Thoughts.

Game 5: vs. Williams
We came out with our zone gellin’, and in the high wind (the game had a decided upwind-downwind dynamic to it) WUFO had difficulty responding. As a team that loves to put it up deep and really play for the jump disc (or take the opportunities to make hucks that are run discs if those are there), relying on their athletes, forcing them to mull around and beat a zone, particularly in windy weather where simply trying to make a play deep is more problematic, was decidedly outside of their comfort zone. We opened up a fairly large lead and never really looked back, eventually shifting out of our primary zone set when we had a comfortable lead and continuing to generate turns by virtue of hard work in our man and secondary zone sets. We won this one 15-6, a great start to the day.

Game 6: vs. Ohio State
A really solid team, overall. We threw our zone with some success in this game as well, though we definitely wound up shifting more towards man as they worked it out (memory’s a little fuzzy here–this is what happens when I put off recaps for a couple weeks due to a start-of-term project). There was a LOT of tension in this game, tempers flared. At one point the game was maybe 11-9, 11-10 us and we thought hard cap was on–we scored the presumed extra point, shook hands, etc, apparently having agreed with OSU’s “coach” on the cap whilst the captains presumed we had a couple extra points to play–lots of dispute and some angry words between players later and we agreed to play to 14. Yours truly kept his composure of course; our very next point I was in on D and we forced a high stall count pass, a swing across the field…the disc carried out of bounds and one of our players caught it on the sideline as an OSU player was sprinting up, and, insisting that he had a legitimate shot at throwing a greatest (more heated exchange, debate on the trajectory of the disc, where it would’ve landed and where he would’ve needed to go, etc), we sent the disc back. I was covering their primary dump, who had been clearing out at a high stall when the aforementioned bailout was thrown. Having followed the disc, I was now behind him relative to the disc’s position on the other sideline, but rather than giving a “hey, I think we were here” bit and re-establishing my position, I figured, eh, I’ll start behind him and sprint past if the throw goes up. Sure enough, disc in, the throw goes up and I get the layout D on the line, getting our heads back in the game and out of the call as we convert the break and capitalize on the next point as well to end with authority, 14-10, rather than simply stemming the tide of an OSU comeback after our early lead.

This was also the game where, when going up for a disc in the endzone, I got hit from behind on my way up (I think Graham was behind me?) and flung upwards into the air. There’s a picture out there somewhere–I was flung upwards and forwards, feet first, essentially going from jumping to make a play to riding down a slide away from the disc as 4ish other guys are making a play some 5 feet away. I came down pretty hard–I hung a lot longer then I’m used to, but fortunately I’m fairly used to landing from great height at this point–and landed pretty squarely on my ass, also catching myself with my left wrist. Had I been flung more forcefully I’m pretty sure I could’ve broken it–instead I wound up merely sore for the rest of the day. Southerns Injury Count: 4

Game 7: Vs. University of North Carolina, Wilmington
If the OSU game was tense, then this game was simultaneously tighter and looser–UNCW gave us a hell of a game, with both teams battling back and forth throughout, but despite their reputation (and the attitude of several of our players in the previous game) we came into this game calmer and more prepared to defuse tension, and so wound up keeping our composure and minimizing the volume of heat exchanged.

Like I said, this was a tight game–we had moved to different fields at this point, and the wind had subsided a bit in addition to now being a crosswind instead of upwind/downwind, so man defense won the day. Our handler D set us apart from UNCW, as the relative ease with which we got our resets contrasted strongly with several of the tense situations we forced them into (and capitalized upon). We battled and were up, 12-11, before UNCW scored to force universe. We marched it up the field before a cross-field strike to Bonesaw in the endzone sealed our win and punched our ticket to the finals (!).

