Uoma Donna came and went this weekend, and despite Keith's better organizational efforts, our stacked Phoenix team badly failed to bring home the gold. We essentially never clicked at any point the entire weekend - messiness in the middle of the field throughout - which didn't bother us during a 4-0 Saturday against some reasonably mediocre competition, but then caught up with us and then some in a horrific loss to the Tucson team on Sunday. Boo-urns indeed.
On the plus side, we had fun, even though I got the feeling that Keith was looking for some fun plus winning action this weekend. Our team name was "The Birds and the Bees," so oddly , the women went as bees (for the most part) and the men went as various kinds of birds. I will firmly say that we had by far the best costumes on the weekend, so we can take pride in that if nothing else. Here's the end of Saturday crew in all its motleyness (I think this is Joanne's photo):
Vince, Luke, Amanda Lindsey, Bonnie, Garret, J-Ro, Genevieve, Dheintime, Katie, Nicole, Monika, BP, Keith, Michelle
Dixon, Nyet, Rob, Joe
Dixon, Nyet, Rob, Joe
College sectionals was that weekend, so between that and the pretty-late-announcement of the tournament, only six teams showed up to play. Add-in that we were playing on half-grass half-dirt all-concrete-hard soccer fields, and you have the makings of an un-fun tourney. Ugh. We played a Tucson team, New Mexico, an older Tucson team, and the other Phoenix team on day one. As mentioned, we won the games, but really clogged a lot and just didn't get anything pretty going. The, um, "typifier" of this angle was Garret, who put up pretty huck after pretty huck... just out of reach, or to a girl who misread it, etc. The tourney was played on small fields with a 2 point, cross-gender rule, which led to a lot of women cutting deep and guys jacking it. Or vice versa. AKA sloppy disc, and plenty of it.
On the mega-awesome side, Genevieve came into town for the tourney. Here's the G, in costume:
We had a fun time - I picked G up from the aeropuerto on Friday evening, and we booked it to Michaels (to acquire bee-costume fixin's, natch) on the way to a great sushi dinner with some frisbee friends in Scottsdale. Drove up to Tucson early Saturday with Dheitime, Katie and Nicole, played all weekend*, then drove back with the same crew, having hilarious adventures both ways (particularly on the ride back, where we learned that JD is a "name that artist" FIEND).
* - I actually drove home with Clint and JD Saturday evening so I could go to the ASU Art Museum Film Festival, which was really great. I should give it a full post treatment, but given my schedule of late, that's unlikely to happen, so... yeah. We saw it with D/C and really enjoyed it. Definitely worth the double tripping to Tucson and back. Sunday morning, I drove up Griesy and Kaetlynn as well as JD, so we had another solid ride there, too.
Sunday evening, after our early return to Phoenix - see below - Genevieve, Beck and I also hit up the Apple Store (to rescue G's broken comp), Fez (for a lovely dinner with Matt Harsh (of Huckaholics fame) and his fiancee Mariah, and some MoJo to cap the day. G also accompanied me to school on Monday, where we worked all morning and then reconvened for a goodbye lunch with Matt and some other CSPO folks.
Back on the tourney front - the one team we didn't play on Saturday, the good Tucson team featuring some Barrio folks, were missing a couple of those Barrio folks on Saturday (notably one J. Grobe), so they ended up in our side of the bracket. So we rolled in lackadaisically on Sunday morning as they were playing a play-in game. Thus began the drama - Keith really wanted to beat this Tucson team, but the majority of the birds/bees were in "goof-around fun tournament mode." Suffice it to say that it was a mismatch of attitudes / directions, and some strife ensued. Whether it was the strife or the terrifically accurate assessment that we were not properly ready to play to start the day, we got absolutely worked by the Tucson dudes - big hucks, Grobe running around, women putting up two pointed on the break side to their guys, you name it. Far cry from our Hoasis glory, and we went down in flames, 13-6 or so. Ouch. The only consolation is that EBay represented Phoenix well in the finals while playing with the New Mexico guys, so Tucson didn't win. Still, we all felt pretty chumpy, especially Keith (who looked downright depressed), and especially those of use who ended up driving 3.5 hours Sunday to play roughly an hour and a half of frisbee.
