Spent the weekend in Colorado with The Phoenix Club team Sprawl - it's an invitation-only kinda tournament, meaning it was pretty cool that we made the cut, even if it was only for the B-bracket and not the elite division with the likes of Double-Wide, Jam and Johnny Bravo. Baby steps to the National Championship, I always say.
We played okay on the weekend - went 3-4 with the usual amount of highs and lows. Came out absolutely dead to start the first game of the weekend against a solid L.A. team; we were down 5-0 before we even started to look vaguely competent, though made a nice run in the second half and ended up losing 13-8. Our second game was against a team from Austin named Riverside who featured a few guys I vaguely recognized; we beat them pretty handily, running away with the second half and taking it 13-6. Played a tough game against a crew of thugs* from Canada in the third game and lost 13-10, but then turned it around for the last game of the day against a very solid Master's Division team called Double Black; we won 13-6 and played well throughout. Had a fun evening hanging out with the guys and got ready for another day of it on Sunday.
* - Club play, as I'm sure I've indicated in the past, can be a lot more physical, with people bumping and vying for space and hitting on the mark and such. That is different from taking ten yard running head starts and delivering flying blind-side elbows at people. Or reaching across and *grabbing* the disc - seriously, not fouling or being over-zealous on the mark, but grabbing the disc to stop a break. There's really no recourse against this sort of behavior other than to call foul**, but it also involves running around the field wondering when the next time you're going to get blindsided will be. Which I suppose is kinda the intent, which means the cheating wins either way. That's just great. Thanks for that experience, guys. Or "guy," as it were.
** - Speaking of, props to me for small steps. Despite the above-mentioned thuggery and some other heated incidents and questionable tactics of fouling and grabbing, I stayed very calm and above the fray all weekend long. Seriously, I got punched and kicked and elbowed and had some terrible calls made and I kept it together all weekend long. I even politely asked people to discontinue their egregious behavior if they would please, without even raising my voice. So yay for small steps - I had a set a priority of remaining respectful all weekend and keeping Sprawl in good graces, and it worked. Baby steps, you know.
We came out to start Sunday much better than the ugly early AM Saturday experience - went down 5-2 against the to-that-point undefeated team in our pool 99 Problems, but stormed back and stayed on top to win 13-11. Things went badly downhill after that - after being tied 6-6 against the New Mexico team Sweet Roll, we forgot how to play and lost 13-7. And our amnesia was permanent - lost the last game of the day, a rematch against Double Black, 13-2. Hideous, embarrassing. To some extent we ran out of gas, perhaps having something to do with only practicing once a week. Who knows.
I played okay on the weekend - I think I had seven turns total, six of which were on hucks. I connected on 7 hucks, too, but that's a pretty crappy percentage - our deep game was sort of collectively off all weekend. I played decent D - I am just slow compared to a lot of the runners out there, sadly enough - and handled well, particularly against the zones that were thrown at us. Even scored a few times. Huzzah. The bad news, of course, is that my knee got progressively sore through the tournament. I made a hard cut in our next to last game and the amount of fluid just passed whatever threshold, and I couldn't really effectively put weight on it from that point on (actually, that had something to do with my three bad hucks on Sunday - I couldn't properly but weight on my right leg, not to make excuses). It got bad enough that I decided to sit out the rematch against Double Black, so I actually only played 6 games on the weekend. Muscle-wise I felt fine, and the altitude wasn't too bad, but I definitely couldn't take all of the pounding on the joints. I hope this was just a fluke, but it is one of the things that has been keeping me from playing club lately. Ah, well.
So I'm a little hobbled today - don't worry, it's definitely just fluid / soreness, no acute injury or anything - and the late flight back to Phoenix (and the two hours cramped in a plane) certainly didn't help. Hopefully it'll chill out by practice tomorrow, but it's pretty stiff / sore, and I'd rather not have this become a lingering problem. We'll see. So a reasonably successful weekend - we were definitely in five of the seven games, and that's a big step up for Sprawl historically. Good times.
And now, back to the grind.
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