That's a shot of the cleanly set fields before our more-or-less-weekly Saturday morning Scrimmage for Lunch Ultimate Gauntlet, aka SLUG. It's an attempt at having a consistently competitive game for the top players in the Valley of Sunny Azz, though it rarely turns out that way. We all come out, bring five dollars each, try to set the teams as evenly as possible, and the losers end up effectively buying the winners lunch. It's two games to thirteen, and if we're tied after two, we play a straight up game to three overtime. By force of severe luck*, my record at these games has been WICKED streaky - five wins in a row, four losses in a row, ten wins in a row (all the games, incidentally, in 2010 thus far). SO that's 15-4 over the past year-or-so, revealing that 1, this game is perhaps not as weekly as I thought, and 2, that people should mayhaps not let me set the teams so often. :)
* - I'm pretty sure I've already tread this ground on the Ballad, but the consensus is that I'm a weird matchup - not fast enough to square off against the speedsters, but faster / squirlier / generally more impact-ful than the other handlers. I don't know. Whatever it is, I've dutifully churned the excess money back into the Sprawl bin and / or charity hat tournament funds and / or Sunday pickup incentives, so I don't feel too bad about it. Regardless, as Justin Griesy Gries recently insisted, one person can't change the course of a game on his own, so I'm sure it's an aberration, and regression to the mean is impending. Maybe. :)
All of which is just to note that the most recent streak came crashing to a halt this last Saturday, allowing me to return to more-comfortable non-DiMaggian levels of streakless stress. Phew. This involved, prominently, a big choke job by my team, blowing a 2-0 lead in overtime via a dropped pull and a bizarre double game throw-away by a veteran, which only means that these things are close and it's a bit of a minor miracle that the chips fell correctly so many weeks in a row - we more often than not play very close games and go to overtime, so a big part of this was just Rosencrantzian absurd fortune. That said, if the pattern is indeed a pattern, then I am due for a consecutive loss streak over the coming days, so don't hesitate to bet against Nyet in the ensuing weeks.
There's something quite serene about getting to any fields early to warm-up, a habit I developed early on and can probably be traced back to the ridiculous amount of pregame prep we did in high school football. Hence the above picture - just a sunny, quiet field, cones set nicely (effectively reserved) with just me to put on braces and cleats and jog and sprint and get ready for the upcoming melee. It's a nice weekly crescendo - players slowly roll in, and eventually we've got 28 guys tossing discs and joking and heckling and generally being 18-40 year old males. It's ritual in a simple sense, and as much as I would, cough cough, appreciate it if people would show up on time so we could get the game going at the actual start time of 8 AM, the rhythm of it is fairly established and brings a reliable sequence to the recently harried Nyetian Ultimate life.
Why so harried? Well, first there's this left knee thing that just won't resolve. I've done all the stretches, all the icing, all the weights and exercises... and it still reliably blows up after I play, sometimes during a second or third or fourth game of a day / weekend. Definitely if I try to play three days in a row (which has a tendency to happen with SLUG Saturdays, pickup Sundays, and Sprawl practices Mondays). Argh - I have, on the plus side, managed to wean myself off of the brace on my right knee, so maybe that's the step that's in order here - I'm still not sure how much I believe the sports doc's assertion about the brace causing my patella to grind, but hey, I'll try it at this point. Anyways, this is frustrating, as I can't do a whole lot more than Ulty on the weekends and elliptical during the week. Hard to get in a track workout here or there with the unseemly genu-flation, so despite the svelteness, I still feel slow out there.
So it goes, I suppose.
The second thing, though: we're in the midst of Sprawl tryouts. This is, arguably, the lamest part of the captainship - as exciting as it is to put together a traveling roster, to get amped over the talent we have, the felt tension of making those last few cuts, the uncomfortable joking with teammates about their place on the team, the general feeling that you're about to directly contribute to the dejection of friends - these are lame. I'll save the world a detailed account of the behind the scenes thoughts and perceptions, largely to spare the feelings of the folks involved. I'll surely post what we end up with and some of the positive, encouraging rationale that went into determining the squad. But for now, it's the predictable stress of having to pick between friends and *really* "inseparable" players, having way more quality players than spots available for them, etc. Good problems to have, I guess, but they're not exactly helping me sleep.
DT's out of town, too, so I'm trying to be observant as possible and recruiting some of the other veteran players' help. I guess I'm not really worried, as we're effectively like the kid choosing between elite colleges - all choices will work just fine - but being fair is a big concern, and it's not obvious how to do that. I'll reveal the probably obvious - there's a clear cut top group, and a few of the last spaces that are up for grabs. Weighing past demonstrated dedication v. skill v. athleticism v. personality fit and all of that? The philo'er in me knows it's not really possible and silly to pretend as much. hardly a novel observation, but that lack of novelty fails to make it feel less crappy.
Ah, well, the last tryout practice is tonight, and then one more SLUG session next weekend as a tryout, and then the ball really gets rolling. I remain, "ultimately," unfazed. Looking forward to the noise we will make...
Bitching and moaning, carping and groaning; these are the least interesting verses. But these annoying gnats have been weighing lately, and in the interest of plain-faced Nyetian disclosure, I thought I'd throw them down here. More, and more from the positive side of things, in posts to come. For now, enjoy the mild redesign at the right, and look forward to yet another potential sign of apocalypse: the Beck may be creating a blog AS. I. TYPE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment