Thoughts.

Southerns.

No extra injury for me in this game, thankfully, though more came on Sunday. More on that in the next post…

Follywood.

So it was that we left Folly feeling more confident in our ability to play in conditions. A half-day’s road trip later, and we were off to Statesboro for Southerns. More on that next time…

aka “You spin me right round, baby, right round, like a (frisbee/tornado) baby, right round round round…”
aka the first of two Dartmouth tournament wins over the course of spring break.

As you may or may not be aware, Atlanta was smack dab in the middle of some nasty storm action during the weekend of Terminus. The weather cut games (and the tournament) short; a 2-hour delay followed the first two rounds (we didn’t have a game scheduled ’til the third round, and had only just finished warming up when the horn send us packing) and the tournament ended with a whimper as there were two more shorter batches of play before weather again forced games to a halt, this time permanently. Even polo fields have their limits.

Terminus Game 1: vs. NC State
Granted, our one game against NC state was shortened/interrupted by weather, but we played hard, they played hard, and we won 8-5 against them, making us the first team to beat them since we met (and beat) them at CCC in the fall. Maybe we just match up against them better than any other team out there they ran into in the intervening time. At any rate, with our 1-0 record on the day and our win being an upset of the tournament’s top seed, we went to bed Saturday night as the self-proclaimed winners of Terminus.

Sunday saw us heading to…somewhere. The name of the park escapes me at the moment, but it was a good hour and a half away from our hotel–at any rate, we played with several of the teams who were in power pools and were looking to salvage a weekend having come all the way to Atlanta. We were set to play three games but wound up with two, as Wisco-Whitewater left early to return home. The two games we did play, though, provided tight games and definitely made what had looked like a lost weekend into a productive one.

Georgia Invite Game 1: vs. Georgia Tech
Or simply “Tech,” as they often referred to themselves. This is a week+ ago’s recollections, so my mind’s highlights have faded. We won by a couple points, on the strength of our defense as always. Tight downfield defense and lots of pressure on the resets leads to a lot of turns.

Personal highlight: at one point we had a turn where I laid out in a failed effort to catch a dump pass. My defender, seizing the opportunity, immediately takes off deep while another Tech player runs up to the disc to huck it to him. He puts up a long floater into the endzone–at this point I’ve already gotten up and begun to chase maybe 3-4 steps behind. The disc sails into the endzone, and the Tech player is all but prepared to reach out and catch the disc, when I catch him, making a chest-height layout at full extension for the D. Definitely my best successful defensive bid in a high-level ultimate game. Other teams were apparently talking about how fast I was afterwards, which is pretty sweet. Yes, Cabo/Socks/others who scour my blog for self-calls, my top speed was higher, and yes, this is a shameless self-call. Like you’d expect any less.

Game 2: vs. Minnesota
Duck, duck, gray duck. Why gray ducks? Damned if I know. Why are we the pain train? It’s all arbitrary.

In contrast to the last game, in which we were in control from the get-go (I do believe we started off with a break against Tech), Minnesota caught us off-guard, with very quick disc movement challenging our marks with the throw-and-run. They jumped out to an early lead, but we battled and battled and battled our way back to force a universe point which we lost on. Despite the game’s result we were left with a pretty good sense of what we’re capable of, and it definitely affirmed the resolve and belief in the team to come from behind in any circumstance against any team.

Our third game would have been against Wisco-Whitewater, another team that’s right at our level and would have made for a great game, but they rolled out to head home.

After the day’s games, we drove to Charleston for a week of fun in the sun. Expect a short Follywood recap followed by a longer Southerns recap (the short version: we won!), potentially in two parts, over the coming day or two.

It’s gonna be one hell of a spring!

Day 1
Game 1: vs. University of Northern Texas
It was pretty apparent that we’d been playing indoors for a couple months. UNT is a moderately decent team, with decent disc motion, but by and large this team won by chucking it to their big receiver(s, though only one of them did any major damage against us). I’m sure they worked it up a few times, but by and large my recollections of their scores were on hucks to matchups–not open cuts necessarily, just straight-up throwing to the tall guy. And hey, if it works well enough, can you fault them for trying?

At any rate, we had a number of errors emblematic of the indoor-outdoor transition; floaty throws that can work in ideal, still indoor conditions that outdoors are mis-placed and D’d. Several drops. This may just be me, but I felt like we were all kind of getting used to not only playing in conditions again (albeit relatively calm conditions at this point), but also to playing in cleats again. My legs spent the better part of the weekend re-adjusting to cleats, though I suspect there was more to how I felt than that.

