Sri Lanka

Two days of low-level pickup. Sri Lanka doesn’t have much of an ultimate scene, but a few players are trying to get it off the ground. They run pickup several times a week in Colombo, and occasionally travel to other cities to play. A few of the players have been to tournaments outside the country (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia) but most are casual players.

The pickup itself was fun. The weather was really hot and humid. I didn’t have cleats, so I played in my barefoot shoes. There wasn’t much stacking or force-holding, but everyone knew the rules and played with a lot of spirit and competitiveness.

Malaysia

Diana and I picked up with teams for a day of ultimate at the Grizzly Open. Diana played with the local powerhouse Care Bears. I played with (and even captained) a team of pickup players from the area. We both had a lot of fun playing and teaching. Diana even won the tourney in a very close game.

Three days of ultimate, partying and foolishness. We played mostly ok, considering the shitty weather, non-seriousness, and future water consumption. Our ladies (esp Sachie, Hanna, Raha) were consistently great. The rest of us had our moments of greatness and bogusness, but overall it was a glorious time. We lost in the semis of the middle bracket, played 8 games on the weekend, and sang “Everything is Drinking” at least 50 times. Max also got birthdayed at the sushi place and Markham won the party.

Had an excellent time playing with the Molar Bears at Mosh this weekend. For a first-year team, we set the bar pretty high for level of play, level of fun, and finish in the tourney (lost in the finals). The wind was rough and the cold was somewhat annoying, but I had a lot of fun.

Highlights

• drinking tea on the sideline
• recruiting for the team turned out awesome
• everyone was very positive, had a lot of fun and partied pretty hard (though separately). need to have unified party next time.
• every team except Trey’s played pick-6
• the rollers-are-live rule was fantastic in strong wind
• my wind throws have gotten better, and my throwing turns came more from lazy throws
• we beat Trey’s team on universe
• jeremy skied 3 guys in the endzone while wearing fairy wings
• jeremy dropped a hand-on-hip hammer for an upwind break in the finals
• papa owes me a buffalo
• I threw a Rochester for a goal (to the break side to the front of the stack)
• I threw Diana a honey goal. She played with her boot on and still got Ds and was effective.
• the costumes. next year, no jerseys

Bicuspids bite, molars crush
Bears love cold. Let’s win Mosh

Takeaways

• if the wind is so strong that scoring upwind is tough, choosing the wind is equivalent to choosing O/D
• conversely, starting on O upwind is good for focus and mental prep. accept the challenge.
• we lost in the finals in part because of lack of leadership.
  • we were up 7-5 after half and playing D downwind. we should have broken for 8-5, then overloaded our O and sealed the deal
  • millersville adjusted to our strategy at half. we didnt. we should have tried to play more handler-y O going downwind, and I should have called handlers (scottie and brown) to play upwind O points.
  • I should have put myself into the cup to stop their crashes
• as the captain, I did a good job keeping the vibe positive but I did not attend to the team’s needs. I got caught up playing and talking from the sideline, but I needed to take a step back (multiple times throughout the game) and ask myself “what does the team need? what have I done already and what am I not doing yet?”
• catch my Ds, then run them back for goals
• continue to work on throws in the wind, esp flicks and hammers and short-range throws

Two days of camping and ultimate in beautiful Burlington, WA. This was basically mini-Nationals, as the top 8 teams from last year were there. A lot of unexpected results on the weekend - Drag'n Thrust only won 2 games, Cosa Nostra played better than expected, we finally beat Wildcard. On the whole though, we performed below expectations and finished last (8th) despite our wins against Wildcard and Mischief.

I played fairly well, though I did have some bad turnovers in the Cosa game and in our second Wildcard game. I also only played 2 points against Cosa and in our first Wildcard game. In the games that I had time to get into, I thought my cutting was fairly strong and my D on the turn was also good.

