Another indoor double header. Won our first game handily, then eked out a last-second win on universe in the finals. Zoya came again. She’s getting a lot of ultimate-watching in. Hope it rubs off on her (just the good stuff though).

Two back-to-back games of indoor. Diana and Zoya came too, so we took turns playing and watching her. We lost the first game (didn’t have any women at first, then only had Diana) but won the second after reenforcements arrived.

Another year, another nationals. This year it was back in Sarasota. The weather was hot, but the location is the best - the fields were beautiful, the ocean was amazing (even at night, and even despite the jellyfish), and the Daquiri Deck was even better than I remember it. The only thing lacking was our game. We lost all our games on Thursday (9-12 Blackbird, 11-12 AMP, 11-12 Toro), then won the next 4 games and clawed our way back into the top 8 before losing the 7/8 game to Drag’n Thrust (13-10 Love Tractor, 14-11 Steamboat, 12-11 Blackbird, 15-9 shame, 9-15 Drag’n). So, no finals appearance this year, but we did win the spirit award, which is almost as big.

Personally I played fairly well. I was only in 2-4 points a game, so I was fresh overall. I had 3 turns total - a drop against AMP and two throwaways on hucks. Both were good decisions, decently well-thrown, and just a little off the mark. We talked about taking calculated risks, so I stand by them. I scored 5 goals, threw one, and got a D. I felt I could have contributed more, esp filling in as an O line cutter when our O was tired (like the last game on Thurs), but we ran a fairly tight rotation so I did my best to help from the sideline.

Another nationals highlight was watching AMP make it to the finals for the first time ever. They played really well, but ended up losing on universe to Mixtape in a very exciting game. Despite that, I’m really happy for them. Their team is very young and they’ll be strong for a few years at least (if they stick together).

Finally, the best part (as always) is spending time with people you know and like. I had a great time bonding with the team (chai time, skinny dipping every night, getting kicked off the beach at 4am, dirty dancing at the Daquiri Deck, spikeball vs Truck/Scandal) as well as people I don’t get to see that often (again at the Deck, and at the fields, and the beach, and random places in between).

Hope to do it all again next year.

Brought Zoya to her first ultimate game. Found some parents on the sideline who agreed to watch her while I played. She was great - no more stranger danger, all smiles and giggles. Our team crushed the other team, who was on the second game of their double-header and didn’t have many subs. Afterwards, we went out to lunch.

We came, we saw, we conquered (except for Slow). We started the weekend off in classic Metro North fashion: by ignoring everything we practice and jamming it in the jamhole repeatedly. But we eventually got our shit together, moved the disc well, and raised our game. The crossover with Slow was an epic back-and-forth game, and we even got the D on the goal line on universe and had the opportunity to win it, but a nice D by Todd got them the disc back and they converted for the win. On Sunday, we had a really close game with Xist - another universe-point game, but this time we won it and qualified for Nationals. We played Slow again in the finals, but it was just for seeding and half our team sat the game out.

Peronally, my main errors were on hucks. When I’m rushing my huck or I feel like I have to throw it (when we call Sausage), it never goes well. When I’m throwing in a power position or it feels natural, I’m great. Besides that, my game was great - solid defense (including several points where not only did my guy never touch the disc, but I felt like he was never open at all), strong cutting, and consistently moving the disc to the breakside. My only turns were 3 hucks, and only one of them was a bad decision. I even felt strong and fast all weekend, never feeling like I cannot keep up with my defender or cannot keep cutting well.

A weekend in Boston with Metro North 2017. I’m in the worst shape ever going into a season, with several nagging injuries. Despite that, I still played pretty well. My two turns were both poor-decision, poor-execution hucks. I also had some mistakes on D, getting beat badly a few times. On the upside, I had 3 Ds including a fall-over handblock on the mark, I threw some nice throws and hucks, and my legs felt ok at the end of Sunday. Even running the nine 40s at the end (one for each OB pull all weekend) felt pretty good.

An exciting weekend for Metro North. We won the region, beating Slow White (the top seed, and #2 in the country) 15-13 in the finals. That game was one of the cleanest and most focused games I’ve ever played. Our O line only had two turns, and only let Slow convert one of them. Our D line converted two breaks (I caught both of them :-) ), and had a chance to convert at least one more. I felt like I was completely in the zone and focused on the game. I did talk to people on the sideline, but I barely remember what I said.

Before the finals, we had a few close games with 7X and Wildcard. I played fairly well in those too, though I had one or two turns on Sat and missed some D opportunities.

6 games across 2 days. We didn’t have many players, and lost some to injury as the weekend went on, so I got a lot of reps. I tried out KT tape for my knee, and am happy to report that it did not bother me at all on Saturday and only hurt a little on Sunday (whether this correlation implies any causation or not, I still don’t know). I had more turns and less Ds this weekend than I did in Colorado, but I also had to handle more since Lucas wasn’t there and Liz is out for the season. I esp played poorly against Amp and Drag’n Thrust, with several turns in each game that were caused by rushing a throw - my main problem area. If we converted just a few more breaks, we could have won those games (or at least kept them competitive).

I threw the longest huck for a goal of my life - an 80-yard endzone-to-endzone huck to Mari. To be fair my mark was slow to get set so I had a wide-open backhand, but it’s still a nice achievement.

Another glorious OMK is in the books. Highlights from the weekend:

• Darts and credit card roulette for spin-the-wheel on Friday = 4 hours of sleep
• First point of Saturday - we have 4 players there on time
• Pool(tub) of shame
• Gooch wears a $90 shark wrestling singlet
• Games got rained out around noon on Sat
• Circling the wagons, playing dice and drinking, car-swapping relay races
• Front seat must be naked
• Day drinking and pizza box at Mike’s
• No one is allowed to take off clothes when they shower
• Dinner with Seth & Jennie
• Anti-thumper at Wolff’s
• After-party at Liz’s mom’s house
• First game on sunday - opponents warm up for half an hour, we win 13-4
• Tom Kirby’s 15-year-old son Jack picks up with us for the day. He’s pretty good for being 15.
• Second game - we fall behind pretty hard, rally the troups, eke out a win
• I throw Dana a terrible floaty huck, do my penance by drinking a sip from the pool of shame
• Squirt-gun shootout with a 4-year-old
• Semis - game is very upwind/downwind, we can’t catch a disc in the endzone to save our lives, lose 13-9
• Last point of semis: I catch a nice half-field throw from Brown, dish it, drop the next pass. Handler picks up, I handblock his hammer, cut to the endzone. Brown throws to my S-cut, it gets Ded, I lay out a million feet to catch it. Rush to stand up and throw the goal, get footblocked. About 30 seconds of my highest highs and lowest lows for the day.
• I threw and caught at least 1 Rochester each
• Post-tourney burgers at Jumping Jacks, grilling at Liz’s mom’s, home by 8pm

Bears finish together

6 games over 3 days at the US Open. We did really well, winning our pool (despite a last-game loss to Polar Bears) and then losing a close game to Slow in the semis. Personally, I wasn’t at the top of my game because my toe was killing me, but it actually got better throughout the weekend and I played my best game against Slow. I even got a shoutout after games on Saturday for continuing to cut hard even late in the day/tournament.

Besides the ultimate, I had a lot of fun hanging out with the team. We drank beer, went swimming in the ocean, played games, watched ultimate, and enjoyed each others company. It was a great start to the season.

Low-key summer league game. I wasn’t gonna go but decided it’s good to move around some. Ended up being great weather and the ideal amount of running. Even my messed up toenail wasn’t a problem (good to know for this weekend).

Two long, hot days of ultimate with not many subs. The D line guys were practically savage all weekend, especially Saturday. DJ left halfway into the second game, so the four of us (Lucas, Billy YoungJo, and I) played every D point after that. Occaisionally one or two others would sub in and help out, but that was basically it. On top of that, I did a bad job taking care of myself (not enough water, salt and sunblock, not enough sleep and food the day before). In one of the very last points of the fourth game, I cramped up super-hard (both hamstrings and a calf) and had to lie on the ground for 10 min before I could get up again. Thankfully the game ended and we were done for the day.

On Sunday, I took extra care to eat and drink a lot (I also ice-showered the night before), and felt way better. We were still low on numbers, but DJ returned and John G’s hamstring felt better so he played a few points. Despite playing the whole previous day, I felt less tired after Sunday than I did after Saturday. The caffeine and electrolyte pills probably helped too.

Game-wise, I guess I played well. I’m not happy about my lack of forced Ds and how tired I felt, but its hard to compare that to a normal game where I’ll have proper subs. I didn’t throw many turnovers, which is great for me, but I did make several fatigue-induced mistakes (not helping out on a few discs, getting beat upline, dropping two discs that I had my hands on, some throwaways). Then again, I played solid defense the vast majority of the time. Even in the last game, I stuck close to my guy a lot and ran a few nice switches with Billy. I guess my main problem was summoning the will to cut hard after a turn, esp late in the day. On the points where I forced myself to go hard, we usually did well and scored quickly. On the points where I was too tired, it was hard to make things happen. I gained a lot of respect for the other guys on the line (esp Billy) and their nonstop effort after turns.