We dropped a tight one, lost by a point according to the Vegas Score Reporter (which is woefully lacking in detailed updates, by the way). Not a particularly satisfying result, given the way we played, but we were pretty confident in our potential coming out of the game, having outplayed them in every way but just failing to get an extra break or two to get the W (granted, were we rolling the way we’re capable of, we could’ve suffered a few extra breaks against us and still won).

UPDATE: we actually lost 8-10. At any rate, it was a close game.

Game 2, vs. Whitman

Up from (t)here. We put things together a lot more successfully in this game. In contrast to UNT, which was dominated by a large cutter, Whitman’s main threat was a handler-type, which we’re much more capable of dealing with. We were in control of this game from the get-go and never really let up, winning 12-6 on the increased consistency of our play (Whitman, incidentally, would later go on to play in the Quarterfinals of the championship bracket against those silly boys from Harvard (hi, McCarthy!). Funky format, eh?).

Game 3, vs. Wesleyan

Not a ton worth recapping here, we rolled this game 13-4. Lots of fly plays by lots of fly folk, our defense was pretty suffocating here as we got several D’s short and forced several throwaways/drops as well. Props to some of our rooks for stepping up and playing well this game as we opened up the rotation. I handled a ton in this game, a trend that would continue through the weekend. I also felt REALLY good this game. I don’t know what it is–maybe playing under the lights (this game came 3 rounds after our last, started at 5 PM), as I’ve had good games at Vegas before under the lights. That Vegas sun can be draining. At any rate, I need to figure out how to get to that state consistently, because in this game sprinting pretty literally felt as easy as jogging. Probably the fastest I’ve ever felt on an ultimate field.

Interlude: Night 1

Incidentally, the first day of Vegas also happened to be the first day of my life as a 21-year-old. We hit up the strip in style to celebrate–somehow Cobbles managed to secure a stretch hummer. A “20-person” vehicle, we got by on about $5/person squeezing something like 32 people in. Oh Schmidt, Crew can stand under my umberella, Leah is crazy…lots of fun sing-alongs on the ride. We then hit up the Tropicana to check in on our alums before rolling over to the MGM to hit up the casino. All in all, not a bad way to spend one’s 21st.

Day 2

Game 4: vs. St. Olaf

The golden “O” on their jersey elicited thoughts of Oregon, but they sure didn’t play like ‘em. They had a few successes, mostly running deep against us (probably my two best bids in terms of athleticism were trying to D hucks in this game). I don’t have a ton of highlights in my mind about this game, we played hard and we won by a comfortable margin. Personally, I kept handling this game, trying to improve my positioning…in terms of energy, in contrast to the previous night, today I didn’t feel like I had that extra gear–by no means does this mean that I’m slow, but it does mean that I have to work harder. It’s a lot less taxing to handle than cut, though, so that helped balance it out.

We took this game 13-6.

Game 5: vs. Humboldt

After a bye we played Humboldt. These guys had numbers on their shorts, so you knew they thought themselves legit. And indeed we battled through the first half, more or less trading points ’til half. We had a lot of inefficiency scoring here–we were, as usual, getting the turns, but getting the disc in once we got the turn proved a frustrating task at times as we struggled all weekend to find the balance between taking our shots and playing conservative (it really should’ve tilted more towards the conservative end, given how many of our deep throws–to open cutters as they may have been–wound up poorly executed (again, a sign of our largely indoor experience these past months). We took half and went into our huddle with a sense of fulfillment. We weren’t playing up to potential.

We came out of half and slammed the door. Our O never had to take the field as we shut Humboldt out in the second half. We got our turns–short turns, long turns–and we got the disc and put it in. I think this one wound up something like 12-6 or so?

Game 6: vs UCSUV

or whatever they’re called. The guys in black. Due to a mix-up what we had previously thought was a bye had been changed into a game, so we showed up to this one late and UCSE had informed us that, sad as it may be, the rules had “required” that they assess 3 points. After a bit of bitching and a bit of intervention and apology for confusion from the TD, we started with a clean slate (though still with maybe 1/3 of our roster showing up after the game had started due to the late memo re: game start.

Undaunted by the confusion, we instead came out with a fire lit under our asses, breaking UCSDeeznuts on our first or second D point and maintaining a one or two-point lead through much of the first half. Despite their being a hack-tastic, call-happy team, we kept battling and though UCSN tied it up at points we had been consistently up on them for most of the game. In the end, we wound up losing on universe point in a hard-fought match, with our sidelines as vocal as they’ve ever been and the energy displayed on the field keying perhaps our best game of the tournament as we lost 13-14. Despite the loss we knew we had the stuff to run with this team, and even having given it our all we knew there was still more room for growth and plenty of opportunities in the game to have really taken control. Up from here.