I had two big highlights on the weekend, both layouts (one on a laser flick huck from garret, one on a almost too far backhand from Rob on Sunday), both resulting in Shylock-ish missing pounds of flesh. Seriously, my arms are ripped up, and I have an apple-sized strawberry on my right hip. And somewhere in there I inverted laid out for a deflected pass and ripped my back up. Genevieve compared me to an assault victim of sorts - it was pretty bad. And is pretty bad, as I've reopened things Tuesday and Wednesday night since. Anyhoo, I otherwise played okay on the weekend, scoring some goals and such, but really struggling with some hammers and backhand hcuks. I even turfed a backhand to Genevieve, and I haven't turfed a backhand like that since roughly 2003. No, not really, but it is a rarity.
So, to recap - few teams, lackluster competition, an uber-grumpy captain, and Nyet-eating fields. And we never clicked all weekend, meaning our stacked roster went 4-1 without ever feeling totally great about things. And I didn't feel great about my personal play, other than a couple of layouts which made it such that I couldn't sleep for the next few days. So, seriously, I really enjoyed playing with G and everybody, but truth be told, this was a crappy tournament. Good thing the Phoenix peeps were so fun, as I am not really interested in returning next year if this is gonna be the scene.
Nice effort Keith - sorry we couldn't pull it out for ya - and great to see the G per usual. I'll leave you with the funniest exchange, imho, of the weekend.
Keith: This sucked. I could have spent the weekend doing something much more worthwhile.
Genevieve: Um, like cleaning toilets?
Keith: No, hanging out with you. I'm very negative lately, and I could use your positivity.
[Conversation about the most positive person we know ensues. Keith continues to insist that it's Genevieve]
Justin Griesy: But what about us, man? We're not positive enough to hang out with?
Nyet: Yeah, what about us? Come on, Griesy, let's go back to Negativeland.
Griesy: Yeah, Keith doesn't even want us around. Good thing we've got Negativeland.
Nyet: Hey, I like evil, and death, and pestilence.
Griesy [not missing a beat]: I think fire's pretty great.
Anyhoo, yeah, not a great tourney, but a good time, nonetheless. I hope Tucson gets it together for next year - fields are pretty routinely bad in April, but it seems there has to be a better-than-dirt option. Oh, and here's some photographic proof - Nyet v. Big Nate in the fourth game on Saturday. That's Garret in the background. I'm pretty sure this was immediately before a blade forehand to JD for a score. I'm also pretty sure that the dirt on my back indicates that this was after one of the "assault victim" layouts. So there ya have it - Uoma Don't-a 2010, a good one for the hanging and the costumed tomfoolery but not for the disc:
On the mega-awesome side, Genevieve came into town for the tourney. Here's the G, in costume:
We had a fun time - I picked G up from the aeropuerto on Friday evening, and we booked it to Michaels (to acquire bee-costume fixin's, natch) on the way to a great sushi dinner with some frisbee friends in Scottsdale. Drove up to Tucson early Saturday with Dheitime, Katie and Nicole, played all weekend*, then drove back with the same crew, having hilarious adventures both ways (particularly on the ride back, where we learned that JD is a "name that artist" FIEND).
* - I actually drove home with Clint and JD Saturday evening so I could go to the ASU Art Museum Film Festival, which was really great. I should give it a full post treatment, but given my schedule of late, that's unlikely to happen, so... yeah. We saw it with D/C and really enjoyed it. Definitely worth the double tripping to Tucson and back. Sunday morning, I drove up Griesy and Kaetlynn as well as JD, so we had another solid ride there, too.