I picked up a few minor injuries (a bruise under my big toe nail, some soreness in my tendons), but my tendonitis doesnt seem to be bothering me today. I hope it still feels good after US Open next week, and continues to hold throughout the season.

Played a close game against Alex Morrone’s team. We started off slow but came back at the end to win it 16-14. I played an ok amount at first, but then played most of the last few points to bring us back on top and take the win.

Straight from there, drove to Porcfest for two days of camping, LBRY and freedom.

7 games across 2 days at Windmill. Played the Portuguese and Polish nationals teams, club teams from all over Europe, a team from Israel, and one US-ish pickup team. We were very solid for a pickup team, but were inconsistent and plagued with injuries. Finished 17th with a 4-4 record - a lot of close losses and hard-fought games.

Personal highlights include a big layout D, several nice hucks, solid handling and cutting all around, and some good lessons learned about leadership (mostly: if the team expects you to lead, you have to lead. Even if you like to keep it loose, you are in charge and need to provide direction)

The best part of windmill is, or course, the people. Our whole team was talented, extremely friendly and nice. The Portuguese team was awesome (my fav game, I think) and I saw a bunch of BDP friends. I also made some new friends that I hope to see again sometime. Maybe windmill ‘17?

Played a fun hat tournament run by Slow White. It was great to play with some people that I only get to play against (Miller, Ralph, Davis, etc). The level of play was reasonaly high, but there were some newer players (league and college players), so it was more fun than intense. Still, it was a great workout. I got to handle a good amount and cover some great players. Plus our team won the whole thing and got a last-round bye. What more could you ask for?

Tryouts went 3-6pm Saturday and then 9am-noon on Sunday. The format was mostly this: warm up, a bit of cutting/throwing drills, 3v3 mini, 4v4 full-field, 7v7 full-field. I had a lot of fun both days, playing against good players and being outside. The weather was a bit cold and rainy today, but it really was not a problem.

Personally, I feel a bit more tired that I should (and felt somewhat more tired throughout the weekend then I think I should). I’m chalking it up to early-seasonness, but I don’t think I’ve felt this way in previous seasons (even last season, when I took 5 weeks off in April-May). However, my flick hucks were pretty good for most of the weekend (only had one mistake), my breaks were solid, and my D was good for the most part. I had a lot of trouble with Korber and Match, but did a good job on just about everyone else. My main problem was my backhand hucks (I’m 0-for-2) and timidness in the air (got skied a few times when I shouldn’t have). My I/O flick was also a bit shitty at times during mini, but that’s probably due to fatigue for the most part.

Two days of semi-serious ultimate in tiger costumes. Calvinball was a prety stacked team, but we managed to play quite poorly. We lost some games we shouldn’t have (including one on universe after being up 8-2 at half), we failed to take advantage of our 2-pointer rule, and we were overall not very focused. But that’s ok, it’s fools fest. Personally I tried not to play much, and I was mostly happy with how that went. I got a layout D on a hammer, caught a two-pointer, caught a Callahan on a scoober dump, and only had a few turnovers. It was quite windy, especially on Sunday, but even my “start-on-O-upwind” strategy failed to backfire :-).

Played an hour of indoor with the Colt guys and Baywatch girls. We were pretty low on numbers and we were playing make-it-drop-it, so by the end we were pretty dead. It was still fun, and I’d do it again.

Record low attendance (4 guys, 6 girls) meant lots of PT for me. I was extra tired by the time we finished. Maybe its the two tough games yesterday, maybe its the focus on lifting over the past few months. Either way, time to take a day off tomorrow.

Two solid indoor games. The first was against UConn (Liz/Saipher/Mary/others). We didn’t play well (start off down 5-1) and the game was quite chippy overall. We eventually clawed our way into the game, switched to backhand to prevent their easy hammer scores, and went up a few points at the end. As time was running out, we buckled down and closed it out to win by 2.

The second game was the best game of the season. We played Colt/Baywatch. They were the favorite, with lots of solid club guys and a deep roster. They only had two women, and we tried to take advantage of that, but I think it was pretty even. The whole game was very close and very spirited. We forced middle the whole game (props to Bosco for the brilliant idea) and made sure we were subbing super fast. We even created two subbing groups for the second half to make sure our lines were well-balanced.

I think the force middle really got to them, because their offence (normally very fast-paced and trigger-happy) slowed down a lot. We often forced them to throw 20 or even 30 throws before they could score. Big props to the improved defense from everyone. On offense, Shockey dominated. He probably scored half our goals that game. Bosco started throwing him floaty dimeballs, and eventually I found my stride and hit him on a few nice hucks too. I think he only got beat in the air once.

When time ran out in the second half, the score was 20-20. They had just scored, so we decided it would be a universe-point game with us on offense. We subbed in our best line and started working the disc. After 3 throws, Bosco unleashes a floaty hammer to CJ for the win. It floats a bit too long, and gets D-ed toward me. I catch it and throw CJ game-winner. A very exciting end to a very good game.

Team Wins

• Force middle. Damn smart.
• We finally subbed at the right pace. I’m just as guilty of staying on too long as anyone. I’m happy we finally did it right.
• Great execution on the force middle. Sideline presence was strong and got everyone into the game. Several people had never played FM before, but they did a great job figuring it out and implementing it. I’d say this was the biggest factor in our win.
• Strong deep game from Andy/Shockey. Really kept us in the game.
• Excellent spirit from both teams.
• Free beer for us after the game.

Personal Wins

• Reeled in my bad throws from the first game, threw better deep looks in the second game.
• D was on point. Got a nice layout D on Timmer in the endzone, an almost-handblock, and generally played my guy tight (plus ran some nice switches).
• Biggest win was the last point. Not that I saved the hammer or threw the goal, but that I made myself get in position to clean up the trash. When I’m tired, I take mental shortcuts and just hope that things will work out. I clearly remember thinking “oh, I don’t need to back CJ up. either he’ll catch it or its a D”. And my next thought was “well, I can get close enough for a small chance at a second attempt”. And that’s exactly what happened, and it won us the game. This mental weakness has been a point of internal struggle for a while, and I won that struggle today.

Needs Improvement

• Still too risky/inconsistent with my deep throws.
• Need to learn to better recognize when someone is open or not. I’ve been hesitant on some throws to open players, when I should be hitting them.
• Starting giving-and-going towards the end, but still not natural.

1.5 hours of metro north indoor. Only had 5 guys, so I got to play a lot.

Feedback: my decisions are good in general, but sometimes I do something stupid. Diana called it my “let’s see” throws.

Double header at Woodbridge, then 2 hours of outdoor pickup. Felt great to be outside, but definitely not ready to run so much yet.

Close game at woodbridge. We played poorly but still won.

Played a game with my team, then picked up with the high school team right after.

Played a close game against the UConn team. They were young and athletic and did a much better job moving the disc to the break side than we did. They also got more Ds and were more patient outside the endzone. We lost 27-24.

Played Woodbridge. Opponents were not strong. We won by a good amount. I worked a bit on my IO backhan.

Solid invite-only pickup game at North Branford. Got a bunch of Colt players, plus the New Haven crew and Jeremy and Rachel. Played 4v4 with 1 or 2 subs per team. Much happier with the quality of play than last time.

Woodbridge indoor game. Not very challenging. But I keep forgetting to use these games as deliberate practice!

Lost two close games to finish 4th for the season. Both were solid games. My highlights: got bunch of nice Ds, esp in the second game. Also completed two skipsies for goals (out of three attempts). Lowlights: still more turns than I’d like (esp first game) and some weak defense at times. I also could have been more aggressive as a cutter throughout.

Played 6 games of 2v2 mini with Diana, Ross and Miriam. It was pretty windy and we were fooling around a bit, but it was still quite tiring and a good workout.

2 solid hours of indoor ultimate at North Branford. I was hoping for more people and a higher overall level, but it was pretty good considering its thanksgiving weekend and it’s our first session. We played a couple games for score, plus a lot of just scrimmaging. Already looking forward to next time.

Played two games against fairly weak teams to win Woodbridge league. Our team is pretty stacked, so it made the games lopsided. We were just shy of scoring a combined 100 points between both games.

Started our first game with only 3 people. Had to pick up some friends for the first half, until reinforcements arrived. Ended up losing by a couple. Second game was closer and more intense. We won in OT after they had the disc to win bun turned it over.

In general, I thought we played pretty poorly (probably not a popular sentiment). Lots of high risk throws and turnovers. Some of the risky stuff worked (Including the winning throw of the last game), but it’s not a sustainable way of playing.

