Played our last regular season tournament: ECC in Seattle. We finished 3rd and played pretty well most of the time, but had too many unforced turns in the semis against Wildcard. I made good progress on my defensive focus, especially in that game, but still had two poor throwing decisions and did not play at 100% on every single point. I’d give myself an 8 out of 10 for the weekend.

Stats for the weekend: 6 goals, 2 assists, 3 throwaways (though I consider one to be only 50% my fault), 3 Ds.

Most of the team stayed until Monday night and spent Monday hanging out in Seattle. I really liked the city. It’s very green and close to nature. There’s water everywhere. It really reminds me of Portland, Maine. I know I’m a bit biased because the weather was nice (not rainy like it often is) and I spent most of the day doing fun stuff. But still, I’d live there.

Went to Melissa Witmer’s agility clinc at Edgely. It was focused very much on the hips and glutes. We started with a three-part warmup: moderate-speed longer-distance stuff to get our heart rate up, then dynamic stretching, then high-speed stuff to get our nervous system ready for full intensity. The last part was pretty new to me. It was very short-distance (15 yards max). The exercises were similar to what I’m used to (carioca, shuffles, butt kicks, skips, etc), but the focus is on speed and explosiveness.

After that, we moved into the drills. There were several drills: jab step, jazz step (jab step with the inside leg), 5-10-5 cone sprints and plyo cone jumps for minimum ground contact. The emphasis was again on the hips: which way they are facing, internal vs external rotation, full range of motion and turning the hips correctly in anticipation of a change of direction.

After the last drill, we played 4-on-4 mini till it got dark.

Did some Kung Fu Throwing in the park. Ellis and I modified the workout a bit, but it was basically the same thing. Also did 60 jump squats (x2 because of the focused throwing) and 50 pushups during the workout.

Played our first summer league playoffs game. We played pretty awful. We were missing a lot of people (draft picks 3,4,5,7,8,9) and we didn’t have the personnel to match up with Alex Peters' team. He had a bunch of tall people and a bunch of fast people, and we were pretty short and not great on D. Some points, we played well, but we didn’t really have a shot at winning without our full team. It was not a fun game (for me).

After the game, I did 50 pushups for losing to Diana in Ds-Turns. Then our team hung out and played Kings while drinking beer and run-nanas. Looking forward to crushing it in E-F pool.

Won Chesapeake Open yesterday. The competition was pretty weak, so we only played one team that really challenged us. That was Termite’s Entourage, whom we played in the finals. The weather was pretty windy and we failed to score many break opportunities. Some points, we would get 3 or 4 or 5 Ds but fail to convert them. We ended up winning the game 12-11 but we did not play our system well. I had two throwaways on wide-open throws that I rushed, including one in our last D point immediately after getting the D.

According to my own accounting, I finished the weekend with a D’s-Turns score of 0 (don’t remember if it was 3 of each or 4 of each).

On the plus side, I caught at least 7 goals on the weekend and threw 3 more. Diana threw me 3 of those goals, including one that I caught on a chest-high fully-outstretched layout. How’s that for a birthday present.

Played a summer league game against Venose’s team. I think they must have been missing people because we won pretty handily. Diana came a bit late, but once she got there, I threw her at least 4 goals. Overally I threw at least 7 hucks for goals and caught a couple of goals myself.

After the game, we (Diana, Birdo, Devlin and I) ran the 10-cut shuttle drill 4 times. On the last time, Birdo and I threw a disc to each other at each cone.

Played a few hours of Goaltimate at Edgely. We played one game to 5, then took a short break, then played again until it got dark.

Lost 15-11 to Doc and Lexa’s summer league team. Need less turns.

Afterwards, did 30 jump squats, played a game of cricket and drank margaritas.

Quick workout by the high rises with Diana. 10 sets of 10 jump squats interspersed between sets of 10-throw (flat, IO, OI, low, high, out, upside down and hucks).

Spent half an hour rolling and stretching after the weekend.

Played our first USAU Triple Crown event - the Philly Invite. The top teams in the country were in attendance - teams 5-16 from nationals last year. This was our first weekend as a full team with a finalized roster, and we stepped up our game bigtime. We took second in our pool with a 4-1 record (beating Odyssee, Mental Toss, Slow White and 7 Figures, and losing to CLX), which put us in the championship bracket. In semis, we took down Ghosts on a universe point goal. Then in finals, we avenged our loss to CLX and won first place. On the whole, everyone played very well. Birdo and Papa especially stood out for low turnovers, a lot of Ds, tons of goals (Birdo) and strong play against tough matchups (Papa vs Stout). Personally I played ok, but I had too many turnovers (even though Butter said some of them were good turns) and was not feeling 100% strong on Saturday (don’t know if it was the heat or my 2 weeks in Africa).

Firsts:

• My first real club tournament win ever.
• AMP’s first tourney win since 2009.
• First time AMP beat Slow White and Ghosts (at least the first time since I started playing with AMP).
• My first between-the-legs goal (against Todd Herman - game winner vs Slow White).
• First time in many years that I seriously cramped up while playing - both calves, right shin, right bicep.

