In the domain of UGH, here are my 2009 Southwest Regionals turnovers:
1. First point of our first game (against Sweet Roll); I burn a guy up the sideline on a fish / Homer cut and get a free forehand shot at the endzone. Justin D. is flying in from the weakside toward the back right corner; I catch him in my peripheral and go to put it up - only to notice at the last second that Rob has not cleared out from the sideline stack position and is standing (with his defender) directly in the lane in which I'm trying to throw it. I try to adjust midthrow - a recurring theme, you'll see - and arc it around Rob and defender, but the wind kicks it out of bounds. Bad start to the day.
2. We're working it upwind against Sweet Roll; I catch a sort of lateral pitch from someone on the left side of the field. I look up to see Rob moving to the left in front of me with his defender a good eight yards to the forced (forehand side). I go to throw an easy scoober over to Rob for the break just as he cuts deep for the endzone (maybe twenty yards away). Mid scoober, I try to adjust and lob it over the top to Rob; against the wind, this doesn't work out so well. Again, the mid throw adjustment is a bad bad idea.
3. Against Strike/Slip, catch another on the run disc for a free forehand shot. EBay is five yards behind his guy and there's plenty of room to put it out to space for him. So I do, perfectly executed throw ... only EBay wasn't actually cutting yet. Chalk another one up to miscommunication; he sprints after it but it's just about a foot out of reach.
4. Same game, we've worked it down to their endzone but are having to bounce it back and forth a lot. No one's getting open downfield. I catch a dump in the middle of the field, look up to see Nigel pointing to the back left corner with his guy playing five or so yards off him in front and to the forced (forehand) side. Nigel points to the back corner; this is Ultimate parlance for 1, I'm cutting there, 2, throw me the hammer. I do, only Nigel doesn't move until after I release it. Throw goes perfectly; upwind hammer, but it's sharp and headed right for a little five by five box at the back corner. Nigel ends up putting a ridiculous and possibly gratuitous layout bid on it - I think he maybe just could have kept running and caught it, but he slowed down noticeably to lay out (as he is wont to do; it works for him quite a lot and results in some spectacular grabs, normally). He got a hand on it but couldn't hold on. Another perfectly thrown turnover.
5. Condors, our third game - a rinse repeat situation, as I catch a disc in the flow with a free backhand shot and see EBay well behind his defender. I launch the upwind backhand, but once again, EBay was not actually cutting - another miscommunication. It's a good huck, but by the time he gets going, it sails past him. D'oh.
6. Condors, after we were quite out of the game - they bring down a big Z on us, only the deep deep comes way too far down. Someone (EBay?) was back there alone. So I go for a big backhand huck, and the mark murders my arm. The disc seriously sails thirty yards out of bounds after popping WAY up in the air. The mark contests the foul, as he claims it was already out of my hand. Which, especially given what the disc did, is kinda ridiculous. Ah, well, welcome to club Ultimate. I swing it, get it back, and try to pop a scoober over the middle middle to Trant, but either because I was tired by this point or because my arm was still in shock from the hack, I release it way too low and it gets D'ed. Bad throw on my part.
(7a). Crazy windy Sunday morning first game against Monster from L.A. I'm guessing gusts in the 20-30 mph range. Josiah swings a disc to me from maybe ten yards away; I've got my hands alligator-ready and everything when the disc hits a wind pocket and takes a sudden hop. Hits the top of my upper hand and goes flying off into the ether. I'm gonna go ahead and excuse myself for that one and blame the universe.
7. Easily my worst turn on the weekend, I caught a disc on the right sideline about ten yards away from the upwind endzone. Nigel is standing alone in the middle of the field, but someone else's guy is standing between us. I get a little bit of tunnel vision on Nigel, who never moves to facilitate the throw. Trant flashes across the dump as I go to activate, so I look at him for a second but can't get it off. Stoli flies to the back corner of the endzone, but Trant's guy poached off on him. I'm at stall 8 by now, and should've stuck with my dump. Trant's alone on the break side, but there's a big wind gusting in my face so I don't want to try the hammer. Stall 9... I try a IO flick that the wind just eats alive; it pops up and sails way out bounds across the field. This got me a "Come the eff on" from one of our captains later. Fortunately, Stoli got a huge poach D on their goal line; Nigel picked it up and hit me for a very relieved score. So no harm done, but it was definitely a choke moment for me.
(8). In our second Condors game, Justin D. got tangled up with the mark and tried to get off a dump but couldn't; I ended up having to bail and cut up the line, and Justin put up a desperation stall 9 lob. It was a bad throw, but in my youth I would've skyed for it (maybe). Those days are gone; I couldn't get high enough, and my 23 year old antelope of a defender D'ed it. Not really my turn, but another one I was directly involved in, and one on which I blame the sad inevitability of my aging.
8. Late in the Condors game, got another strike throw with a free forehand shot; I put a huge ~70 yard forehand up to Justin D. He had been running to much that day and maybe didn't take the best angle on the disc; he barely missed it with a layout bid. Another trun that went where I wanted. Ah, well.
And that's it. So 8 turns for which I'll accept responsibility in a five game weekend, which is not terrible (given how much I handle the disc, how much I hucked, etc.) but not particularly good. More practice / tacit communication between teammates would've helped, and I really regret starting our weekend off with an O-point turn. But otherwise I'm at home with it. I'll give a more complete, full team performance / highlights / personal highlights review down soon, I just wanted to be sure I got these down before things got even fuzzier. The other "negative nelly" news that is not as negative as I would've thought is that my D was not atrocious this weekend - I didn't play D points, but the times we turned it over, I was not incompetent - I actually got a couple Ds, only got burned deep once or twice. Helped out others, etc. So that was really surprising - I figured with my knee in its sorry state I'd be toast. I do have a lot of trouble catching up with the silly fast guys, though ... only two years 'til Masters eligibility ...
More on 2009 Southwest Regionals later. And possibly a review of what it feels like to play 1 on 7 (okay, 3 on 7) VOTS Ultimate. All in good time.
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