YEAH! Even though I am sitting here at 11:30 after our 6 o'clock game with my grapefruit sized ankle propped up on top of the couch, I am still pretty excited about tonight's game. We faced the Audacity of Ho - my favorite team name in the league, btw - an undefeated team from the Monday league. Pretty solid bunch, with Clint, Lexi, Annie, Alexxx, Alex, and a surly little guy named Hilton (who is quite a good player). They only had three women show up and refused to play 4-3 understandably, so we were faced with the usual challenge of getting our womenfolk playing time... AND we were missing Viral and Nat, plus Rich was hurt with a sore back, so we were a tad shorthanded on the guys side with 7.5 men for the 5 guys' spots. Looked to be an exciting game.
And exciting it was - somebody convinced me to play Z on the first point - WHA? - and Audacity proceeded to dink dink dink it back and forth for what felt like 50 throws. (It was very windy initially, but that unexpectedly and thankfully ended in a hurry - made for a much nicer game than last week). They finally broke the cup, got another pass off, only to have one of their newbies try to cross the field with it - and I intercepted it. That may have done them in right there, as that sort of point is enough to make an experienced player slam their fist through their skull. We worked it down and punched the disc in, good guys up 1-0.
And the hits kept coming - we dropped the Z after that display and went with a straight up attack. Hilton tried to hit Alex, I D'ed it, dink dink, Craig sends it deep, and I grab it over Alex for the score. Rinse repeat - Hilton throws it deep again, I D it, work it to Craig, throws it deep, Alex misreads it, and I catch it over him again for the score. Before we knew it, it's 3-0. Crazy. We get another up-winder on a big huck to Miller, and it's 4-0! What's going on?
Enter the drama. On a couple of those first points, little things here and there accumulated. Clint made a bad OB call on me, and I disagreed with him - Tricky backed me up and said I was in, even after I had offered to send the disc back as a sort of in/contest mimicry. A guy decided to guard me by shoving a forearm in my chest to which I stupidly responded by pushing his arms off and having him call foul and making a scene. On several occasions, early in the game and beyond, I marked my man tightly - but off the requisite disc diameter of 10.75 inches - and my guardee decided to call disc space. On these occasions, he put the disc at his chest - mind you, you can't even do this if the person's chest is within 10.75 inches - and shoves off a good foot while calling disc space, pushing me off the mark. So I call foul, because pushing your mark, with the disc or no, is a foul, particularly if they are a foot plus 10.75 inches off you and not actually within a disc space. Gripety gripety - turns out our undefeated foes were in no mood for a tight game, mark-or-otherwise.
So there's a little bit of tension when Hilton buts up a crappy, floaty huck to Alex - are you sensing a pattern here? - and I leap to D it. Boingo! Another one, a serious get position and sky him D. We turn it, they try the same damn thing, only this time, it's a better throw. Alex and I are both running for it, I feel like I got inside position, he says I was behind him, whatever - the real factor is that he ran into me and stepped on my ankle (hence the grapefruitness) while jumping. I never had a chance to make a bid because he clobbered me, basically, so I called foul. He went APESHIT to the point where it was obvious that talk of perspectives and my swollen ankle and all these things was not going to get it done. Just kept yelling about "incidental contact." So I just held my ground with contest - my inability to jump and swollen ankle did not make me feel this was particularly incidental - and he sent it back. Craig backs up that I got clobbered on this play. I feel bad about this not at all, more just frustrated with what is sure to be the remainder of the game in pain and tonight being sleepless. Anyhoo, they turn it, we work it down, and Jack gets a throw to Salina for the score. 5-0.
And then things came back down to earth a little. Hilton made some nice throws to folks other than Alex cutting deep. We traded points for a bit: 5-1, 6-1, 6-2, 7-2, 7-3, 8-3, half. All of this is highlighted by some argument-inducing foul calls, yay. Positive picture - we were doing a tremendously better job of getting our women involved: Beck got the disc multiple times, as disc Allyson, Kelly, Salina, Genevieve - all of them got it a bunch AND did a great job with throws, not turning it over very much to speak of at all. YEAH!!! I got a little huck happy at points, missing on a shot to Allyson and putting up a huck to Genevieve that she... er... misread. Oh, well, would've been a big fat upwinder, but no biggie. :)
So the second half starts, and it's more of the same - a tightly contested, somewhat whiney game from their end with a lot of good play from ours. Jack, Tom, Craig, Paul, Jeremy, Rich, Miller (!) on the guys side, and all of the women as mentioned, just had great games. We received going upwind to start the second half (Might I add here that we won the flip and took the wind, and they elected to receive? WHAT? Okay, thanks, we will take both decisions off the flips, gracias). Things proceeded to get a little less flowy - they threw Z a few times and a poachy nonsense thing that it took us a few points to figure out. So 8-4, 9-4, 9-5, 9-6, 9-7 (!!!) and things were looking hairy. At some point in here, Hilton ran into Jack intentionally on a deep throw, a pretty questionable move that i wouldn't necessarily condone or condemn, just something that certainly does not reek of friendly Ultimate. Jack got mad, I got mad for Jack, I tried to politely tell Hilton to watch it with the intentional body blocking, he starts yelling about WHATEVER, and uh oh, time for the hatestick, bury the hatestick, take out the hatestick TIME. Woah-oh, shocks my game... They only up the animosity with some more goofy mark calls, and a tantrum from Hilton when Jack calls him on a travel for the first time in a game where he likely traveled thirty times.