This game’s injury, the fifth and most serious of the weekend, saw me getting taken out by a UNCW player. Dominant cutter-type, pretty athletic build–and apparently pretty heavy, as lil’ ol’ 135-lb me was floored upon impact. I was sprinting for a swing as the disc was in the air. He was apparently just standing there (I didn’t see him at all, I was looking at the disc after all). I called a foul. He (and a couple teammates) protested on a couple counts, at one point trying to tell me that I wasn’t going to be able to make a play on the disc (had the discussion dragged on much longer, I would’ve been 50:50 on dropping a “my top speed is higher” line for the second consecutive spring break), but I stuck to the argument that:
a) a foul is any contact that affects continued play (getting floored would constitute an effect on continued play)
b) if the foul affects the play on the disc, then the disc either goes to the fouled (in a circumstance where the catch would’ve clearly occurred sans foul) or goes back to the thrower (in circumstances where the result is unclear. Rules Blog, go!). Ergo (“Ergo! I don’t know what that means, I go to a state school!” -one/several? UNCW players, as reported by sidelines) foul, disc goes back since they contested.

I don’t know if we scored or not, but I didn’t play the rest of the game (I did finish the point though). I was worried for a while that I might have dislocated or subluxated my shoulder. At any rate, I was icing after the game’s end and still icing as we began our game against Tufts in the finals. Southerns Injury Count: 5

Game 8: vs Tufts
Of course. Of course we travel all the way to Statesboro, GA, and play not one, but both of our regional rivals also at the same tourney. The Northeast is back on the rise, if the presence of two NE teams in the finals is any indication.

We went down early. It was pretty apparent from the get-go that both teams were fairly tired from their earlier games. Tufts has a good system, but they definitely still had some work to do when we saw them. We had a lot of miscue/misexecution turns that they capitalized on early, but they had their fair share of throwaways too–several of which were predicated in the late-game by their poor resets (combined with the way we play dump defense, they really didn’t have much there). I was watching from the side all first half as we went down (score was…8-5? going into half? 7-4 or something perhaps?), but after a brief chitchat with the tourney’s trainer (“Yeah, it’s a muscular thing. If you had a dislocation you wouldn’t let me come close to doing this with your arm. It’s tough with the way you throw the frisbee, but if you can deal with the pain you’re OK to play”) I jumped back in. I can’t authoritatively say that I helped–I promptly threw away two backhands thanks to my shoulder (localized to the deltoid, I had trouble with placement and touch on the long backhands) and a third turn besides, but I CAN authoritatively say that I threw the winning goal, a short scoober to a wide-open Carson in the endzone.

All in all, a very good tournament for us. We kept our focus high throughout, kept our energy up, and overcame several challenges on Sunday, most notably dealing with the tension between us and OSU and being down to Tufts in the finals. A great way to cap off our spring break, and a nice dose of confidence heading into the spring season.

You win some, you lose some. Sometimes you win ‘em all. This was one of those times. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Day 1 was pretty straightforward for us, with several games that were not terribly challenging and our hardest game coming from Northwestern, which we still won 13-9.

More on each game:
Game 1: vs Rutgers
Ariel (hi, Ariel! Thanks for introducing yourself at Folly. You may be the only reader I have outside of people I already knew) was really Rutgers’ only threat to do anything dangerous with the disc, and we did a good job of putting enough pressures on the handlers and downfield that he wasn’t able to hurt us to any large degree. We had a fairly open rotation at this point in the day as I recall. We went into the weekend wanting to play a full weekend of ultimate, never mailing it in against any team, and we did so successfully all day Saturday, playing two complete halves against Rutgers for a 13-5 win.

