NOW That's What I Call Club Ultimate, Vol. 1: Sprawl NYF 2010

I'm slowly trying to piece together what went down this past weekend. The general vibe is probably summed up by a single question asked by many a passing stranger: When did Sprawl get good? The local Phoenix club team has a relatively short history, one plagued with a fair amount of mediocrity - no offense to anyone involved intended; it's tough to get a club team off the ground. But the bizarre disparity between the ability of the one club team in town and the fact of a 5 million person population of Phoenix has been jarring to me from the get-go. Plus there is not really a shortage of players here - true, the drop-off from the top 25 or so is rather severe, but those 25 or so seem just fine. Getting them together and on the same page has been an obstacle, and getting them organized strategically has also seemed challenging. Justin and I (and the rest of the Sprawl core leadership) overcame those challenges just enough this past weekend to give us a ride with one beast of a revamped Sprawl team.

The skinny is that we took second place at NYF against a weaker-than-usual field, blowing out our competition all the way to the finals where we lost by a single break to PBR Street Gang, a team that went to nationals last year and actually managed to beat some top tier teams in the country. I.e. we killed all local competition and hung just fine with a nationals caliber squad, something that would have been unheard of in the not distant past. So we're trying not to get too excited, but there's a feeling about that Sprawl made a leap this weekend - where that will land is unknown, but it's a good feeling to see some clickage and some dominance from a squad that has obviously had it in them for some time.

Before we get rolling with the review, here is the team, first with the A- members only (missing Cole for some unknown reason) and then with more of the Sprawl family sharing the shot. The first is from my camera, the second is from Joanne who snuck an artistic shot from a ways away.

Joe, Dheintime, Ian, Will, Jim, Cisco, Pat, Griesy, Damon
Luke, BP, Rob, Nyet, Garret, Dixon
(Not pictured: Cole, Kid Connole)

Jose, Dheintime, Ian, Will, Paul, Jim, Cisco, Pat, Griesy, Damon, Josiah, Skunk
Joe, Luke, BP, Rob, Nyet, Garret, Dixon, EBay, Tom
(Not pictured: a whole lotta peeps)

As mentioned here, we split the team into an A- squad and a B+ squad, a decision that garnered not a little complaint but was eventually accepted by even those in the least enviable position (i.e., the A teamers who had been dropped to B to help facilitate the learning experience for the young folk). The original plan was to have the A- crew run in Division 1 of the tourney while the B+ team would play Div. II. For unknown reasons, the team that was supposed to be our first round opponent on Saturday, the ASU Alumni team, decided they couldn't hack it in Div. I (marginally reasonable given they had only 10 solid players and some 50+ year olds on their bench). So TD Tim, in order to make things as easy as possible, flipped the seeds of ASU Alumni and our B+ team, bumping our B+ team to Div. I. We had had a quick but thorough debate about putting the B+ team up or down , and ended up thinking the morale boost of winning some games would be better than the experience of competing against better teams. So this move rendered our entire debate moot. Ah, well. There were two pools in the Div I Bracket, and we figured that our teams would be in opposite pools. Normally you would want to not schedule a game against your own B+ team - if nothing else, it's annoying to pay money for a tourney where you play a team that you play against more or less every Saturday morning. But EBay had asked Tim if we could ease the B+ team into the tourney by having a "friendly" game. So for better or worse, we started our NYF by playing all the dudes we had been playing every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday for the past month, only this time, the fat majority of the stars were on one side.

Now is probably a good time to note what the actual split was (capt = former or current Sprawl captain, club* = club-plus player, club = club player, college = duh, and blank is a new player). A- featured Nyet (capt), Damon (club*), Garret (club*), Ian (club*), Joe K (club*), Jim (club), BP (capt), Dhein (capt), Dixon (capt), Rob O (capt), Luke, Cisco (club), Griesy (capt), Cole (club*), Pat and Will. The B+ crew was Ebay (club), Tom (club), J-Ro (club*), Trant (club*), Paul (club), Jose (club), Rob N. (college), Jia (club*), Mike VE, Wexler, Joe S, Keith (club), Sullivan, Nappi, Ed, R Bell, Clint and Skyler. Should be pretty clear that this was an unfair matchup, but we did a pretty reasonable job making it an intense competition and taking things seriously all the way to the end. (One of the things we did this weekend was to institute an "only captains talk in the huddle rule" to quiet the normal din and the traditional Tufts "game on" call which requires people to stop goofing around and lock in to the games. Seemed to work).

Sprawl A- got off to a big start in this one, a theme for the weekend. We rattled off 4 D points in a row to take a 4-0 lead, only turning it once in the process. This turned out to be our second toughest game of the weekend - we were still ironing the offensive kinks out a bit, and let's face it, our B+ team is better than some of the other competition. But we ran a pretty tight ship in the first half, leading 9-2 with only four turns and going on to take it 17-6. I was trying to play primarily O points all weekend, which meant in a blowout like this that I would get limited time. But that is completely fine, because I got the decided highlight of the game. But why tell you when I can show you - Kevin Hatch caught the second half on video! I'll provide the timed highlights:

2:00 - Handblock by Nyet!!!
3:00-4:00 - Nice zone point
5:38 - Turf by Tom followed by the hopping dance. This (the dance more than the throw) has been earning Mr. Wobblesworth some heckles in Sprawl circles.
9:30 - A timeout (!!!) after a swill catch by Cole followed by a slick breakmark backhand to Justin
14:40 - GREATEST! by Nyet, Yeah!

So yeah, career in-competitive-game greatest #6 of the year with three coming in the past year. There may be some correlation between my newfound lack of speed and these greatests - I probably could've toed this one in in my youth, but I'll take the dive out the side and highlight reel action as I can get it. Anyhoo, we followed the game up with a good huddle of both Sprawl teams and carried on with our day.

We drew the Freaks from the Peaks next, a Flagstaff team featuring Skunk among others. The story was more of the same - a four turnover first half and a 9-2 lead, but this time we followed with another 4 turnover half as we cruised 17-4. Our O-lines were perfect this game, 5 for 5 with no turns, and things had started clicking pretty well. Kevin caught a portion of this on video, too:

1:00 - Cole bails out my too-low scoober.
4:28 - Damon layout D!
5:40 - Nyet hammer to Dhein to break zone
6:42 - Collision!
9:10 - Layout D by Kid Connole
10:40 - Nyet goal + casual spike

Seriously, thanks to Cole for saving what would have been my only turnover of the day. Here it is in still, courtesy of Joanne:

And here's an action shot of a low, spiderman webcasting flick, again, courtesy of Joanne:

The last game of the day was against the top seed from our pool, Notre Dame's alumni team "Papal Age," whom we tore apart. We only turned it 6 times, our O was again perfect, and this one was over well before it started - another 17-4 win. Video for this one is coming soon, too, but Kevin ran into his limit on Vimeo so I'll have to include it in another post. And speaking of that, that was our last game on Saturday, so I'll continue the tourney recap in another post. We went 3-0 Saturday with a 51 - 16 point differential, and more importantly, we took care of business against two pool teams and looked tight doing it. People were buzzingly happy, we got everyone plenty of PT, and things felt pretty good. The serious atmosphere had taken, too, and it seemed like people were on board with the "new" (read: solid continuation of the things accomplished last fall) Sprawl mentality. Fun times, more to come.

Here are the Sprawl stats from Saturday if you're interested in such things:

Opponent		O	OP	O+	D	DP	D+	SC	Turn	O-efficiency	O-overall	D-efficiency	D-overall	Score%
Sbrawl		7	4	5	16	7	12	17	18	57%	71%	44%	75%	49%
Flagstaff		5	5	5	16	11	12	17	8	100%	100%	69%	75%	68%
Notre Dame		5	5	5	16	9	12	17	6	100%	100%	56%	75%	74%
Saturday		17	14	15	48	27	36	51	32	82%	88%	56%	75%	61%

O = Offense points; OP = Perfect O points (no turns); O+ = Offense scores; D = Defense points; DP = Perfect D-points (score with no turn); D+ = Defense scores; SC = Total scores; Turn = Turnovers; O-efficiency = OP/O; O-overall = O+/O; D-efficiency = DP/D; D-overall = D+/D; Score% = scores per possession

Player		Saturday
		T	PT	D	DS	O	OS	D+	O+	T+	ppD	ppO	ppT
Nyet		21	32%	4	4	17	15	4	13	17	1.00	.76	.81
Damon		29	45%	22	14	7	7	6	7	13	.27	1.00	.45
Garret		31	48%	23	16	8	7	9	6	15	.39	.75	.48
Ian		29	45%	21	15	8	7	9	6	15	.43	.75	.52
Joe		28	43%	23	19	5	4	15	3	18	.65	.60	.64
Jim		26	40%	17	12	9	7	7	5	12	.41	.56	.46
BP		28	43%	20	16	8	8	12	8	20	.60	1.00	.71
Dhein		30	46%	23	19	7	7	15	7	22	.65	1.00	.73
Dixon		31	48%	26	22	5	4	18	3	21	.69	.60	.68
Rob		26	40%	22	17	4	4	12	4	16	.55	1.00	.62
Luke		29	45%	24	16	5	4	8	3	11	.33	.60	.38
Kid		26	40%	21	14	5	4	7	3	10	.33	.60	.38
Cisco		23	35%	16	13	7	5	10	3	13	.63	.43	.57
Griesy		28	43%	21	17	7	7	13	7	20	.62	1.00	.71
Cole		25	38%	16	14	9	8	12	7	19	.75	.78	.76
Nardi		26	40%	21	15	5	4	9	3	12	.43	.60	.46
Will		19	29%	16	9	3	3	2	3	5	.13	1.00	.26

Key: T = Total points played; PT = playing time (percentage); D = D points; DS = D-scores; O = O-points; OS = O_scores; D+ = D point plus minus; O+ = O point plus minus; T+ = total plus minus; ppD = plus minus per d point; ppO = plus minus per D point; ppT = plus-minus per total