Tyler, Matt, Mike, Stefan, Nick, Dave, Chris, Beck, Jeff
Nyet, Ashley, Lindsey, Al, Mark
Nyet, Ashley, Lindsey, Al, Mark
I'll just piece this together quickly - as you'll recall, I was hobbling my way into the tourney on an inflamed knee, so I was doing my best to be very smart and take it easy all week. I got the swelling down enough to put in a full day's effort on Saturday, so I cleated up, brought a ton of caloric, salty food and prepared to bring it. We were the 3 seed from Wednesday, putting us in a pool with the 6 seed from our night (Keith's FIGJAM, whom we beat the previous Wednesday 13-3) and the 2 and 7 seeds from the opposite night. First up was the 7 seed ,Tim Streit's team SupercalaHuckalicious-withD-alaPoaches featuring P-Mo, Phil Brown, Eric Nabity and others. They threw a Z on us and took a 1-0 lead... and that was about where the danger stopped. We picked apart their Z a couple of times early, they switched to playing us man and basically couldn't hang with us. It was the usual attack - Lindsey and Nyet abuse of matchups, Al getting off hucks, etc. - but pretty much the whole squad busted out some A level play. I particularly remember hitting Lindsey with a hammer over/around Nabity which was SWEET (though, to be fair, I also remember Tim blocking a BH huck from me, something that hasn't happened in quite some time. So it goes). We cruised out to a big lead and didn't look back, taking this one 13-4. I remember some chippiness with P-Mo, who likes to start stall counts from 30 feet away and was generally her usual charming self. (I was actually pretty serene for the most part on the day, aware that the aggro-ness on Wednesday had rubbed some the wrong way on FIGJAM). Anyhoo, this put us at 2-0, +19 in our two pool play games so far and gave us a lot of time to rest up for a big matchup with Your Dad* who was beating but having to work against Keith's FIGJAM across the way from us.
* - Solid team name, btw.
Ah, Your Dad, captained by Cisco and Katie: a great team led by two great peeps. I remember on draft night agreeing with every pick they made - Cisco is a solid player who ends up getting consistently underestimated, so he got a high (five?) draft pick on the men's side and took advantage of it. Their team had Joe K., Skyler, Tim, Chris Drew, Barry, Ed Finn, and a crowd of other super-solid players. We knew we would have our hands full, and from the outset, it really looked like we would get rolled. Despite my crazy layout efforts - I had two big D's in the first minute and a half of this one - they took advantage of some sloppy 3BK play to take a 4-0 lead in this effective quarter-finals game. Your trusty cap'n's called a timeout to get our heads back into it.
And... chip away, chip away ... back into it we did get. I went into absolute "get us to the semis" mode and ramped up my game a little bit - I think it started with me grabbing a deep high huck over a crowd for a goal to make it 1-4, and then sending a big forehand shot to Lindsey for goal number two. We just got turns, took care of it, hucked it deep, scored, repeat. Down 4-3 I remember putting up a stall 9 shot for grabs to Dave; he came down with it to tie the game at 4's, and it was really on then. Lots and lots of hustle from 3BK across the board - everyone really bought in, and we mixed the energy with a pretty unstoppable deep game. Mark and Stefan really stepped up their handling so I could enter the cutting fray; Al put up a ton of hucks; Lindsey, Ashley, Beck and Tyler just plain shut down their lady-folks and got open pretty easily, too. Our role player types - newer guys Nick, Matt, Mike, Chris, Jeff and Dave - all made some big D plays and generally played really smart, just getting gains, cycling it back to handlers, beating their guys deep on occasion... good stuff. The change from the beginning of the season to this game was striking, and I'd definitely say this game was the highlight of the season.
So that's a bit of a giveaway - we took half in this one 7-5 or 6, and just kinda leaned on them the rest of the way. I can't remember if they ever pulled even, but towards the end we got a couple of short field turns, capitalized right away, and put this one out of its misery. 13-8 for the good guys, and our ticket to the semis was punched. Really a nice, tight all-around game - hotly contested but no arguing, good stuff. (Katie even said "thanks for being chilly," so my efforts to downgrade to DEF-CON-I-don't-know-which-way-that-scale-goes panned out).
