NOW That's What I Decidedly DO NOT Call Club Ultimate, Vol. 1: VOTS Spring League MMX

Just when you thought I was done talking about frisbee... we had our VOTS Spring League draft on Monday night. After a one league moratorium on captaining in honor of left-for-D.C. Genevieve (and partially because my knee was hurt and I didn't want to crush some team's chances), this league I am captaining with Lindsey, Dhein's roommate and frisbee speedster extraordinaire. She played with us at Hoasis (see here and here), was on Justin's May Cause Dizziness Fall Championship Team, and is an ex-collegiate pole vaulter. I.e. she's money and a sweet gal taboot. Here's a pic of her skying for the disc at Lei-Out recently:

And as long as I'm adding pics... did you know I designed the disc AND league jersey for this season? In one fell swoop. Here they are (the left is the original design, the middle what ended up getting approved by discraft for the discs, and the right as it will appear on jerseys):

Sweetness. Anyhoo, Monday night all the league captains gathered for the draft. The powers that be determined that I would have the 13th of 16 picks for the men and Lindsey the 14th of the 16 for the women n a straight draft (don't even get me started about why we don't snake this and make it FAIR). There was seemingly a little less talent this time around - some guys aren't playing league, and Keith points out that the last few leagues I've played in have been unbalanced with more talent appearing in the pool from which I was drafting. This league everybody was up for grabs unless they indicated a conflict for one of the nights, so game was on, but we were in a spot with quite a drop-off, which made our drafting a wee bit challenging. Here's what we ended up doing:

• R1: Al - older handler, but best available hucker at the spot without many true A grade players left for us. In retrospect, we maybe should have rolled the dice with Paul - he went early second round, and his baggage (i.e. the "new" player he brought with him to league whom automatically gets placed on his team) turns out to be quite a hoss.
• R2: Stefan, a speedset from Lindsey's MCD team who was begging to play with us. Great pickup at this spot.
• R3: Mark, a short athletic guy from Keith's last team who was another great one to nab at this point
• R4: Dave, another teammate of Lindsey's from fall who she says has a ton of promise. As an added bonus, his wife is the 6' tall Tyler, and they were baggaged so we got her as an automatic second round draft pick.
• R5: Nick - solid player, good tall, young athlete to pick up this late.
  
• R6: Mike - 6'4" athletic guy
• R7-9: Chris, Jeff, Matt. At this point we were just grabbing young athletic dudes.
• R10: Lee - sneakily enough, Lee was Lindsey's baggage. Lee has never played Ultimate before, so this is somewhat legit ... except that he's an ex-ASU football player. So an incredible athlete who doesn't yet know what's going on but I am sure will pick it up quickly.
  

On the women's side:

• R1: Ashley - Short, quick, the best speed available at this point in round one.
• R2: Tyler - Tall girl with good hands who is still learning the game. this was a bit of a steal on our part.
• R3: Beck - my lovely baggage will be joining us again! And not having to deal with some of the silliness that went on last league, hopefully.

So a good combo of youth, speed and experience. A lot of the teams look pretty good this year, imho. We start things off against Cole in week one and roll on from there. WE shall see, but I am excited to be captaining again for sure. The draft itself was a load of fun - we all gathered at Boulders on Broadway and drafted over, um, drafts. Our table had EBay, Rebecca, Tom, Angel, Lisa, Kevin Hatch, Lindsey and me, and I humbly put forth that not only did we have the fastest drafters in the room, we also had the best heckles. My personal favorites were "Hope you like turfed forehands," "But who's going to score the other full two thirds of your points," and "With our 8th round pick, we select Vince Noe." They all make hilarious sense in context, I assure you.

Wednesday night we followed in the league spirit with a new players' clinic (Ebay and a bunch of vets taught people forehands, how to cut, etc.) and had a quick exhibition game between the two nights' captains that the Wednesday crew eeked out ( we had given them Cole to make it fairer, bu tthe whole thing turned into shenanigans anyways). My knee was still hurting pretty badly, so I went out in the dreaded double braced knee costume and hobbled around (this was before my sports doc appt. and before I started stretching out the IT band). Couldn't jump at all, but had fun, and the season is off to a good start. I'm psyched in all departments - about the job EBay's doing comissioning, the way the designs turned out, our team, etc. Should be good times.

Oh, and I almost forgot - our team is called "3BK," which is a dynamic acronym that this week stands for "Three Bad Knees" (which is what Lindsey and I have between the two of us). It will later stand for things such as "Bodacious Bidding Blood-sucking Koalas," so yeah, just you watch out.

Alright, no more frisbee talk until at least ... I'll give it til Monday, as I have pickup tomorrow. I am already feeling a lot better in the knee department just after a couple of days of concentrated stretching, so hopefully this spring will be a marked improvement over the fall. We, as ever, shall see.