Personal note on this game: maybe late in the first half, I got kneed in the calf playing defense. I know, right? Kneed in the calf, what/how the hell? I turned more quickly than the cutter as he changed direction (I was behind him) and he kneed me.
Southerns Injury Count: 1

Game 2: vs Northwestern
We played NUT twice around this time last year at Ultimax, narrowly winning our first meeting and comfortably winning our second. This year we were better prepared for them, jumping out to a lead fairly early on with a few breaks and a rock-solid O-line in the first half (i think we went into half up 7-3 or so). Second half, we stumbled almost immediately out of the gate, as our O-line was broken straight away and gave up another break right afterwards, letting NUT creep back into the game and making the second half a bit more passionate as NUT tried to get themselves amped up enough to get back in it. We kept our composure, however, and our D-line (my D-line) got the breaks back as we went 6-6 in the second half to close out a 13-9 win.

This game, I was covering a particularly body-ful NUT cutter. I play pretty good body defense these days, getting in the way of the deep cut, but this guy instead of running around me, or trying to set me up somehow, would invariably move out into a cutting lane before stepping into me, often with an arm pushoff, and heading in. I kept warning him about the foul possibility there, and when I finally did call it he flipped out, giving me sass about “[I] was moving so it’s a foul on [me].” I countered with the fact that a) his pushoffs were taking away my capability to make a play and b) his elbow caught me in the throat on the foul call in question and we agreed to disagree. (Southerns Injury Count: 2) He came and spoke to me after the point and we reached an understanding that was much better than the somewhat contentious exchange we had on-field, so that was a good way to settle things before stepping back on the field against one another and a really great move on his part to come talk to me after the point.

Bye: Got lunch, watched the Discomfort Trolley. Man those guys develop. Some great freshmen waiting in the wings…

Game 3: vs LSU
We played these guys at CCC, and they were about as impressive then. We went into this game really focused on improving with every point we played, and our commitment to playing hard defense really showed in this game. Layouts all over, several layout D’s, and a point block by yours truly. (According to Dermo, later: “I was covering that guy for the second time, and after he got it the first time I was like, ‘this time I’m DEFINITELY going to get a layout D on you on the in cut.’ And then you went and point blocked the handler and beat me to it. Thanks a ton! Now I’ve got to get a layout D in the next game, I haven’t gotten one yet today!”) Incidentally, I also layout D’d Dermo’s guy at a later point.

This was the game, I think, where I had a layout D attempt that missed (you ever get those, where you’re right on top of a guy, but the disc is placed juuuust so so that you can’t get the D without laying out entirely around the guy? That’s what this was like), and as I got up after the bid, Chase was running past following his man and his knee caught me square in the back of the head. Southerns Injury Count: 3

Game 4: vs. Ohio
Another game we went into with keen focus and came out of as 13-4 victors. We really opened things up in the later stages of this game as I recall. I don’t remember a ton of specifics about this game (I’m getting some cognitive confusion here with Ohio st, whom I have very clear recollections of and who we played on Sunday). At this point in the day we threw a bit more zone (also in the LSU game) with very good success. Having a consistent group of people who play zone D together really enhances the chemistry and effectiveness of a teamwork D like that.

One part hat tourney, three parts scrimmaging/B-team tourney. Lots of wind, which was better than windless and gnat-filled.

Beach Houses. Beach. Ahhh, Beach. Sun, lots of sun. Lots of sunburning.

A wonderful week.

Ultimate-related components:

Hat Tourney
A pretty good time, though the wind really hosed the level of play. It’s a lot tougher to be a ballin’, play-makin bomb-thrower when the wind means that precision throws are tough and completions depend as much on the capability of the cutter as that of the thrower (in contrast to calmer conditions, where I could place throws such that the receiver’s ability is relatively less important).

Of course, I’m no Alex Crew, whose (mostly) unstoppable flick, upwind or downwind, carried his team into the finals and ultimately to victory. A “5″ on the 1-5 scale, indeed. Did I mention that he’s single?

Follywood Proper
B-teams had two squads, each playing a couple games a day I think. They didn’t place terribly well, but they made a shitton of progress in just a short while. Especially fun to watch friends of mine who’d never played ultimate before come on spring break and go from recreational tosser to on-field baller.