A bit of ultimate, skiils and frolf in good ol Troy. I did decent in the pull comp but sucked at TRC and accuracy. The weather was cold but decent, the partys were both some of the best that we’ve thrown, and Diana had fun the whole time (except frolf), so I’ll count the weekend a victory.

Two days of beach ultimate in Miami. A fun tourney with a bit of wind and a good amount of partying. We played decently well most of the time, though shitty sometimes. Ended up losing in semis to a Seattle team.

Another strong finish by the Rockford Peaches in fall league, though we played quite poorly in our second game. The guys didn’t have many subs, so our rotation was pretty tight. Our decision-making got really bad in the second game, especially towards the end. There was a 10-minute stretch right out of half where neither team scored a goal. We even called a timeout to talk about reining in our throws and going for the easy ones, but then kept making bad choices even after that. In the end, we did manage to turn down the aggresiveness and score some easy, patient goals. It also helped that the other team was missing Bosco, their best player.

Since Halloween is on Saturday, we all dressed up as the Peaches - pink dresses, red socks and hats. Our team was the best-dressed of the evening.

Played an hour of indoor at Woodbridge. We played a team of fairly young but very athletic players. They all ran pretty hard, and one guy had really nice throws that he used to find the endzone a lot. They only had one girl, but she also played very well most of the time. She got really tired at the end. Our team was lacking most of our strong players, and we didn’t play very well at first. Eventually we got our shit together and stopped turning it over so much.

Two games, two very different results. First game, we smoked our opponents. We scored twice as many points as they did, which is pretty difficult to do in indoor. We were even missing our first-round guy, and started off with almost no guy subs because many of our guys were running late. Still, we played well, moved the disc to the break side easily, and got a lot of Ds.

Second game, the exact opposite. We started off pretty weak and went down 5-1. After a timeout, we refocused and picked up our game, but we still struggled with poor spacing and unforced mistakes. Our opponents backed us hard and forced us to cut under, which we did. But we moved the disc to the open side too readily and got stuck in the black hole corner too often. People didn’t stay out of the endzone, so scoring was also difficult. And on turns, our defense was lacking. We did close the gap to 3 points at the very end, but they were in control the whole time and milked the clock nicely to end the game.

After lot of team shifts and last-minute scrambling for players, we scraped together a squad to send to Clambake. I only knew half the team going into the weekend, but they turned out to be a great bunch. We also had people drop and pick up as the tourney progressed. We ended up winning all our pool games and making it all the way to semis before Silence of the Clams knocked us out. The weekend was cold and windy on the whole, so a lot of games were upwind-downwind turnoverfests. Our “bobbing for shots” game went over really well during the day. The game didnt make it to the party because we went hard pretty early and lost focus.

2 games of indoor. Had decent subs, so wasn’t too tired. I did convince Diana to play too :-)

Played Woodbridge fall league with Team Reptar. Our opponents were pretty weak, so it wasn’t the best game, but I still enjoyed the unexcepted opportunity to run around and play. Gonna start playing with them every weekend, I think.

First night of fall league. Met my team, which turned out to be pretty cool. I was told it was very top-heavy, but I think all the players are at least decent. No one’s unathletic. We lost our first game to Bosco’s team by 1, then beat shockey’s team by 1. Everyone played well, though some of the newer players need some coaching. I got a decent number of Ds (mostly poach Ds) and threw some nice goals (mostly to Kamil). Indoor is a great workout.

3 days of ultimate with Metro North. Played 7 games total. Didn’t play that great overall, but improved throughout the weekend. Best game was the last game against Wildcard.

In general, my main places to improve are fitness (as always), throwing, and switching my mindset from D to O. My biggest issue was too many bad throwing decisions after getting a turn. I play much better when I look for breaks and move the disc quickly, not try to huck it. I don’t think I completed any hucks at all this weekend.

Btw, we finished 7th at nationals and qualified for the Pro Flight for next year.

I believe that love will find a way.

Last mini before nationals. We had 4 guys and 4 girls, so we had a good rotation going and a good mix of 2-1 and 1-2. I even got to play on the same line as Shockey, for the first time all season.

My first Northeast regionals experience. Pool play on Saturday was fairly easy. I think we beat every team by at least 6-7 points. Winning our pool put us up against Slow White in semis. That was one of the best games we’ve played all year. I didn’t play much (only a few points), but the team played well as a whole and we won on universe point. Since there are 4 bids this year, winning against Slow (only the 2nd time I’ve ever beaten them) made sure that we qualified for nationals, since we couldn’t do worse than 3rd at that point.

On Sunday, we played Wildcard in the finals. The game was decent but they played very strong D, went up 8-6 in the first half, then scored a few more breaks in the second to seal the win. Then we played Slow White again in the 2-3 placement game. Once again a solid game. This time they came out on top. Our defense converted 2 breaks (same as Saturday) but O gave up a few more that we couldn’t make up for.

T minus 18 days until Nationals.

Signed up last-minute for a hat tournament in Enfield (just north of Hartford). Ended up on Barb and Timmer’s team. We started off weak, getting crushed in our first game. But then we dug in and won the next two pool games and three straight semis games to win the tourney. The final was us vs. the team we lost to first game. We were really tired (the day was HOT) and had lost some players to injury and concerts, so we picked up a few replacements. They also lost their best player, but picked up quality replacements as well. Victory was sweet, esp because we got a round of free wings for winning. I also met a bunch of cool CT ultimate players.

Got home from Crossfit just in time to see that a critical mass had gathered for mini. Ended up going despite feeling tired, and was pretty happy that I went. Special guest Tree joined us for the games. We played for a while, then finished with a 3-team round-robin.

Played about 2 hours mini with some Metro North and New Haven folks. The quality was very good. Most games had no more than 1-2 turns, and some had no turns at all.

After mini, went to Walrus & Carpenter for my birthday dinner.

In some ways the worst Wildwood yet. Cops were super annoying, got a $333 ticket for open display of alcohol. Played quite poorly most of the time. Shrooms didn’t do much. Diana wasn’t there.

In another sense, tourney was pretty good. Weather was great - not scorching hot, not pouring rain. Cline’s dance party at Stardust was sick. Stayed up till 4am both nights, got quite drunk but wasn’t hung over. Partied with lots of people I like. Played well against Rabs and Humiliswag. Saved a bunch of money by sleeping in my car (the ppl whose house I slept in front of were not too happy). Chilled with Jennie, Barb, Robb and Max a good amount.

Played a lot, esp on Saturday. Weather was super hot. Started off well, then went crazy and couldn’t stop hucking it away. Sunday was hotter and more humid, but we had a few subs and I felt way better. Didn’t cramp at all, had 0 turns, played fairly well.

We beat Muff N’ Men in the finals to win the tourney.

Two days of fun in the sun with the sharkfuckers. Played 7 games with a combined point diff of 94-45. Wasn’t too tired because we didn’t have that many points to play. I had some silly turns of Sat but tightened it up on Sunday. The finals was my best game - no turns, at least 4 assists, a handful of Ds, and a hand block followed by a Rochester for the goal. We won $1000, threw it in the air, swam in it naked and swaggered around as much as we could.

Didn’t do too much in the way of workouts conditioning. Mostly played ultimate:

• 4 hours at a PoNY tryout. Didn’t make the team.
• 2 days at Mixed Easterns with Metro North. Handled a lot.
• 1-day round-robin at Lums Pond in DE. Played against AG, AMP, Tyranis and Jug Handle. Also handled a good amount, primarily for the D line.
• 3 days at Windmill Windup with Cambridge. Played a lot against some good teams. Fairly happy with my play. Got one of the most difficult and awesome layout Ds of my life.
• 4 days of beach ultimate at Bar Do Peixe. Definitely more relaxed that the rest of the tourneys, but still a lot of fun and pretty high quality. Played a total of 11 games, though they were about half an hour each. Played with some awesome women, including probably the best girl in Portugal. Highlights include my first layout handblock, a hammer handblock, some good D and strong intensity and focus under pressure (sometimes). Also ridiculous partying every single night, especially Saturday and Sunday.

Today, a return to real workouts. Threw with Miriam at Wooster Square for over an hour. Worked on torso torque on my flicks, spin on my leftie backhands, and flight path on my hammers.

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.

Started the playoffs with a game against Vanni’s team again. They scored the first few, but then we jumped out to a 10-3 lead and never looked back. We got pretty sloppy in the fourth, messing around and throwing fullfield hammers and thumbers. We just barely missed the big 4-oh, winning 39-16 or so.

Played RABS in WL. We were close most of the way but got frantic on O in the 4th quarter and let them widen the lead for the win. We played pretty solidly overall and adjusted well to their game (taking away the deep cuts and the around throws). I did not play that well down the stretch, throwing away some bad throws in the 4th quarter. I also hurt my knee on a high layout in the middle of the game, but that seems to be doing better.

