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.