A-team, we(as well as the women) had a few scrimmages. We wound up playing Arkansas, Carleton GOP, and Oklahoma…we beat GOP pretty handily, were tight with Arkansas (I *think* we may have opened up a bit more of a lead late that game, but I can’t recall if we actually won or not), and dropped one to Oklahoma in some pretty windy weather as our glaring lack of outdoor experience manifested in numerous short turns. A good swift kick in the nuts to us, we spent a fair bit of time afterwards getting back to basics, working on throwing, doing some general zone work with specific situations, and dialing back in our dump-swing.

First of all, this day started off with better food. While we tried to mishmash from a grocery store on Saturday (which was fruitful for day-long food but terrible for breakfast–where’s my breakfast sandwich??), Sunday saw my car hit up a McDonald’s for some perhaps over-greased but protein-laden breakfast sandwich action.

Unfortunately, that did little to abate the stiffness going into the day’s games. Nate said it best as we got dinner a week later: we basically spent our studs in the Florida game. Not to say we (yes, we studs, including yours truly) weren’t still able and capable of playing, but it was clear that we were all below 100% from the end of that game onwards, extending into Sunday.

Vs. Illinois
We started off with the Illini. It was obvious we were still recuperating from the previous day through much of this game, definitely some lethargic play, and the boys in orange got ahead of us relatively early on, maybe 1/3 of the way into the game. Sidelines were huge in this game–certainly picked me up more than once when I was dogging it in the cutting lane or otherwise. Carson continued to be a machine for us here–that guy had to have played more points than anybody save perhaps Cobbles, our main handling cog. It’s been too long for many details to remain in my mind, but I do know that the late game saw us down I think 13-10, something like that, before we put on a late run, bringing it as close as 14-13 before they closed it out.

Illinois, incidentally, went on to lose in the B-bracket finals to our good friends from NC State.

A personal highlight from the game: on either that last point or the second-to-last point, I made probably one of the best plays on a disc I’ve ever made in ultimate.

The guy I was covering made to cut deep on me; I was maybe a step or two back, the guy was not a threat I had to respect deep. However, our D was doing a good job of frustrating them, and they put up the throw to one of the better deep looks they’re apt to get–guy cutting up the sideline with the disc trapped, as most of their hucks came. This one might have been a tough one to make a play on, too, but Socks on the mark got a piece of the throw, which took it from laser-y throw deep to a lofty throw much shallower than expected (I’m assuming the intent on the original throw here). As I turn around on the up call, I see the disc high and about to come over my head–basically unplayable if I let it go. So I leap and, getting as high as I can, use an extra bit of body torque to reach up and hook the disc down out of the sky. I’m not 100% sure, but I think I wound up doing a 180 flip in the air, going from chest up as I reached to landing on my hands and knees. Given that I was definitely stiff all game, that play alone might have been one of the best indicators of the payoffs of the training I’ve been up to all fall–having the strength to go up and get that one was not something I had expected to be able to do. Now I shall.

Vs Miami-Ohio

This team had something like 10 guys. Between points they’d have calls of “All right, anybody on the sidelines who can play right now needs to come and play!” A surprisingly good game though. Tired as they were, they looked early and often to go deep, with some success early on before we tightened things up on both sides of the discs, forcing more turns and converting on them. They also threw zone a fair bit, which was a good opportunity for us to work on that–they were not a very fluid zone, so simple rules of finding space and hitting the open man in space applied when popping/winging. I got a bit of time in handling, as did Misha as we mixed things up a little bit more and opened up our rotation a bit more to work fresh legs in. Not sure what the final score was, I want to say 15-10 or 11. For a team so shallow in personnel, they played very well, but it was obvious by late game which team had 10 and which team had 19 guys on the squad.

Vs Colorado

This game didn’t happen–again, our top end of rotation was worn out; we agreed to play Colorado in a looser game working in the new/underplayed guys more, but then they found Michigan a willing partner for a serious game and jumped to play them instead. We went to watch Wisco-Georgia in the A finals.