Things I did well:

• inside breaks
• threatening deep, then cutting hard under (break and open), then slashing for the IO
• patience near the endzone

Things to improve on:

• reduce bad decision throws. I only had two or so, but that’s two unnecessary risks.
• reduce execution mistakes. Had at least three here (two to Trey in the same point, probably tired mistakes). I’ve been working on throwing harder, I think that will help.
• don’t get caught looking away from the guy I’m covering. Focus on him and my footwork, but take peeks when I can. Even when I’m peeking, move to cover the likely next threat.
• better around breaks, flick hucks.

NY Invite. Haven’t been to this tourney since 2009, when it rained insanely hard and the games did not get called off until after the fields were wrecked. Maybe they haven’t been able to get the fields since…

I continued in my role as the primary O-line cutter. I think I played better this weekend. I only had 3 turnovers - two hit my receiver in the hands and one was a good look but a bit too low and too far for Benny to catch up to. I played fairly solid D after turns (and even got some D points in during the last game) but I think I could have done better. My favorite games were against Slow, Shuyamouf and CLX.

Lessons from the weekend:

• need to continue working on my throws, especially on putting enough snap on my flicks and on reaching out on my backhands.
• am getting better with the shape of my cuts, but need to start deep cuts from closer in.
• need to work on executing the proper dump cut. I went upline a good amount but did not come across for the IO at all.
• pay more attention to the mental prep and the instructions from captains. they set the focus, but it’s easy to forget what is said when you’re focusing on the current point.

My stats:

• 35 O points, 8 D points
• 10 goals
• 4 assists
• 1 D
• 3 throwaways, 0 drops

Excellent weekend of ultimate. I haven’t won a non-playoffs tournament since Philly Invite last year. Also, I really felt like our team grew and learned a lot this weekend. We had a lot of subs on Saturday and won all our pool play games (none were very challenging). Then we lost our crossover to SHUYAMOUF because we did not defend the deeps well. We started strong, going up 5-2. Then they scored 10 points in a row. We came back some with a run of our own, but it wasn’t enough to win the game.

On Sunday, all the Spinners left for their game so we were down to about 10 guys. But I liked that better because I got to play more and connect more with everyone else. We won our first game against Bang, then played Lions in semis. They took half 8-3 to start, then we got a break to go to 10-5, and then we scored 6 straight to win the game on 11-10 on hard cap. That was one of the most exciting comebacks I’ve ever been a part of. Devlin gave a great half-time speech about wanting to feel our team from the sideline and our defense refocused to execute our gameplan. We took away the deeps and the arounds, and they collapsed. I caught a great huck from Harrison to tie it at 10s and Katie hit Ben with a hammer to win the game.

In the finals, we played SHUYAMOUF again. They gained their MLU players (Sean Murray and Lucas), but Amp was on fire. We started off strong and never looked back. They only beat us deep one or two times, scoring most of their goals in the front corner of the endzone or on nice IO breaks. We did slack off on taking away the arounds - will have to work on that in the future. Our ladies were especially dominant, getting several nice Ds and shutting down their assignments. In the last few points, they were completely uncovered for multiple cuts in a row. The guys also played well. Bulb caught the winning goal by walking to the throw in the enzone - there was no one even close to him.

I had the honor of being named the mens MVP for the tourney for playing strong back-hip D, attacking the break side with my throws, and deciding to stop throwing my deep throws that weren’t working. Sara got the women’s MVP for repeatedly breaking the mark and for several heads-up Ds during the day. We celebrated with some all-natural chocolate milk and dinner at GuacamoleDesi Village. Amp!

Amp’s first tournament of the season. I’m still coming back from my tendonitis, so I only played half a day on Saturday. The weekend was a mix of ups and downs for me. I started off on a huge down, with two drops and three turns in our first game (which we ended up losing). The rest of the games went pretty well. We beat AG on Saturday, then won our quarters game on Sunday and lost a very close game to AG in semis. I caught a layout Callahan against AG.

Things I need to improve: cutting on O. My awareness is decent but needs work, especially paying attention to my teammates. I also need to learn to stop and cut faster and to throw better into the wind. Finally, fewer turns. Maybe it was just my first game outside, but the throwaways were poor decisions and that’s no good.

EDIT: also got bit by a tick sometime this weekend. This might come in handy later.

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.