Spent two weeks in Tanzania. The first week, we hiked Mt. Kilimanjaro. Most of the hike was pretty easy and we were pampered quite a bit. I felt like a British explorer - having a tea break before dinner and being around green canvas tents all the time. The summit night, however, was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. We woke up at midnight, ate a small meal, and spent the next six and a half hours getting to the top. It was dark, cold (below 0F) and there wasn’t much oxygen. I felt fine at the start (4800m above sea level) but after a few hours, walking became pretty difficult. The cold didn’t bother me as much, but the lack of oxygen was rough. I spent most of the second half of the climb just focusing on walking slowly. I was mentally repeating “left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot” to keep focused. As we neared the first summit (Stella Point), the sun started to rise. When I got there, it was glorious. I was (almost) at the roof of Africa. We took a short break to drink some tea with sugar, then continued on to the real summit (Uhuru Peak), which was over an hour away and 200m higher. This section was not as bad as getting to Stella Point because it was warmer, less steep and the end was in sight. At the peak, we took another short break and a bunch of pictures (including a mandatory handstand pic for me). Then we started our descent. Back at Stella Point, we took a few more pictures before heading back to camp. The descent took about an hour and a half. Then we slept for a bit, ate a little and went down another few hundred meters to a lower camp to make sure we don’t get altitude sickness.

Had two summer league games today. Lost them both after being up in each. We’re terrible at consistently playing well. Both games, we were the better team. Our players were faster and constantly open, and our girls were awesome while their girls were either savage and tired or didn’t do anything. Losing sucks.

Played a short game in the rain. Edgely was swamped so we moved to the Belmont Plateau fields. Ended up only playing to 9 because it got dark. It was very rainy and wet, so throwing and catching was tough for everyone. Gloves would definitely have helped, especially because our deep game was lacking. I threw several good backhand hucks but every flick huck attempt slipped out of my hand and fluttered to the ground. The game was close the whole way through, but Ditz’s team scored a late break to go up 8-7 and “take half”, so they received again and scored that to win 9-7.

Afterwards Vinny, Jean and I ran some shuffle-sprints. We did 8 total: 4 normal ones and 4 out-in-alltheway. We drank beer and ate carnitas and stayed up till 3am.

Played a few games to 5 at the Duck Pond before the thunderstorm kicked us off. Spinners season is done, so all those guys came out. Also a new girl named Claire. The games were good but the weather was really muggy, so it was kinda rough.

• Skater Squat: 3x8
• KB Swings: 3x10@35

4 hours of practice at Edgely. We spent a lot of time scrimmaging with a focus on defense. We tried several poachy defenses, different marks and downfield positioning. We also spent a little time on reading/catching hucks and throwing deep to women. My defense was not the best and I turned over a wide-open away throw to a girl. I was better on offense: cutting was pretty smooth and I threw a nice huck. Need to work on fitness and quickness more.

Played a game against Raynor’s team. We jumped out to an 8-4 lead at halftime, but then lost our focus and the game (16-14). Our O looked pretty disorganized during the second half. We weren’t getting good cuts and our dumps were not clicking. There were moments when we played really well, especially near the endzone. But overall, not our best game. Personally I threw away way too many discs. I really need to learn discretion if I’m gonna handle.

After games, we did Ben’s 25m shuffle workout. We ran 8 shuffles. I ran each in 25 or 26 seconds. I also did 30 burpees over the course of the evening: 10 after our game, 10 before winning the fields, 10 after.

Played a bunch of games to 5 at the Haverford Duck Pond. Mostly AMP people, a few Bitmapers. We played 4 on 4 the whole time. Overall I played OK, same story as always: too many turnovers.

The legendary Poultry Days tournament. Camping, carnival, chicken, beer, partying, chicken, ultimate and lots of chicken. The team names are chicken-themed, dinner is chicken and even the brick marks are chickens. The weather was awesome all weekend and the level of play varied from really low (I think we bageled our first opponents) to top-notch (finals was Team USA vs Team Canada). We had a relatively easy Saturday, only facing one team (Breasts and Thighs) that really gave us a game. But we pulled out a win to finish the day 5-0 and earn a first-round bye on Sunday. We also fit in a game of SpikeJam and many many games of Spikeball.

After games, we hosed off, got dinner and watched the USA vs Canada showcase game while drinking tequilla mango smoothies and spikeballing at halftime. The rest of the night was approximately this: cricken/middlebury with Duke, brief visit to the carnival for beer, return to fields for the dance party, back to campsite, bed.

Sunday started off with a big breakfast of bagels, biscuits + gravy, and fruit cups. We won our first game was against Tad’s Pitt crew, then lost to Breast and Thighs in quarters. It was windier that Saturday and we struggled against their zone. After being knocked out, we played an extra game against Canada’s U23 team. They went up 4-1, but we came back to win 11-9. I hit my head on the ground on a layout D early in the game and sat out the rest of it.

Overall, a great weekend.