And since my bro said he likes the personal narratives, I can write this without feeling like too much of a self-centered idiot: I brought it in this game. Things started out a little shaky in that 0-4 run with me back at handler; people just weren't cutting, and I had to punt just to keep from giving them the disc on our own goal line. So I started putting Al, Stefan, and X back there (usually Mark, sometimes Chris) and ran myself into the stack as a primary cutter. Much smoother, even though I'm technically out of position when I'm a mid / deep. Your Dad came at me with a mix of Skyler and Joe on D - Skyler is a big, 6'3"+ dude who has allegedly become a"huge deep threat," and Joe is a club-level handler who is a bit short but otherwise a fantastic all-around player. And different as they were, I definitely won both of the matchups. I had Skyler's number for whatever reason, beating him deep and on up-for-grab discs on a couple of occasions. Opened up the under game, and I got some break marks off on him, too. He also didn't score deep on me, so hooray for our side. Joe gave me trouble when I was D'ing him - he is super crafty and quick, though he does hang back around the disc a lot in a conventional handler mode. On the other end, though, he just couldn't stop me deep - Al noticed this and put it up over and over. And I just made plays, grabbed a number of goals and helped lead us to a W. I'll throw in the usual apology if this is too much braggadocio - after a week of inflated knee and the general feeling that I had to come up big to get us through, it was pretty nice to meet the personal goal of getting us to the semis. And I think I sat out maybe one point in that game, meaning that despite the relative time off, I still had my wheels under me - and I played mid in this game taboot. Actually, I left quite a bit of salt on my shirt - see if you can spot the wacky "Jesus in the tortilla"-esque picture of a demon here:
Terrifying, I know. Yet good evidence of the effort that went into capping off pool play with a big comeback upset! Yeah 3BK!
And ah, if only the day had ended there ... well, let's just pretend it did. Because we got absolutely whooped in the semis by I'm With Coco - they threw a vicious zone on us (the first team to have the smarts to do that all season) on the too narrow VOTS-fields (33 yards compared to the normal 40 = less ground to cover) with some serious athleticism (Vince, Mike VE, Will Holt) that gave us a huge amount of trouble. When push came to shove we really only had two handlers (Al and me), and they threw a bit of a box and one with the usual cup plus the short deep manning me up. That's an idiotic defense if the handlers can take advantage, but when they can't - as is generally always the case in VOTS - it's pretty devastating. So props to Coco, they owned us* 15-5 and ended our day with extreme prejudice.
* - If I were feeling less gracious, I would mention the double teams and disc space violations on our younger guys and girls. Or maybe the other douchebaggery that was a certain jackass recklessly plowing into my co-captain and giving her a concussion early in the game - that really irked me something fierce, even moreso when I gave him the "oh we're going to play that way eh?" physical club-style D** and he responded by spazzing out and shoving me. Real consistent, homes. But that stuff aside - really, their borderline tactics weren't that egregious, they just happened to pick on some of my less favorite aspects of the general C-level-ness of VOTS Ultimate - they were just way better than we were at that particular style of game. So props to them. The mistake may have been made in the draft, going for too much athleticism and youth at the expense of some experience, however mediocre that available experience may have been. It just would have been nice to have another couple of people with just a little more field time who were chilly enough to make solid decisions / cuts against a Z. Ah, well, another draft at another time. Speaking of which, it would be nice if we would fix the draft so one team isn't picking at the beginning of every round and taking Vince, Will and Mike. Just sayin' - hey, I wouldn't be I if I didn't gripe sour grapes at least a little... :)
** - Alright, apologies to the universe - this was a bad decision on my part as the game was just not going our way, my D in particular was not likely to make any difference, and I was definitely pissed and trying to rattle the guy. Really just inappropriate for VOTS - what I did was not illegal or even unethical in any real way, I just took away his cutting lane on the open side in the endzone by stepping hard into it knowing he was about to try to go there. Very, very typical move in the club setting, but ... big collision, and he lost his shit over it. Again, it's stuff that happens a million times in a physical, competitive game, but people aren't expecting it in VOTS, and I'm an idiot and forget where I am sometimes. So, sorry dude (and I did apologize later in the game that day, though he pretty much ignored me. So it goes). But really, the relative sin of stepping hard and bodying up someone trying to cut to the corner in the endzone next to running through and not stopping on a collision with Lindsey? Egads, homes. I'm sure everyone disagrees with me.
So that capped an excellent 3BK season. Well, not really, as we are having a post-season barbecue in a week (YEAH!). But now's a great time to give a big kudos to Lindsey and the rest of the squad - people improved across the board, we came together great as a team and seemed to have some exceptionally fun times doing it. I think we struck a nice balance of intensity, learning and fun, and that's really what Lindsey and I were aiming to do. So another successful VOTS season on the books, even if the trend for my teams has been champions, finalist, semi-finalist ... I suppose I'm staring down the barrel of finishing completely out of the running in the fall...
P.S. The final numbers on the season: 9-4, +43. Bing, bing, bing ... KABOOMSKI!
UPDATE:
Katherine, you wouldn't be referring to this guy by any chance, would you?
And if you think that's bad, you should have seen what he did to Beck and Tyler. I'm not just griping re: that, they were double and triple teaming newbies with abandon. I mean, I guess you force people to call it, but it feeds directly into my hatred of zone in leagues where the average level isn't very high. Just sayin'.
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