Played a WL game against Vanni’s team. We had all of our guys there, so I didn’t really play that much. They also weren’t that strong, so the game was pretty relaxed for us. My fav play of the night was Robb throwing me a thumber just outside the endzone, and then me turning and throwing Billy a Rochester for the score. Final score: 39-15

Overnight tourney in Pittsburgh. Not sure how much I’ll play, but if I can’t run I’ll definitely be working out on the sideline.

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

We cruised through regionals, winning all our games by a good margin. No team made it to double digits against us. Our O line didn’t get broken once all weekend, and we had very few unforced turns all around. The intensity was good, even when we were winning by a lot.

We spent an hour or so on Saturday talking about spirit. Amp often gets low spirit scores, though we don’t think we have poor spirit. So there must be something we’re missing, something we need to pay attention to and improve so we’re not seen as jerks. Some good points were that we want the teams we beat to cheer for us and be proud when we represent the region. We don’t have to make friendly banter on the sidelines or smile at everyone, but we do need to respect our opponents as worthy adversaries and recognize when they are doing something well. Some teams we mentioned as examples of good spirit are Polar Bears, Slow White, Fury, Riot, the men on CLX.

For me personally, I played well on the weekend, though I didn’t play much (esp on Saturday). I did have one drop and one rushed semi-throwaway that I should not have had, but besides that I think I was very effective all around. I did notice myself rushing during our last game. I’ll try to remember that feeling so I can notice it in myself in the future. Brayden (the AG coach) also gave me some good feedback during the game.

• When I’m marked tightly on the flick side, I lift my pivot slightly as I throw to get space. But that’s still a travel. I need to either call disc space or do something else (pivot?) to get the space I need.
• When I’m near the endzone (or downfield too), I get locked in on one person and wait for them to make the move I want them to make. I need to be careful of spending too much time on one person. Instead, I should either communicate where I want them to go, or to another cutter.
• When I throw the disc laterally from the break side towards the middle, I MUST remember to cut upline immediately. I should practice this.
• I made the same dump mistake that I made a few weeks ago in practice (and Katie was my dump again). The mark was counting stalls a bit quickly, so I was rushed in my head. I turned to look at my dump, but then immediately turned back upfield. I need to commit to the dump and stay with her for at least a few seconds before looking elsewhere. She’s waiting for my look to make her cut, so I can’t expect her to be open right away.
• Don’t rush so much. Learn to notice it and relax when it happens. I think this may lead to my frantic cutting as well.

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.

We lost 15-13. Just like las year. Just like two years before that. 15-13 is my least-favorite score. The thing is that we actually played pretty well this time too. I don’t remember too many stupid decisions. But we did dig ourselves into a hole early on and could not climb back out of it. Mott and Quinn both played very well, skying pretty much everyone on PTA repeatedly. Isaac and Swilson talked a big game, but I was underwhelmed by their play (though Swilson was solid on D). Having Paul and Tache back was a plus, but Adam and Dustin were out with injuries. Maybe we’ll get our shit together next year.

First game of Mercer finals was a typical Roots finals game. We went up a few, couldn’t close, and lost 19-18. We played well for the most part on both O and D. Our O line was especially strong in the second half, scoring most goals quickly and efficiently. Our D was solid, though we didn’t get many takeaways. We also struggled to convert our Ds, sometimes having multiple-turn points where we had trouble getting downfield cuts. Noah was really big for us, as were Quinn and Mott. I had one turn on an IO break flick that went over my reciever’s head. Otherwise I played decently well, though my D was not the best. I need to focus more on my guy and work on my footwork more.

Another awesome Wildwood is in the books. Random friends were seen, beach ultimate was played, beers were shotgunned, and we even a trophy. Here’s how it went down.

Friday

I started the weekend by fooling everyone into thinking that I’m now the TD of wildwood. The crew asked me to send an email to every player at the tourney to tell them some useful info (be respectful, no glass on the beach, watch out for plainclothes cops, etc). But the way it came off, it was like I was making the announcement, and that’s usually the TD’s job. All weekend people came up to me asking about cops and saying they didn’t know I was in charge of wildwood now. I set most of them straight, but sometimes it was easier to just go with it.

Friday was also the start of our weekend-long game of Gems. Everyone started with 5 gems, and whoever had the most by the end of the weekend got to keep the trophy. People were flipcupping for gems, betting gems (I won 3 on an arm wrestle between Diana and Katie), and even giving gems away for things. It definitely spiced the weekend up.

After pregaming at the house, we head for the Bolero. We danced for a bit, then bounced and went for ice cream and skinny-dipping in the ocean. The water was surprisingly warm, and the ice cream was surprisingly good - vanilla with strawberries on top. That sobered us up some, so we went home to party some more.

Saturday

Our theme for the weekend was a bit unusual: you must wear (at most) one article of clothing and it must cover your back. We had some interesting choices - dresses, panda suits, wrestling singlets, full-body spandex suits, even a kimono. I went with a fullbody suit on Saturday and a dress on Sunday. The suit was a big hit, and not all that bad to play in. I thought it would be super-hot (it was) and that throwing in those gloves would be tough (it wasn’t). We spent most of the day drinking and chilling with people. We won all our games (both Troyalty and Troylettes) without too much of a struggle. One of the teams we played was solid, but we stepped our game up and won by 4, our closest win of the day.

The party was quite good this year, mostly because we didn’t spend too much time at the Bolero. We pregamed at the house, then went out. Robb and I went ahead of the rest, and we went straight to the Rabs party room by the pool. When we migrated to the Bolero dancefloor, Diana was already there. We spent maybe 5 min inside, then went back to the Rabs room and to the pool area. After much socializing and big-containering and dice-gaming, our thoughts turned to food and we went to buy way more Chinese than we needed (though Singapore noodles were delicious). We ate on the steps near our house, then went in for the afterparty and for bedtime.

Sunday

Sunday went pretty similar to Saturday. The teams we played were better, but we were never down on points. Our two-pointers were decent, our guys were very solid, and our ladies carried the day as usual. I thought we’d have trouble against Esser’s team, but we went up big and they didn’t manage to catch up in time. In the finals, we played Max Power, a Canadian team that played in Borocay and other beach tournaments. We talked them into playing Pick-6, which turned out great. I ran back a pick-6 for a goal, then threw a pick-6 Callahan shortly afterwards. Our first game to 7 was closer than it should have been. I threw a 2-pointer at 5-5 to win it, but it could have gone either way. Our second game was not as tight. I think we won 7-3 or 7-2. After the games, I played an awesome spirit game of 1-on-1 hockey in the sand. We each had a tiny hockey stick and the puck was a tennis ball. I lost my game, then Diana played one of their girls and lost as well. But we did drink tasty Canadian whiskey, so really everyone won.

Troylettes lost their second game on Sunday, so they were done at this point. There was nothing left to do but collect the trophy, take some photos, and then count our gems. We met back at the house and went through the final calculations. After much trading and consolidating, Stefan and I were the clear leaders. It was very close, and we each did some shots and promised some things to get the last few. We’re now both wearing our costumes to FGiving, and I owe Steve a cheesesteak next time I’m in Troy. In the end, I had two gems more than Stefan so I took home the MVP title and the trophy. I like to think of it as being voted “most entertaining” by the team.

Lessons for next year:

• Gems game was great, but the small gems were annoying.
• Prepare a spirit game. They are very fun.
• Team theme for next year: fun police.
• Robb should be in charge of swag.

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

Played 3 days (Thurs-Sat) of high-level ultimate in the Twin Cities. It was like having an early Nationals. The top 6 teams from last year’s nationals were here, as well as Union (Canada’s national champion) and a mixed team from Colombia. I played almost exclusively O line, which is a first for me. I did not feel 100% comfortable all the time, especially with the effectiveness of my cutting and the number of turns I had. But everyone told me I played well and should be happy with how I did.

Overall it was great playing against such strong teams so early in the season. We played Drag’n Thrust and Wildcard to universe (and had the opportunity to win both) and won a universe-point game against Union. We also played decently against Polar Bears, though they beat us 15-9. After games, we had a great time hanging out, partying and exploring with the team. Much bonding was accomplished.

My stats for the weekend:

• 39 O points, 7 D points
• 8 goals
• 7 assists
• 3 Ds
• 7 throwaways, 2 drops

Scrimmage at the Duck Pond. We played 4 games of 10-12 minutes. All games were 5v5 and on-the-fly subbing, but on a full field. We also added the rule that you cannot throw backwards. I played well for the most part, but had a poor flick huck again. I did have several good hucks though. I’ll keep working on it.

Warmed up my throws with Diana and Bulb. Then played a decent game of ultimate. I threw away three hucks, all flickside. Two were short and bladey, the other was over Katie’s head. Besides that I played well, got a bunch of Ds, and we won.

Afterwards, I ran the 10cut drill 5 times. I focused on figuring out my footwork, getting low on turns, and running at top speed the whole time.