Highlights:
-Robinho with one of the nastiest layout grabs I’ve seen from him (or anyone) for a goal early on
-Dermo with a huge layout D, following which he was taken out by a UCLV player and got a black eye (best part of which was the player attempting to call a foul on the play, after Dermott had clearly gotten the D well before any contact and if anything, the foul was on him)
-Graham being a dominator cutting, with more than one domination deep.

Lots of great signs from the team in this game, bodes well for the future of the team and of the program.

Interlude: The Dartmouth Women

They were amazing, quite simply. Thanks to the large number of byes in the format we had plenty of chances to watch them–I’m blown away. They are SO good. So many talented players, handlers, cutters, defenders, you name it. Forget how well we did and how promising our season looks–THEY are the real deal. Typically Princess doesn’t put it together ’til just before regionals, but this year they’re already gelling and they’ve still got MONTHS to fine-tune. That’s a real scary thought.

Day 3 (we all crashed hard Saturday night)

Game 7: vs. Colorado

Losing to UCSF dropped us from the championship bracket of 16 to the so-called “ninals” bracket of 8, along with a few teams whose presence outside of the championship bracket was surprising (namely, Colorado, Florida, Oregon, and to a lesser extent, Illinois and UCSD). We squared off with Mamabird to start our day. As was the theme throughout the weekend, we played decently well, getting our turns, but failed to capitalize enough to take control of the game. This was a fairly tight game throughout–I think Colorado went up on us early but we hung tough and got our breaks back. The final score of 10-13 could have easily been 11-12, as the game was capped at 12-10 and an execution error on O led to the turn and the final score. By this point in the tournament I was starting to hurt–I had re-tweaked my ankle in a collision at the end of the UCSOB game yesterday, and was playing with an ankle brace on Sunday–and in this game, I got cleated going for a sky at one point (I got skyed, or rather, out-positioned) in the knee, which had me playing with a Charlie horse for the rest of the day. Rather than talking them up or asking out, I chose to play through it all, figuring that this was as good a time as any to work on my mental toughness and to learn how to play through it, with pretty good success I’d say.

Game 8: vs. Davidson

Not sure what to say about this game. Unlike Colorado, where their success was based in part on their superior athletes (though we still got our share of turns), Davidson did not have anything too impressive or intimidating to them. This game was again hallmarked by offensive troubles, as we gave the other team far more opporunities to score than we should’ve–as a team that likes to chuck it (like many of the teams we faced), we got our chances with the disc but each time they get the disc is another 50-50 shot at a quick score, so offensive efficiency is crucial to keep them in check.

I personally had a great game–I got to cut more often in this game to good effect. Thanks to my having handled all weekend I still had a pretty good bit of gas left in the tank on Sunday despite being beat up. I finally started getting my cutting groove back on O, and defensively I feel as thought I’m making pretty good strides on containing the deep threats and really dictating with my body positioning. Somehow we still wound up losing this game, 9-13, leaving us with a sour taste in our mouth as our ninth game was a no-show.

Game 9: vs. Oregon

Apparently their ego was too bruised from prior losses to finish out the bracket, as they pulled not only out of the 15th place game with us but also out of the game before that with UBC. Unfortunate, as we were really looking forward to a ninth game to get back into a groove and finish on a strong note. Personally I was feeling amped to push myself for one more game and really get to the edge of my physical capabilities for a weekend’s worth of ultimate, but so it goes. My ankle and knee certainly didn’t mind the earlier break.

Overall, a very successful weekend for the program. We’ve seen flashes of brilliance out there, gotten a taste of what this team is REALLY capable of, and that ceiling is still a ways up there–and with that ceiling so far we STILL managed to do as well as we did. Makes a fella really excited to bust his ass over the next few months and take this program to new heights.

Haven’t done this in a while, but general thoughts on the good and the bad, personally:

Good

• Defensive positioning, generally–still need to get better at pouncing after dictating my quarry to cut in, but I was very happy with my defense this weekend.
• Conditioning in a general sense–stayed strong all weekend, despite getting a little banged up. Never had to ask out of a point, though I did generally play fewer points/game than in some tournaments
• Health. The ankle made it ’til the end of day 2, and the knee never acted up on me (the Charlie horsed knee was the left, not my usual right nemesis)

Needs Improvement

• Handler positioning/cutting/mindset. I’m getting a better sense of where I need to be, but I need to develop a stronger drive to get to that position as the disc moves–I find myself following the play too often.
• Cutting sense. Particularly in points where I have to be the man cutting, I need to get a better killer instinct and take over the way I’m capable of. Additionally, a goal of mine going into the weekend (that I didn’t get to work on since I was handling) was to get a better sense of anticipation and timing for my cuts so that I’m getting open at optimal times. Still need more opportunity to do that.
• How my body works. I’m not sure how or what led to me to feel as good as I did in the Wesleyan game, but I need to figure it out and apply it consistently so I can be in top form when I need it most. I can play well enough when I’m not in top form, but there’s another tier I can yet reach.

