Yeah, the astute and the impatient blog-readers alike will note that I failed to update the status of my VOTS fall league frisbee team last week. And with good reason: my ankle was still large-end grapefruit-sized, so I took measures to prevent myself from playing (left cleats at home, etc.). And Tom missed, Nat missed, and Viral missed, and it was hellaciously windy... and we got crushed by Ben's team, the stupendously badly named The Incredible Huck. Ugh. They killed us, 15-7 or some such. Paul really stepped it up in this one, particularly in the second half, on both O and D. There was some issue with Jack getting really irked that we would crazily suggest that sometimes, particularly in huge upwind-downwind games, punting is a good idea... whatever. It was a terrible game, I was not emotionally invested at all because of my injury, and we played badly. Leave it at that. It dropped us to 5-3, and with two more tough games to play, we were staring down a potential losing streak ending in a .500 season.
Not so fast! We had Justin/E-Bay/Eric Iverson / Emily Haydon's team "More Cowbell" on the schedule tonight. They were undefeated (albeit by the skin of their teeth - a couple of one and two point wins here and there) and I had learned today that we would be without Nat, Jeremy, Virla and Kelly, so yikes. And Jack didn't show up either! EGADS. On the good side, my ankle really turned a corner on Sunday - returned to borderline human dimensions - and felt more or less okay walking around campus, so I procured a lace-up brace (thanks Beck!) and decided to give warming up a try before the game. Success! The swollen points pressing against the brace were a tad uncomfortable, but I could run in straight lines without pain. Tried a few cuts before the game, and good to go.
This spring has been from all accounts exceptionally windy, particularly on Wednesday nights, and this night was no exception - big gusts going one way down the field, though with the 8:00 game, things died down a tad for us. The name of the game would be zone tonight, and though we were missing the aforementioned people, we had Genevieve, Tom, Craig, and me available for handling duties, so that leaned things in our favor. We lost the flip, though, and they sent the intial pull down to us. Some crazy back and forth, good D on both sides, but some sloppy turns from our side and bad drops - I hit both Paul and Craig in the hands with hucks on this point - and they punched in the first one for a break. I felt okay, but got Justin sic'ed on me for several of the man points, and in case you don't remember from the fnuk posts, dude is SICK FAST and tough to cover and get away from. I really couldn't play great D on him, but I could keep him out of the endzone and at least make him throw the scores instead of breezing by me to catch them.
They tacked another on in a similarly sloppy point, and it was 2-0 bad guys. Uh-oh. And Craig fired a huck to me at the start of the next point - I was getting guarded by ? (blond guy who looks vaguely like John from St. George) whom I would normally sky easily, but with the tight brace and the soreness I just couldn't jump - I got a hand on it, but he ticked it away. Annoying. And a bad start. Luckily we got the disc back, Craig hucked it again and this time I skyed properly. Huzzah, no shutout. We finally got to pull, so we threw what would be the first of eighteen consecutive zone points here.
Ah, Cowbell's Achilles. Even with their toppish line - with EBay, Emily and Justin handling and Eric Iverson popping - they just don't have people to huck to or people that can pop throws over the top. SO our zone SERIOUSLY frustrated them - I think they really worked it up only three or four times, and only scored on one of those. There is little more to say, other than that Salina, Allyson, Genevieve, Craig and Tom - Craig in particular played almost all eighteen points in the cup - kicked serious ass in the cup, and Tom also nailed a ton of Ds, and EVERYONE - Rich, Paul, Miller, Beck - just shut their stuff down on the sidelines and in the middle of the field. Amazing. They had no answers!
(And let it be known - Beck got a HUGE D on a DUDE!!! YEAH!!! Go wife!)
So the rest of the game was a barrage of turns by them, lots of which occurred on short fields. They managed to punch in one or two off of transititons, but the rest of the game went 2-2, 2-3, 3-3, 3-4, 4-4, 5-4, 6-4, 7-4, 7-5, 8, 9,10,11,12,13,14-5, 14-6, 15-6. 15-6!!! We beat the Wednesday one-seed 15-6??!?!?! Nuts!!!
So what happened? Well, the obvious story of the game, and the one that should spread league-wide in no time, is that they absolutely did nothing against our zone. We just had a huge number of short fields to work with, and scored on one pass a ton of times. This had a bit of a cumulative mental effect, and somewhere around 11-5 the zone-ineptitude got into their heads in a big way.
And like I said, a number of folks just made gigantic plays. Allyson had a nasty goalline D AGAIN, Beck had her huge D, Paul intercepted one in the endzone, Tom smacked quite a few earthward - NASTY! Salina effectively D'ed Eric Iverson, for crap's sake. I get a little pumped just thinking about it - teehee! Beyond that, Tom and Craig came through with some big hucks. Lots of good possession play from Genevieve, Miller and Paul, and all of them got into the scoring mix big time - I especially enjoyed a hammer from Milelr to G for the score. Beck got in the mix on some yardage gaining throws. Rich played great. Man, what a nice, across-the-board team game.
Personally: After missing a laser from Tom early in the game, having Justin get one on me in the endzone (on a terrible hammer, ftr), I turned it up a bit despite the whole "playing on one leg" issue) and beat Justin a few times on deep throws, skyed Justin and EBay quite sickly on a huck (definitely YOINKed it from EBay), beat EBay on a streak up the sideline, etc., and threw some scores as well (one scoober to Beck got intercepted by Miller, but what you gonna do?) - that one to Miller, hammers to Genevieve and Allyson, huck to Paul, quick BH to Craig. I may be forgetting something, but that looks to me like a full two-thirds (5 throws, 5 goals) of our team's points. I had a good game. And yet I don't feel compelled to post to VOTS boards what a great player this makes me as SOME have done. Ugh.
Really, this was a teamwide effort capped by some great D and some, for the most part, efficient O. Pretty surprising - G and I fully thought that with Nat out (and especially after Jack no-showed) that we would be in trouble. But we pulled it out. This is the third undefeated team (fourth, if you count the opening game of the season) that we've introduced to the concept of losing, so if nothing else we've had a good season of spoiling.
(and again, personally, my ankle held up - we were really hurting for subs, so I ended up playing this entire game at deep-deep. Score. A few hours later and nothing is terribly swollen, so I'm hoping I can get some disc in this weekend and cap the season next week).
Speaking of - we're now in fourth place in the wednesday night league, tied with Joe Discpack at 6-3 but having beaten them in our regular season game. The tournament format has gotten rearranged, and it's really not worth going into, but if things hold up, we'll get to play the 8th seed from our league, and the 5th and 1st seeds from Monday. It's a good position to be in, and I'd like to stay there - we have Vince's team next week and Discpack has Cowbell, so on paper, we should have enough advantage to stay at least tied. I guess we'll see, especially since we may have just revealed how one would go about beating Cowbell. Hmmm... anyhoo, I really like the parity this season and the fact that every game has the potential to be tight. Really glad to see our team coming together at the end of the season. Hope our injured / no-shows can bring it out the next few times. Looking forward to the thrilling conclusion.
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