Played my first A League game of the season with Roots. We played PTA, our perrenial rival. The game was close the whole way, but we pulled ahead to take half 8-6. They caught up and tied it at 9s, but we pulled away 13-10 and then closed out the game 15-13. I played most of the D points and maybe 1 O point?

The squad is pretty stacked this year. The Sauls, Bode and Quinn are back in town, Dundala and Pauly are back from hiatus, and a few of the younger guys are looking pretty strong. As long as we don’t choke when the pressure’s on, we should be in good shape.

Did our first structured tryout. We did several drills (give-n-go, breakside cuts, 3 on 3 for 3, 3 on 3 for 2 turns) and then went to a full 7 on 7 scrimmage. It was a bit windy and I threw some bad throwaways. I’m also out of shape after not running for a few weeks. But it will come back to me.

I didn’t play in this because I’m resting my patella tendon, but I helped yell things from the sideline. Still, it was fun to be outside and throwing in nice weather. Looking forward to the season.

Played one day of Fools Fest on Friday, then my tendonitis started acting up and I sat out Sat and Sun. My inside backhand has really been coming along. I’ve been working on putting more snap on the throw, and I threw several this tourney that were a bit off but sat for long enough to get picked up by someone else. I also ran back a pick-6 for a goal.

A few AMP guys and friends of the team scrimmaged the Haverford mens’ team. We played a game to 6 first (which we won 6-2), then played about 6 or 7 points of zone against them to give them more practice. Finally, we mixed up the teams and scrimmaged for half an hour or so. We didn’t have many subs, so I got to play a lot. Haverford has several players who are very strong, but they didn’t move the disc too well and relied on being taller and more athletic.

Ultisquash

The veteran’s ultisquash fight club committee decided to honor Diana and me by inviting us to their elite game. In attendance: Wheels, Schmucker, TC, Panna, Dre, Raha, us. We played a dozen or so games, all intense and fast-paced. I really enjoyed playing with Schmucker and Wheels. They don’t come out much and I don’t get to play with them that often. Also covering TC was a lot of fun. What a great way to end the season.

Spinners Practice

I was rather sore after all that ultisquashing, but decided to go to Spinners practice anyway. The weather was finally nice and it’s good to get my outdoor throws straight as early as possible. We spent a good amount of time on drills and working on some set plays, then scrimmaged a lot. We started our first set of scrimmages with a hunger-drill throw to simulate playing after a huck. I’ve never done that before but I really like it. We also played a bunch of 2-minute make-it-take-it games and worked on double-teaming.

I was really tired by the time we started scrimmaging, and it didn’t help that we had very few subs. I thought I played reasonably well and had some good throws and cuts, though I dropped the disc TWICE during the 4 lines cutting drill (where we were specifically trying not to drop the disc by focusing on catching one point of it) and also turfed an easy throw to DBaer because I didn’t pivot.

Last regular-season game, and it’s against the 1 seed. They didn’t play like they’re the best team in the league, but they did beat us by 10 or so and they are solid all around. We played pretty well, and having Leo really helps. He’s a great thrower and he knows when to cut deep. If only we’d had Tom, Ashley and Ashley, we could have had a really close game.

Beat Venose’s team 29-27 in quarters of full. When we played their game, we didn’t do well. When we played our game and stepped up our D, we did well.

Beat Trey’s team by 1 point in an exciting back-and-forth indoor game. We finally had our whole team. They were missing Trey, but had everyone else. They played the Trey zone with TC as the big man deep, but we were disciplined enough to work through it most of the time. We also played well on D and got a decent number of blocks on dumps to TC. He played really well and did almost everything for them. But in the end, Ashley put up a full-field buzz beater to Tom to win it.

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.

3 hours of Phoenix tryouts at Maple Zone. We spent most of the time doing drills. The first few drills were pretty cool - 4 stations, each with a different set of cuts, and you run the cuts as fast as you can. There was a straight 40, a 10yard incut followed by a 40 deep, and two drills with 2 short cuts each. We ran each set of cuts once and were timed.

After the cuts, we had 4 more stations to rotate through:

• baseball drill
• defense drill (defending an incut, break cut and deep cut, then later defending the dump)
• breakmark drill, then continuation cutting drill
• marking drill

Finally at the end we got to scrimmage two games to 7. I wish we had played more, but it was still fun.

Lots of utlimate tonight: core winter league at Ampro, then Spinners practice at Tee’s. I got lucky and found rides from/to everything.

Winter League

We played a great game tonight and pulled off a strong win against a (possibly) better team. We stuck to our goals (don’t get beat to the force-side cone, always have a dump), played great defense and smart offense. We got out to an early lead and held it the whole game, never letting them come within 3 points. Thanasis and Eddie had a great game, coming up with some nice Ds and some big skies. Our ladies also did well on offense, and their defense is improving each game.

To be fair, Jake’s team was missing Jack Kelly and Jake was not at 100% because he’s just coming back from a long hamstring injury recovery. But I still think we played our best game yet and the improvement is very encouraging. I did not expect us to win a single game this season and had switched focus to coaching and working on fundamentals. But maybe that’s the secret?

Spinners Practice

After our game, Jake and I went to the practice. We did a short warmup, some 3-man handler weaveing, a drill to work on our first step, and then some scrimmaging. We mostly worked on dumps to the open side (and dump defense). We also played 2-minute segments with no subs, alternating 5v5 and 4v4. Finally, we played a few 5-minute quarters with subs.

I felt pretty good throughout the practice. It was really cold at Tee’s and my hands were freezing, so my throws were not as quick or accurate as usual. But the main thing that’s holding me back right now is fitness. I gotta in better shape. Also, better footwork would be great. Ben’s first-step drills should be helpful here.

Played the first game with my high schooler team. We worked on setting goals that are within our control: always having a dump and not getting beat to the force-side cone. For the first half, we didn’t have those explicit goals and we played pretty poorly. After half, our focus improved and we matched Gooch’s team point for point. But we didn’t really convert any breaks and they rode their first-half lead to the win.

I ended up staying to watch the second game and throw with Cuatro. Then it turned out that Norm’s team was shorthanded, so I picked up with them for my second game. They are a more experienced and disciplined team, so our game was a lot closer. Fern played especially well for us. But Drexel put together an athletic team and pulled away in the second half to secure their victory. Two losses in one night.

Played against Roots and then Trey’s team. We played fairly well on the whole and won both games. We were a bit savage and some of our players were sick (including me). I had a few bad throwaways but played with discipline besides that.

An awesome weekend of Leiing Out. All our games were really close - don’t think we won any by more than 3. Our team was solid, though some people played uncharacteristically poorly. Charlie Mercer carried the team for the most part. I played alright. My throws/O/D were solid, but some decisions were poor and I missed a few plays on mental errors.

The parties were sweet. Some things I remember:

• pink party
• sleeping pills
• tiedye shorts and a tutu
• shotgun ok
• kamikazes
• getting uber by yelling “UBER!”

• shot or text
• lindi chugging rum for everyone’s texts
• cup o rum
• shirtless dancing
• yelling at the bouncer for telling everyone to be quiet
• … and panna breaking it up
• 80 chicken nuggets
• … under everyone’s pillows

• buttchugging
• Robbs OPFJ

First core game with my team. Almost everyone on the team is in high school. They have decent throws and they mostly know the basics, but they aren’t great in terms of athletics or discipline. It’s gonna be a fun challenge.

Went to the spinners tryout at Maple Zone. It was a lot of fun and went pretty well. I didn’t do that great on the beep test (only level 10) but I did well on the hunger drill and played well for the most part. I was one of the better non-spinners players there.

Pullups

• 8 pullups
• 5 chinups
• 5 neutral
• 4 chinups
• 4 pullups

AMP Indoor

Played more amp. We spent more time focusing on cutting. Did a new drill where one cutter cuts in, catches the disc, and hits a second in-cut at an exact location. The goal is for the second cutter to time their cut so they get the disc i nstride at the correct spot. We also scrimmaged a lot.

Ultisquash

Played a bunch of ultisquash in the morning. We hav enough people for two games, so we played pretty much nonstop. I was undefeated until the very last game.

Amp Indoor

Another great indoor session. We spent more time working on downfield cutting. One thing we did was eliminate the dump in several drills. We also worked on cutter timing and some short 3 on 3 drills. We finished with a bunch of scrimmages, throwing, rolling and dinner at Butter’s house.

My indoor throws have definitely been improving. Fitness is still a bit lacking, though that may be because of the ultisquash.

Playoffs game against Zaarz. I played like poop.

An awesome 2 hours. We did some short stretches and drills, then scrimmaged a lot. First drill was a give-and-go drill with 3 stationary receivers and one cutter running down the middle of the field. I liked the drill, but I’m unsure about the in-game usefulness. Going from catch to throw quickly was good practice. But when I try to do this move in a real game, the hardest part is throwing to a moving cutter while also moving.

