Hmmm ... indeed. Our first game was on a beachside softball field full of ruts and divots and bare mud patches. The field was sloped at odd angles in different areas and hosted a number of homeless campers*. The bathrooms were terrible and all locked up besides. In other words, it was a wreck. But I've had experience with this kind of thing, so I pulled a trick out of the Mike "Verbal" Bright and asked everyone to complain about the field for 60 seconds. When they were done, I said, "alright, good - we all know it suck, it sucks for both teams, so drop it from now on - no talking about the field." it removed the distraction quickly, and we ran through our normal warmup team and got ready for our first opponent, Recess**, AKA the UCLA college team
* - We were warned by one of the hosting Condors players to watch our bags and, in one of the more callous comments I've heard, not to feed the homeless as "they are like seagulls and will flock to you if you do." I mean, I get the advice, but there had to be a more sensitive way to put that, no?
** - I'm pretty sure that yes, I went with the lame joke and said something along the lines of "we're starting the schooling with recess." I can't resist!
Recess was solid, for a college team, but we started the day with a game very reminiscent of some of our sectionals games - our O essentially didn't turn it, our D played tough and made their own share of goofy turns, and we fairly easily ran away with it 13-2 or so. I spent the bulk of the time keeping the team's focus - we knew we'd be running into more challenging opponents later in the day - but this did not stop some abject goofiness from breaking through. Rob dropped a one-handed sky only to come up with it off the rebound. Griesy put up one of the nuttiest, double-helix hammers into a crowd that I've seen in a while - it was grabbed by Cole - only to be outdone by Ian Newton, who got *heckled* to throw a hammer by some Sprawlers on the sideline and actually did it! His flew wayward into a crowd, to, missing its mark by a good fifteen yards or so, but fortunately Tim was there to grab the trash. On the plus side, Paul delivered a legitimate, good-decision hammer for a score to Trant, so we weren't all about the idiocy here. And somewhere in there Griesy made up for his wackiness by swatting the CRAP out of a huck from point blank range for a huge D. Like I said, not much of a challenge, and I certainly didn't get worn out - I played three O points, and that was that. We packed up our gear afterwards and headed on to the site of our next fields. We did so leisurely - the fast game plus the fact that we had a second round bye meant we had three hours until we would play our next opponent at the next set of fields.
We got to the next locale and watched Southwest Region stalwart Johnny Bravo* warm up and devour Inception, the three seed in our pool. Interesting to see the JB in warm-ups - they practiced their physical D, up the line throws, and timing cuts, displaying a coordination across the team that we lack with our top lines. Yikes. Doubly, triply scary to realize that it's not like JB is anywhere near the top team in the country, and they look like a Platonic ideal archetype out there. Sheesh. That's probably enough JB praise for one paragraph, but note that it makes me feel like a complete idiot to realize that however good I think my throws are, pretty much everybody on JB has equal and better. Sigh...
* - Things to know about JB - one, they are all 6"2" or taller, I swear, and most of them are 6'4". Two, they all are fast and have nasty throws of all types. And three, one of the bigger jackasses in the known universe, #0, has a tramp stamp. JB is a perennial Nationals qualifier and stands head and shoulders above everyone else in the region; they run a freaking buttery offense, play tight, physical D, and generally turn 50-50 discs into 90-10 discs. They're quite good, thanks. They also carry themselves like a crew of arrogant bastards, for lack of a less ale-ish term. We hate them for all the obvious-probably-jealousy-based reasons, but this year at CO Cup they gave us a new motive to loathe. Studer went to frisbee central to grab some bananas and procured three from the table. He was walking back to our field when #0 from JB walked up to him and stole a banana right out of his hands, laughing all the while. This offense has garnered more than one joke in Sprawl circles, and I'm not entirely sure what would happen if Studer encountered the guy in a dark alley. The whole situation provided quite a lot of speculation as to what would happen in our game later in the day, so stay tuned for that ...
After the bye, we went back through the warm up routine and awaited our opponents - they had been moved due to yet another field snafu*, so we got started a bit late. Turned out not to matter a whole lot - they were a very green (though tall, lanky) team, and it became obvious pretty quickly that we were going to win easily. I honestly don't remember a whole lot about this one outside of the fact that we played decidedly down to their level - some unnecessary turns, and they connected on some "what the hell?" type deep throws and actually scored some goals on us. We won 13-4, but it just felt stupid. I actually jumped in on a couple of D points on this one to try to get the legs moving / lead our team by example in the running-hard department. Oh, and I missed Dhein on a deep shot in this one, missing homes by just a hair too long. Ugh, and ugly game, but another sectionals-level easy win for the Phoenix ballers.
* - The tournament directors had announced that the 2nd round game between Recess and the La Jolla Bags would be played on a field TBD, but natch that field never was determinded. So the standing plan was to have them wait until 6 to play the 2nd round game. Cole, of all people, spotted a field around the corner and told the teams as much - they headed over and squeezed in their game during the originally scheduled time. We gave Cole all kinds of crap for trying to step in and do the TDs' job, but in this case it turns out he actually helped. I once again couldn't resist, though - after Cole started bragging about fixing the situation by having noticed the field, I said, "Wow, you must know a whole lot about fields, Cole. have you ever heard of Quail Run in Mesa?" That would be where we held all of our September practices, none of which Cole has attended. Passive-aggressive attendance-heckle BURN!!!
JB had a bye during this round, and a lot of their players watched our horrible game. that inspired another funny postgame speech - "On the plus side, Johnny Bravo thinks we suck" - meaning that we would surprise them later in the day - "on the minus side, we sucked." Tough to maintain focus in games against decidedly lesser opponents, but we goofed on this one. 'Twas time to lock back in and get ready for the game of the day against Inception - win and we were guaranteed a spot in the semis. Before all that, though, we had to drive over to the field site. BLAR.
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