As Though It Needed It: Scottsdale Paved

Your 2010 Southwest Region Desert Section Champions:

Dheintime, Ian N, Cole, Josh, Aaron, Jim, Trant, Vince, Tim, Griesy

Ebay, Joe, Studer, Cisco, Nyet, Rob, J-Ro, Ian P, Dixon, Paul

(Unpictured: Will, reasons unknown)

The hometown club team Sprawl played well in 107 to 110 degree heat at Scottsdale Sports Complex and won the oh-so-important seeding-for-regionals tourney. We got a pretty big scare in the finals from Tucson's Monsoon - we trailed 5-2 after some rare offensive (and offensive) gaffes - but managed to hold seed en route to the big tourney win, our third in a row. This is the first time Sprawl has won the section, and while we still clearly have a lot of work to do before we take our cracks at regionals, things are clicking pretty well.

I get routinely heckled for my long-windedness on here, particularly by the Ulty folks, so combine that with the fact that our games outside of the finals were a samey blur ... and you get BULLET reports:

• Aaron invited us over to his parent's place for a pre-tourney team dinner of pasta and garlic bread on Friday. I got there a little early (6-ish) after a long day of coffeehouse reading and felt decidedly out of it, but had a good time hanging with Trant, Aaron, EBay, Dixon, Jim, Griesy, Cisco, Joe, Paul, Studer, J-Ro, and eventually Griesy. Good times and good food - I had to head out early so as to rendezvous with the Spitfire (formerly PHXation) ladies at Red Devil Pizza, where they were having their pasta team dinner, to pick up a shade tent (KEY!) from Kaysi. Did so, then met up with Beck for the carbs-on-top-of-carbs mondo MoJo pre-tourney froyo. Strawberry and Chocolate with fruity pebbles, if you were wondering.
• First game Saturday was at 10:00, so of course I got there ~8 to get everything ready and warmed up for the day. Be-there-cleated-up time was 9, and we actually got going reasonably close to that time - nice! After jog / stretch / plyos / throws, I headed over to the captains' meeting where Tim reviewed "How a Soft Cap Works 101" with the people. Always exciting. Came back to our ritual pre-tourney scrimmage where the D was handing it to the O, a generally good sign.
• Alright, I am quickly discovering that I don't really have time for elongated writeups on these, so I'm going to limit each game to ... two sentences. Can I do it?
• WIN over AZ/NM Masters' Team Le Tigre, 13-5. We got some big breaks early in this one, they were still in their feeling each other out / masters' team waking up phase, and before we knew it we were up big and opening up the subbing. O was pretty clockwork in this one and D did its usual job of frantic coverage combined with iffy decisions on O; too many missed opps by them, really.
• WIN over Tucson's Monsoon, 13-4. We again came out big with some march it down O and a couple of breaks to take a 3-1 lead, but a super-rare Dhein drop led to a break-back and a 3-3 game. We cleaned things up considerably and our D clamped down on their deep game, sending us to a 10-1 run and another relatively easy victory.
• WIN over University of Arizona Sunburn, 13-3. These guys, too, caught us by surprise early - we traded huck goals to start things off, and they did have one 6'4" or so goon and a couple of athletic-type throwers who made us sweat, at least momentarily. But our O really had no trouble* here, and they had enough new players that our D clamped down just a bit and had little trouble running the end of the game to the big win.

* - Let me explain "no trouble." J-Ro catches the pull, tosses it to me, I 1) huck it to Dhein for a score or 2) toss it to Griesy who hucks it to Cole for a score. Sometimes we had to throw it four times! Seriously, this was a beyond bizarre tourney for the O-line players, as especially the handlers had several points in a row where we were on the field for no more than twenty seconds and effectively jogged MAYBE fifteen yards in that time. Joe K got mad that we were scoring so fast and not giving the D time to rest; I got practically bored at points and started sprinting down on pulls on D points in which I was not in just to get a semblance of a workout. This is good and bad, as it means our O-lines didn't really get to do a lot of work; we did look good when we were out there, though, admittedly against less-than-stellar competition.