After that drill and a 1-on-1 cutting in space drill, we played a bunch of scrimmages. For the first few, we were not allowed to throw the disc backwards. For the last few, it was just standard indoor ultimate with a slightly longer stall count.

I need to match up against Papa more.

Played a close game against Zaarz (Zargham + Laarz). Finished tied at 25s. Nothing particularly good or bad. A bit sloppy at times, should not have turned it over so much, mostly from rushing.

Played a few fun games at SJ’s indoor hat tourney. My team was a bit stacked because I was a maybe and the team was meant to be decent even without me. But we ended up very strong, with several good club guys and some strong ladies too. We won our first two games pretty easily, then played a close game against Trey’s team where we were down the whole time but came back at the end to win 14-12. In the finals, we played against another stacked team from the B pool: Billy Maroon, Izzy, a few tall dudes and some ladies that knew how to get open in the endzone. We trailed the whole time again, but closed the gap at the end. We lost by only 2 points.

A lot of people from the previous weekend’s men’s tourney came back out for this. It was fun to play with some of the guys I played against the last time.

Played against Trey’s team, lost 24-20. I didn’t play very well at all.

Played a really fun and really high-level indoor tournament at MapleZone. There were 5 teams of about equal caliber:

• Rabs + Trey
• Heva Havas + Roots
• Med Men + Mazur
• Spank
• Amp + Hypnotoad + UDel + Termites (us)

About a third of the team was from our Entrapment indoor nationals crew (me, Chappers, Ducky, Weez, and Keg), and I’d played with many of the guys on Amp, but the UDel guys (Charles and Brian) were new to me. They both played well, each with at least one really nice sky. Josh also had some amazing moments, including breaking through a secret door in the endzone after a big sky. But despite the uncomfortable amounts of FUN we were having, we only went 1-3.

Despite our record, I’m very happy with the weekend. All the teams were very evenly matched and we lost our games by 3 points or less. The team we beat went on to lose in the finals against Trabs. 3 teams were tied 2-2 and had the exact same point diff.

Oh yea. We had a hawk disc. We scored at least one goal with it, after which the other team made us swap the disc out. They lost. Don’t mess with the hawk. Just hawk it!

Played against Dre’s team and Satell’s team. I’m becoming more convinced that a team playing their second game back-to-back is better off than their opponents who are on their first game (assuming the double header team has good numbers). We lost to Dre’s team by 2 and beat Satell’s team by 2, though we were up 6 on Satell in the 4th quarter and started to get lazy. Dre’s team played well and did a great job poaching against us. Satell’s team was on their first game of the season (we were on our 3rd), so that may have had something to do with their loss, but they also lacked strong women to match their very strong men. I think they’ll get better as the season goes on.

Played our first indoor fall league game. We won 30-24. I expected Patrick’s team to be better. We did play pretty good D and didn’t have many unforced errors. I’m looking forward to the rest of the season.

Lost to team AMP again. This time we were down a bit for most of the game, but came back at the end to bring it within one before losing 15-13. I didn’t play my best game and we were all kinda ambivalent the whole time. After the game, we went out to Goat Hollow, which was pretty cool except for the loud guy playing guitar and singing.

Lost another fall league game to Butter/Trey/Amp. Were up most of the time, even up 12-9 and then 14-12, but couldn’t close out. Supper club at Growlers.

Fall league against the Penn State team (again). They were savage, we had 1 sub of each gender. We warmed up with Spikeball, then started playing. We took half 8-4 without feeling any real pressure. After half, they came zone. It was a bit windy, but mostly it was cold, and our throws were off. We let them score 5 breaks straight before we get our shit together and started playing like a real team. I think we won the game 15-11 or maybe 15-12. Finished with some more Spikeball before the lights went out.

Had a fairly light practice. We worked on several play calls, did a few pull play scrimmages and some transition work, worked on our redzone O and our marks, scrimmaged and threw deep in the wind. I played with the O line again so I’ll be ready to fill in on O when needed. I had some unusually bad turns on O, including a drop on a wide-open pass. D was better - definitely feeling faster after the last two weeks of easier and more consistent workouts. Looking forward to one last high-intensity workout on Monday or Tuesday to seal the deal.

Good practice. I played with the O line this time, which was a nice change for me. I think I did well overall. My spacing and timing wasn’t as great as it could have been, and I threw my only turn of the day on a wide-open cut to Alex. I put too much edge on the disc and it dropped right at his feet. I also did well in the redzone scrimmge and the upline drill. On D, I played tight on my guy but got beat deep once or twice and wasn’t as decisive in the zone as I should have been (pick one side and commit, don’t hang out in the middle).

Played Zargham and Diviney’s team in fall league. They were missing a bunch of players (DBaer, Diviney, Flex, etc). We went up a bunch of breaks in the second half. They mounted a late run, but it wasn’t enough. We won 16-14 I think.

Played the Penn State team again. We were savage to start, but a few more guys showed up after we began. The first half was close with one or two breaks for both teams. We took half 8-6. In the second half, we opened with a goal and then 4 or 5 breaks in a row, then finished out strong. I don’t think our O was incredibly strong, but on D they kept throwing us the disc and we converted our second-half breaks quickly.

Played a fun and really close game against the “Amp” team (Butter & co). We were up the whole game, but never by more than one or two. In the end it came down to universe point, and we gave up the break to lose it. We played well about 80% of the time. Our D was good and we generated a lot of turns. But on O, we had trouble moving the disc to the break side and our handler movement was not great. Our stack also tended to get caught deep, which made cutting difficult. I got several Ds (at least 3, +1 shadow D) and played well for the most part. I felt pretty quick and in the zone. However, I missed several D opportunities and turned over at least two throws. One was a dumb dumb turn where I got stuck looking at Frankie in the endzone. More mental toughness!

Last practice before regionals. Worked on transition offense, fitness and marks. Played a few games focusing on transition offense, then played a game to 3 where you can only score if you didn’t start on O. Finished with a flick-huck drill. Lunch at Circles was delicious.

4 hours of practice at Ballfields. I played offense most of the time, which was a nice change. I think I played pretty well, though I had two back-to-back turnovers that should have both been easy goals. Besides that, I did a reasonably good job cutting, throwing and scoring. Raha even said she felt I played well.

I think the O line won one double-score scrimmage out of three (though we won it 4-0) and also won the first red zone to 10.

Tonight was the first game of Competitive Fall League. Cotton Mouth™ represented well. We were a bit short on players (7 guys, 5 girls) but we came out strong and closed stronger. Penn State let us go up two breaks right off the bat, then got em back to take half 8-7. We started the half with three straight breaks and then got three or four in a row to win the game 15-11. I expected more of a fight from the other team, but this makes me optimistic about the season.

Katie and I also did a bunch of AMPs during the game and I did a few more at home to bring it up to 50.

Amp practice 9am-1pm. I rolled my ankle at about 9:30, so I spent most of the time watching and icing. It was a good practice. We worked on proper swing/continue cutting and applied that in redzone offense. This is one of my weak points so I wish I hadn’t hurt myself because I needed the reps. Hopefully I’ll be ready by Wednesday.

Did 50 AMPs throughout the day and then 20 more with everyone at the end.

A great weekend for ultimate. The weather was perfect, our team was underrated, and we were poised to ruin some dreams. Our first game was Saturday afternoon against Bill and Stacy. We didn’t come out strong, but victory was rarely in question. We kept it close through most of the game before pulling away to win 15-11. This put us in E pool and set up the long-awaited Vinny vs. Flagger matchup (on the showcase field, no less). Both teams were fairly drunk at this point, though Diana was actually sobering up after a very sloppy Game 1 BAC level. Turns out we play better when we’re drunk (and when Ellis is there). I think we were up the whole game and won by a lot. I played one point with two giant cardboard hands taped to my hands, and Diana threw me the goal. Our victory put is in E pool semis, the first time I’ve ever played on Sunday of Finals. Diana and I both finished the day at +2.

Our first game on Sunday was against Butter and Raha’s team. We were even more shorthanded than yesterday: only 5 guys. Our opponents went 5-2 on offense every time, so by the end of the game we were feeling pretty gassed. The game was close throughout though I think we led for pretty much the whole time. We won 15-13. Wolf and Max both had a stellar game. Wolf must have caught at least half of our goals and Max threw some beautiful long shots to him and others. Ben also played extremely well, with two spectacular layouts to maintain posession after crappy throws. Tired but undefeated, we moved on into E pool finals against Vanni, Harrison and their squad. Our lack of subs really showed this game. We quickly went down 0-4 and continued to struggle the whole game. The finals score was 15-7 bad guys, but we put up a fight to the very end. I had two layout Ds (my only layouts of the weekend) and a good long huck to Max. Diana threw me a nice huck for a goal, and Max continued to play excellent defense. I’m not gonna talk about how many terrible decisions and throws I had because there were too many to remember.

