The Ones That Never Knock: Part Five

Crappy feeling, natch, after all of that. But honestly, given all the snafus that peppered our season - the lack of tournaments, the fourteen player practices, etc. - the outcome contained no element of surprise, just an overhanging disappointment. In the immediate moment, I felt pretty clear-headed and positive about the whole thing. We had worked hard, we had accomplished a lot, Sprawl looked better than it ever had. But at the end of things, we effectively did the exact same thing we did last year - won one significant game at regionals (Inception), lost a close one to the Condors (albeit this year in the semis), and lost to a team we really should have beaten (last year Sweet Roll, this year The 405) for a fifth place finish. As time rolls on, I feel worse and worse about the "what might have been" element of it all. And, as once smartly noted by Jack White, I just don't know what to do with myself - everything was so oriented towards this last weekend, the practicing, the planning, the thinking, the weight loss and training, etc., that I'm just sort of stuck here regretting moments that i can no longer do anything about. I'm a little spent, I guess.

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'.

The Ones That Never Knock: Part Four

Well, freedom's just another word for "doesn't come with your reduced room rate," because nothing at the breakfast bar was actually free. This is the type of thing hotel managers should probably tell hungry Ultimate players *before* they've all already gone through the line and consumed all kinds of little yogurts nd individual serving cereal boxes, don't you think? Well, said little items were not labeled for individual sale, so we did not buy them, as far as I know. There was some confusion in the lobby, so we calmly grabbed our bags, whistled unsuspiciously and left the premises. I think that may be the first time I've dined and dashed, but I wasn't about to play ten dollars for 1.5 cups of Rice Krispies. Dig?

We remade the Oxnard to Santa Barbara trip to hit up our fourth different field in two days. The team felt nice and loose. Got there at about 7:45 along with the other teams, and we were pretty slow to get cleated up and jogging about. I felt awful - despite the limited play the day before and my best efforts to stay caloried up, I was having a mini energy collapse. Plus my shoulder was killing for reasons unknown - probably a combo of a big layout on an Ebay and the sleeping-on-it-funny consequences of sharing a bed with Cole for two nights. So hammers, scoobers and flicks were all wonky from a persistent catching / clicking in my shoulder, and I couldn't run well. Grrrreat. On top of that, our O in our white-blue scrimmage before the game looked just plain ugly. Couldn't move the disc, really couldn't et it off the line, lot of unexplained turfs, yeck. part of this was our fired up D lines giving us trouble, but still, I had a nice little sick feeling when we lost the flip and found out we'd be receiving to start the game.

Ah, the Condors game - easily our biggest game of the weekend, and despite all of our sputtering in pregame, we came out *seriously* jazzed. Short pull to start, J-Ro hits me, I hit Dhein, and we're off, firing it around the field easily until Greisy hit Ebay for a medium range huck goal. Sprawl exploded off the sidelines in one of the more enthusiastic displays I've seen from this team ... it was 1-0. Phew. Long game ahead, but there was every sign that multiple national titles or no for the Condors, we could run with them, no problem.

Like most west coast teams, the Condors used some breakmark throws, well-spaced field, and big hucks to fast guys and/or super-goons to attack our D. Really the entire game, but particularly early on, they took big, 50-50ish huck chances that consistently worked in their favor - definitely a blind spot for Sprawl. We responded with a more conservative approach, occasionally sending it deep, but really only in 80-20 to 90-10 type situations. In other words, both teams were flinging it, but our personnel / method required a bit more precision. In our favor - at least initially - we were being nice and precise. The game started back and forth, with neither side really even half-interrupting the other's O. But at 3-2, our D clamped down a bit - hey, they're trying to go deep on us over and over! STOP IT! - and got that coveted first break to put us up 4-2.

It's a bit of a blur, but to rewind a bit - I think at 2-2, we were doing another job of work-working it, when we had to reset on the sideline. J-Ro got it to me, and I looked up to see Cole heading down same third style for a huck. We have a rule on Sprawl - don't huck it to people cutting away in the same vertical third, as even if you complete this throw regularly, it's a much lower percentage throw then hitting people making angled deep cuts across the field. So I was a bit aggrieved that our big deep receiver was effectively ignoring the rule ... except that his wacky bad cut completely opened up the left side of the field. Cole and a guy one on one with the entirety of the left half of the endzone to play with? Thank you very much. I fired about a fifty-sixty yard IO flick huck out to the left half of the endzone (following my "not same third" rule), zipping it past the defender to a calmly jogging Cole for the score. It was the third point in a row in which we had more or less diced their D, and that throw chad two effects - one, whatever shoulder issues I had before the game felt nice and cleared out, and I had a mental flash that it was time to channel my inner gunslinger Garret to help out our O. Two, the Condors weren't going to let us just run our man offense any longer, so the rest of the game would feature a hella lot of zone transitions and general junky, tricky D's. Ay caramba.

Back to the present - we traded a bit more for a while to put us up 6-4. Some super highlight plays in here - Vince had a big layout D on a huck somewhere in the first half of this game, Studer poached off a man to D a huck, only to have a post-Studer fist pump foul called - WHAT?!? (The national coordinator Byron was right there on the play, and while he couldn't give any kind of observer argument during the game, he did confirm afterwards that this was a non-foul). On the O-side of things, they came down in zone-to-man transitions, clams, J-U-N-K junk (low down cheap little punks / taking everyone for the ride). And it flustered us throughly. But, with all humility, let me introduce the now-fresh shoulder - I started working the scoobers, hammers, cross-field blade flicks, you name it. Hit BP across the field a few times, hit Rob in nice pockets behind the cup, hit Cole and Dhein on big gaining blades, broke traps by hitting J-Ro with no-lookers. Fun times, and it effectively dissected their Z. A lot of high pressure situations and throws, and they weren't all perfect - one scoober went between BP and Dixon and they both hesitated, resulting in a rush-to-grab-it BP drop - but for the most part, we demonstrated to them that the Z wasn't going to hold us down. They even started calling me "the handler" and putting their fastest D guys on me (to no avail! HA!). So if I did anything for Sprawl this season, it was that first half-plus of zone shreddage. I was *really* glad to be able to use the one thing left in my declining skill set to help out the club in this game; it felt great, and after another D break in there, we took half of semis 8-5.

(Somewhere in there, J-Ro made one of the D's of the year - poached the lane for juuuuust a second, and a guy tried to huck it over him. Josiah used every bit of every plyo this year to leap and partially block the pass, sending it sailing out of bounds and preserving the lead. 'Twas awesome - Cole had a similarly huge play later in the game, but the J-Ro out-of-nowhere poach-D is one of those "remember-forever" moments).

By half, some of our hosses were starting to get worn down, and now is as good of a time as any to comment on the subbing. We had two full lines going on D and O, with some overlap of the running types between, but handlers on O (Josiah and I) playing every O point. So we had about twenty players available for the twelve spots in play. Paul called subs for us all weekend and had a set of instructions for overall PT, and I talked to him specifically about the idea for this game - it was our biggest game, so we needed to treat this like a competitive sport and keep our best guys out there. So we ended up playing sixteen of the 22 players overall, meaning that six guys did not play in the semi-finals Condors game. Without getting into specific names, here's a bullet point list of considerations to make:

• Three of the people who did not play were late adds to the roster for purposes of filling in for injuries. It should not be entirely surprising that they did not play in our most important game of the season.
• Two were backup handlers who 1, were just going to lose time by virtue of keeping J-Ro and me on the field, and 2, were backups. One of these was Paul himself, meaning that Paul, who easily had the power to do so, did not call himself into this game, and did not complain one bit about it. This would be a good moment to acknowledge that Paul helped Sprawl immensely this weekend, on the field and off, and did a great, thankless job with the subbing. So props to Paul, who understands that his playing time will certainly come in the future, and sacrificed his ego for the sake of helping us all out. I really, really appreciated his efforts.
• One was a late-add headcase of a player who had sustained an injury late in the season and more or less had not been running for the past month-or-so. I could go into a specific naming-names rant here - and the people involved will probably easily be able to tell who I am talking about anyways - but suffice it to say that this guy was difficult to coach, had real trouble responding to criticism, and more or less ignored instructions. He's a good player, don't get me wrong - at least when his head is on straight / not infused with THC - but his dependability is suspect, and in a big game, he's not going to be run out there to make the key mistake.

As if to prove my point, that latter guy became angry about not playing in the first eleven points of the semi-finals game and took off his cleats. And, well, it's hard to respect that (or to respect the snarky facebook post same guy made after the game. Disappointing for a teammate to do that - I'm not exactly shouting '66 "Judas," but seriously, man, get with the team-first program).

All of that said, one, did our guys get tired? Sure. We also didn't do track workouts and only practiced once per week all summer long; what are you going to blame here? Two, could we have done a better job rotating people in? I don't have any qualms about the people who didn't play, but we probably should have worked in EBay and Aaron a bit more to spell the starters and to give Aaron/Ebay a chance to shine. It also would have helped to have BP not playing so much handler, as he helps us more at mid positions. I spoke to Paul at halftime about that exact adjustment, and we tried to make it ... but it may have been too little too late.

All of which is to point at one persistent quirk of Sprawl - we tend to want to blame strategy level things (we should run a vertical stack! we should swing more! we should have more plays!) in a context where we don't attend a lot of tournaments and we can't get everyone out at practice at the same time. And I reiterate, we don't do track workouts, and we plain don't have the across-the-board athleticism that some of these elite teams have. I.e., we're collectively deceiving ourselves if we think that the reason we lose a particular game is that we didn't play our end of the bench guys enough. As I've brought up here several times, there are a number of things we don't do that great teams need to do - there are good, practical reasons we don't do them, but I don't think a one of us can pretend that he did *everything* he could have to promote Sprawl's success this summer.

As you may be able to gather from the tone here, we couldn't maintain the first half pace and ended up losing the game. The Condors were tough and clawed their way back into it. Weird stuff went down - Griesy got point-blocked a couple of times. We ended up in a bad sideline trap with BP at primary dump, and his juking faked me out on a dump throw. Cole essentially didn't know how to run our dump drill and had a couple of resultant turns. Cole also never completely clicked with our O, ended up glory-hounding quite a bit* and thereby cut off an untold number of deep cuts - basically, he clogged badly. Dhein had some wacky turnovers and generally had way less of an impact on this game than normal. Etc., etc. There were still plenty of great plays - Josh got up SUPER high for a D (that got absolutely spanked earthward and was lay out caught by the guy that threw it - one of the more amazing Ultimate plays I've seen). Vince had a giant D in there; BP had some spectacular full lay-out bids. But chip, chip, chip, little miscues here and there (the vast majority for which you could construct a hearty argument that "practice attendance issues" were the primary culprit - we just, in the end, don't know each other quite well enough to be smooth in frantic D environs). We went down 10-9, go a break to get back into it, it was tied at 11's... and we finally caved to a more well-rounded team, dropping the contest 14-11.

* - So yes, Cole scored a ton of goals, especially in this game. But he also dillied around the back of the stack, trying to set himself up to score those goals and doing little else to help the O. I don't want to harp on the guy, but man, he was a misshapen cog in the machine at the end of this game. We never would have been in a position to win without him there in the first place, but for about the last twenty minutes of this game, Cole's defender was standing in the way of my potential hucks. Frustrating.

A crushing lost, it turned out. The disappointment was palpable, and as much as I tried to remind everyone to keep heads up and get ready for a long road to the finals, we exhibited every symptom of a deflated team. We faced The 405 next, a team of athletic college guys and a few dudes from last year's L.A. Monster. We had no reason to lose to them, but they started the game with an easy huck score, we started on O with an atrocious throwaway, and it was immediately 2-0. I called timeout for another "wake-up!" huddle, but the damage was sort of done.

The 405 broke our marks left and right with some quite nice throws, and hit just a ton, ton, ton of hucks deep. They had one skinny athletic freak #12 who spent the whole game jumping way over our guys and coming down with nasty goals. Our O was relatively buttery after that initial break, but the game was a big tradefest. Somewhere in here the Phxation Spitfire girls showed up, and that was a nice boost of crowd support. I threw some hammers and hucks for goals for the fanbase, but despite throwing everything out there to make the comeback, we couldn't swing it. Not a particularly fun thing to write about - I had an errant throw to Griesy in this one that resulted in a break, so i feel nice and terrible about that. Ian called a travel on a throw that inadvertently undid a D for us. BP went psycho style, getting at least two layout D's that I remember in the clutch. But it didn't quite add up - our D made some quality adjustments in there, but then our O started sputtering (Cole had a hammer drop in the endzone that might have staked us, Vampire style). We lost 15-13, and Sprawl's season was over with a disappointing fifth place finish at regionals.

The Ones That Never Knock: Part Three

Got there with enough time to warm up throws and gather everyone together to get amped for the showdown. We had played a shorter squadded version of Inception at Colorado Cup and handled them pretty easily, winning roughly 15-4. So it was key to remind everyone of the game's importance and that this would not be an easy contest - they really did have a few more athletic types who looked like they could give us a run, and even though JB had destroyed them two rounds back, it was clear that they were a thoroughly competent frisbee squad.

This became exceptionally clear about twenty seconds into the game, when they caught the opening pull and dink dink dink hucked it for an astonishingly easy goal. 1-0 bad guys, just like that, and Sprawl knew it was get-going time. Our O line went in; we, too, worked it fairly easily, but then Gries tried a down the line huck to Dheintime. It was one of Gries's trademark laser-it-past-the-defender hucks to a streaking receiver, only the defender was mildly athletic this time, and jumped to D the too-low throw. Ruh-roh. This meant we had to play D with our O line, and things got ugly quick. They turned it, we turned it, and the point quickly adopted that familiar "hell-point" feel. I don't know how many back and forths we had, but after a long nerve-racking time, we finally got a turn in the middle of the field that I picked up and calmly hucked to DT for a score. 1-1 instead of 0-2 was huge, and started a big run for the Phoenix squad.

Or, really, that hell point burned out their players - they did have some quality guys, but had a quite finite number of them, and our in-shapeness and depth proved to be too much. Some monstrous D from the likes of Ian, Rob, Josh, Vince, Studer, etc. turned the game very quickly - breaks came freely, and we took half 7-2. One of the striking things in this game was the switch that flipped in Vince. Mr. Noe has a habit of getting HUGE D's and then taking HUGE, unnecessary chances with hucks when we have the disc that require him to make yet more HUGE D's. At some point in this game, though - after one particularly errant, 10 second hang time up for grabs hospital huck - Vince dialed it down and began taking his chances (largely to Rob, who kicked all kinds of arse through the weekend) at appropriate moments rather than wantonly. He and Josh K, in particular, developed a psychic connection game, and with two athletes running the middle of the field like that (and Ian and Joe K feeding them), things were troublesome for the bad guys once we got rolling. Indeed, this one turned into a laugher - our O marched it down sans incident on its remaining points, our D continually blanketed them, shutting down their deep game and playing some great D in particular on their dumps, and we walked away with a 13-3 victory, just one point shy of the 13-2 beating JB had given them. Semis guaranteed, and it felt great to come through in the one truly important game of Saturday.

Not that this game didn't have some hijinks, too. Most famously, Ian P got the yips something fierce and turfed a series of forehands in a bunch. Your classic "the catcher can't lob the ball back to the pitcher" mental block, it was great to see him work his way out of it and throw a breakmark flick for the winning goal. Studer also yipped it up a but, throwing away consecutive Wobblesworthian flicks. He, too, gathered himself and played the D to make up for it. Outside of that, not a ton pops to mind - Griesy hit Cole a number of times for scores; I hit Dhein a couple of times deep for easy ones. Really a smooth game, though we were amped for it enough for the easy-win outcome to feel quite nice.

Fast-forward to the next game ... actually, don't. We wanted to give JB a good show in the last 1-2 game of the day, but man-oh-man, we got so amped for the game that we played a little out of our element and missed a number of deep shots. You really can't turn it over that many times against a quality team, and before we knew it, we were down huge, and then down huger. Nightmare game, and best left unrecorded*.

* - Okay, I have to record this. Probably the most notable play was some Nyetian idiocy. JB does a great job pulling the disc very high and sprinting down on the pull, so the first throw that is normally unchecked is constantly hotly contested. On one pull, I felt them screaming down on me, so I gave a small juke to throw the defender off and headed the opposite way as J-Ro caught the disc. Unfortunately, J-Ro tossed it at me as I was juking - it was a perfectly fine throw, just came about a half second before i was ready for it. So it hit off my hand and tumbled earthward. I grabbed awkwardly at it and miracle of miracles pinched the disc in my left hand between my thumb and forefinger. Sadly enough, the disc was on the ground ... apparently. I didn't know for sure that it was on the ground already when I "caught" it, so I just went to play it. The other team understandably got mad; I said I thought I had pinched it in time (I have been told repeatedly by teammates since that I was absolutely wrong). Amazingly - and probably because they were already up by a ton - they let it go.

Actually, they didn't let it go. Somebody on the other team asked what happened, and the guy guarding me said, "They turned it over, but this guy's going to keep it. We'll get the D anyways." Pretty much a great and demeaning A level heckle. Good stuff. I feel mildly bad in retrospect for "cheating," but I really did have no idea, and when-in-doubt you have to vie for your side in this sport, imho. We ended up turning it and they scored anyways, so karma keeps track, I suppose. Ugh. On the plus side, I did snap off a blade flick for a score (to Cole) in this one, so I can forever say that I threw a goal against JB. Huzzah.

Otherwise, though, it was just kinda embarrassing. And nothing really came to fruition - ha - in the grand banana conflict between Studer and #0, either. Actually, #0 didn't even play - we're not sure if that means he's too good to play against us, or so bad that he can't even play against *us*. Pretty sure it's the latter. Anyhoo, not a lot worth saying - we opened up the subbing at half and took our beating, losing 13-3 and not really belonging on the field. But it really didn't matter - we made our goal for Saturday, coming in second and primed to start Sunday int he semis. I utilized a metaphor recruited on the spot - hit the reset button, blow on the nintendo cartridge, because we're completely starting over. Sunday was a new day, the Bravo stuff didn't matter, and honestly, if we hadn't started the game pepped out of our heads, we would have at least been respectable - our uncharacteristic jack it first, ask questions later strategy came out of nowhere and hurt us quite a bit.

Headed out of there, planning to team-meet back in the Oxnard hotel lobby at 7. We checked the scores of missed college football and baseball games on smartphones, stopped by the beach en route, and headed to rooms for well-deserved showers. Aaron, who was completely on top of this weekend in the organization department, even got our jerseys laundered. BAM! We cleaned up and settled on hitting up Outback for a salty meal, thereby dodging the two hour waits in other hopping Oxnard eateries (I went 2 for 2 on disappointing meals, this time grabbing a BBQ chicken sandwich that lacked BBQ sauce. WHAT?). People had single beers, we discussed who would be on the weird team for Sprawl (and who would captain - the consensus was Dixon and Jim as co-captains), and after some threats of credit card roulette, we headed back to the hotel for sleep.

Of which I had little - we were glad to have a later 9 am start time the next morn, but this didn't stop me from waking up repeatedly during the night and finally conceding to a 5:20 AM wake up. I don't know what the deal is - hotels + Ulty = bad night's sleep for me and always have. The only worse ones were the times I camped. BLAH. Anyhoo, I once again applied SPF 30 before the sun was up. At least this time the ETD was 7 AM so we could partake of the free breakfast. I mean, "free" breakfast...

ADDENDUM: Day one for me was ~23 points at primary handler and one ... okay, two, turns. Some hucks, some break marks, whole lotta resets, and man can I not play D (the bravo game *may* have convinced me that it's absolutely idiotic for me to be on the club field after this year. Embarrassing). Not bad, but given the competition, not much to write home about, either. That would, imho, change in the semis the next morning, though I suppose I'll need some objective assessment before I go around declaring that. See the next post, please.

The Ones That Never Knock: Part Two

One of the nice things about staying at a relatively nice hotel like the Hilton in Oxnard is the free made-to-order breakfast. You know,the one they start serving ... at 7 AM. Our early start time meant no free breakfast, dammit, so we scrounged what we could from the grocery trip the night before and headed down to Santa Barbara. To a field that, we had been told, was "less than ideal."

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.

The Ones That Never Knock: Part One

Sprawl 2010, Southwest Regionals Edition:

Cole, BP, Ian P, Aaron, Griesy, Trantstamp, Jim, Skunk, Dheintime, Tim, Vince, Dixon, Paul

Ian N, J-Ro, Studer, Joe, Nyet, EBay, Rob, Cisco, Josh

The pinnacle of Sprawl's season, the 2010 Southwest Regional Tournament in Oxnard Santa Barbara, CA, came and went this last weekend. Sprawl came up well short of its Nationals goal and, sadly, will probably spend a significant portion of the offseason pondering what might have been.

The party started for the Nyetverse on Friday at noon. Griesy, Paul and Ebay were scheduled to appear at la casa de floras at high time, and somehow, somehow, somehow, we all collectively convinced Cole to appear as well and make the trip to Cali with us*. We were taking Griesy's parents' minivan, and after some fun times hanging around the living room and discussing the desert tortoise Sigma that was hanging out in Beck's and my bath tub - yeah, Beck strikes again! - we headed out at roughly 12:30 for the 7+ hour drive to friggin' Oxnard, CA, the location of our hotel**.

* - Don't get me started.

** - The Southwest Regional Coordinator royally screwed up the weekend. He waited until about four weeks before the tourney to actually confirm that SoCal would be hosting regionals (there was a brief time in which we thought Tim might have to take over and host things in Scottsdale - too bad), and then told everyone he had reserved fields for all divisions (open, women's, mixed and masters'). Only he had only reserved said fields for only Saturday, which doesn't work so well for a two day tournament. About two weeks before we got a message that the national coordinator would step in to fix the mess and organize things in Santa Babara ... but we never heard where. Aaron H. had already found hotels in Oxnard, and everything in SB at that late date was $200 per night plus, with it being Columbus Day weekend and all. So we had to keep our Oxnard hotels, and eventually found out that we would be playing at four different locations over the two days, meaning we had to drive around SB between games. More on that later, but suffice it to say that we had a less than ideal housing / traveling situation for the weekend.

I packed a book for school and two books for possible pleasure reading, but of course nary a one was cracked - too much fun conversation. The trip passed relatively painlessly as we killed the time discussing innovative Ultimate strategies*, how all the Florida college Ulty player must be great athletes because "they're built just like me,**" how the Venn diagram of those who had never seen Mary Poppins and didn't know what the phrase "T and A" meant landed squarely on EBay, and how no one had a very good explanation for why country music is so popular if it really is so "obviously" stupid***. In other words, the typical meandering tales of road trip. We hit up religion and Cole's favorite cancer - skin, ftr - to round things out. Oh, and Ebay reiterated our mission to transcribe Jay-Z's "99 Problems" into some kind of formal-ish English:

If thou hast difficulties with the fairer sex, I have an announcement for thee, my male offspring

I hast four score and nineteen difficulties, but a wench does not count amongst them.

Strike me!

* - Not to give away too much, but it seems the fine people at USA U neglected to prohibit jetpacks in the 11th edition rules. We will be exploiting that loophole shortly.

** - spoken by Cole.

*** - I recently read David Lipsky's quasi-biographical account of David Foster Wallace - he had been hired by Rolling Stone to interview DFW during the latter's book tour for Infinite Jest. It's a pretty sporadic account, tracing the conversations verbatim as it does, but it gives a lot of insight into the experience of writing / delivering that book. One thing that DFW harps on a bit is how he had repeatedly noticed a tendency within himself to underestimate the intelligence of the reader / average American or what have you, which is why I bring this up now. Country - that is, modern, glossy, insipid, poppy country - clearly resonates with a lot of people. One explanation is, natch, that they and it are dumb. That's the one Cole gave, that we are educated and therefore we don't like country. Dubious at best. But in the spirit of DFW, I want to try to understand rather than just condemn. There's a passage in the book in which he tries to equate the tropes of country music with a general metaphor of regret, longing, nostalgia, etc., all surrounding the experience of loneliness. Meaning that the tales of breakup and loss and good times are not meant to be literal summer night accounts, but really stand-ins for advice for how to cope in a bitter, cold world. I don't know if I can give country-listeners that sort of second level credit, but insofar as the choice to enjoy that type of music represents in anyway an active decision to forego the analytical in seeking pure, pseudo-Buddhist be-the-moment relief ... well, it makes me a tad more tolerant. I mean, I still don't understand the phenomenon of modern country's popularity, and I don't *really* believe that sort of meta-awareness activity is really taking place. But the fact that the angle exists makes me more willing to open my mind, even to a genre which I pretty much hate with all my being. This was all on my mind when i asked why we all so casually agreed, against popular opinion, that country music sucked. I didn't really get a satisfactory answer.

Everything car-ride-wise went smoothly until we hit L.A. at 5 o'clock ... oops. Unlike Art Brut, there's no chance I'm going to live there anytime soon, lest I murder someone.We *finally* pulled into the hotel parking lot at about 7:30 and ran into Aaron, Ian, J-Ro, Monika, etc. immediately. They were headed to Chili's, so we didn't even bother to unpack the car, just hopped back in and headed to the warm familiarity of a franchise. We had to wait a bit, but the time was easily filled with Ian and Aaron picking my brain for how we would strategically handle the tourney. I got a half rack of baby back ribs for some pre-tourney saltiness (supplemented by a serving of carby rice), and ... they sucked. I mean, what was there was tasty, but what was there was minimal, skimpy meat, and I left the restaurant hungry. Grrrr. We headed to a grocery store to stock up for the following day, and I had to get some yogurt and a Zone bar to keep from going to bed hungry. On the plus side, Ebay pretty much made my day at the grocery store - when the cashier asked him, "Would you like to donate a dollar to breast cancer?," Ebay correctly replied, "No! I hate breast cancer! Why the hell would I give it money?" HA! We got our supplies and headed back to the hotel to quickly go to bed.

Why quickly? Well, in all the idiotic field reservation confusion, the coordinators failed to get fields with lights. So with five rounds to play on a day past the autumnal equinox, we had to start at 8 in the friggin' morning. In Santa Barbara, mind you, and yeah, we were 45 minutes away in Oxnard. All of which meant a 6 am departure time, which meant a 5:30-at-the-latest wake-up time, which meant get to bed pronto. I nabbed a room with Vince, Paul and Cole.We caught a little of the baseball game, but got to bed at a pretty reasonable 10 pm time. I was awoken by a screaming sleep-talking Vince at one point in the night, and otherwise slept terribly, my usual in-a-strange-bed routine. After waking up probably 15 times at various short intervals over the night, I snapped-to at 4:30 Am and got up for good - it was game day, so I got up and got ready.

4:45 AM is quite a time be putting on suntan lotion in a hotel bathroom... to be continued.

The Blurst of Times

Well, the monkey in me will do nearly any task ... but one of those tasks is not, it seems, blogging on any kind of consistent basis.

School is sort of crushing me, time-wise and residual-mental-energy-wise, so I thought that rather than let the Ballad sort of trail off into several measures of rest, I'd at least announce that I'm taking a semi-official semi-hiatus, or at least handing this off to my army of orangs. This probably doesn't amount to a whole lot - I'll still post here and there, but that's basically what I'm doing now, so feel free to observe the unobservable change.

Change you will observe - the album reviews are going to get a lot shorter. No, really, I mean it. I'm spending way too much time on particular albums - e.g., I've been listening to Pink Floyd's The Wall for a solid week and a half now, trying to develop a fresh angle on it - and it's badly interfering with my ability to enjoy my music collection. So screw that - if something bogs me down even in the slightest, I'll give it a snapshot, placeholder, three line review and move on. I'll mark those reviews accordingly in the Album Review Depository, and perhaps some day come back to flesh them out. But for now, time and lack-of-energy plus a desire to, you know, hear some of my tunes, all dictate that the format change.

Otherwise, the trickle of posts may drop to a drip. I still owe a writeup of Sprawl's performance at regionals* this coming weekend, and I'll deliver something in that vein. And I'll very periodically give updates on the Nyetian Narrative** and the state of school***. But for now, I am turning my limited energies elsewhere. 18,263 days, give or take, left on the planet, and I've got to get some stuff done. Apologies and thanks for reading so far - again, I'm not stopping the Ballad, just warning that I'm entering a minimalist composer phase, that's all. Have a good one.

* - the state currently? More trouble with practice attendance, spotty play at practices and SLUGs ... I'm a cynical guy, but I can't say we've looked particularly good lately. That said, it's probably more the doldrums of constantly playing against yourselves more than anything. The fresh competition in Santa Barbara, I anticipate, will bring out the best of us. I.e., I'm excited if not optimistic - we have a tough road, and I know we can do it, but we're going to have to gel like never before. Interested to see if we've done enough to get there.

** - After a good maybe week and a half, my energy crashed right back down again. It's affecting me in all domains, but the last couple of Ultimate practices have been the worst - it's a skipping record complaint at this point, but I'm topped out at 65%, have no second gear to go make plays, am having lots of trouble judging what I can and can't do, etc. Somewhat miserable, but I am pressing through and trying to keep head held high and all that. I really only need to make it six more days (Nationals, honestly, would be gravy personally - obviously I would still want to do well, there, but I'll worry about that bridge etc.), so I'm confident I can buck up and get it done. After that, though, man, the cleats are coming off for a bit. I can't believe I've spent five months now in this two-thirds-of-myself state; it's pretty much interfered with everything in life. So it goes - I'll keep truckin' on. Can't keep a good Nyet down. Or a bad Nyet, for that matter.

*** - Things are, um, concretizing? I'm pretty much officially done with courses after this semester, will be defending my prospectus soon, and then entering the vast wasteland of thesishood. But I have a reasonable plan, an interesting project, and I think I'm making headway. We'll see.

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!

Crowd-Pleasing Bullets

Well, *apparently* album reviews are not certain readers cups of tea. And while some may ignore their readers' beverages of choice and post about the 21st century max-banal*, I am nothing if not a slave to my single-digit** readership. The people want Ulty updates? The people get Ulty updates. Abbreviated, ill-informative bullet-form updates - mildly appropriate given emoticon-titled subject posts - but updates nonetheless. The last few weeks, in (insert Megadeth scream here) BULLETS!!!

* - I kid, I kid. But seriously, you didn't think you could rag on my album reviews on facebook sans repercussion, did ya? :) But really, cute stuff from the Mark. If I'm ever forced to cover him in an Ultimate game, I will just say, "I've got Iheartyou."

** - My DFW impulse to clarify that "single digit" is a description of the quantity of the readership and not their individual mutant and/or shop-class-related finger-and-toe-statuses*** is kicking in. Clarified?

*** - My sensitive-'90s-ponytail-guy-sans-the-ponytail (and probably the sensitivity) impulse to clarify that there is nothing wrong with missing nineteen fingers/toes is kicking in. Morally or essentially wrong, I mean; let's be honest, you're probably going to deal with some functional difficulties in life, not the least of which will be throwing a flick**** and/or typing "Eff you Nyet" into the comments below in a timely fashion.

**** - See? Ulty content. In the fourth paragraph!

• When we last left our Sprawling heroes, they had won the Open Division of the Colorado Cup, even whilst missing famed superathlete co-captain Dheintime. This apparently went directly to the entire team's collective heads, as the plan - ramp up practices in August in preparation for the start of the Open Series proper in September - fell flat on its collective face. We started having attendance problems almost immediately as the month clicked "8," struggling to get sixteen-to-eighteen people out to the fields. And sixteen-to-eighteen people - particularly when that sixteen-to-eighteen is partially comprised of four-to-five non-Sprawlers - does not make for effective practicing with your top lines. Boo-urns.
• I can hardly talk, as I continue to be a mysteriously malaised, topping out at 75% wreck. Seriously, it's been better, but I'm still fading out here and there, and it got bad enough that I missed a couple of practices in there. Think about it - Nyet, willingly skipping Ulty practices! Not even going! Egads! The good news is that I've pursued all kinds of standard-issue medical explanations, and nothing overtly serious is going on. So put your worries away - cardiologists, pathologists, even surgeons assure me that everything is fine and this is merely some post-viral badness. One of those tests involved an incision and sitting out of all athletic activity for a week-plus - that was awesome - so maybe now you're starting to get an idea of why I haven't been entirely enthused about writing about Ultimate lately.
• Again, just to emphasize, DO NOT WORRY, and DO NOT WRITE me with bizarro speculations. "Nothing is effed here, dude," as Lebowski would say, so other than sympathizing with my suffering suckitude of late, you don't need to expend another thought on the health of Nyet. I'm fine. And raring to go for this weekend, taboot.
• Random side note - my funniest self-joke of the past month? Well, I'm still tracking my diet, which has been extra challenging with the sporadic cessations of exercise. But I'm maintaining my weight and eating well. Huzzah. The joke, though, is that the first self-e-mail chain I used to track things back in January was entitled "Food Diary." After a couple of months, I got tired of scrolling so far down the screen and created "Food Diary II." Then the nutritionist wanted me to track carbs / protein, so I started "Food Diary III." Tracking carbs means keeping track of a bit more info, so it was convenient to keep on elong e-mail and copy-paste frequent foods rather than repeatedly look them up. So this time I let the scrolling go long. And it turns out that e-mail threads in gmail max out at 99 messages; after that, it changes to "Re: Food Diary III." Annoying! So I had to start a new thread. Its title? "Food Diary Zoso." I. Am. Hilarious. Even if you don't get that particular joke, appreciate the meta-joke of having read one of the more mundane paragraphs e'er featured on this blog. Outside, you know, those dreaded album reviews.
• NEhoo, our solution to the attendance problem was to back it down to an optional practice on Mondays and a mandatory one on Wednesdays. This helped somewhat, but the curse of Phoenix-summer continued to afflict, and we continued to have problems. J-Ro even berated the team in an e-mail with the subject, "WTF?" When the excessively chilly and ubercool J-Ro gets feathers a-rufflin', things are problematic.
• We did (at least) continue to SLUG it out on Saturdays, occasionally having some stellar games. So there's been a thread of competition throughout, even if the practice issues have caused a lot of consternation.
• Speaking of consternation, we (in case I haven't mentioned it here yet) are going to be playing the series without stalwart Garret, who has run into way too much work and a new PhD program this fall. We're also going to be missing BP for sectionals (ugh), but it's better that way than having him miss regionals. And Cole has been 100% AWOL - I am relatively certain that I haven't seen him since CO Cup. Now, again, I missed three practices in there, but by all accounts, dude has just been GONE. So, um, that's disconcerting. Hopefully he rolls in this weekend to grab his reserved seat on the Pepsi Max Where-Have-You-Been-Dude? Bench. I mean, I'm one to talk, but I know where I was. Hopefully it's just been scheduling conflicts and not a dedication issue. Either way, communication is preferred.
• Speaking of, sectionals this weekend. Exciting times. We're carrying a roster of 23 and facing off against Monsoon, Le Tigre, El Ponderosa, ASU and U of A. You'll note the conspicuous lack of a Sweet Roll there - they have split between a master's squad and a co-ed team that could give Barrio a run. Pretty sure I mentioned this in the CO Cup writeup, but we never got that last official crack at 'em. Oh, well. Sectionals, fwiw, is conveniently located at the Scottsdale Sports Complex in Sunny Azz, so if you're around, be around! We play pretty much all day both days.
• I am sure all of that sectionals talk has you wondering how things have been going lately. Well, we changed practice fields to Eastern M(es)A in September, and have been making the trek to the east coast on Wednesdays for two hours of intense scrimmaging fun. Last week we played vert stack to give our D a look at the alternative O set, and then had to the D give the O lines nasty poaching sets. With the latter, we let the D play with eight guys - eight on seven! - and we still managed to score a good amount of the time. So hopefully that'll have us ready for the junk defenses our man-O will likely inspire.
• I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that things are intense enough at practice that some people on our D line - lets call them "& the Argonauts" and, um, "Red-headed Electrolyte" - got in an argument over coverage responsibilities that escalated in approximately six seconds into a drag-out, pit-bull-death-grip fight/wrestling match. YOWSERS! Shades of Nyet v. Ariel, 2002! (No, not really; we just yelled a lot. I don't think I'd seen a *physical* fight at a frisbee practice EVER before - you'll very, very occasionally see skirmishes at tourneys, but this was two guys who know each other at each other's throats with intent to harm). The whole thing was uncomfortable - it was broken up quickly and everyone was fine, so no biggie in the end. And the intensity was good to see on some abstract level, I suppose. But still. Eesh.
• So of course after all that quality O and leading-to-fights defensive intensity, we came out Saturday to SLUG and played sloptastic frisbee. Just didn't look good at all, tons of turns, people tired, leading to a lot of "glad sectionals is next weekend" sidebars. Ugh.
• Then fast forward to last night, where things looked a little better, but I - clicking on maybe three of my eight cylinders - managed to have a terrible, terrible practice. Qualify it - I was fine, more or less, for the "O" part of practice (when we were playing 7 against 8 and not allowed to throw it upside-down to simulate, as best we can, windy conditions) , and just had a really bad stretch of throws in the middle of the D section of practice, where we were running a vertical stack O. I probably took it too hard - it was just an exceptionally bad stretch of about ten minutes or so - but wow, can't go through that this weekend. I am sure the 106 degree forecast will help with that tremendously. Ugh, again.
• But all else considered, it was a good, hard, well-attended practice. Hard to know how we'll look this weekend, but for the first time in six weeks or so, we get to play someone other than ourselves, and that's always nice.
• So how are we feeling re: the weekend? Well, on some level, it's immaterial; all the teams who want to can go to regionals. I.e., our finish doesn't *really* matter. But we (obviously) want to win the section for seeding purposes, so we're going to have to crack down and get over the spottiness of late. Hopefully we will manage to play well AND work on our game, as regionals is still sitting as the smack-us-upside-the-head sudden change in intensity. We just don't have the same opportunities as JB and SG to engage serious competition at tourneys yet, so I envision a wake-up call in our future that we may or may not respond too with enough juice. All of that said, we look as good as we ever have of late, the people who are rolling out to practice are flat out bringing it, and there's adequate excitement in the air. O is crispy even without our blond deep threat, and D bothers me at practice, which is pretty much my barometer for goodness. So the weekend should be fun and enlightening. Wish us luck.
• In non-Sprawl Ulty news, my league team "The Way to Wikki Wakka" is 1-1, having staked out big leads which were choked away in both of the first two games. If I didn't mention it, my spring co-captain Lindsey is out for a bit with bad back issues (no!), but the league director made the sweetest - literally, sweetest - okay, you caught me, that would be figurative - of lemonades out of the situation for me and allowed me to captain with Jenga. She's a PHXaion / Spitfire player who is solid AND notorious for shattering all happiness/coolness scales, so despite our precarious play in the first couple of weeks, we're having a great time. Our team is the usual mix of skill/experience/talent - I'll do a full scale writeup at some point - but suffice it for now to say that I'm doing my best to run that team while my energies are really focused on and, more importantly, accustomed-to-the-level-of-play-of, Sprawl. So if I don't seem my usual fired-up-self with ridiculous VOTS game posts and such, it's only as an act of maintaining balance and not getting frustrated with the inevitable Sprawl-to-VOTS drop-off. I'm sure things will return to the usual VOTS-detail-obsessed state once I hang up these club cleats for good.
• In news a further step removed from Ultimate, school is back on. I have a relatively light semester courseload-wise, though I am writing this post at breakneck speed during a half-hour break from reading one of many five hundred page books that are staring me down. I am (allegedly) defending my prospectus at some point this semester, and continue to feel woefully unprepared. At least I don't have to grade undergrad essays this semester and can actually spend some time getting down to the brass tacks of, among other things, post-Darwinian evolutionary ethics. I know you're intrigued.
• As a final removed step, congrats to good friend Reena and her new husband Rob - the Nyetfam, Beck and I headed down to Dallas a couple of weekends back to attend her traditional Hindi wedding and had a fantastic time. We used the opportunity to spend Labor Day weekend in Texas and a good time seeing Aaron & Kristen, Grandpa, Deb, Pat & Ron, and my parents in various contexts, most of which involving delicious food. We *may* have even gotten my family hooked on grilled pineapple! May.

Hope that scratches the itch. Sectionals writeup due next week, though hopefully it will be a relatively boring weekend. We shall, as always, see.

This is Not a Fun Blog, Vol. 6: Bacalao!

Perhaps revealing my utterly uncreative nature, I took the opportunity on this, my third night of captivity, to keep the streak alive. My affinity for the -burger suffix is unmatched; in Beck's absence, I am three for three* in that department and tonight made myself codburgers topped w/ mango chutney a la Salt Spring Island's Moby's. I salt-and-peppered the cod, threw in a touch of Penzey's Cajun seasoning, broiled the fish, toasted buns, shucked and boiled corn, cut and steamed broccoli to make a delicious if somewhat formulaic dinner (that, ftr, has SALSA AUTENTICA on the broccoli and some of the corn, not some plebeian catsup. So phbbbbbbbbt!).

* - Through no fault of my own - last night was *going* to be a burrito dinner, or maybe even a breakfast for dinner at a local diner, but as I straggled my way out of practice, Skunk came up and revealed that he had locked his keys in his car. In this age of remote keys, it's fairly puzzling to me how that could even happen, but I suppose it continues to be Skunk's world, and I just take up residence. So I gave Justin a ride home (as planned, and incidentally, homeslice just moved and now lives something like 200 yards from Tuck Shop, dios mio!) and then took Skunk up to his place several blocks north and west of mine, then ran low on gas and got some, then drove Skunk back down to Tempe several blocks south of my place to grab his car, then found myself getting home at 11:30 instead of the planned 10:30. So leftover chicken burgers it was, and they were quick and delicious and hit the spot after sweating out some 13 pounds last night**.

** - I'm not even joking. I weighed seven pounds less when I got home than when I left, despite having drunk half a gallon water and 32 ounces of gatorade during practice. E-freaking-gads, Sunny Azz! And e-freaking-gads Sprawlers, whose poor practice attendance requires me to play at near savage frequencies.

Super-filling meal, and pretty reasonably good for me, too - I went with two quarter pound burgers and low-cal whole wheat buns, so all told this ran a conservatively-high 730 calories with 8 grams of fat and 73 (!!!) grams of protein. Again, subbing fish for your beef is a great way to keep that -burger streak going while preventing, um, other streaks. Like ones in your arteries? Yes, that was terrible.

No real plans for the next couple of night's meals, but I'll keep you appraised. Practice tomorrow night, though, so it'll probably be back to the burrito plan, Pepe Le Kendall's plans notwithstanding. We'll see. Otherwise, things roll along quietly here; a fresh batch of 20,000 lightly-clad freshmen-to-bes have littered campus, making everything up at school a madhouse (I'm pretty sure all 20K registered at the gym today, sheesh). We're adding 9 people to our little department, too, so it'll be nice to have some fresh faces. And I continue to be in a constant state of should-be-reading/writing/doing-more. So it goes - more when it happens.

Glad My Car Has a Cupholder (Part 4): Bullets Edition

In the illustrious, keep my long-winded self concise form of bullet points, starting with self-evaluation:

• Honestly, I spent so much time worried about collapsing due to sickness combined w/altitude that it did not entirely occur to me to be really worried about how I was playing. It is no exaggeration that Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and for brief moments on Friday, I felt god-awful, couldn't-lift-my-head energy-less. I was pretty resigned to the notion that I would roll out to the fields on Saturday, try to do a warm-up, and I'd have that same fade-from-the-world feeling I got in Flagstaff a couple of weeks back. So to be able to play at all, let alone well, was a pleasant surprise.
• So I was in a relatively low key mode and was aiming to conserve energy as much as I could, which meant playing fairly, appropriately enough, conservatively. If J-Ro is a prototypical conservative, disc-control handler, and Garret is a prototypical take-chances swashbuckler, my ideal contribution is to be somewhere inbetween near halfway, but I spent most of the weekend closer to the J-Ro end of the spectrum.
• This was completely fine because, as I'll note below, Griesy was in a very aggressive mode hucking-wise and took a fair number of chances for all of us. They weren't all perfect, natch, but with him picking his spots, I could "run the offense" a lot more than trying to huck left and right. Consequently, I think I put it deep fewer than five times all weekend - weird for me, but the right move given the balance of our offense.
• I also had Trant's suggestion running through my head to stay back and run the O (rather than join the fray upfield) - he's right, that's my role on Sprawl, and while I think I can spell our horses a little better by joining the fray on occasion, this weekend, I was more of an anchor than a spark. Um, that's not a metaphor. I also played the hitch position maybe 90+ percent of the time I was out there - largely because Garret was gone and BP explicitly told me at one point he didn't want to play hitch ever again, more or less - so I ended up being a really conservative quarterback of sorts. If the Ravens would like to pay me to run their Super Bowl team, I'll take it.
• Not to overstate my carefulness this weekend - I did bust out break marks when needed, specifically dissecting some zones with scoobers, getting a few wrap-arounds off to Cole for scores, and one particularly nice breakmark BH to BP who turned and flipped to Rob for an easy goal. So I'd say my impact, while nowhere near as flashy as Griesy's cannon show, was quite positive for the team. Again, I was more worried about surviving and captaining, though, so maybe I'm not the person to ask.
• I had five turns on the weekend*, all on Sunday, and three of them in the finals in ridiculous wind conditions - not to make excuses, but when you're playing hitch and picking up the disc trapped on the sideline in a 35 mph wind all the time, the occasional turn is going to happen as a matter of percentage. They were:

1. In the ITB game, a backhand semi-huck to Cole at the back left corner; he didn't get there in time and had to toe the line instead of skying to catch the disc. He missed it, giving me one of our four turns in the game and leading to the only offensive break we had. I suck.
2. In the 99 Problems game, a guy poached the BH lane, so instead of throwing to BP, I turned and fired a quick backhand to J-Ro - or where he used to be standing. He had started to cut to the middle of the field and caught me off guard. D'oh. Normally J-Ro and I are psychic, so this was a pretty weird miscue on both of our parts.
3. In the finals, I was trapped on our goal line, turned to activate, but BP fell down on the dump and J-Ro got lost behind the confusion back there. I turned on stall 8 to put a tight throw downfield to Griesy, but ended up throwing it directly into a poach. D'oh.
4. Not even worth recounting, as it was pretty much a carbon copy of the above - dumps got mixed up, very windy, and I tried to desperation put it up for Gries, but it got wind-eaten and knocked down by a defender. Boo.
5. I put up a huge backhand huck directly over/through the cup in the wind and rain to a streaking Cole for an easy goal. Only our good friend #29 (I believe) made the "you scored ergo travel" call. Aggravating. So I got the disc back and put it right back to the exact same spot - Cole skyed for it and looked like he got it but it got knocked away; he said later this may have been a strip. I'm not too bothered by this one as it was effectively a punt, and we got the turn quickly and punched the disc in for a goal. So huzzah, and seriously Flux #29, ugh. Odd how one dude can ruin a game.

* - I should always qualify this as "five for which I will take credit/blame." On Saturday, Dixon danced and danced behind the mark, and as I went to throw it to the open space on the open side, he inexplicably stopped moving. So I ended up throwing it to no one, but I'm chalking that up to wacky Dixon behavior, sorry. In the finals, I activated BP at the dump and noticed his man was playing five yards off him upfield - easy dump/swing, right? So as I went to throw the flick, BP - again, inexplicably - cut upfield toward his guy. Que? The situation was such an automatic "throw the flick out to space" that I had already started the throw by reflex, so when I tried to pull it back, I ended up spiking the disc more or less at my feet and looking like a complete idiot. So I'm not eating that one, either. These two were actually legit cross-ups, way more than the usual "always blame the receiver," and I declare them not my fault sans guilt. :)

• I had plenty of legs for the few times we did have to play D on our O-lines, and Ionly got significantly beat once on a big cross-field breakmark flick (by Rice-bud Marcus, I believe) that was a really nice throw and something I couldn't do a whole lot about. Otherwise, I actually made some pretty solid D contributions - I had a big goal line poach D in the first Flux game, a D on a huck in that same game that drew a crap foul call, but which I followed up with a shutdown mark that got us a high stall turn, a D on an iso huck in the Critical Mass game, and my personal favorite highlight of the weekend, a layout D on a predictable swing backhand at a big point in the 99 Problems game.
• This last one was especially funny because I hit the disc well after it was out of the thrower's hand, but he called foul - it was a pretty silly call; I am 99% sure I didn't touch him at all, let alone foul him, as I hit the disc before everything when it was a good foot out of his hand already. So given the silliness of the foul call, I wasn't exactly in the mood for a conversation about it - he having eliminated himself as a candidate for productive rational discourse - so I stood up and didn't even bother contesting it, just said, "No, I'm sending that to the observer." It was a breach of Ultimate code of sorts, but when an egregious call is made, it's the thing to do. Unfortunately, the observer directly behind the disc replied "I didn't see it" (which is WACK as it seems to confuse the very meaning of the verb root of her job title). Ugh. Fortunately, the other observer did and quickly called no foul; big turn, and we punched it in shortly thereafter. Huzzah!
• I had a couple of layout catches for goals on the weekend (one from Cole and one on the aforementioned windblown mess from BP) and a few jump and land in the endzone gaols, too. But really my job was to be steady, and outside the finals, I did a good job of that (and even in the finals, all things considered, I played okay and got some key breaks off - the scoober to Rob probably being my "throw of the weekend"). So a steady not spectacular performance by me, but I really think that's what Sprawl needs from their fat handler captain these days, and really, I continue to be amazed that I was able to do it at all, given my dampened energy / spirits of the previous week.

Alright, player by player review, with stats in the form of Name (Offensive +/-, Defensive +/-, Total +/-, O-points, D-points, Total playing time percentage)

• Nyet the Lesser (47, -1, 46, 61, 3, 37%) - You've read enough about this jerk above, so I'll just comment on the captaining - I stayed remarkably level this weekend and kept people's heads in, gave feedback, etc., without making it negative. There's a lot to keep track of when you're captaining alone - again, sucked to miss Dheintime this weekend - but I think I game/team-managed pretty well. And I really like how last night's practice went, too. Props also the line-callers who helped a ton, and to the other Sprawl leaders who kept suggestions / thoughts coming.
• J-Ro (40, 3, 43, 52, 9, 35%) - Rock-steady per usual - I probably should have had him play Hitch more, but our offensive formula clicked so well that changing it seemed silly. His role at this point is very well defined, and he nails it time and again - great cog for our O, and he's a key guy even though he's not necessarily making big hucks or splashy plays.
• Joe K (3, 13, 16, 7, 61, 39%) - Great job by Joe - he's really an O-line player who plays some great D, so it was really nice to have him on the field for when we got turns; he uses his breakmark throws exceptionally well. I don't remember him hucking a whole lot, though he did pull very effectively all weekend long. had those two weird, unforced turns in the first Flux game that put us in a hole early, but otherwise had a very solid weekend.
• Aaron (11, 4, 15, 11, 34, 26%) - Probably the one guy who didn't get enough PT this weekend - he played very steady this weekend, nothing huge on either side, but no mistakes to speak of, either, and his handles kept things moving on both lines. AND he was one of the few guys routinely containing breaks and swings - again, little things that don't stand out like, say, hand blacks, but integral to success. Another cog guy who did his job very well. He is probably more O-line than D-line but can fill in at either spot - but with our O playing fewer points than usual, most of the PT there was given to O-only guys. He of course, is a stand up dude and didn't even mention this - great to know we've got him ready to step up when needed but happy to play his part, too. Plus, he chugs a mean ICE.
• Jim (1,8,9, 5, 32, 21%) - Jim played great this weekend - had one hiccupy series with a couple of goal line turns, but he brought a lot of energy to the D and filled in on D-line hands nicely. Still needs to get the quick snap decisions / throws going on O - he ended up playing hitch / ratchet on a few D lines, and he was a little hesitant to break the mark which stalled out our O at moments. But that is probably more a matter of matching skills to position - he did a great job at the catch, and really, in terms of team role, the occasionally psychotic energy he brought to the sidelines was hella fun. And as mentioned, extraordinarily helpful to have his help calling lines.
• Paul (3, 11, 14, 5, 27, 18%) - Paul also really brought it this weekend - I thought his times as hitch were a little more successful when we had the disc, and he generally adopted a good, sweet spot approach w/r/t aggression at caution on the O side. He did have that one ridiculously silly push pass attempt - it ended up flipping end over end - but I think the ballcap was only flung in disgust that one time all weekend, a great sign. Lots of hustle, and again, great help on the line-calling - he really took the reins with it. Homes really stepped it up this weekend and demonstrated he belonged.
• BP (32, -4, 28, 44, 30 , 43%) - huge D and O play from BP; he continues to be a playmaker, grabbing us D's (layout handblock? Skies on deep shots? YES) and being an integral Man on the O. He was oddly uncomfortably playing the Hitch at points and goofed some long hucks here and there, but his laid-back buttery yet somehow aggressive game was on full display this weekend.
• Ian (8, 1, 9, 8, 49, 33%) - dude was coming off an MCL sprain and four weeks of no sprinting, and it unfortunately showed - he was just rusty and dragging on the field way more than usual, uncharacteristically biting on in-fakes and getting beat deep. Once we figured out that we just needed to scale back his PT a little bit, he bounced back excellently and made some big D plays - really psyched that he could start having a "bad tournament" and not let it get to him, just rallied and contributed, both on D and with the disc. I am completely unconcerned that he'll get his sea legs back, and again, he struggled but adjusted quite well to it.
• Ebay (30, 0 , 30, 36, 28, 37%) - The career Ulty path of Ebay is surely upward trending, and it is dope to see him at this height - hombre was *great* all around, gave us handling, mid play, defense, skies, you name it. His rundown of Cole's huck in the finals was a tournament Top Play, and he generally brought it big time. Still needs to up the speed for when we face the big boys - just to give him some kind of criticism - but damn, hombre played really well.
• Studer (7, 6, 13, 7, 50, 33%) - Another role player who just flat out brought it - hustle D all weekend, threw a Mr. Wobblesworth Special huck to Ebay for a score and hooked up with Big Nate on a hammer, and caught the winning goal in the finals taboot. Tom also continues to upward trend, and while we'd like to see him be able to grab some D hands now and then, his fill play this weekend was key.
• Josh (11, 11, 22, 13, 53, 38%) - Rookie baller Josh fulfilled all expectation in his first tournament, getting who knows how many D's of the layout, sky and handblock variety. Absolute gem of a game, and he was really consistent with his decisions on top of that. Only 22, just graduated from UW, and really just outside teh BP/Griesy range of all-around dominant games. great addition to the team.
• Dixon (19, 4, 23, 23, 56, 46%) - Another big tournament from the guy who never stops running - Dixon only had one or two turnovers for the whole weekend and gave us a ton of shutdown D and energetic filling on O. A little less overt than his play from last year's CO Cup, but only because everyone else stepped it up, too - he didn't need to do as much.
• Rob (5, 6, 11, 9, 52, 35%) - homes routinely puts in huge tournaments that don't make a lot of noise - he takes on other teams big cutters and shuts them down (so he's not necessarily getting huge D's, just preventing his guy from touching the disc), makes who know how many key midfield cuts, and really makes no mistakes. Tis one was par for the course - great play, *great* popping against the zone, and the veteran masters-eligible speedster continues to blow my mind.
• Trant (21, 3 ,24, 23, 41, 37%) - Jason battled hamstring issues all weekend and had to sit a bit at times, but provided his stellar D and up-and-coming O throughout the tournament. Trant is sneakily one of Sprawl's most improved palyers - and he was already good - so to have him stepping it up and making, e.g., some huge deep cuts and poach reads, is helping a ton.
• Skunk (3, 17, 20, 3, 45, 28%) - Skunker continues to baffle with his occasional drifting concentration, but he kept it together and really stuck to his role of energetic defender this weekend. Most importantly, he was the guy who took off full sprint style on people when our opponents turned it, and got himself a few quick transition goals for his troubles. A big question mark before the tourney, Skunk showed that he can focus it in when he wants to. He still needs to eliminate the lapses when e.g. guarding the dump, and still makes weird decisions with poaches and giving his guy too much cushion - so there's plenty to work on - but I really appreicated the solid attitude and the willignness to play his role.
• Kyle (2, 12, 14, 4, 46, 29%) - repeatedly people said "that guy is fast," "he gets D's." Kyle did exactly what he needed to, which is run all over the field and knock stuff down. He got a little winded at one point and suffered accordingly, but he bounced back and made numerous plays in the air - I think people challenge him because of his height, but he was up to the task. On the O side, he took a chance down a sideline that someone (Skunk?) toed in, and immediately recognized that making that sort of throw wasn't his job. We'll unfortunately be missing him for regionals - something about an anniversary trip to Hawaii - but for now , Kyle amply demonstrated the value of his making the Sprawl cut.
• Griesy (43, 13, 56, 51, 29, 46%) - with Dhein out, even more weight than usual fell on Griesy to be the guy, and dios mio did he pull it off. I've already alluded to this repeatedly, so suffice it to say that he was a beast - umpteen hucks for goals, breaks, sweet cuts, etc. He keyed our offense, and the only thing I can think to say is that he didn't go deep enough - with skies like the one he had in the finals (over EVERYONE, it was an all-timer), you know he could be hauling things in downfield. But really, he played insanely well this weekend - took chances so the handlers didn't have to, and was absolutely feeling it with his Cole connection. Perfectly aggressive and able to keep it up consistently through the weekend in which he played 46% of points and cut hard on all of them, Griesy was the obvious tourney MVP.
• Vince (3, 4, 7, 3, 64, 39%) - Vince was huge on D - his numbers are a little deceptive as he sat out once we got ahead in games - i.e., he was really only playing against other teams starters and in our two tight games. But he patrolled the deep game very well, baited more than a few throws, and took out the other teams' deep threat repeatedly. He also wore a preposterous mustache throughout - no indication whether this hurt or helped - and only had a few of his trademark way overly aggressive deep chucks. He fell in love a bit with playing VOTS style and throwing it to Will all the time, but otherwise put ina stellar weekend - a little harder to see since it happened nearly 100% on D, but Vince was a top player for this tourney, too.
• Cole (46, -1, 45, 60, 9, 40%) - Dominant deep threat who scored a ton. That doesn't even capture it. Wait, here:

These are the saddest of possible words

Jones to Griesy to Cole

Trio of Sprawlers, fleeter than birds

Jones to Griesy to Cole

Ruthlessly picking on your trailing deep

Making a giant get skyed and weep,

This was the play that made you say, "Bleep!"

Jones to Griesy to Cole

• Cole scored 27+ goals on the weekend, and I swear 90% of them happened in the above fashion. Ridiculous and a perfect playing of his part - he adopted his role with aplomb. He definitely started to get frustrated with teammates and lose his cool on a couple of occasions - memorably spiking it at an opponent after a rough foul - but he responded very well to being calmed by the Nyet Zen-master. Great play, and we really need him to continue to make huge plays for us once the competition gets stiffer.
• Will (0, -2, -2, 0, 32, 18%) - gave us big energy when we needed it on D and gave us another stellar rookie performance. Also, ho hum, had the play of the weekend - someone sent it deep for Griesy but threw it was too lasery hard and flat. It was a sure turn at a big point in the first Flux game. But out of nowhere comes a screamingly streaking Will to catch up to the disc, lay out and grab the goal. In. cred. i. ble. Will maintained a great attitde all weekend, helped out with the line-calling, and filled in with a spark when we needed it. Obviously lots of skill-areas to work on in his game, but he's already made a contribution.
• Big Nate (1, -2, -1, 9, 28, 21%) - A running joke was that I kept inadvertently insulting Nate all weekend - said he couldn't handle, made fun of old players, made fun of Ogden(ville) where he happens to have been born - so I'll refrain from that here. Big Nate did a great job on O, never turning it over and making a few big grabs in the endzone over shorter defenders. He struggled to stop deep cuts on D a little bit, but that's a minor complaint; yet another case of filling his role well and putting the team first. Plus a tremendously fun and helpful guy to have on our sidelines - did a nice job staying on people about running down on the pull and letting me know what he was seeing. Nice work.

Oy. So I know I said I would throw in some general highlights, too, but I'm a bit tired, and I've pretty much hit the bulk of the big ones already. Just picture a ton of Josh layouts, Griesy gunning it, a near greatest from Big Nate to Cole... and you'll get enough of an idea of the nice play that went down. I'll post videos and/or more pics as I see / get them, but that should do it for CO Cup 200. On to the next thing - thanks for reading, and pave the world. Sprawl.