UCLA One Day Tournament

Our first tournament of the season was the UCLA One Day Tournament and we were split up into X and Y. I don't know which I was on, but I wish we called ourselves either Xoryn or Yoryn instead of letting Tambler name us after how much fun we had on Saturday night. We played Hawkins and Jolie's UCLA team first and went down a couple points in the beginning. I wasn't paying too much attention to the score all day, but before one point, Tambler came to the line to get us pumped up by saying she'd take off her shirt if one of us got a lay out D. While I was running for a disc that Chiral tipped on the mark, I was considering slowing down, laying out, and smacking it down, but I decided it would be too much of an asshole move, so I just caught it and then realized I was in their end zone. Callahan! We pulled our way back into it and won by a couple points. Our rookies had their first game under their belts and we moved on to our next game against CSULB, my favorite team that isn't us. It's a good thing I like them so much because I'm pretty sure during that game Tambler told me I'm cut and that I should see if they'll take me. It was a fun game and may have crossed the line into too silly, but it was mostly Igloo's fault and I support that in these preseason tournaments. Igloo got two successive foot blocks on one point and ended the point by grabbing a Callahan because she loves to steal my thunder. At least two of our rookies legitimately bid on a discs. Neither of them caught them, but it's so great to see that they're already not afraid of hitting the ground. When someone else was taking Igloo or she wasn't on the field, I didn't pay much attention to our matchups and kept matching up against their really short players. I still haven't heard the end of that. We took the lead of that game in the beginning and won by a decent margin. Before our third game, Tambler and Meeko switched coaching positions and we lost a couple players to the other Psycho team that had suffered a few minor injuries. Out third game was against another UCLA team that I thought was a lot better that the first. In the past, UCLA has been in better shape than we have later in the day, and that may have contributed to this, but I think there was a lot more to it. The big players on their team were Beans, Sapphire, Slavia, and maybe one or two others I forgot about. They had good flow for a first tournament and forced us to make D's instead of having a ton of drops like other teams. UCLA was playing better than we were, but we stepped up our game to play on their level, so I think we were playing better than we had been in the morning. Both teams still had a lot of turnovers, but not as many as our first two games. On one point, Loryn had five D's in the same spot of the endzone. It was insane. We were low on numbers and tired and it showed. UCLA beat us by about four points. Irvine was up next. We're used to them being a lot of fun, but they had a lot of new faces we didn't recognize. Still, they lived up to our expectations. Mel, one of our rookies, showed that she is better in most ways than the old Mel when she got a monster D in this game. She also laid out for a bad throw from me and looked pretty awesome all day. Don't tell her I think she's good though. We won that game by about six, so we went 3-1 on the day. The other Psycho team (was it Xonds or Yonds?) also went 3-1 as they beat Caltech, Irvine, and the third UCLA team, but lost to the UCLA team we beat. When I was a rookie, I didn't go to any preseason tournaments, but after this one, I think starting the year off with a one day tournament is an ideal transition into the season and a great way to give the rookies a taste of what it'll be like to be a college ultimate player.

Thanks to Igloo for the pictures.

Lists Vol. 2

Grossest Psychos
1. Dada
2. Penny
3. Ferris
4. D-Wade
5. Cuervo

Biggest Partiers
1. Zeta
2. Ziggy
3. Cuervo
4. Maple
5. BC

Biggest Hippies
1. Nala
2. Quito
3. Mahi
4. Bonds
5. Penny

Best Beer Pong Players
1. Bonds
2. Austen
3. Meeko
4. Sir Robin
5. Ziggy

Wannabe Psychos
1. Igloo
2. Shy
3. The Anil8r
4. Amy
5. Monstro

Lists Vol. 1

I hope practice isn't rained out tomorrow so I can hear you guys complain about which lists you did or didn't get on.