Sunday evening, after our early return to Phoenix - see below - Genevieve, Beck and I also hit up the Apple Store (to rescue G's broken comp), Fez (for a lovely dinner with Matt Harsh (of Huckaholics fame) and his fiancee Mariah, and some MoJo to cap the day. G also accompanied me to school on Monday, where we worked all morning and then reconvened for a goodbye lunch with Matt and some other CSPO folks.
Back on the tourney front - the one team we didn't play on Saturday, the good Tucson team featuring some Barrio folks, were missing a couple of those Barrio folks on Saturday (notably one J. Grobe), so they ended up in our side of the bracket. So we rolled in lackadaisically on Sunday morning as they were playing a play-in game. Thus began the drama - Keith really wanted to beat this Tucson team, but the majority of the birds/bees were in "goof-around fun tournament mode." Suffice it to say that it was a mismatch of attitudes / directions, and some strife ensued. Whether it was the strife or the terrifically accurate assessment that we were not properly ready to play to start the day, we got absolutely worked by the Tucson dudes - big hucks, Grobe running around, women putting up two pointed on the break side to their guys, you name it. Far cry from our Hoasis glory, and we went down in flames, 13-6 or so. Ouch. The only consolation is that EBay represented Phoenix well in the finals while playing with the New Mexico guys, so Tucson didn't win. Still, we all felt pretty chumpy, especially Keith (who looked downright depressed), and especially those of use who ended up driving 3.5 hours Sunday to play roughly an hour and a half of frisbee.
I had two big highlights on the weekend, both layouts (one on a laser flick huck from garret, one on a almost too far backhand from Rob on Sunday), both resulting in Shylock-ish missing pounds of flesh. Seriously, my arms are ripped up, and I have an apple-sized strawberry on my right hip. And somewhere in there I inverted laid out for a deflected pass and ripped my back up. Genevieve compared me to an assault victim of sorts - it was pretty bad. And is pretty bad, as I've reopened things Tuesday and Wednesday night since. Anyhoo, I otherwise played okay on the weekend, scoring some goals and such, but really struggling with some hammers and backhand hcuks. I even turfed a backhand to Genevieve, and I haven't turfed a backhand like that since roughly 2003. No, not really, but it is a rarity.
So, to recap - few teams, lackluster competition, an uber-grumpy captain, and Nyet-eating fields. And we never clicked all weekend, meaning our stacked roster went 4-1 without ever feeling totally great about things. And I didn't feel great about my personal play, other than a couple of layouts which made it such that I couldn't sleep for the next few days. So, seriously, I really enjoyed playing with G and everybody, but truth be told, this was a crappy tournament. Good thing the Phoenix peeps were so fun, as I am not really interested in returning next year if this is gonna be the scene.
Nice effort Keith - sorry we couldn't pull it out for ya - and great to see the G per usual. I'll leave you with the funniest exchange, imho, of the weekend.
Keith: This sucked. I could have spent the weekend doing something much more worthwhile.
Genevieve: Um, like cleaning toilets?
Keith: No, hanging out with you. I'm very negative lately, and I could use your positivity.
[Conversation about the most positive person we know ensues. Keith continues to insist that it's Genevieve]
Justin Griesy: But what about us, man? We're not positive enough to hang out with?
Nyet: Yeah, what about us? Come on, Griesy, let's go back to Negativeland.
Griesy: Yeah, Keith doesn't even want us around. Good thing we've got Negativeland.
Nyet: Hey, I like evil, and death, and pestilence.
Griesy [not missing a beat]: I think fire's pretty great.
Anyhoo, yeah, not a great tourney, but a good time, nonetheless. I hope Tucson gets it together for next year - fields are pretty routinely bad in April, but it seems there has to be a better-than-dirt option. Oh, and here's some photographic proof - Nyet v. Big Nate in the fourth game on Saturday. That's Garret in the background. I'm pretty sure this was immediately before a blade forehand to JD for a score. I'm also pretty sure that the dirt on my back indicates that this was after one of the "assault victim" layouts. So there ya have it - Uoma Don't-a 2010, a good one for the hanging and the costumed tomfoolery but not for the disc:
No comments:
Post a Comment