Sprawl was pretty hard hit, too - more people than you would have expected teared up with the end of the season, lots of hugs shared. It does mean a lot to folks, silly as a game of plastic is. Cole and Ian N almost immediately broke any semblance of a funeral / wake by hauling up a half-keg of Summer Sam-ish homebrew. Miles of smiles came through, and Sprawl did what they do best: hanging out in the shade tent, telling Dixon's mom jokes and lolligagging in the sun. I had q few people thank me for the captaining effort which felt great. Griesy and someone (Aaron?) got really silly and dumped a chestful of ice water on me, Gatorade-at-the-Super Bowl style. Weird thing to do after a loss like that, but the real problem was that my phone was sitting in my lap when they did it. I successfully reinforced my reputation of gigantic ass-itude by not reacting to the prank with a ha ha but with a WTF?, as I knew within one second of the ice hitting my back that my phone was going to get drenched as well. Sorry for ruining the moment, but dudes, really - just have someone ask to borrow my phone just before next time, eh? Oh, and ftr, the phone is fine. Anyways, Sprawl quickly made the shift from downtraodden to fun-loving, and the threat of being iced was again in the air.
On a different sort of personal note - I made a crack on facebook a week ago that I was pondering whether i would "bronze my cleats" 8 days (after regionals) or 31 days (after nationals) from the current date. I was in the middle of a horrible physical week and the sentiment was very real; I was just sick of training and training only to break over and over again. My knees killed me all year long, I could pretty much at most play one day and stay in okay condition, but any playing two out of three days or three out of five resulted in a more and more decrepit Nyet. And I obviously had this bizarre fatigue near-total-physical collapse in moments. So I made that comment in a moment of acute worn-outedness, but really, it's worth considering. Playing club Ultimate kills my body, so retirement seems like it could be a good idea, at least from the competitive ranks. I'll delay a real decision until I've got some distance from the season, but I won't mix words - The 405 game ending did purge me with a nice sense of relief in addition to all the disappointment.
And, assuming I don't play club any more, I'd like to think I went out on a high note. (And if anyone could humor me with a comment in support of this self-aggrandizing note, please do). I played one of my better games in the semifinals, having a lot of the handler side of the O run through me and coming through with some rather sick throws. And I was running around the field nicely, resetting for dumps and beating my guy with classic Nyetian squirrelyhood. Probably the best I've felt about my play since I've been on Sprawl. Additionally, the last throw of my Sprawl life was a big, had to have it down 12-14 forehand huck to BP, off a dead disc and over and past a much taller defender - BP made a nice play on it, but it's good to go out Ted Williams style. So, if these were my last open club games, they were two good ones - the Condors game felt good to me, and unless I'm delusional, I think I stood out one last time, just a little bit.
The ride home was good - longer than the ride there, with the additional 45 minutes to Santa Barbara and the lovely Sunday afternoon L.A. traffic. We stopped at the Union Ale brewery in SB before heading out, where I finally managed to have a good meal - a delicious personal cheese pizza and one (only one, as I was driving) honey blonde microbrew ale that hit the absolute spot after the two days spent in the sun. Great trip with another round of excellent conversation - topics are failing me at the moment, but we laughed a TON. Also played a fair amount of "Name that Artist on the Radio" game, which was pretty easy during the All Beatles hour. I have to give the best-of-all-time shotgun MVP award to Ebay, who regaled us with top-notch stories and taught us a lot about the bubbling undersurface of a fun-loving dude*. I ended up driving pretty much all eight hours back home, and Ebay - plus a few caffeinated beverages that contributed to my furthered inability to sleep - made the last couple of hours pass with ease. Excellent work, man. I also capped the trip with an all-time funny/inappropriate joke directed toward Ashley (whom we had exchanged for Cole), and the best thing about it was that we were all still laughing as I pulled into the driveway. You'll have to ask her for the content, as I am not about to repeat it here...
* - Some of Ebay's tales contained some rather personal elements, so I won't betray them here, but trust that they were excellent and gave me a whole new appreciation of the homie. He also talked about wanting to alter life goals - he wants to travel - and it was great to hear another person's account of attempts at self-understanding and doing what's best for his own happiness. Not to delve too much back into the DFW aspect, but this was another tangible instantiation of a familiar phenomenon - we heuristically think of others as static, defined entities while constantly seeing the dynamism within ourselves. Remembering that dynamism is there is key to empathy, methinks - and it's parallel to realizing that the tendency is going to be to underestimate the complexity of those around you, as you tend to default to dealing with people by boxing them in convenient "oh, that is so-and-so, they are like X" compartments. It's never true, and hearing some rather intriguing past and current backstory from Ebay drove that home in the near-wee hours of Sunday night. I don't mean this to come off as "I though Ebay was a simpleton but he's not!" type idea. It's more that the frat-ish, drinking buddy, gregarious personality has contrasting elements, too, and when the former is so dominant, it is exceedingly easy to slip into the misguided assumption that the loud, prominent feature is the whole picture.
So, Sprawl 2010 is done. And Sprawl for Nyet may be done permanently. It's an odd quietude. I'd like to think I did a fair job captaining - even if I am gruff and yell on occasion, I think I balance it with some even-keeled mentality at tournaments and provide at least a sincere, focused goal for the team team to pursue. You can also argue that I did a great job of leading a horse to water - set out everything, but couldn't quite get people to completely buy in. I've never really gotten people, just as they don't get me, so this may not be surprising. Unforunately, natch, this was kind of a window for Sprawl - lots of people are old and getting older, people are moving out of town, etc. The train may have left the proverbial station, and even though we have some new faces coming in who could play - Jia, Fernando, Garret, Kyle, Adam, Brett, etc. - it's not as though the obstacles that haunt us (115 degree summers, no tournaments, no invitations to elite tourneys) are going away any time soon. So - sigh. As I noted, i've actually felt worse about the tournament outcome over the past few days - really regret the dump to BP inthe Condors game, really regret the throwaway to Gries against The 405, and just generally wonder if I could have done a better job of paying attention to things out there in a way that could have nudged us over the top. Easy to lump all of this under "being too hard on yourself," I guess. But if this were a sorts sport, and I were some jackass blogger, I would probably be writing a results-based "Nyet Jones failed to accomplish anything in his year as Sprawl's captain" type lede. It's true on one level, and I feel pretty god-awful about it. And feeling lower as days pass - I'll get over it, sure, but for now, dammit, shouldawouldacoulda, all the normal sentiments.
But also, phew. I'm giving myself some time to reset - blow out that nintendo cartridge, ya know - and re-evaluate what the good thing to do with myself now is. I'm not sure it involves breaking my already broken knees any further, so keep that bronze molten; the adidas may be headed for dipping. Maybe now I can just concentrate on writing a thesis ... and enjoying failure in a whole new domain!
Just kidding; I'm negative just to make you all feel better about yourselves, really. Good job Sprawl 2010 - I think we've clearly seen that we can hang, we have that necessary palpable evidence, so now we you (?) need to assess what it's *actually* going to take to hit those elusive high notes. Thanks for the stress, thanks for the crispy Ultimate, and per usual / most importantly, thanks for the good times. Keep on pavin'.
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