Psychos most likely to eat 12 tacos
1. Lindsey
2. Tidal
3. Molica
4. Dada
5. Ziggy

Ultra’s favorite Psychos
1. Sir Robin
2. Bowie
3. Meeko
4. D-wade
5. Bonds

Psychos most like Ultra
1. Ultra
2. Meg
3. Ferris
4. Beesley
5. Joule

Creepiest Psychos
1. Joule
2. Austen
3. Tidal
4. Hannah
5. D-wade

Straightest Psychos
1. Ashley
2. Spipit
3. Godiva
4. Loryn
5. Penny

We Talkin' 'bout Practice

A couple weeks ago, before we started holding rookies practices, we had a returner practice. I'd been looking forward to it for a while but somehow didn't consider how different it would be without last year's big dogs (Sir Robin, Meeko, Ferris, and Guano) on the field. Meeko was actually there, but as a coach so it wasn't the same. It didn't take long before I realized that I would have to play a part in running the show, especially once we split into teams to scrimmage. Tambler split us up into four teams so we could have two scrimmages going on at once. I found myself on a team of cutters, so I handled for the whole scrimmage other than one point that Zazu offered to step in and let me cut. However unbalanced we were, I was happy with my team. Hannah had taken a year off, which she spent abroad in Israel and Spain, but she jumped into a spread offense she'd never seen before and consistently got open on the first cut for me. For the first day of practice, our flow was fantastic. We had way less drops than I had expected, and even though my team lacked solid throwers, each player was confident enough to throw a continue once they got the disc down field. I didn't expect to get any first possession scores but we did and I had little to do with it. The outcomes of our scrimmages were interesting. My team beat Joule's team handily and Bonds' team beat Loryn's team, but then Loryn's team killed my team and Joule's team beat Bonds'. Either we're just really inconsistent or else props to Tambler for splitting up our teams evenly.

We've had two rookie practices and they've both been a lot of fun. I haven't learned close to all the rookies' names yet, but the ones I have gotten to know seem like they're going to be great additions to the program. Some of them seem pretty dedicated to learning how to play- five of them even came out to throw with me on Friday and are already throwing acceptable forehands. Our scrimmages have been messy, as expected, but looked like a real game of ultimate at select moments. I'm excited to see how they improve over the next week before our first tournament this weekend and how the younger returners step up.

Psycho Recruitment

All week we've been hunting down freshmen and trying to get them to come out to our first practice on Thursday and I'm already stoked about some of the girls. Even though I've spoken with only a small fraction of the total number of girls that expressed interest in coming out to play this year, I've heard from two high school players. What a leap forward it'll be for our program to bring in players that already know how to throw a flick and understand the fundamentals of the game. A few girls are taller than me, including one former basketball player that must be sit feet tall. A ton of girls seemed really enthusiastic about playing ultimate and more girls than I expected stopped to let me try to sell them on ultimate even though they hadn't considered playing for us. As expected, most of our recruits are freshmen, but there are also some older girls looking for a change in pace. Quite a few guys came up to us for information about playing for the Squids, including a guy that declared himself to be "the best Frisbee player in the world". I didn't let him go with a proclamation like that, so we gave him some challenges to prove that he's actually the best in the world. Have fun with that one, Squiddies.

Our theme song for recruitment is "Paparazzi" because we follow potential rookies until they love us. Hopefully they'll all c-come out and see that we'd be so fantastical and that the disc is plastic but we still have fun.

Labor Day Championships

Can anyone tell me why this is a called a championship tournament? Would Pres Day be more legitimate sounding if I changed the name to "Presidents' Day Championships"? It was a fun semi-spontaneous road trip up to Santa Cruz with Monstro, Dada, and Nagana. What was originally thought up to be a camping trip turned into a weekend of sleeping in a castle of a house and being ultimate superfans.

Watching high level ultimate was great, but a couple big names I hoped to see were either missing or inactive and I've still never seen Fury play Riot because Riot lost in the semifinals. Usually I cheer for the underdog, but a Fury-Riot match up could have been so epic, especially since this is a championship tournament and all. The wind picked up by the time the semifinals rolled around and gave Riot more trouble than Traffic, contributing to their loss. Fury then beat Traffic in a mundane finals game even without Georgia Bosscher and Alicia White. Underground had stronger results than I expected and it looks like Rare Air had a tough tournament, going 1-4 in pool play, but other than that, the games went mostly as expected on the women's side.

