls on my swill throws, too." She snapped back at my relatively benign (and for the record, more self-deprecating than anything) comment. HATE STICK reawoken. Two throws later, she tried a break mark backhand to my guy and I got a COLOSSAL, horizontal flying layout D on it. I took off downfield and muttered "Nice throw" to her. Nothing big in the grand scheme of trash talk, but apparently her head was now entirely occupado, and it further destabilized her. She was worthless the rest of the game; got shut down by Genevieve, dropped passes, threw CRAP away, couldn't toe the line or stay in bounds on her good bids to save her life.
The last event was late in the game - they threw a Z, and Pauline was playing wing. I came streaking down the sideline, and she started sliding over to cut off my path. So when I got close, I cut out further and started to go by her. Only again, she decided to jump into my path at the last second. This time I tried to avoid her by turning sideways, but with two sketchy knees, I'm not about to throw on the brakes to avoid someone who's playing D like that. So surprise, surprise, little miss dirty D got run over again, and this time came up screaming. This time, after saying "that was a fundamentally dirty play and you know better," I just stopped talking to her. I was highly tempted to comment on her relative level of rationality all night, but I didn't. Ugh.
Perhaps all of this makes me a terrible person, and granted, I was meaner than I needed to be. I really, really did not appreciate her little calling me out act, and I let it overwhelm me with hatred. That is not good, I suppose. And there's probably some gentleman's code that says don't run over girls, no matter how psychotic and contact-initiating they're being. But there's a point where when an athlete chooses to engage in a little psych warfare, I find it completely ethical to respond in kind. I may be the only person who realizes that 1, I was nowhere near as mean as I can be, and 2, if I really wanted to run over someone, I would just do it and there would be no mistake. That is, natch, highly subjective, and I don't expect anyone to excuse me or be sympathetic toward me because I'm essentially saying, "I could have hit her harder." Respect to Pauline; she's a great player. But if she wants to be a great player and wants to throw down, and then expects some reprieve or some kind of license to play like a little thug because she's a girl, she's not getting it from me.
In the end, if she considers that good strategy, she is just wrong. Don't wake the HATE STICK. It was already finals of league, it was already a revenge game. I was already pumped. Already at 11. She may have just upped it to 11.4. Mistake. Read On.
POST-SCRIPT: I'm done griping about P. She's a great player, a fun person in other contexts, and she just got overly emotional about everything. I really do think she was just disappointed about the whole grilling issue, and it just cast a shadow over everything. I have no remorse for the events on the field; I was trying to be honest above, and I do feel that she was playing dangerously and should have fully expected the contact that she engendered. Trash-talking may have been over the top, but I kept it pretty subtle and did not bring up anyone's mom or anything. So okay, I apologize for saying "nice throw." Really? Anyways, it's over for me, this was my catharsis and I'm not gonna mention it anymore in the writeup. Again, she's a fantastic and truly impressive player, and as someone who also gets highly worked up, I appreciate her intensity. Let's move on.
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