Despite our loss in the finals, I had a lot of fun. I played every point except one in both games on Sunday, and I played almost all of the points on Saturday until we started killing it in game 2. Now that ultimate is done for a month or so, it’s time to focus 100% on Amp.

Another close and well-fought game at Mercer. We came out strong with a big focus on defense and jumped out to an early lead. We got five breaks in the first half, going up 8-4. But in the second half, our offense let us down. We threw away easy throws and dropped a couple of discs, letting PTA back in the game. We got some nice Ds back, but could not convert. We ended up losing 17-15.

After the game, we hung out, drank some beer, and played a bunch of Milk.

I missed game 1 on Monday and we lost by 2 points, so this was a do-or-die situation for us. I don’t think we played the best that we could, but we did win 15-13. Tache, Swilson and Franky each had a few nice Ds. Jack had a sick layout D but it was a foul. I covered Frecka for the most part, so I didn’t really have many chances at a D, but I did contain him on all but one occaision (when he beat me deep right at the start of the point). I also threw away a disc on a rushed swing to Swilson. Need to stop rushing my throws.

Game 3 tomorrow FTW.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 my first game of Mercer A League this year. We played Illuminati in a pretty easy game. We won 15-4, then played some more pickup after the game.

Then BenJ and I ran a modified version of the shuffle ladder workout. We ran 4x6x25m shuffles with timed rest (2x,3x,3x,2x the time it took). Apparently this is how the workout is supposed to be done, so what I did last time is not quite right. After the sprints, Weeks, Garret and Jack joined us for burpees (200 total: 50 for me weeks and garret, 30 for ben, 20 for jack). Then we chilled, played some cups and went home.

Played a good summer league game. We worked on dumps and stack spacing. Our offense started out pretty poorly and we were down 8-2 at half. But we came out of half strong and tied the game at 9s. After that we traded points the rest of the way, always down 1. Facing a hard cap at 17, we got the break to go up 16-15. They scored, bringing it to universe. We played patiently, but then turned it. They worked it up to the endzone and called a timeout, but could not convert. We worked it back the other way and punched it in.

After the game, we did 8 shuffle-into-sprints. 5 were same direction shuffling, the last 3 were opposite-direction shuffling. After that I did 20 burpees, then 14 more with Jill and Nasc.

Played in our first summer league game. We were missing some of our best players (Ellis, Diana, Cat) so we didn’t do very well as far as score goes, but we worked on some important things. Our handling was pretty solid, our girls were better than theirs and everyone got a taste of zone. I’m looking forward to this season.

We won the finals of indoor spring league 36-34. That score is pretty deceptive though. In the first half, we opened up a huge lead. I think we were up by more than 10 points at one time. Then in the third quarter, we stopped playing nice and easy and they started scoring 2 for every 1 we put in. In the fourth, they went on a run, scoring 4 or 5 breaks in a row to bring the score within three. We called a timeout, regrouped, and got back to the nice and easy mentality. We held our lead to close out the game.

Had a double-length practice today. We had over 40 people there. Did a bunch of drills for marking (esp straight-up) and breaking the mark. We also worked on a sequence for getting the disk off the sideline. We scrimmaged for about 3 hours total, which was awesome. After practice, we went to Percy Street BBQ for some delicious brisket and beer.

Went to a Spinners practice. We started with a few force-middle dump drills, then spent the rest of practice scrimmageing. We played a 3-team game to 7 (final scores: 7-6-6) and then worked on breaking up the pull play and double-team sideline traps. Overall, very beneficial.

Played Bulb’s team in indoor. We won 33-21. They only had 4 guys and were on their second game, so they were pretty tired. We even played 2:3 for one quarter.

A day full of ultimate. In the morning, Justin and I played a hat tourney at Edgely. Team “Favorite Nonalcoholic Beverage” played three games. The first two were close but not that serious (we won the first, lost the second). The last game was against Dre and Billy’s team, which got me really fired up to win. We didn’t play well at first, but went on a strong 5-point run to take half. We held our lead through the second half (though they narrowed the gap) but gave up two breaks on universe point to lose the game. Most of our team was pretty young, but we also had a few more experienced players. It was a great mix and we had a lot of fun.

After the games, Justin, Maddie and I hit up Chipotle and then swung by Sedgely for a bit of disc golf. We met Panna and Billy at hole 3 and played till the 9th hole. Then Anna picked me up and we headed off to indoor spring league.

We had a double header against Dre’s team and then Butter’s team. The first game was close for the whole game, but in the 4th quarter we made a concerted effort to move the disc quickly and not try to huck it, which helped us score a few quick breaks in a row and win the game 37-31. The second game was tougher, with us trailing by 1 for most of the game. We took the lead sometimes, but we were pretty tired and didn’t have enough discipline to pull out the win. They won 31-30, handing us our first loss of the season.

And now I’m really sore.

First AMP practice of the season. We worked on sideline situations: dumping, swinging and defending the dump. Then we played some full-field 3 on 3. At the end, some sprints and core fitness. After practice, spikeball and lunch at Llama Tooth (good food and beer, super slow).

Played two days of indoor at the Indoor Nationals. The whole thing was not very well organized and the fields were crappy (they were square) but it was still fun to play. We played well on Saturday but lost by 1 to a not-very-strong team. We still ended up winning our pool on point diff. Sunday, we beat Boston (the eventual winner) and made it as far as semis, but then lost in the semis to a team from DC. Our defense was good throughout the weekend, but our offense was disorganized at times and gave up too many turns. I’m not really sure what the cause was - square fields, lack of playing together, strong opponents? Either way, there’s more to work on for the future.

After playing 4 games on Sat and 4 on Sunday, I went to our first indoor spring league games Sunday night. We won both and played pretty well, but again took too many ill-advised throws on offense. But I’m excited for spring league. Our team is fun and solid, and the seasson (which is 1/3rd over) promises to be a fun one.

Fools was a blast, as usual. I spent most of my time playing and partying with ShortFatGuys (mostly DoG players + Wiggins and Idaho + some younger guys from NYC and Rochester + DanD, Dana and myself), but I picked up with Penn and the GodFeathers for a few games. I think I played 11 games over 3 days. Most were foolish, but several were really intense - we had two games against Plonkers (aka Ring) and one against UVA alums (Truck Stop) that we managed to win.

Takeaways from the weekend:

• I cut too close to the handlers. Need to clear earlier.
• I have to stop clearing up the sideline and clear to the front of the stack.
• When chasing a deep cut on D, spend less time looking for the disc and more time chasing. Otherwise I won’t catch up.
• My backhand dumps suck. Need to step out and reach farther.
• Zone defense: commit early. Don’t get stuck between two players, pick one and go.
• Team defense. We don’t play enough of that in Philly.

Picked up with Butter’s core team for a game against Dallas. We went up early and didn’t take it very seriously, but then they came back and won by 1 or 2. It was a very fun game even though we didn’t win - very spirited and pretty high level.

After that, we played our 3rd place game against Butter’s full team. His full team was also missing a lot of players, so most of them were pickups and the whole game felt like a high-level pickup game (I spent a quarter playing tag with Marin instead of playing the game). We ended up winning by a lot.

Played against RABS in the semis. We were all really tired so we didn’t give them a good game. They won by 5 or 6 or so. Our defense was pretty solid but our O was crappy.

Played the west-side team in the quarters. They were short on players and didn’t come out strong. We jumped out to a big lead (I think it was 14-3 after the first quarter) and then coasted to the end. They did pick up their intensity in the 3rd and 4th quarters, but not enough to come back.

Played Bill’s team (SHREK). We won by a good amount. We only had 5 guys, but I think that worked well for us.

Venose talked me into going to a Hammerheads practice. It wasn’t terrible, but it was definitely a waste of time for me. We scrimmaged a lot, which was nice, but I don’t see myself playing for them, not even occasionally.

After that, Keg dropped me off at Tee’s for my winter league game. We were short on players (5 guys, 3 girls) but we pulled off a solid win against Venose’s team.

Mega ultimate weekend over.

First, played an hour of indoor with AMP. I tried out my abbreviated warmups and I think they went well. I just need to speak louder and demonstrate the new exercises up front.

After that, we drove over to MapleZone and played in the first-ever Indoor Regionals. We won our first and third poold game easily but lost the second one to Tad’s team. We still made semis though. In semis, we beat Scorpio (BLo’s team and probably the favorite to win it). Then in the finals, we had a rematch against Tad’s team and beat them by 2 points to win the whole thing. Tad’s team ended up beating BLo in the backdoor finals to take the second bid to nationals.

Played Delaware Powderkeg in winter league last night. They were missing some people and we had most of us. We beat them 41-24. Our team did a good job for the most part but we didn’t do enough to stop their deep shots to Kurt and we didn’t sub as fast as I think we should be subbing against better teams.

Played 8-10 games of mini at penn park. We also did some throwing and one or two marking drills.

