Layout D’s made: 1

Times point blocked: 1 (This is why I should never make IO huck attempts)

Days of ultimate: 3

Total Games Played: 6

We had a nice schedule–generally the schedule mirrored the typical club nationals format, which meant each day had a manageable number of games instead of the typical 4-5.

Saturday we had first and second round byes, and our first game was sandwiched by byes (and against a local high school team), making for a nice way to get used to the Hawaii sun and my newly-met Philthy teammates before having a couple more serious games against UCSC (eked out a universe point win–did I mention we only had 10-11 bodies all weekend?) and Stigmata, apparently a team with a Revolver core (including Dartmouth ’03 Andy Fisher), against whom we shat the bed and lost something like 13-4.

Sunday brought power pools; had to win one to avoid an afternoon play-in game for quarters, and that’s what we did.  First game was against defending champ Ono; we gave them a much better game than Stigmata but still lost by several.  Closed out the morning with another eked-out win over Womanizer, which as I understand it arose from the ashes of last year’s Voltron–like us, they had some talent, but relatively few subs (in contrast to all the teams we lost to, which had both talent and subs).

I really started to feel like I was getting back to playing well these two games; had a woulda-D’d situation in the Ono game (sadly a second deep cutter got to the disc before the man I was guarding) and a legit layout D against Womanizer.  I spent most of the weekend floating between handling and cutting, and the cutting was starting to click a bit more in the horizontal stack too.

The beauty of the format became apparent after we won to dodge the play-in; with our two early games finished, we had all afternoon to enjoy the nearby beach (the fields are just across the road from the campsite, which itself is right on the beach.  Gorgeous).

Monday ended early; matched up against Ski Patrol, featuring the three Titcomb brothers and a few guys I recognized from Bashing Pinatas (as well as Elliott May ’06 –strong Dartmouth presence on the teams), 3rd-place qualifier for mixed regionals out of the Northeast last fall.  Got out to an early 4-1 lead; I was feeling great this game, finally felt like I was able to run at something approaching full tilt.  Ski Patrol, to their credit, didn’t get too flustered after our early lead and went on something like an 8 or 9-0 run to take control of the game, which they held on to and left us sitting around at the end with a sour taste in our mouth for having tossed the game away.

We made up for the early exit on Monday with some international exchange–yours truly, being the team’s resident Japanese speaker, hooked the visiting Japanese college team (FREAKS, out of Tokyo–I didn’t know the school, but they’re located in Shinjuku) into a noontime 5v5 showdown on the beach, which we won 7-4 or so.  They were definitely the most fun team to watch all weekend; there’s something about an alluring foreign well-practiced capital-T Team turning up to a tourney full of pickup teams…they gave quite a few teams a run for their money.

Great time all around; getting to travel to Hawaii and play in the sun for a few days during what has been a fairly dreary New Hampshire winter filled with microbiology and physiology was a much-needed and refreshing change of pace.

Scattered observations/impressions:

• I’m not as busted as I thought I might be.  Definitely have plenty of room to get back to peak form, but outside of tiring quickly in the heat (cloud cover was a godsend) I’m pleased with where I am right now.  That said, there were several instances of shoulda-D’d and need-to-cut-now-but-i’m-tired that will hopefully resolve with some conditioning–I’ve been doing pretty much entirely strength work at this point with a bit of GPP mixed in.
• Had a lot of fun playing and hanging with the Philly folks; ’twas nice to finally get last year’s jersey from Dusty, and not too terrible playing with him either.  Rest of the Philly guys were hilarious.  Here’s hoping to play again soon, and looking forward to seeing them around.
• For those interested in final results, Stigmata cruised through the finals against Ski Patrol after stumbling against Ono in power pools on Sunday.  All three of our losses were against teams that made semis.
• There need to be more women’s teams.  Only 9 (vs a full 16 men’s) made for more of  stagfest dynamic than many of the guys would’ve liked.  That said, the stagfest dynamic was still pretty fun.
• Parties were a good time, with live music Friday and Saturday nights and a disco set up Sunday (though in this dance lover’s opinion, the DJ could’ve done a MUCH better job; too many breaks between songs, too many un-danceable songs.  Crank that bass up and put a mixer to use!).
• Overall the tourney was very well supplied, with gatorade powder available at every water station and a big tub of communal sunscreen, and several tents set up around the field site in addition to the massive event tents providing plenty of protection against heat stroke (though I heard somebody still wound up passing out).
• Food was great; morning smoothies, pulled pork lunches (though that cost extra), and dinner options including mexican and curry…tourney fee is put to good use.
• Five Ultimate had a strong presence, with all of the Titcombs there (apparently the tourney was something of a company field trip?).  With it being Kaimana 23 they apparently went for a basketball aesthetic; all the tourney jerseys on sale and the ones the Kaimana Komittee wore were cut-offs; popular opinion was “meh.”  Would’ve been much better if they went all the way and did throwback tank tops a la MJ’s glory days.
• Fields were gorgeous.  Weather was rainy the first night and delightful the rest of the way; slept in hammocks at the campsite.  Pretty ideal as far as vacations go; could not have found a better way to spend my Valentine’s Day than with my truest love–the disc.

Related posts:

1. Spring Break, woo!
2. So, Spring Break…
3. Spring Break! Part 2: Follywood (3/17-3/21)