There were a couple of upsets in the Open Division, but I missed most of that action. Since Revolver took second in their pool, the Sockeye-Revolver semifinal was the big game of the tournament. I didn't watch it because I was standing on the sideline between the two women's semi's, but the perimeter of that field was packed and I hear there were spectacular plays on top of spectacular plays. Sockeye won that game and the finals game against Doublewide.

Without a doubt, Streetgang was the sharpest looking team out there, especially with those new hats. However, they didn't have as much success as I thought they would. They have a ridiculous pool of talent but a tournament like this gave me some perspective on all the elements a team needs to succeed against top teams. In some games against strong teams, they had solid first halves but then would have a couple miscommunications and slide out of the lead. Their chemistry wasn't always strong, but I anticipate that down the line they'll be rocking some of the teams that beat them in Santa Cruz. As a newly formed team, they're only going to get better as they play more with each other.

Safari took seventh and held seed. They came close to taking down Zeitgeist in their first game on Saturday morning, but lost in hard cap. Freshly back from Africa, Brenda had some good D's in that game and set a killer mark the rest of the weekend. Tai had at least a couple impressive layouts dispite a dislocated rib in her back that she could feel move around when she hit the ground. They beat Box, the only Southwest team they played, and took out a Chelsea Putnam-less Schwa in the 7th place game.

Southwest Region Tune-Up

This was my first tournament with The LAW, the newly formed women's club team from LA. I expected the level of play to be a huge step up from college, but it felt a lot like what I was used to. On the other hand, I know teams were trying new stuff out, and this "tune-up" tournament is probably a poor indicator of what I should expect for the Series. My recaps would definitely be more accurate if I wrote them right after the tournaments, but there's no going back to the past, so here's the best I can do from memory:

Before our games, we were throwing around in all different colored t-shirts and shorts while other teams were doing plyos and end zone drills in their uniforms. I felt like we were the Little Giants about to take on the Pee-Wee Cowboys. The feeling was short-lived because Michelle arrived with our uniforms, and just like that, we looked like a legitimate team. The first few points in our first game against Safari were messy and we went up 3-1. They were running a vertical stack on offense and turning the disc over on miscommunications. A couple players were clearly frustrated with it, but I heard later that they were running that offense for the first time. They got in their groove and beat us 13-5 with a clam that we couldn't break. We played Mucho Gusto next, who was down players. Their best player was Tonya, who they picked up for the tournament, and there weren't any other standouts. I thought we could have beat them, but I think they beat us by a sizable margin. The thing that stuck out to me the most when we played the Lady Condors was how different the UCSB players looked. We played UCSB four times this year and I watched them play a few times on top of that, so I generally know who's who, but they threw me all off. First of all, they were wearing shorts instead of skirts. Andrea Romano wasn't wearing a hat, but another player that looked a lot like her from across the field was, which tricked me when we were matching up across and I was all excited about guarding Andrea Romano. They played a lot like UCSB on offense the way they would have a handler push up and go cut. Despite some uncharacteristic drops that caused a few long points, they looked like a really strong team . I also don't have the final score for this game but the Lady Condors definitely won by a lot. We had a chance to watch the Safari-Rare Air game during our bye and then played our last game against Rare Air. The game was short and there wasn't much that stood out to me. Rare Air beat us 13-2 and is obviously a solid team.

I'm heading up to the Labor Day Tourament in Santa Cruz this weekend and am curious to see if Safari and Rare Air can challenge the top teams in the nation. It'll also be interesting to watch how the inevitable Fury-Riot match up plays out. Can Fury can top Riot on more or less their own turf after losing to them twice in Washington or does Gwen Ambler just hold the key to winning? I'll be able to tell you in a few days (but I'll probably wait a month and forget everything).

Good luck to Safari, Streetgang, and Meeko's team!