Hard-times for my VOTS Fall League team of late. Our captain, Nipar, basically wrecked himself at Southwest Regionals; Alan's been out of the country the last two weeks and missed Thursday's game with Swine Flu; Tom "Heart Attack" has been battling knee issues and is both hurt and out of shape, and of course I'm a walking case study in -itises. On the women's side, Tanya has been AWOL, Angel's, um, "captaining," and Tricia has been dealing with knee issues, too. The rest of our team, with the exception of Tim (who is new to town) and Wes (who plays casually now and then) consists entirely of people who have played less than a year, meaning Beck is one of our more experienced players. Beck has a forehand and can catch things that are thrown upside down, too, which also gives her a leg up on a lot of our teammates. Anyways, we are unsurprisingly struggling BADLY, and a lot of teams are figuring out that there are only a couple of people on the field that need to be treated seriously in order to shut us down. AND we struggle terribly on defense, too, which means that teams are scoring on our turnovers a very disproportionate amount of the time. Ugh.
So, in case you didn't notice, I'm not exactly throwing down the detailed game writeups this season. I lack the adjectives beyond "another" and "bad." So I'm doing everything I can to go out and have a good time, try to teach people a little bit, though I'll fully admit that I'm frustrated. Part of it is just a typical competitive nature that detests getting blown out of game after game and having to do way more than my share for the team; part of it, though, is that there doesn't seem to be a degree of learning here, and we're making the same mistakes in week 6 that we made in week one. It's frustrating, because among other things, I can't even get throws to Beck when people are constantly cutting her off and cutting when it's not their turn. I can't even throw to my WIFE!!!! I'll stop before this turns into a rant, but it gets to be frankly unfun to play uphill game after uphill game where you're not just getting beaten, you're making guys on other teams who are very, very average look like all-stars. And it's not like they're even playing well, they just have multiple people running around the field uncovered. AND you can't even try to get your newer players involved in a good way, because they're either not open or they're cutting each other off left and right. It's even more "not Ultimate" than VOTS is normally "not Ultimate." I'll do my best to keep a good attitude, but it just feels like a pointless farce*.
* - Mayhaps this is reason #2476 we should run this league by autodraft - granted, there are a lot of unknowns that go into it, injuries and foreign travel and bad self-ratings, but man do we have a weird team. Affected badly by injuries, sure, but DAMN.
Alright, enough whining, let's have a game account. I played pickup on Wednesday after taking a week off in Austin/SA, and I was gasping for breath more or less the entire time. This combined with some lightheadedness I had in SA while playing freaking HORSE w/ my dad made me more than a little concerned that something was wrong, but fortunately, I seemed to have my lungs back under me on Thursday night. All of the above-mentioned factors came into play, and despite the fact that we were playing the winless cellar-dweller from the other league, we got absolutely destroyed. They won 15-7, and it was never in doubt. We just can't cover anyone, and when the other team has Kuda, Bonnie, Bill, Tricky, and Cisco, plus a new 6'10" guy, plus other moderately athletic peeps, we're doomed. We tried throwing some Z at them, but our cup was super loose and it was entirely ineffective. Perhaps you are starting to see why I don't write these games up; I am way too negative.
I personally didn't play well. Or really, I'll be fair to myself - I realized that we can't really complete four passes in succession, and so I took more chances than usual and had to play cutter rather than handler. And things were just off - I missed a trailing edge grab on a huck where i had to navigate through three guys; I couldn't figure out where I was on the field after a swilly huck traversed the entire width of the field and couldn't decide whether I needed to greatest it or just catch it; I actually had a disc fall out of my hand for no apparent reason while trying to go to a forehand grip, and that hasn't happened to me in more than a decade. On the throwing side, everything I put up either hit people in the hands and was misread/dropped, or I put out perfect throws... for people who were just a hair faster. Basically, I think I let the "carry the team" mental state get to me, tried to do too much, and had an unspectacular day. So... yeah. Enough of that.
I did have at least two decent plays, and I'll let you SEE them rather than describe them - wahoo! Kevin Hatch, father of one of the players in our game (for the other side) and a VOTS-oldtimer, shot some video of our game and just posted it on the interwebs. It's twenty minutes long, so I hardly expect you to watch it, but I'll list some highlights and you can do what you will. Hopefully I'm not imagining all of the above, and you can see some of the things (our team dropping hammers, their team running around sans defender, etc.). And full disclosure - this edit is missing my idiotic, right-in-front-of-the-camera disc drop, so I'll post that if Kevin tracks it down, too. Alright, here are some things to watch for:
3:10 - Nyet flies by Beck and scares the crap out of her. Nyet is sorry!
3:40 - Streak deep by the Nyet and the floater-flick for the score.
6:20 - One of the hammer drops I was talking about.
7:15 - Still can't believe I didn't come up with this, but note that I shouldn't have had to run around the crowd back there.
8:40 - Good chance to play "you make the call." She claimed I hit her arm... I continue to contest.
11:00 - Tim throws a hammer shot to the back left corner. Some dude poaches off and runs into me from behind. I fall, I tip it, make the circus catch. Gratuitous spike. All in good fun.
13:15 - Bonnie makes a really nice huck to a super tall guy, and I poach off and sprint across field to try for the D... only to get skyed. Don't worry, I'll get my revenge.
17:10 - Another one.
19:08 - Revenge! I sky the 6'10" brand new player. And show him the disc, of course. Whilst wearing my devil horns from last year's Halloween costume, no less. Please ignore the bad-languaged heckling from the sideline...
Anyways, fun times, and thanks to Kevin for taping. Here's to improving next week.
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