"Sunrise doesn't last all morning / A cloudburst doesn't last all day"
The Zorro lost our game tonight, 14-13 on hard cap, bringing a reasonably glorious Nyet /Genevieve-captained team winning streak to an end at 15 glorious games. So it goes.
We drew a second game match-up with the team that I think most people out of the gates regard as favorites, Dustin and P-Mo's "Premature Huckulation," and yes, that is exactly as funny as anything would be if you took a sexual phrase and stupidly substituted an Ultimate term in for one of the words. Dustin is a 6'9" mega-goon whom I'm sure I've mentioned before, and goon is not necessarily a pejorative, it's just a in-my-circles term for a really tall Ultimate player. Dustin fancies himself a handler oddly enough, as being 6'9" generally makes him unstoppable on high throws. It's usually a little weird, though tonight he played pretty well at the handler spot (and might I add that he can be kind of hard to defend - a couple of times I laid out on discs which I thought I had a chance, but Mr. five foot arms just reached way the hell out in front of himself and made me feel stupid for even thinking the possibility existed). PMo is Pauline, our starlet from last league's finals. I made an effort to play nice with her tonight, giving her some compliments and hopefully letting bygones be bygones; she is a pretty solid player and it's no fun to run into people constantly with bad air betwixt you.
So the reason they are favored out of the gate is that they grabbed Damon, very athletic good throwing Canadian import, and Jason Trant, solid tall jumping all-around player if a little attendance unreliable in the playoffs / finals (you may recall that we could have grabbed this guy with the seventh pick in the first round, but he dropped all the way to fifth pick in the second round because people didn't want him missing the playoffs for their team). They then proceeded to grab nothing but 6'1" and taller players for the rest of the time, resulting in a forest of goons. So between a GIANT captain, a great player female captain, two great players and an army of gigantism-suffering clones, they are a tad imposing to say the least. Very athletic and anchored by some leadership and skill - Viral asked me at one point, "how did they get so many athletic people?"
The most notable thing about the game, particularly early on, was that neither team was being careless with the disc - flashes of club. They pulled to us to start things off, and we just buzzed it down the right sideline with a series of crisp throws and catches. Kelly put up a little bit of a goofy throw (she basically just threw a flick even though I wasn't cutting toward her and Jason was between me and the disc; I nonchalantly reached around his head and snagged it), and I followed up with a goofy IO scoober to Miller for the score, 1-0, us. We pulled to them, and within a couple of throws Damon put it up deep for (???) and they came down with it.
We figured, what with their DNA-based altitude advantages, that they would try to huck it all night long, so we converted to a straight up mark for the rest of the game. We still need to work on this a bit, but generally speaking, the straight-up mark is standing head up and about 3 yards off the person on the mark with your only intent being to stop hucks. And this worked great - we really made them work it up the field instead of just sending it to big guys, and it paid off in a lot of good defense from us and a lot of turns. As mentioned, it wasn't 100% effective because a few of our players bought some fakes and let hucks off, but overall we had a good working strategy for them.
On the next couple of points, I beat a guy deep for a flick huck from Rich, they came back and had to work it hard up the field but eventually scored. 2-2, and no turns after four points! Tres exciting. We finally cracked first, and they took advantage of a short field to go up 3-2. Craig put up a horrendous blade huck to me on the next point, and I skyed Burger to rescue the score. 3-3, and thus far just a tight, intense game with good decisions coming from both sides.
We got a couple of breaks on the ensuing points and nabbed a two point lead that lasted til 7-5. It's hard to remember all of the chicanery that went on here, but big plays to remember were a nutsoid huck from Craig that went sailing out of bounds toward the right corner of the endzone. I made a lay out greatest attempt on it - laid out out of bounds, caught the disc and sent it back over my shoulder before I landed - but unfortunately, in a addition to doing all of that, I couldn't break Jason's "mark" as he caught the disc in front of Kelly. Ah, well, 'twas still a valiant effort.
Best part of the night happened somewhere in here - Jeremy got the disc in the middle of the field about twenty yards out from the endzone, and I cut in hard and got the disc. Turned around, and wide open cutting to the corner was Beck - sent her the flick, and SHAZAM! A Love Connection! For the Score! Nothing quite as fun as seeing Beck grab the disc out of the air and touch it to the ground to indicate "I'm in." Aaron, if you're reading, she SIGNIFIED.
Beck also played great defense all night - all our women did, actually. Our whole team did, *actually.* Just ran hard. Sub plot #1 of the night was that Jason and especially Damon ended up having to stay in from about that 7-5 point on, and not only did they stay in, but they were touching the disc every other throw. Not to take anything away from their other players - Dustin played great and chilly at handler, Pauline moved the disc well, and a couple of other people (Rob tolar in particular made a huge number of possession catches for them) got reasonably involved, but especially down by the endzone, it turned into the Damon show. We forced them to throw it a gerbillion times, but - especially since we were doing a fairly even steven rotation and not trying to match our top picks with theirs all night - you know, in the interest of letting people have equal playing time and all that - our great defense broke down at times. We took half 8-5, but had to pull to them to start the second, and hit a pretty significant lull.