• WIN over Northern Arizona University's El Ponderoso, 13-3. We had two turns in this game, both on the same defensive point. Bit of a laugher - their team had some newbies and played with a female handler some of the time, too - but good to see that we can maintain our focus and put together a near-perfect game when we need to.
• That ended Saturday - Beck came out to the last game of the day after work (to see me play a whopping six points - I played D in that last game just to wake myself up!), and when in Scottsdale ... we headed over to Sweet Republic for some artisan ice cream. Beck got a combo of sweet corn and jalapeño ice creams, and I got the ol' standby real mint chip. Beck *also* got a pint of bacon ice cream to take home. I sampled it in the store, and I am pretty sure we now know what non-kosher manna tastes like. RIDICULOUSLY good.
• Went home, and Beck was sweet enough to get us Thai takeout to salt-supplement my day (I didn't run, true, but standing in the dry oven for eight-ish hours will make you sweat a little bit). Caught the ugly UT game and went to bed quite early, ready to hit the next day - first game at 9, be there at 8.
• WIN over ASU Diablos, 13-3. The Diablos have some stunning athleticism, but with it being early in the season and they not being entirely experienced, we gave them a lot of trouble. We worked on our trap zone and confounded them quite a bit; our O again walked it up and down the field easily.
• BYE ... BOO! The tournament format dictated that we play that 5th pool play game at 9 ... and then sit there for a two hour bye. We also beat ASU pretty quickly, so that was really more like a two and a half hour bye. Ugh. It did give us a chance to take in some Spitfire Ultimate, though, always nice (particularly for our Sparkies with SLFs on the team). Spitfire beat the everliving crap out of a Kaetlynn-less ASU Caliente, winning 15-1 despite turning it over a ton. We augmented the game with an impromptu session of "fire hucks at a one meter by half meter soccer practice goal." A good time was had by all.
• An even better time was had when we heckled Sulli in the ASU quarterfinals game. If you ever want to laugh a bit, get a mass of twenty people to say "WOP-WOP-WOP" every time a particular player takes a step on the Ultimate field. Hilarious.
• ASU *tried* to bail on us for the semis after they beat U of A, but Dhein wasn't having any of it. They correctly repsected their elders and stuck around for
• WIN over ASU Diablos, 13-3. Second verse, same as the first. Good of them to play, even if it meant another beating - again, our O just didn't make mistakes, and our D swarmed them a bit, too. Dhein recommended that I give them a few pointers on here, so I suppose I'll try:

1. Don't throw it to the trapped side so readily. It's what the D wants you to do - so keep it away from the trap by breaking the mark.
2. Offside deeps need to give hammer looks, paticularly in that wind. Our Z was pretty sucked in to one sideline, and guys HAD to be open across field. You need that trapside handler to be a dude who can send it over the top if necessary.
3. Identify matchups. You've got some great athletes out there, but it's also clear that there's a big mix of talent/experience on the team right now. Make more of an effort to isolate say, Track Star in the middle of the field. The corollary to this is that the other players need to know their roles, so if they get it, take a look, but then dump back quickly so the D doesn't have time to set up.
4. High frequency of hucks helps. We started playing almost exclusively under on man D without the deep threat.

• Hope that helps, and again, props to ASU for sticking around. Though whoever said, "I have a test tomorrow" as an excuse? Remind me to tell you of the time I wrote an English paper ON THE SIDELINE at a Mardi Gras tourney. It can be done.
• And finally - ha - WIN over Monsoon, 13-9. Bad start to this one - they received and hucked a score over Joe immediately, we answered, they answered, and then our O got wonky all of a sudden. We weren't unable to move the disc, we just had a couple of miscues where we threw to open space right as the receiver turned around, or Dhein threw one away under no pressure, Griesy dropped one, J-Ro turfed one, Josh stopped his cut on my throw to space... UGH. Five turns near our goal line, all in about a ten minute window, and we were down 4-1 and 5-2 before we knew it. Zikes! But we kept heads level, our D crept us back into it, our O WAY cleaned things up, and we eventually righted the ship 5-5, let them take half 7-6, but ran away with it down the stretch. Close, and probably going to be good for us in the long run as, no offense to Monsoon, but if we have hopes of Natties, then we can't let them hang with us like that.
• So, disaster averted, and next stop, Oxnard. I think Sprawlers are pretty happy but definitely aware that things are about to kick up several Doritos in intensity. We'll see if a lackluster section and a lack of tournaments generally combined with some hard intrasquad scrimmaging will be enough.

On the personal level... I had four turns on the weekend, none of them actually bad throws. Cole faked me out with a jogged straight cut on the first, Ebay faked me out on a cut to open space for the second (not his fault, just a miscommunication), Dhein faked me out on a breakside cut (he turned right as I scoobered it at the back of his head), and Josh came in on a poach cut and inexplicably stopped after five steps (his defender blew by him). Frustrating to be involved in that many miscues, but none of them were really errors per se, just combinations of badness. I'll take the hit on the one to Ebay, but otherwise, I feel fine about the way I handled / threw this weekend.

On the plus side, I hucked quite a bit and hit all of them - backhands/forehands to Dhein, a one-throw-point huck to Dixon, big forehands to Griesy and Josh in the finals. Money. So that part was good and then some. Again, take out that stretch in the finals, and our O was near perfect this weekend; hopefully part of that was because of my anchoring ... though admittedly a lot of it was the sweet cuts of Dhein, Cole and Griesy and the latter's continued amazing puts. Good times.

It's beyond bedtime - there were other highlights (Dhein's "slipped disc," Ebay getting football-popped and his defender claiming he "hit the disc first," Studer's fist-pumps), and I could do the usual player-by-player breakdown, but really, let's all get focused on regionals. We've got less than three weeks to get it completely together four our season goal. Wish us luck.

UPDATE: Action shot, courtesy of Keiththe Joanne/Keith coordinated effort of photography / facebook postage, respectively!