Highlights from that game:
-Wisco fouls a lot. More than one egregious foul was contested for justification to the effect of “you need to deal with our body on you on the play” which came out more like “I think since we were both vying for the same space…,” nevermind that said vying took away all chance for the guy in position to make a play. It’s no wonder these guys supposedly got 3 team misconduct fouls over the course of Sunday play.
(That said, there is something to be said for balls-to-the-wall D…being tight on your man like that means the pressure is always on, fouling or no)
-Some re-fucking-DICULOUS puts. At one point there were back-to-back points scored on the most unlikely of hucks–the first, I believe, was Georgia making a half-field, hanging blade to the pinpoint back of the endzone (the cutter did a hell of a job setting his body to block a play on the disc), followed by a similarly ridiculous put to the same spot by Wisco on the next point.
-On a stall call (Wisco on D–by the way, this game was observed), the Georgia player with the disc strongly contests. Wisco player (16? He’d definitely be all-region chippy/sassy, given various other plays throughout the game): “Whatever. I’ll just get you again.” Sure enough, he did–but given the fact that the thrower literally just stepped and threw a forehand there’s no way the second stall was legit. Guess the guy had to save face. (the throw went off uncontested after the next contested stall).

We left having upset some, rolled with others, and having established ourselves as a force to be reckoned with–most importantly, however, we established for ourselves that we’re capable of great things–and that we’re nowhere close to our full potential, a very powerful motivating force as we head into our winter training ready and eager.

Without further ado, onto the game recaps…

Vs. Texas State
We came out hard today. From the very beginning, we told ourselves that we were gonna give it our all on the field, and (perhaps more importantly), from the sideline, and the on-field intensity was matched by the sideline’s constant chatter, superb support, and continual cheers. Texas St was a pretty good team, but I don’t know that they ever had any kind of upper hand on us. We were running hard and working well–our defense was stellar all day, and this game was no exception, as we broke them at least a couple times in the early few points. Going into half with a lead, we resolved to keep the pressure on, and we did–Texas St. started to creep back into things in the later going, showing more resilience against our D and pressuring us a little bit more, but our studs were gellin’ and we put this one away 13-9.

We worked the hostack pretty well here–not only running it on O (I think I threw the first two scores, one on a huck to Watson in ho, the other on an around break/swing after transitioning to straight stack), but also causing chaos in it on D with smart handler poaching of the lane and shutdown D downfield. We pressured Texas into a number of turns, and they also came out a little flat with a few throwaways/drops in the early going.

Vs. LSU
This game was not as challenging as the last one. Looking back, it would’ve been a great opportunity for us to get complacent and let them stay in the game, but we rode the momentum from our last win into this game and again came out on fire. This team had maybe 12 or 14 guys? They were tiring a lot more quickly than we were and we never let up. The same themes on O and D from last game also applied to this game. No particular highlights leap to mind, personal or otherwise, we just got ‘er done, as it were. 13-3.

Vs. NC State
An interesting game, for a number of reasons. Namely:
-looking at their results, particularly against Florida on Saturday and in the other side of the B-bracket on Sunday, this team certainly seemed capable of really hosing us. But they didn’t–we were in control of this game from the get-go. As we repeated many a time throughout the weekend, “it’s all about us.”
-they got really chippy with their calls/fouls as the game went on. It was pretty apparent that they were frustrated with their play, specifically their inability to stop us on the mark and to really make anything happen when they had the disc.
-additionally, they got really annoyed by our sidelines. This was the game where our sidelines really started going–major props to our freshmen for spearheading that. Imagine being NC State, busting your ass to score a point–and then being treated not to congrats from your teammates, but to a cheer of “D-A-RT MOUTH!” from the team you just scored on. It says that we’re not afraid, and we know that our D was great and you got lucky this time. Add in our multitude of ridiculous pull/sideline cheers and you have a great recipe for frustration.