To the tune of a five point run from them. Ugh - maybe we should have played zone or something, but I don't know if it was our D so much as our horrendous offense. It's hard to remember precisely what went on here other than that our crisp decision making left the building and we obviously got tired - or, I should say, our men got tired. Again, our women rocked out - Beck and new girl Selina (pronounced Suh-lye-nuh) typically took their second woman and honestly, I can't remember their second women touching the disc (and they were not shabby players - Megan and Irina!). Allyson, Kelly and G usually had to take Pauline, and while Genevieve giving Pauline trouble is to be expected, Allyson and Kelly both took it to her as well, Allyson even beating her deep for a score. Hiya! But... back to the boys. We got a little tired, and again, with Damon, trant and Dustin out the for all but MAYBE three points in the second half, we started to have problems - and even when we slowed those guys down effectively, they were getting a lot of easy resets to other players.
Our effort stayed high the entire time, though, which was just huge. This really was your classic knock-down drag out, with both teams having to runrunrunrunrun. And at this point I'm badly repeating myself, but we picked our poison against that team with the straight-up mark, and it really paid off. Yeah! Still, tired defense corresponded with tired offense, and what had been a crisp, flowy offense sputtered a lot in the second - a few handlers to rename nameless put a lot of deep throws up for incompletions, and it killed us. They took the lead 10-8, and the rest of the game we fought and clawed, always one point behind - in fact, I think the game went 10-9, 11-9, 11-10, 12-10, 12-11, 13-11, 13-12, 14-12, 14-13... the soft cap went on at 13-11 and the hard went on (obviously) on the last point, so this was really a game that didn't end and was separated by (I suppose) two breaks.
Case in point of the attack of the tireds - I got a big D when it was 12-11, tossed it to Viral and headed for the endzone with no one around. But he just didn't step into his throw, and it floated way up. So Jason, Damon and Todd all closed in while I'm camping under the disc - I had to jump and grab for it at its highest point because of the oncoming traffic, and I had another "hit the broken tip of my finger" experience, just couldn't get up high enough / couldn't close my fingers around it. Really should have had it, another drop - BUT, there's no reason I should be having to sky three people for that catch in the first place. Frustrating, and it's not to pick on Viral for that particular play, just an instance of where being worn out led to a bad throw led to a bad catch. They scored, so instead of 12-12 we were still down 13-11. Nuts.
On a completely different point, though, either Jeremy or Viral put up a swilly throw to the endzone, and who read it correctly and grabbed it? Your favorite new Ultimate player, BECK!!! Her second goal - fantastic!
Some frustrations in the game, nearly all occurring in our bad second half - we stopped dumping the disc, kept trying to put up laser hucks... I beat my guy deep a bunch of times and our handlers (Craig, Tom) had trouble putting up nice hucks; on another one of those late 13-12 points, I had jason by 20 yards and Craig fired a laser past me on which I had no chance. Genevieve caught a lasery blady huck from Tom... about a foot out the back of the short endzones. Somebody dropped their mark on Damon while I was guarding Jason for an incut, and Damon somehow managed not to just get a huck off but an IO backhand huck - against a straight up mark! So I sprinted and actually caught Trant, but my big lay out came up about a foot short. Devastating, but it was a pretty perfect huck against a great receiver; just gotta tip your hat to that (and mutter under your breath about whoever let the throw go off). Just a ton of missed opportunities, and I'm sure the other side had them, too, but it felt like we lost our legs and minds together.
Damon toward the end of the game did not get so much chippy as whiny - something happened between Jack and him, and whatever it was put him in a mode where he just complained and made whiny, nothing touch foul calls. He called a foul on the mark on me on a play where yes, there was contact, but it was a step through break mark throw and he really just threw it away. This was on the goalline at 13-12, and I wasn't the only one - and not just people from our team - who found it a little cheesy. Whatever, didn't contest it because I was not interested in the ensuing hissy fit. P Mo cheated a little bit earlier in the game with a pick call, too - it was actually seventh level cheating, but I made the smart decision and didn't even bring it up with her.
But I'll bring it up here - Jeremy cuts deep to right side of the endzone and smokes his guy. Pauline poaches off on Jeremy - a totally reasonable play - but she without a doubt leaves Allyson. Allyson cuts in, and is now wide open in front of me, a solid 8 yards away from Pauline. Meanwhile, the guy trying to guard jeremy runs into Pauline - and Pauline calls a pick! So not only is it your usual controversial not-within-three-yards pick call, she actually SET the entire thing up - she called a pick on a player who was guarding the same player she was guarding!!! STUPID! EGREGIOUS! I take umbrage.
But like I say, just blew it off, and generally had a very congenial, even positive night of interactions with the PMo. Huzzah for good sport. Actually, i was just beaming after the game - this was probably the best all-around VOTS game I've played in terms of featuring hustle, smart play (for most of it) and mutual respect in the midst of fierce competition. Good times, PH.
So anyhoo, a great game, we scored the final point on hard cap leaving us to never know whether they actually would have scored that 15th point. I was very proud of our team though think there is a lot of room to improve. Proud of the Beck for scoring and playing great, hustling D. Proud of myself for remaining above the fray despite an intense, emotional and hotly contested game. Not so proud of yet another drop and have wasted a lot of time wondering what the hell is going on - but all I can do is maybe practice some more jumping one handed grabs and hope this finger issue subsides soon. Also not so proud that this ended up being some 2300 words and I still don't think I captured what a fun night it was - I hung / played tight defense on taller and faster guys than me all evening, and our team really showed that it's got BIG TIME potential if we can work out the kinks. We shall see - thanks for reading if you did.
p.s. Also - disappointed that i was off with both Jack and Genevieve last night - just wasn't on the field at the same time they were. They both played great, just not with me. Sigh...
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