since my last post (ironically named t-it up–> t’d up at QCTU in finals, oops) we finished 1st at queen city, fourth at easterns, and 2nd at sIntex. Small summaries for QCTU and Easterns: sunday was a lot more difficult for both tournaments, QC was sort of a confidence booster, more of a reality check then Easterns really put us in our place. we saw ourselves in finals before the weekend, and in the wisconsin game came out flat and they came out firing. we were playing to keep up instead of taking control of the game and it (along with a lapse in keeping track of halftime) cost us semi’s. it was surreal, wisco knocked us out of nationals last year and then handed us our first loss of this season, no one knew how to feel but we knew we didnt like it so our eyes were set on Austin…
spring break made me nervous going into this huge tournament we’ve never been to, with a solid 10 players at practice two weeks prior, i had very modest expectations (also having to do with a very lackluster performance at easterns, individaully speaking). i felt a little burnout after prepping so long for easterns* quasi-tournament directing wise and captaining/playing wise, it was and is a blur. then open easterns came the following weekend and i got to spectate and observe and it reinstilled my absolute love for ultimate, just getting the chance to watch notoriously great players was the right perscription** to cure burnout. i dont really remember the practices leading up to that week but we’ll say they were pretty standard.
friday: ate a burrito the size of my face (the whole thing, logan said i couldnt do it and im not one to turn down a challenge) and squired about DT austin running into some of oregon in a food instigayted hangover. fast forward to hotel–michigan fab five on espn–cutthroat game of a disc version of silent speed ball across the hotel pool–sleep.
saturday: continental breakfast with waffles the shape of texas, i will give this at least 10% credit for our success this weekend. first round UCSB (previous to this we’re 0-2 in my time playing thusfar). we wanted this game so badly, i am a firm believer in starting your day off in a win, it does wonders for morale. they are a great team and our man vs. man prodcues some great match ups. finney in pool play was not the finney in finals, the finney in finals was the best player of the weekend in my opinion*** went on to win 15-11, faced cal next…long story short for that game: played very similar to the wisco game in easterns, we were scoring to keep up not to win and it ultimately produced a loss. also, an-chi is dirty, kelly did an excellent job playing man d against her, it helped close the gap significantly. i hope to see them again in the future, with a better mental attitude. onto arizona, i had thus far played every point of the previous games and was exhausted. we play a very tight rotation and needed that end of day bye so we could not look past arizona in the slightest, esp. if it came down to point differential (luckily, it didn’t) #5 is a phenominal player who i hope is playing elite club somewhere, she would produce great things. end of day: 2-1, thanks to UCSB for beating cal by a larger margin than cal beat us and we beat SB. crazy 3 way ties in A and B pools, some rearrangin’ in C and D pools lead to interesting pre-pre quarters.
black sunday: 6 AM wake up call fast forward to continental breakfast (sans texas waffles, insert fruit loops and bagel) fields at 7:15, start to put cleats on and take a warm up jog…not happening until i see the trainer about these pesky blisters from new cleats**** long trainer line=not touching a frisbee until the first pull of prequarters vs. Northwestern. To put lightly, i was god awful in the half. i had the first 4 turnovers, got scored on deep several times (ended up punting a cone, as logan describes, that narrowly missed her head. the trajectory was not intended, the force behind it was) ended up 12-11 thanks to the caps. onto stanford (whm we hadnt seen since nattis ’09, prequarters, lost 12-5 or something like that) we knew they would come zone and we knew we wanted to throw zone which is pretty much exactly how the game went. we put the pounding on late in the first half with a couple crossfield hammers and patient zone O and aggressive junk defense (oxymoron?) came out of the second half with the same intensity, let up a bit a little later, then finished it. onto semis. iowa, we hadnt faced them yet, they won our home tournament and had been described to us as unstoppable (robyn fennig mainly, but it takes two to tango ya know, more like 14 in this case) they were very good, we threw the zone D from stanford game and they shredded it. we quickly figured out they would be a man team for our D. they came zone and with sara casey at the wheel, with kelly and i back, mich anne marie and patti popping, we efficiently moved the disc up the field and scored. patti was on fire, she scored our first 6/8 points. m-a-c-h-i-n-e. robyn fennig is not overrated at all, she is great on both sides of the disc (she grabbed a disc that was about 3 inches off the ground coming from a layout D on our side, frustrating and dirty at the same time) i thought her and sara casey were a great match up, with SC’s arm span that of a small engine plane. her throws were mostly contained to the open side, key word: mostly. it was a point for point battle all the way to hard cap, final score 12-11. onto finals.
skirts part 2: first play, we’re on d playing man, skirt #1 picks up the pull to #2 to madras with a backhand drive to finney. i was on finney. she is fast. feeble attempt at a layout intimidation D ( i missed my chance to actually get a D about .5 seconds earlier…remember: leave your feet, be punctual about it) 1-0 SB. i will sum this game up like so: i believe that our defense was very good, very very good. we could get the D but what we did with it was another story. this is when playing 70 points the day of finals takes a toll on your offense. physically you may be there running on adrenaline, mentally you are checked out. we just couldn’t cut for each other. nothing is more frustrating than not having cuts when you have the disc, unless you are the person cutting and you can’t get open. you can’t help out your teammate who is getting ever so closer to the t in ten. i came out for the first time that day per danny’s request and may or may not have gotten a littttle choked up, i was not putting up the fight i should have been. we went into the half with 1 point to their 8. hacing just watched finals of club championships 2008 when fury came back from a similar deficit, we went out into the second half with the goal to just be better. play better, and for the most part we did. that half the score was our 6 to their 7, making the final score 15-7 SB. 2nd at centex is nothing to be upset about, and we did it with fans (props to uva, unc, oregon and iowa state, we will undoubtedly return the favor at sectionals/regionals and hopefully nationals).
i just hit preview for this, it is “that” blog post that i never read that is really long and my attention span cant handle. hope you took “your” adderol! oh yeah, i saw THE jessica makowski, and i saw her dance in front of a lot of people. can you say highlight? yaaaAAAp
*how michelle ng does what she does and…still does it, amazes me. us ladiez gotta lot of thanking to do to her for making women’s ultimate what it is right now and where its heading.
**must take with a few gin and tonics
***i learned this weekend that i put on a terrible mark, added to the long list of things to work on, bumped to the top based on amount of times broken (directly proportional)
****i will never wear soccer cleats again, currently donning warrior lax cleats…bro