We played the winter league season opener against Butter’s team. We played OK in the first half, they played better. In the second half, we really started to suck. Our team is pretty tall, so the deep game should have been good, but we overthrew our receivers 3 out of 4 times (or maybe more) while our in-cuts were wide open. Our defense was also lacking. Overall, a poor showing. We lost 27-14 after being down 14-10 at half.

I think our team has a lot of potential. I’d say we’re the tallest team in the leage, and we definitely have the best women. We just have to reign in the deep shots (or start to aim at the front of the endzone) and step our D up, and we’ll be crushing it. I’m missing our next five games unless I reschedule a few, but hopefully things come together in my absence.

Played 3 hours of indoor at Tee’s. We didn’t take many breaks and played pretty hard. By the end, I was pretty beat. I played about the same way I always play: good on D and receiving, too many throwaways (some stupid decisions, some just bad throws). I always forget that hammers are a good throw indoors.

Played indoor at Tee’s with a bunch of AMP players and some friends. We put in a solid 2 hours of scrimmaging. I relearned for the millionth time that I’m much better at getting blocks than throwing goals (or even passes). After scrimmage, we raged at the Furfs’ house and then swung by Noah’s housewarming party. A grand time was had by all.

A short pre-finals workout. All we did was go through our usual warmup (jog a lap, dynamic warmup, Omega (breakmark) drill, Santa Cruz drill, Santa Cruz with in-cuts from the outside to the middle). Then we went inside and watched our game against Indy to prepare for Saturday.

Track

• Warmup: jog the curves, accelerate to a sprint over the first 50m of the straightaway, decelerate back to a jog over the last 50m.
• 5x200m, 2 min rest between sprints.
• 5 min rest
• 2x Whistle drill (described below)
• 5 min rest
• 4x40m, 15 sec rest between sprints.

Whistle Drill

Start jogging. When you hear the whistle, sprint. When you hear the next whistle, jog. Repeat. When you hear a long whistle, the person at the front of the pack starts jogging in place. Everyone else jogs to where they are and keeps jogging in place there. On the next whistle, everyone’s back to sprinting.

The interval between whistles is between 3 and 12 seconds (random). Each rep was a full lap (400m). I think we did about 5 or 6 sprints total. The rule for jogging is that your arms cannot fall below your waist and your feet have to come up to your shins on each step (no baby-stepping).

Practice

Start off with hunger drill, with each person taking turns throwing and the offense has to catch with both hands. Did backhands and flicks. Then moved on to scrimmage for 5 pulls. The D worked on zone-to-man for the first 5 pulls, then ran wolf for the next 5 (from a standstill). O and D took turns going through wolf. I honestly think the O did it better. They run a diamond in the backfield and do more switching than we do. After wolf, we played a 5 min game that went into overtime, then sudden death. The D got a turn and worked it up, but we turned it over on the goal line (I threw a dump over Panna’s head). Then O scored.

Worked on playing in our units (O1,D1,D2). D2 struggled during the first scrimmage to 7, but killed it in the second one. I guess team chemistry really means a lot.

• 3-line marking drill
• 9x endzone O for the O line and then the D line
• Scrimmage. Worked on waves, zone transition and force middle

Went to Southpaw tryouts. We warmed up and ran through the baseball drill. Then we split into four teams and played a round-robin with games to 8. Wirst game, I played fairly well on d but threw a bunch of turns. Second and third game, no bad turns and a lot of caught goals. I did have one turn on a huck to Christian, but it was a good look and if I’d put a bit more distance on it, it would have been a goal. The real lesson, though, is that I usually cut too frantically. I did a lot better when I waited for my turn and set up real cuts than when I just ran around all the time. I think with all this time on defense, I’m forgetting how to play O.

I didn’t play.

Worked on marks and scrimmaged. I really see how stepping back on the around mark is important.

Had practice for a few hours at Edgley. Worked on breakside hucks and scrimmaged, then ran 3 hari-karis. Five guys for lunch.

Ran the hunger drill and the breakside dump drill. Did them twice each. Worked on boxing out. Then scrimmaged southpaw for an hour.

I did something weird to my foot on Wednesday. I hope it’s just a bruise, but it hurts to run and there’s a large red spot on the top of it.

We’re on the road again this weekend, this time in Connecticut at their home opener. We played fairly well, but were behind the whole game and lost 29-23. We played well for the most part but our offense struggled and our defense didn’t get enough turns back. The goal was to guard the unders and force their throwers to throw bad hucks against straight-up marks. We did that pretty well, but they ended up catching a lot of bad deep shots, sometimes even after we got a hand on the disc. We also didn’t cover the incuts as well as we should have.

Personally I had one layout d and another jump d that didn’t go far and got caught. Also, a turn on a dishie pass against a zone. I didn’t get burned much on D (a few in cuts) and played well on dumps. I’d say my biggest problem was not pulling the trigger on a few bids. Gotta be a bit more aggressive (also more physical till the refs call it). And I could always be in better shape.

My parents came out to watch the game, take some pictures, and take me out for sushi after. Also saw a few old friends: people from college and Dono (hey buddy - you’re this blog’s only reader).

Practiced on the upper field at Temple. Worked on marks and moving the disc. I got in a little work on boxing people (Art) out.

Had Spinners practice 11-2pm, then went to UDel and scrimmaged their team (plus a few pickups) 4-7pm. My ankle didn’t hurt after practice, despite playing a lot (played a bunch of O-line, which was interesting). I think I’m almost fully healed.Also, met Bill Clemente at the first practice :-)

Had spinners practice both days. Ankle is still not fully healed, but I played most of both days. It seems to be fine when I’m not playing, but gets worse as I play. I hope it heals completely by next weekend.

Gym Friday

• Dips 3x10/25lb
• Bench 2/170, 4/155, 5/145lb
• Pull ups 4/45, 4/40, 5/30lb

Spinners practice today

I’m still hurt but I did about 200 push ups before the core workout, and then did the core workout. Also throwing.

Played two games in winter league finals. First game was against Keg/Kuhfuss. We were up the whole game but I got hurt in the 3rd quarter (evertion ankle sprain) and we only won by one point. Next we played Laarz. I sat out the first half but started to play in the second half. We were down 5 late in the game, but then we threw the Trey zone and evened up the score. We couldn’t pull ahead and ended up losing by 1.

After that, I went to Spinners tryouts. We did the beep test, breakmark drill, hunger drill and 40 meter survivor sprints. We also scrimmaged a lot. In the end, I made the team. Expect a lot of “spinners practice” posts.

Tied Brose’s core team 20-20, then did 10 burpees, pistols, push ups and full-body crunches. I played well in the first half, esp on D, but threw away a LOT in the second half. Mostly deep throws to people covered by H or bad up-line throws.

Lost to Butter’s team in full for the third time this season. We played really well, especially on D, but still lost. That puts us tied for 5th with Drexel and TKO.

Beat Trey’s team 20-19. Trey wasn’t there, but the game was still close. We should have won by more because we were up 8-1 in the first quarter, but then really slowed down.

Beat Alex Peters 27-21.

Lost to RABS. We once again had 6 guys. They had their full team. They crushed us.

Lost to Butter’s team. We each had 6 guys and we both played well. We were up most of the game but died at the end.

Tied Trey’s team 19-19 today. I wanted to win, but I’m very happy with how we played today. Faster subbing, better D, better (though at times still shaky) offense, more blades, more glory. Btw, my score in the “Ds minus turns” game with Diana is still 0. She’s at 0 as well. Looks like it’s gonna be tight to the end.

Thursday: Lost 7-0 in dodgeball to the defending champions. I guess they are the champs for a reason. At least two of the games ended with me alone against all 6 of them. Both times, I got a few out but then got hit. On the plus side, I came up with a pretty interesting (though kinda cheesy) strategy. Gonna save it till the time is right.

After that, we lost to Butter’s full team on Thursday. We had the game and were up a few in the third quarter. They scored 5 or 6 in a row, and then we lost by 3.

Beat Carol Jantsch. Should have won by more. Partially my fault, I just can’t resist the silly throws.

Lost to Trey’s full team. Got rocked: 28-15. And that was their second game of the day. I don’t even know what to say or do to get us to play better. Lesson for future: don’t captain. Just playing is way more fun. Alternatively, work on captaining before captaining again.

Tied BLo’s team. Our O is still having problems. We threw into a lot of poaches and made dumb mistakes. We’re also still taking too long to sub.

Won our game . We’re getting chillier on O and we ran a zone on D that worked well at first.

Won against the Drexel team, then lost to TKO.

Won against Ted’s team.

Lost to RABS. They were on their second game and we were on our first, but we still lost by 4. I got 3 handblocks, but turned it over too much. Also, need to sub more rapidly.

Beat Truskin’s team. I really need to get better at being patient and also at boxing people out.

A bunch of Ampers and a few possible future Ampers played 2 hours of indoor at Tees. Then pizza and beer at Jill’s house.