Spring is upon us - or at least as much as spring can be in a place with two seasons - which means that VOTS Spring League is about to kick into gear. Genevieve and I teamed up again to extend our frisbee dynasty, this time with the added challenge that everyone knows us and will be gunning for us. Bring it!
Um, already broughten. Our draft was Wednesday night, and the order is selected by an anonymous vote amongst the captains - basically, you rate each captain in terms of Ultimate skill / captaining skill / drafting skill. Genevieve and I both ended up picking 7th (meaning "2nd best, for whatever that is worth), just ahead of Pauline-Mo and Vince, respectively. I picked seventh last league as well, so that was unsurprising, but the cat is really out of the bag w/r/t Genevieve - no 4th picking from the women for us this time. D'oh. The background annoyingness of all this is that it is a "straight draft" instead of a serpentine - meaning that we got the 7th pick of the men's and women's rounds EVERY SINGLE ROUND. The alternative would be to snake back and forth (so that with 8 teams we would get the seventh pick and second pick of alternating rounds), but the powers that be have declared that a no-go for largely unarticulated reasons. The thought seems to be that the skill of a captain can make up for having to pick behind every team for the entire draft. I don't know if I buy that, but we're stuck with it - the situation is that every single pick we make is theoretically the second worst pick of that round. Of course, that's if everyone drafts perfectly and all that stuff and you don't have to worry about drafting a balanced team and whatnot, but still, *knowing* you'll be picking late every round can put a damper on the draft.
Or more accurately, it mainly means that try as you might to scout whom you want ahead of time, you get repeatedly scooped in every round. Which is precisely what happened. That said, I can't complain about the team we drafted; we did stick to known entities and people I really enjoy playing with for the most part. So to get on to it:
We drafted women first, and there were five obvious first round picks and then a bunch of unknowns. The first five went almost strictly in order, the 6th was a person we had never heard of, and so I (did I mention G was out of town at the AAAS conference in Chicago? Well, she was, and so we had to do a quick scouting job before the draft. Not ideal, but I think it worked out) was left with a tough decision - draft an unknown named "Kelly" who rated herself as experienced, tall and athletic, or draft a known but probably properly a second round draft pick named Megan. I basically flipped a coin in my brain and went with kelly; just couldn't bring myself to spend a first round pick on megan (who's a very young ASU player) when a purportedly experienced athletic lady was on the board. Of course, PMo (with the 8th pick right behind me, and also the coach of the ASU women's team) grabbed Megan immediately and enthusiastically, so I may have made a colossal mistake. We'll see.
Grabbed an athletic, somewhat experienced player named Allyson with our second round pick, someone G had recommended for the pick. So that's groovy, and her e-mail address is ***rugbyplayer*** or something so I'm guessing we got a solid athlete there - and when you're picking relative unknowns toward the bottom of the second round, that's what you hope for. Our third round pick was a complete unknown named Salina who was the youngest / most experienced / athletic left, and YES, I practice ageism when drafting. Deal.
Our fourth round pick was automatic, none other than the Furious Fist of Ferrous herself. That's right, THE BECK is playing spring league!!! After a somewhat disappointing winter run with Phxation, the local
The women's draft, generally speaking, had a limited known talent pool, and so it was not entirely surprising that we did not grab a ton of known greats with our low pick. I think we did a good job, and may have scored a coup with that 2nd round pick, but we'll see. The men's, on the other hand, similarly had an obvious top tier of about five guys, but much, much more known talent down the way. Again, with a seventh pick, that upmost tier looked out of range, but there was always a chance that people above would pick incorrectly or what have you. So...
Not so much. Surprisingly, Bryan, Sprawl captain who noted that he would be missing the playoffs, went as the first pick. Hmmm - that team is captained by Russell and Liz, so maybe they really wanted handling, but still, odd first choice. The second pick (made by E-Bay) was your friend and mine, Royal WEfnuker Justin. Yeah, i would have gone with him first overall, but what are you gonna do. Another WEfnuker went 3rd - Pat! - and our reunion team dream was destroyed. Ah, well. Pete went 4th, Damon went 5th, and Rob went 6th, leaving me with another tough first round decision - Jason (tall, skinny athletic club player-type) seemed to be an obvious pick, so I made it, but it was then revealed that he had just let Katherine know he would be out for the playoffs. Ugh! So I withdrew my pick and went with Jack, and on further consideration, am really glad I did.