We continued to roll in this game. Again, the intensity was there, the sidelines were huge, and we were more or less unstoppable. Lots of great plays by our guys here, highlighted by our handling core being simply unstoppable, breaking the mark at will. Calls of “no break, no break–BROKEN!” were commonplace. Our handling core was thin this weekend, but they were rocks for us the entire time.

Highlight (lowlight?) of the game–one of our freshmen skys to catch the last goal of the game (we won 11-5), in what may have been his first touch of the weekend (and certainly his first goal), and spikes it with full strength, super-pumped for the play. I’m on the sideline, and one of the NC state guys just goes “Oh, that’s real classy, Dartmouth. How much are you up by?” I immediately start explaining the above–”oh, he’s just a freshman, he’s very excitable, he didn’t mean anything by it…” and more or less apologize to their whole team. Sorry, NC State. Sorry you couldn’t even cover our rookies.

(lunch break)

Vs. Florida
This was the game of the weekend. The final score was 9-6, but beginning to end this was our game. Point after point, we would lock down and force the turnovers from Florida. We had drops in the endzone, first-pass turfs, all flukes, to give Florida the disc back–few and far between were discs Florida got that they forced the turn on.

Our D, especially our zone, gave Florida lots of trouble. At one point we threw a clam, had the disc trapped near the back of their endzone–I’m the open-side in, and a pass goes up to a cutter streaking in wide as I start running over to pick him up–I get there first, make the layout, and miss by this much catching a callahan. We then proceed to turf our first throw after the turn and the work it up for the goal with the shorter field in transition. More or less sums up the game. In an hour and a half, one of the best teams in the country could only muster 9 points against us.

This was the point where we went from “good weekend, kicking the butt of some good teams” to “great weekend, establishing in our minds the potential to be truly great.”

Vs. Michigan

MagnUM picked up Northeastern transfer Will Neff this year, and his presence helped them tremendously in this game. The guy has monstrous pulls, not to mention being a dominant handler. He also gave Michigan some scouting reports on us, as they were clearly better prepared to deal with our game than the rest of the teams we’d played, pressuring our handlers a lot more. We bent but did not break–when the around was taken away/made difficult, we worked the IO more–but they converted on enough turns to squeeze this one out, largely on the strength of some great puts and some better-still catches from their athletes deep.

I was cramping up on and off at this point in the day–it had started at the end of the Florida game and came back in the early parts of this game–but I managed to be good to go enough to get in for a point that we won’t soon forget.

We ran a clam. UM works it up to half field, a little farther, and then we finally get a turn on a long pass up the line near the endzone. Chaos ensues in the transition, and the point finally ends on a long put to Nate Raines in the endzone, who was apparently not picked up in transition.

UM’s sidelines are shouting–”who the fuck is poaching?? how the fuck did this happen?” when finally, one guy figures it out.

“Wait a second. How many of you are there?”
“…”
“…there’s 8 of them!”

Oh shit. Did we seriously just play a point with eight men on? After much ballyhooing about what to do (quote of the point, Nate Raines: “yes, Will! obviously we’re not going to count the goal.”), UM gets the disc at half-field as though we had violated offsides twice, and then proceeds to score with relative ease. Turns out we had two breakside defenders (in their own words, “we had that side of the field locked down”). I’m still incredulous that we managed to play a full point with eight guys. This spurred many a discussion on ways to effectively sneak 8 into play in the future/alternative means to mitigate playing with eight–we could just let them play with 8 at some later point, or 7.5 players for two points (we decided that, say, having a guy on the sideline block a throw up the line would be like half an extra defender for that point).

Anyway. A hard-fought game, with a ridiculous 8-player interlude in the middle. We dropped this game 11-8, securing 3rd place in the pool (we were the 6 seed in our pool) and a spot in the B bracket against Illinois on Sunday.