Turned it on, on and all the way up - we dissected the poachy D eventually and I scored on a crossfield flick from Tom to stop the bleeding. 10-7. They scored downwind, we did, blah, blah, this was a whole lot of teamwide play capped by endzone catches by me between hobbles (and one particularly nice huck from Jack to Chris). It ended up 10-8, 11-8, 11-9 when the cap went on. They pulled to us going downwind, and I scorched someone deep to make it 12-9, game point. They work it, Lexi takes off deep - something, when she wasn't busy snarking on the field and poaching off her woman and then yelling at us for not throwing to her when a man poached ON to her woman, she tried several times all game and failed at repeatedly - and I trekked deep to stop her. I'm limping around the field pretty badly at this point and had been all game. A pick gets called, someone points out that I've poached, so when the disc gets tapped back in I have to race across the field to cover my guy.
Hilton - he who mouthed off at me for asking him to watch it on the running into Jack play - comes across the middle. Throw goes up, and I LAY THE BLEEP OUT on him, go around him Matrix style for the D. My legs hurt and actually started cramping a bit, but I stayed in there. We've got the disc within 25 of their endzone. Craig notes later that this is the type of play on which Hilton would have called a foul normally, but seeing as it was super clean as can be, there's no dirty trick he can pull. Bladow. Craig picks up, pops it to Paul, he flips back to Craig - meanwhile, I cut for the right side of the endzone, and as Craig gets it back I shoot for the front left corner. They're running that tooljob poach defense, so I've really got two guys covering me in the endzone - I beat the first guy, but the second is waiting for me on the left side of the field. Craig puts it up anyways - it's a shoulder level hard backhand, and it's headed right for my defender as we both run for the front corner. He's clearly between me and the disc.
So I just LAY THE BLEEP OUT on him, Matrix-YOINK style, and grab the winning goal. He, I don't know, steps on me on the ground in front of him and falls on top of me, smashing my face with his butt according to Obert, but this is all well after the fact and I certainly got to the spot first if he fell on top of me. Bladow II, and bladow of the WOWSERS best-personal-layout-grabs-EVER variety.
Anyways, just a fun, bookends, double happiness SICK sequence - and I even managed to celebrate with a fling the disc celebratorily in the air, not at someone, spike. Some sour faces in the postgame handshake, and I'll fully admit that I caused at least part of it by not being in a mood to put up with the mark nonsense, but it was pretty tit for tat all game and I don't really see that any side has reason to complain - just a hotly contested game that got rambunctious, and the team that was oh so used to winning every game did not get their way. So it goes, and ftr, I am not going to, per G's advice, spend any time feeling bad about any of this.
Sorry this post was so me-centric, but I had a good game, and that end-sequence is a pretty rare entry in the personal double-happiness-on-game-point pantheon for me. I have all the usual mixed emotions about getting so amped for the game and riling people up, but I do think a large part amounted to getting in their heads with a hard mark, for which I will not apologize. I didn't emphasize it enough here, but our team played great, and we got big contributions from everybody. PLUS we pulled this off sans Nat & Viral, so yeah US!
Beck chatted with Genevieve's mom, who is just an incredibly neat/nice/interesting/feisty lasy, after the game for a bit. I sat around lamenting the pillar of swell that is creeping up my fibula and wondering how the next week or so is going to go. Audacity gave us a nice, pregame-typed cheer, so that was fun. Caught a little of Justin's game - we face his More Cowbell team in a couple of weeks, OOH - and came home to a sadly post-Houseguestapalooza abode. Fun times on the Ultimate field, a great effort - I RE-EMPHASIZE that blog appearances to the contrary, I am not the only person on this team, and we played a teamwide much better game than in the recent past. Very proud of the Zorro and our "upset" - a nice game, even if it's costing me a few hours of sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment