Thoughts.

“All ultimate people are great people. Well, except for the assholes.”

-Matt Love

Location: Okura Beach, Akashi.

Format: Hat tourney Saturday (competition included accuracy and distance throwing as well as on-beach play), team play Sunday. 25 minute (continuous) rounds made for short but sweet games (the girls, perpetually shorthanded, were especially appreciative of the short game times)–games were typically followed by an hour or more bye, so there was plenty of time for hangout/fooding/socializing between games.

Conditions: Warm bordering on hot (20-24 deg C), cloudy on Saturday, sunny on Sunday. Beach was pretty rocky–barefoot playing was a no-go, sadly. Still forgiving enough to bid freely, but the arms and legs would pay the price.

Overall experience: Great!

Saturday I wound up with a squad of Japanese college students (as I’ve mentioned before, the scene here largely revolves around college teams). I showed up late and arrived as teams were already huddled. Opening conversation went something like this:

“Is this team G?”
“Yes”
“Sorry I’m late! I’m Matt, nice to meet you.”
“We were just thinking of our team name…What’s that on your shirt?”
“This? Oh, you mean ‘Dartmouth?’”
“What’s a ‘Dartmouth?’ Mouth, like mouth?”
“Oh! Well, uh yeah…it is but it doesn’t really mean anything, it’s a person’s name…”
“Sounds cool. Alright! ‘Dartmouth’ will be our team name.”

So it was that Dartmouth had its inaugural tournament appearance in Japan. Our 2-1 record was good enough to finish 5th in the tournament, but a poor showing in the accuracy contest sank any hopes of finishing in the top 3 overall. Our foreigner contingent represented pretty well though, with one team sporting a couple of us making it to the finals (out of perhaps 150 players on Saturday, there was just the dozen or so of us foreigners spread about).

After games on Saturday we made the obligatory onsen trip to clean off, hit up a nearby buffet, and then hung out at the beach for the evening with some of the other players–now teammates and friends–and some watermelon. Spent the night in a ryokan near Kobe, channeling some summer-camp sleepover nostalgia sharing a room with the 10 of us for the night.

Sunday we Wondertwin-powered into the form of a Rising Tide:

The smallish roster and being already familiar with each other from having played together in Awaji meant that as a team we gelled pretty well from the get-go, with a little bit of basic strategy talk and subbing (your basic “always have a handler on the field” prescription).

First game we opened up a 3 or 4-0 lead before letting them creep back in late for a 7-6 victory that never felt so close. Second game saw us brush up against some stiffer competition–indeed, the team went on to win the whole thing–and drop a 7-5 game that also never felt as close as the score indicates. Almost all of the Japanese teams had a good grasp of the fundamentals of using the dump-swing and break throws to punish poaching or generate easy motion, but this team had it down even more systematically than the rest, who seemed to improvise more (or maybe we just played better D). At any rate yours truly wound up looking stupid on D a couple times.

Our third and fourth games were also tight, with our last game going into sudden death overtime after we were tied at the end of 25 minutes, but, much like our namesake, we slowly and inexorably rose above. (Our second game of the day obviously occurred during a receding phase).

Rising Tide finished 8th overall, with a 3-1 record and the 1 to the tourney champions. In other words, I think we have a solid claim to second-best team overall.

Other events: Between games/during byes (games are only 25 minutes, remember, so 3/4 games a day means a lot of down time) were various frisbee-related demos: some freestyling here, disc golfing there, a fair bit of dog catch, and some other games of skill, all complete with an announcer to narrate (“Ok, here’s the throw to Rover…can he do it? YES! Nice catch!”), as well as continuous (good) music playing at the fields. It wasn’t just an event for the people who love to run themselves ragged on the field; families could come and enjoy, with there being several food options and games on the side. Saw a few young’uns tossing foam discs around, or throwing at targets, while the families picnicked. Tourney organizers in the States take note–loath as I am to feed associations between ultimate and dogs, there are plenty of options out there to make a weekend of ultimate about much more than simply ultimate.

Highlight of the non-ultimate events was definitely the 「ダイビーングケーチコンテスト」, aka Diving Catch Contest, aka Layout Grab-off. Yours truly did a little showboating before tracking down and catching a nice floater above the head, with a near-faceplant of a landing and a facefull of sand to show for it and little else. For whatever reason we didn’t so much as place despite, you know, actually catching the disc, which some 20 of the 25 pairs did not. Plus we had way more style.

Personally: I felt pretty great all weekend–despite having to deal with a strained quad for much of the week preceding, the short beach fields combined with some day-before muscle debugging (my VMO was too tight and not firing; got it working with a bit of foam rolling and some massage along with some focused mobility work) had me feeling fine all weekend long, the usual after-game and day-after aches and pains notwithstanding.

Played pretty darn well–the short field helped in a lot of ways, as it a) reduced a lot of defense to something closer to handler D, where I’m most comfortable and b) put me in close proximity to all the other players, meaning I had plentiful opportunities to poach, bait and help with good results. Offensively, despite not having really thrown a disc in a month or so, my IO backhand and forehand were both gellin’ (though the flick was a little too zippy at times) and the rest of the arsenal fell in line pretty well too–it helped that Saturday was close to breezeless and Sunday wasn’t too strong either, but regardless of condition it bodes well to see the muscle memory holding up. Having fewer players on the field makes it a bit easier to assess the state of my options with the disc and find space, so I didn’t find myself struggling in the handler role as much as at Awaji (it helped that we defaulted to a straight stack O).

Personal highlights are numerous. I knew I was set for a good weekend when, late in my first game on Saturday, I had a full-extension, fingertip layout D on a swing for the goal, which I immediately followed with an IO backhand break huck to the other endzone for the goal. There was also a span in one game Sunday where I believe I threw a goal (or at least right up to the endzone), and then in the ensuing two points D’d up the first throw and threw the score on the next pass (the first, a poach on an upline pass that led too far; the second, a straight-up denial catch D on a dump attempt), turning a pretty tight game into a comfortable lead in the span of about two minutes.

Altogether, couldn’t have asked for a better weekend getaway. Left on Sunday riding on cloud nine; it’s ridiculous how happy this sport makes me sometimes.

The tournament almost got canceled.

It would’ve been just my luck after the other near-misses since I’ve gotten here (see: me forgetting that Japan and Hawaii are different countries and missing half a (one-day) tourney for a couple wrong turns), but, thanks to the power of democracy and on the strength of a 13-9 vote against canceling, we powered on through Saturday’s rainy, windy games, shortened to 30 minutes from the already-short 50 minutes.

I picked up with a mishmash of internationals from all over–ranging from Shikoku to Kyuushu (and yours truly + 1 from Tottori), there were quite a few of us who’d made good treks to play some disc in Awaji (mine spanning some 6+ hours of driving on the way down, including a detour on Friday night to Shikoku to stay closer to the tourney). We had a bunch of newbies; wound up splitting into experienced and rookie teams with so many of us there (about two dozen).

Coming in looking at the teams, I figured we had a pretty good shot at winning the thing–mostly Japanese college teams*, which obviously wouldn’t be up to the level of college teams in the states, and given I was playing on a team with people who knew what they were doing, it seemed like good odds.

I gave up on ideas of winning about halfway into our first game, for a couple reasons. Turns out “experienced” meant, in many cases, that they could throw a forehand–people were familiar with things like zone D, but the fundamentals of good man D were lost on most (especially factoring in our relative out-of-shapedness compared to practicing college teams). For another, we hadn’t practiced together and the lack of chemistry was very apparent from the get-go, on O and D.

And the Japanese teams were pretty decent. It’s very much a stereotype of Japanese sports in general, but most stereotypes have a seed of truth at their root–they work hard, if the extent and duration of pre-game drilling was any indication, and focus on the fundamentals. The wind made everyone’s throws pretty difficult, but players weren’t afraid to take the inside looks (and could get away with them against a loose D) in man offense situations. (Incidentally, every team we played exclusively ran a horizontal stack). I had a lot of trouble singling out teams’ go-to guy(s), simply because most teams were willing to spread the disc around, throwing to the open guy and not forcing it. Throw in their conditioning we struggled a lot on Saturday.

On a personal level, I got stuck handling most of the time. This worked OK when we were running a straight stack, because I could float into cutting territory without too much trouble, but eventually we decided to shift to a horizontal stack–while I can cut in a ho-stack without any fuss, handling it in proved to put me out of my element and Saturday became progressively more frustrating. The difference in level from Nationals with a group of teammates you’ve known and played with for ages vs. a pickup team you just met is large, and I had trouble shifting my decision-making processes. My frustration with my own play also left me struggling to take more of a leadership role in terms of sharing experience and guidance to help the rest of the team improve, which is something I need to work on.

Saturday evening we all made the half-hour drive to a nearby onsen (one of the greatest things about Japan that I sorely miss in the states), where we cleaned off the day’s muck and relaxed away our cares.  Following the onsen stop, we had a short trip to a nearby player’s house, where we barbequed and bonfired. Our host had gotten some bona fide beef imported and made some spectacular burgers–unlike the states, good burgers are hard to come by in Japan, and all together it made for a spectacular night.

Sunday saw a return to 50-minute rounds and a retreat of the rain, but the wind showed up in even more force than the day before, making for a severe upwind-downwind dynamic.

This actually worked to our advantage; we shifted to (huck and) zone D, preventing overmatched defenders from being exploited deep (with yours truly usually playing deep-deep in their stead). Offensively, we saw our share of zone as well, which led to a bunch of blades from this guy and a lot of battling for field position from all corners.

Unlike Saturday, we actually eked out a couple wins–I think we finished 9th out of 16 teams. All it took was a couple lucky breaks going upwind. I was a lot happier playing Sunday, in part because I had a more realistic idea of what to expect, and in part because playing deep in the zone meant I got to run around a lot more against teams looking to punt it for field position–I’ve decided that my preference for cutting and reticence to handle stems from a need to run.

All together, it was a pretty great weekend that made me nostalgic for college after some 9 months without a proper tourney (longest such stretch I’ve had in the past 5 years). Nothing quite like long road trips, Saturday hangouts, and that day-after exhaustion.

Speaking of exhaustion, I’m still in very poor shape. Hopefully I can level up a bit before the next bit of action–a return to Akashi beach in June for some beach ultimate fun in the sun.

*incidentally, most of Japan’s ultimate scene seems to revolve around college clubs. There were a couple club teams there, but they didn’t strike me as much better than the college teams we played. I didn’t notice any formal coaching of any of the teams–I think ultimate, rather than being its own sort of culture in Japan, falls much more into the category of other college club sports–just something you do for fun in your spare time, and forget about shortly after graduation. Will refine my impression/opinions as I get more exposure in tourneys throughout the spring.

Word to the wise:Even if Japan IS a lot closer to Hawaii than most of the contiguous States,

…you still need your passport to fly there.

Technicalities and finances prevented a late rescheduling, and my winter just got a whole lot worse. Rest assured, blogonauts, the tournament will be aptly recapped by the others.

Been a while since I had cause to do a tourney writeup…this is less a writeup proper and more a short impression, since it was so brief (one day).

There’s some stuff from the summer version here. The site and condition were pretty much exactly the same, maybe a little rainier, but you get the idea.

And so it was that the 25th-seeded pickup team won.

What a great change of pace. After a long denouement to my ultimate career after regionals, with a brief, minor peak against Arizona at nationals, I’d found my passion for play fading (though my fascination with learning and teaching in this sport and otherwise continues as strong as ever).

But a glimmer of hope. Strangely, found it whilst tooling on some 15 and 16 year olds at the summer camp I was working at (perhaps you’ve heard of CTY? More than a few ultimate types got their start playing there, despite the camp ostensibly having nothing to do with ultimate). Somewhere in the flurry of terrible decisions and missed executions, punctuated by goals scored by yours truly (and staff accompaniment), I found it.

What was it? The joy of playing, of course! I had forgotten what it felt like. Those weeks of practice between regionals and nationals–they weren’t joyful. They were focused, they were dedicated to improving ourselves. They were work. Even at nationals, that sense of work stuck. Only when I could bring it all to fruition and really play in Colorado did it all mean something.

Similarly, I’d been tooling around with my throws, sure, thinking a lot about ultimate, yes, but I’d been missing the joy. The dam started leaking tooling on the teenagers, and the trickle became a river playing in Ow My Knee, tooling on dults.

Why lie. It’s a lot of fun to be good. It’s easy when you win. Playing this weekend, with a team of friends who not only played, but were damn good, was EXACTLY what I needed.

Particularly on Sunday, when we played legitimate mixed teams, that practice, and take themselves seriously, it was great to go and chill, pile together, and drink water during timeouts and halftime while our opponents huddled together and talked strategy. And then go back out and beat them (like our come-from-behind, universe point victory over 7 express in the final–we were down something like 7-10 when the cap horn sounded).

This is less a recap and more a rejoicing–this is why I play ultimate. I had my doubts about playing elite when I return stateside (and easing those doubts is not a guarantee that I’ll feel any more confident in a year’s time when I get back from Japan, where I’m teaching English next year), but my passion has been re-invigorated.

College is impossible to recapture–the people, the community, the commitment were all so different than anything I could hope to ever find again–but playing in OMK reminded me of the other aspect, that part that drew m to Dartmouth Ultimate in the first place–not the Dartmouth, but the ultimate. I love this sport.

What to say.

My collegiate career is over.

Soon enough I’ll be leaving this school, separating from my friends of many years, and moving on with my life.

What’s it all for? What’s it all about? I struggled with this thought on Friday. We had already made the national tournament., only the second time our program has done so, and going into the year we never really had any concrete goals outside of peaking at regionals–and what a peak it was! Two of the best, most emotional days of ultimate I’ve ever experienced. The energy was palpable. We had bunches of alums, friends, family (my parents got to watch me play ultimate for the first time in the regional final), all rooting for us. It’s the sort of atmosphere that makes me happy to play this sport, to know that the work and effort I’d invested could be made manifest in such a way.

We won the region…and then? What? More ultimate. As Socks put it at one point, it’s like having a really good friend over to visit, you have a great time seeing them, and then the time comes for them to go…and after leaving in the morning, you get a knock on your door that afternoon–your friend is back, he missed his train. While it’s still really great to have them there, it’s just not the same. This was how I went through practice the week after regionals. Closing in on the dance itself, we had a team meeting, generally got on the same page of loving the chance to play with each other and be the Pain Train in its current form one last time, and I had a bit more vigor and a bit more excitement for the sport as we left for Colorado.

But Friday came, and I was flat. We opened against Carleton–very good, talented team–but I got caught flat-footed and beat to the open side more than once. For goals. Where was the fire? The desire to put it on the line for my teammates?

I was still missing it against Colorado. I’d gotten a bit more will to play and work to show on the field, but the focus was missing. I cheered on the sidelines, but that was mostly just going through the motions.

We finished against UCSC after a bye. We won this one, but did I really bring anything more than I did to the previous two games? I had more opportunities to play harder, so in aggregate, yes, I played harder. It was good to win, but I could have just as easily lost that game, in terms of investment in the result.

I still don’t have a good answer for how I felt.

But then, Saturday came. Arizona. What a game. I spent most of the game covering Joe Kershner, whose name you might recognize as the top of the heap in this year’s Callahan award. Really great guy, totally deserving. First point of the game we introduced ourselves to each other, and exchanged some words over the course of the game. Dude knows how to ball, but I do too, which made it a lot of fun on both sides of the disc. Getting to run him around on the turns was great–probably half of my elation from playing this game stems from my being a cutter for almost all of the game.

An amazing game to play in–my new best game I’ve ever played in (supplanting my sophomore year vs. Brown in teh quarterfinals at NE regionals–that still remains the tightest game I’ve ever played in, Brown hardly turned it over all game thanks to the unstoppableness of C-Mo). Certainly a game that I was happy to end my career on.

…but then we had two more games. I was pretty banged up from the ‘zona game (bashed my knee on a bid early, and it’d been swelling up on me since), and combine that with the 5-minute break between games (going to 17-16 meant we were well past cap), and we came out flat. I only played a point in this game (though I got to finally throw the skirt on, now that we were out of contention). We were within striking distance but let this game get away from us pretty quickly.

After that, it was Delaware, and after a bye we had a lot more energy and rolled in this game. I played a few more points in this game, including the game’s final point–in a clam set, the final play of my collegiate career was a layout D, which I caught–however, given that the Del player was not anticipating my laying out for the D, he did not have time to get out of the way, and crashed into me (I was laying out perpendicular to his direction of motion–I almost never make these sorts of bids for exactly this reason). I took a (collegiate) career-ending injury, and Socks then came on to throw a breakside score for the win. A pretty fitting end for both of our careers, I’d say.

A lot of fun, is how I’d characterize it all. Really, nationals is like any other high-level college tournament–you show up, you play hard, you go home. This is the simple truth of ultimate. Why do we continue to seek glory in this piece of plastic? Well…why not?

This team is moving on already. We have our spring banquet tomorrow (which is way too soon), and after that, I’ll literally have nothing left. It’s pretty sad. You can insert a cliche about taking solace in the progress of the program, but really, there’s not too much of that sentiment right now, just nostalgia. Sitting back, reminiscing, and enjoying the memories.

I’ll likely keep updating this blog for at least the next while, but given that I’m going to be out of competitive ultimate for at least the next year (I’m teaching English in Japan), there will come a time when the new content ceases.

In the meantime, I plan to pour out the essence of my ultimate self here, various skills and teachings that I’ve acquired over my four years here. So, look forward to that I guess.

Signed,
Maaaaaaaaaaaaatt Mackey

We won.

Hoo, Ungawa, Dartmouth’s got the power, indeed. Tapering now for Regionals…

Another trip to New Haven for Yale Cup; the last time I’ll ever play there.

A Friday night rainstorm had the TD cautiously postponing Saturday’s games until noon start time–contrary to the 9AM start listed on the score reporter, these were short (1:15) rounds, meaning any team that came out flat to start their games would NOT have much time to make up the difference…

…guess who came out flat to start their day.

Game 1: Vs. Williams
Williams continually frustrated us to start, taking advantage of our flatness–we had more than a few drops, throwaways on deep looks that, while not terrible looks, had too small a margin of error. Williams responded to our generally unsuccessful deep game by putting it up whenever they could and wherever they could. Granted, they had their fair share of turns too, but in my years of playing against Williams they’ve always shown the ability to pull down the fringy stuff with more consistency than most (though they tend to be pretty hopeless in high wind–the fringy looks become near-impossible ones with more frequency). Our D line only got a few turns throughout the day, and when we did they threw a very poachy man D set on us, forcing us to stay on one sideline with their mark so the poaches wouldn’t get burned. Were we to meet them again, we’d be better prepared to beat it.

5-11.

Game 2: Vs. Wesleyan
Well, losing to Williams is one thing. But we still couldn’t get it up for Wesleyan. We continued to have trouble connecting on the deep looks, as our O line handed out turns like it was Wesleyan’s birthday instead of treating them like the red-headed stepchildren they are. To be fair, our D line didn’t capitalize in conversion as much as it could’ve either. Yours truly did make some plays though:


(Yes, that’s a skirt. Yes, it’s golden. I had just gotten it that morning courtesy of Ms. Rohre Titcomb of Five Ultimate, who I had been nagging since I saw one at Vegas to bring me one. Real scandalous looking, but real money, too.)

After going down early, we battled back to force a universe, but couldn’t finish the comeback. We at least were showing signs of progress at this point; we went into the bye resolving to work harder through the rest of the day.

8-9.

BYE
Watched the women roll Wellesley. In Sam Routhier’s words, “I read Mackey’s blog and he’s all ‘The women are awesome,’ then I talk to Tien and she’s like ‘We’re okay.’”

The women are awesome. You heard it here first, and will continue to hear it here. I mean, holy crap. They won Yale Cup.

Game 3: Vs. UVM
UVM’s looked pretty legit this year–granted, they’re not the class of the region by any means, but ever since they played us tight at sectionals in the fall my impression of them has been that they’re really turning a corner this year. I couldn’t tell you if that’s spurred mostly by seniors with chemistry or what, but they definitely have the potential to surprise.

That said, we came out and really took it to them to start. They played pretty loose on our resets and we had a dump-swing-continue offense all day. Second half we loosened up our rotation and UVM actually battled back with a couple breaks, but we fortunately didn’t get into the danger zone before we closed this one out.

11-9.

Game 4: Vs. Brown
We got UP for this game. Finally returning to our underdog mentality, we kept the pressure on in this game and never let up, opening with two quick breaks. However, for all the trouble we gave Brown with our pressure on the resets and keeping them from hitting their primary deep option, they frustrated our offense with zone-to-man transition and converted on two more breaks to even it up before scoring a third as we called a time out. We came out firing and kept the intensity up, playing tight, hard defense, generating turns, and converting breaks. Probably the highlight of the game was Socks point blocking Vandenberg on a huck attempt–he wound up, and released the backhand straight into Socks’ outstretched arm. Priceless.

10-7.

A Night at the Routhier’s
Basketball. Batman Begins. Lasagna. Sweet, sweet slumber.

Game 5: Vs. Amherst College
We played pretty well in this game. Not 100% Dartmouth Ultimate, particularly at the very beginning, but we got up to speed before too long. Amherst liked to huck it. Like, REALLY liked to huck it. At one point I was covering a guy who was basically in the endzone with the disc maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the way up the field, pretty close (but in front of him), and they put him. He did come down with it, to his credit, and we learned our lesson from thereafter–dictate in, regardless of how far out the man is. And they stopped seeing success with their huck attempts, and we put this one away without too much difficulty.

13-6.

Game 6: Vs. Harvard
In quarters? Whoops. Guess this is what happens when you finish third in your pool. Harvard gave us a bit of trouble in the now-windy weather, throwing a box zone (4 man cup, 1-3, etc) with an extra man on our primary handler. This forced us to make some long over-the-top throws, which were fairly wide open–but again, with the wind, they weren’t sure things. It also didn’t help us in the early goings that despite there being 5 men around the disc our handlers’ general disinclination to go over the top meant trying to work it and giving Harvard short turns to start. Defensively we got our fair share of turns. I was covering Zirui, probably Harvard’s most explosive cutter, and he got his fair share of touches but wasn’t unguardable after a couple points to figure him out. Likewise we can match up well with most all of Harvard’s studs–despite going down early, we really battled back at the game’s end, with good old-fashioned man D really making Harvard work for every score they got.

9-11, but we wore Harvard down enough that they looked dead against Middlebury for 3/4 of their semifinal loss to them. I think Dartmouth can claim an ultimate (pun intended?) victory here.

That ended our Yale Cup run. Somewhat disappointing, in that we didn’t play particularly inspired ultimate outside of the Brown game and mid-late against Harvard. However, the weekend was probably the best result we could’ve asked for in terms of making progress heading into regionals. We’re not complacent. We’re ready to work again, and we’re motivated to work ’til the very end.

Watch out.