Jack is an incredible player - older, but still fast, good throws, and just plays his ass off - but he's not someone you look at and say "obvious first rounder, will be a serious deep threat and such," mainly I think because he is not tall and is 38. But the thing is - I think HE IS!!! I may just be talking myself into this, but beyond getting a great guy / great player / great dog (see below), he really is an all-around player that creates all kinds of matchup problems. So he may not be an obvious first pick overall like Justin or a prototypical long threat like Pat, but he's going to accomplish a lot for us. I am psyched, and again, he's a great guy with whom to play and with whom I mesh well - we played together at NYF and had a blast on all fronts.
After getting scooped on several of my second round options, I ended up taking a guy named Alan with the second round pick - another fast, mid type. Vince followed up by picking Nat, a guy who works at CSPO and is a friend of Genevieve's (and who I thought would fall to the 3rd round), and so as a friendly maneuver (Alan is an old teammate of Vince's), we traded our second round picks to everyone's happiness. Nat is another high ceiling pick - when he is in shape and uninjured, he is another badass all-around guy. Of course, he is currently out-of-shape and gets injured frequently. So I am Einstein's Not-God with my dice-rolling. I'm psyched if for no other reason to have another frisbee bud on campus.
In the third round, I improbably picked up Tom, an older handler with seriously sick throws (and who plays pretty crunchy defense). Another case of misevaluated talent, I think, and I couldn't believe he fell that low. Grabbed Miller in the fourth round, another guy who lasted way longer than I thought - he's another fragility risk and is reportedly battling some hamstring issues, but that aside, he is a seriously athletic guy who will come up with some deep throws / Ds if needed. E-Bay agreed that if he pans out, he would be the steal of the draft.
Got Paul in the fifth round, so at least one fnuker will be playing with us. He had told me he had a sleeper pick, so I called him after selecting him... and his sleeper ended up being a girl. That was unhelpful, seeing as we had already completed the women's draft, but it also happened to be the top woman selected. Hmmm... "Sleeper." I do not think this word means what you think it means. Anyways, getting Paul in the fifth round is just dumb; he remains unknown despite having a great fall season and finals game in front of everyone. I don't get it, but was more than happy to scoop him up where we did; another athletic dude who's getting more experienced all the time.
Grabbed Craig of all people in the 6th - WOW. Craig handles pretty decently and plays okay defense, but more importantly can throw deep forehand or backhand, a rare commodity that low in the draft to be sure. Hooray. And then I got jeremy in the seventh, a young speedster who is still learning the game, but still - WOW TWO. He is very green, to be sure, but I am repeatedly confused as to why people would select other unknown players when a known to be lightning quick guy is on the table. NUTS.
8th-10th picks were all unknowns, so I did my best but ended up getting two older guys (Greg and Richie) as well as a dude named Viral whom I know nothing about. So, after reviewing this, I liked a lot of the picks I made, and got a lot of guys on the cheap that I did not think I'd be able to grab. There's a laundry list of picks I thought I might be able to pull off - Brayden and his dad, Pat Smith, Ben, Russ, a bunch of the unknown but tall and athletic guys, etc. - that I couldn't, but going through it again, I really did get a ton out of every pick. So in the end, I think Gen and my pre-draft strategy meeting paid off, and we did the best we could with late order picks. Looking at a lot of teams in the league, no one stands out as having had a particular awesome draft with the possible exception of Dustin / Pauline, who stand out only because they drafted nothing but 6' or taller guys (Dustin is 6'9" already), so in non-windy conditions, just their height could wreak havoc.
SO a solid draft, and we're looking forward to the season. It'll be interesting having Beck on board b/c she'll be a good barometer for how good of a job we're doing teaching and keeping newer players involved - unlike some people who may not be inclined to speak up, Beck and I will be able to talk honestly about the experience from a new player's perspective. Again, another post. AND having Beck around just might keep my hotheadedness in check. We'll see... :)
Oh, and lest I forget - jack's dog is an 8 year old shepherd mix who is just the nicest, sweetest, mellowest dog I've ever met at an Ultimate game. He just sits on the sideline the entire time and chills out, no maintenance needed, just happy to get patted by people who walk by, and never ever runs on the field. Amazing. Jack's dog is named Zorro, and our team color is black, so I think we may have pulled off another excellent multi-reference team name with "The Mark of Zorro." A quick summary:
1. Jack's dog ZORRO is our mascot.
2. ZORRO is a notorious man in BLACK.
3. The "Mark" satisfies the Ultimate pun requirement
4. The Mark of ZORRO is a "Z," aka ZONE DEFENSE. Double Ultimate Pun!
Transcendent. Should be cool. In other news, my shirt design won the vote, so keep an eye out for a bunch of frisbee folkds walking around wearing this:
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