3 days of gorgeous weather, high-level ultimate and awesome partying … or at least that’s the pitch. Unfortunately, this year did not live up to expectations.

Saturday

The weather on Saturday was not bad. It wasn’t sunny, but at least there was no wind and the ground was fairly dry. We played 3 teams - Maui Mana (a local team), Colony (an Australian club team preparing for worlds), and Club Prince (a Madcow-Bravo combo team). All the games were lopsided. We crushed Maui and got our ass kicked by the other two. The game against Prince was a bit closer than the other, but the finals score was 15-7 or so. We didn’t play great.

Sunday

The weather got worse on Sunday. There was a lot of rain and the ground was very muddy by the time we played (11:45am start times today and yesterday). We played another local team and wrecked them, then played KUT (Carleton Alum) and got killed again. I skipped the second half of the first game and the first half of the second game to pick up with Ski Patrol, which made my day much more interesting. They were mostly Seattle guys with a few outside pickups (Brown, Zargham, Lucas). They play a very different style of ultimate - much more relaxed and dynamic, but still focused. I wish I’d had more time to play with them. I did get to play half a game aginst Sofia Freaks, another unique and interesting team that I love playing against. They went up in the first half and took half 8-4. After I left, Ski Patrol rallied and won the game on universe point.

After pool play ended, we played a prequarter game against Stanford Bloodthirsty. The game was close the whole way, with them leading by a bit, but we got a late break and won 13-12 when the game got capped. Stanford had a great deep game and their primary handlers played very well. We sucked on D and were decent on O. Everything was pretty sloppy. We also had a 15 min break when one of the Stanford guys hurt himself. In the end, the game got capped and we scored on O to win it.

Monday

Winning in prequarters earned us the right to play Ono in quarters. By this point, the fields were completely torn up and muddy. The wind made the game almost unplayable (it blew over the tournament tent early that morning) and most of us had trouble throwing and catching. Ono had several strong throwers, and they were able to convert several upwind breaks, which quickly lead to downwind breaks. It was shitty all around and we lost 15-6 or so.

Overall I played very well for the first two days. Ignoring the Ono game (it was terrible ultimate), I had no throwing turnovers and just one drop - a throw from Bhavin in the endzone that should have been an easy catch but I misread it a bit and then dropped the catch. I mostly cut, but did some handling and played a bunch of defense. I’m especially happy with my offense. Maybe playing O line for Amp is a good move.