Here it comes, much later than promised.

Other highlights/comments:
-WaHo returns (dinner after Sunday play). A brief prelude of things to come over spring break. My God, I can’t wait.
-PowerGel as tourney food. I’m not sold either way just yet. I think it was a nice little pick-me-up, but it’s caffeinated and I’m not sure if that contributed to my cramping late on Saturday (I suspect that had more to do generally with my food that morning and during the day). We’ll have to see how Vegas rolls. It also tastes rather bleh, so another downside there.
-The women gave us some AMAZING travel gifts. A pamphlet with all kinds of ultimate-related goodness, including a matching section of players to traits that had us all talking (do I really have dreaded pubes?) as well as a shitton of candy and foodstuffs. AND a banner, which we sadly did not display during our games.
-We got a little love from Cultimate just a few days ago talking about us as Centex hopefuls (we hadn’t even asked) after we’d submitted our bids to Vegas, and they also encouraged us to go to their Florida affair in January. They’re really trying hard to sell this Collegiate Championships Series, so it’s not surprising that they’d solicit us, but still cool nonetheless–and even cooler was a sentence in the email which said “we’ve heard nothing but good things from Florida about you guys and know that they’d love to see you [at the Florida affair].” We’re basically bff’s with Florida now.

We rolled into CCC unknown and underrated.

Back to studies for now, I’ll take care of Sunday/travel recap on another study break…

Oh man. Oh man.

This is going to be a great year.

We rolled into Brown having no legit tourney performance beforehand this Fall, and left having (in my opinion) proven to ourselves that we’re more than capable of running with any team in this region. As always, it seems, but there remains SO MUCH room for improvement, it’s almost silly to think about where we could be in a month, in a few months, come the spring. We’re at an amazing stepping-off point, and I’m beyond excited to help our team reach new heights.

At any rate, on to the recap…

Game 1: vs Wesleyan
After a relaxing bus ride down (interrupted only by a forced switch from a finicky long bus to a reliable short one), we got ready to play and came out strong. It was a cold and windy day, so all the games had a pretty solid upwind/downwind component to them, especially the earlier ones. We got started a bit late, and our first point (we started on D downwind) was long and hard-fought, as we worked the disc up the field a couple times, punishing their foolish choice to force us out with solid puts to deep cutters–while we didn’t manage to put in in on that point, our ability to get the disc from them (and their ability to give the disc to us) persisted throughout the game. Our failure to score going upwind did not.

They’re listed as Wesleyan-B on the SRT, which would explain a lot–I was sorely disappointed after hearing them get hyped up so much. The game was a good starting point for us, as we established some of our zone sets, began to apply some of our offensive strategies, and had some moments where we really ran and played extremely well. We won 8-4, apparently–I do believe that was in hard cap.

Game 2: vs MIT
I was sorely disappointed this game. Not with Dartmouth, but with MIT. Again I had looked forward to playing a good team here–MIT went all the way to the backdoor semis last year (where we beat them in a really, really good, hard-fought game to make it to the backdoor game to go), but this year it seems that they have not only graduated their two best cutters but they also lost their core handlers who were such a huge rock for them on offense last year. We threw a lot of zone again, and they really didn’t have an answer for it, with lots of short turns going upwind and downwind letting us rip this game wide open. It’s not surprising at all that Wesleyan beat MIT after this, given how they played against us.

At one point during this game (at least, i think it was this game–perhaps it was against Wesleyan) Misha sprained his wrist, taking him out for the weekend. Definitely missed seeing him play, but that we continued to roll over the weekend was a testament to our depth as a team. This is easily the deepest team I’ve been a part of at Dartmouth. Perhaps the A-team was like this in 04-05, but I really don’t think so.

Not too much else to say here. No highlights in particular leap to mind. 13-4 win, us.

BYE:
We chilled/slept on the bus. Thank you, Raines’, for donating 4x our allocated budget from Dartmouth so that we can take a bus to the occasional tournament!

Game 3: vs Brown-Y

A compilation of Brown-B and Brown-C (how that adds up to X and Y is beyond my algebraic understanding), these guys are better than your average B-team.

That said..this game was not close. Final score tallies were something like Carson 7, Bollox 3, Rest of Dartmouth 3, Brown-Y 2. Carson was flat-out ridiculous in this game. Granted, they couldn’t really cover any of us, but Carson was just on fire when it got to the endzone. I think he only sat out 3 or so points total over the course of the game. That guy loves ultimate, and I’m glad he does–we all benefit.

Interlude: Night at Brown

No good stories from yours truly this time (I can only get called “Dartmouth’s fastest man” so often) but a few scraps I picked up from gossip circles…

-”W, your scruffy beard tickled my face and my heart…give me a call if you’re ever in DC -XOXO, C”
-”Blackout!!!”
-Shmi leaping into the bushes after a lost rosham
-The dorm we were staying in apparently consisting entirely of steaky football players and scantily-clad women

Game 4: vs Cornell
Another day, another Dunkin’ Donuts stop. We had plenty of time to prepare before our first game–I commented at one point, while we had already run and gotten limber and were drilling while Cornell was still mulling around on their sideline that we had “won the warm-up,” and sure enough, we came out a lot sharper, opening with an upwind break on D and continuing to roll out to a 4-0 lead. Our D was tenacious, and our O, while not perfect, was good enough. We made the plays.

However, after storming out to our 4-0 lead, Cornell fought back a little as I think we mentally started to take them for granted. We went into half up 8-5, as I recall, and we talked about getting our grit back and really battling for every play in every point. And then we went out and took it to them, scoring three unanswered out of half to finish things in soft cap and close out the 11-5 win. Cornell is a good team, and especially given their athletes I had expected them to a) put the disc more often and b) make more plays, and while they did get their fair share of Ds and catches on floaty puts, they never seemed to find a groove on O–due in large part, I think, to our great D. When they went spread we were poaching smart and taking away all kinds of space, and when they went straight we contained their cutting threats downfield and forced their handlers into making uncomfortable decisions. All-around solid play by Dartmouth.

This was the game that got me really excited for the coming year–watching us run so hard and play so well here showed me just the capability that I think we can bring consistently on the field, and I think there’s plenty of room for growth on top of that, too.

BYE: We watched our women play MIT for a bit (Sam Snow, I don’t care if your girlfriend plays for them–know where your loyalties lay!), then returned to our fields to prepare for what would be our last game of the weekend. That is, of course, Harvard, whome we can never seem to escape playing.

Game 5: vs. Harvard

In an almost ironic reversal of our last game, Harvard went up 4-0 on us early as we had a few botched executions to go with a couple iffy decisions, and Harvard pounced on the turns and quickly struck to score. Despite the score, we continued to play our game, making a few defensive adjustments, pressuring the resets more and mixing in a couple other looks to take them out of their rhythm a bit (similarly to how they tend to crowd the lanes and mix in some varied zone sets to keep us on edge, including a clam set in the endzone off of a timeout). After their early lead, we fought back a little, but basically wound up trading points the rest of the game–we went into half down 8-4 or 5, and the game ended in their favor, 13-9.

Lots of great plays had in this game. Crambo had some bitchin’ moments on D especially (and played with the consistency and hucks of a young Sam Routhier!), and we had plenty of plays to rally around during this game–some great, team lockdown D at times, Will DeKrey and the hand of God pulling down a prayer, lots of all-around awesome.

Personally, I felt GREAT this weekend. The elusive second gear was not only present, it was persistent! It’s a good sign for my summer conditioning and speed work, as well as for the lifting I’ve been doing all term. The real test will come when it’s time to play 3 games in a row, 4 games in a day–we’ll see how the knee holds up then (it was on the cusp of being on the cusp of being a problem, but nothing I needed ibuprofen nor the knee strap for–though I did need some ibu for my ankle after I rolled it on Brown’s shitty slanted fields). For now, though, I’m feeling like I’m in probably the best shape (or at least the best health) I’ve ever been in at this point of the year, which is exactly where I want to be if this is going to be the best year I’ve ever had and the best year Dartmouth Ultimate has ever had.

Things are nicely on track for what has already been an amazing senior year to continue. Now if only my studies were as enjoyable as ultimate…

PV was, as always, a great time.

All in all, a great way to start off the year. The more I watch people play and the more I spend time with people off the field, the more excited I get for what’s yet to come. I didn’t think it was even possible to get more excited than I was at the term’s start, but every day proves more rewarding than the last.