Pre-Regionals

Regionals are this weekend in Fort Collins, CO. We lost another one of our best players at Sectionals when Ashley tore like every ligament in her knee in our pool play game against Claremont. Even without Ashley, we beat UCLA and earned ourselves the fourth seed at Regionals. With that win and our win against Cal at the Stanford Invite, we've shown that we can be a great team when we want to be. We'll have to do it again when it counts to go to the big show. It's time to shine!

Stanford Open

I’ve been meaning to write about the all the tournaments we’ve played in this season, but since I’m so behind and it’s more fun to write about winning, I’m going to start with the Stanford Open and write about Sectionals next. The tournament began for us well before we arrived at the fields on Saturday morning because all week we had been discussing with each other and reflecting on our own about we needed to do to bounce back from Pres Day and poor play across the board. Unlike almost every tournament we ever play in, we all knew that we had a realistic shot at winning the Stanford Open if we played up to our abilities.
We aimed to leave in the late morning to avoid LA traffic, but we hit traffic when we got to San Clemente. We found out later that the freeway was closed for a couple hours because of a grenade on the side of the freeway. Once we got past the grenade traffic and stopped at Taco Bell, it was smooth sailing to Turlock. Our hotel rooms were huge and since B-Team lost so many girls in the last couple weeks leading up to the tournament, we had way too many rooms and didn’t even need all the floor space. Even some rookies got to sleep in beds. We’re spoiling them too much.

In the morning, we decided to follow a Puget Sound van to the fields instead of figuring out how to get there ourselves. It was a poor decision. We found ourselves in a five car caravan on First Rd. instead of First Ave. in the wrong city and had to make several U-turns, but we eventually made it to the fields. We laughed at how we would be playing on an open field surrounded by farms, and that was before we heard the rooster cock-a-doodle-doo-ing all day. It was supposed to rain on Saturday, but we didn’t feel a drop all day. As it turns out, a 70% chance of rain means there is a 30% chance it won’t rain. It was still pretty windy and it was hard to keep track of which direction the wind was blowing in because it constantly was inconstant. Upwind and downwind directions changed all day and the wind picked up more in the afternoon.
We played Santa Cruz first, coming out with a lot of fire. We went up 4-0 before they started scoring. We looked and felt good, but it was the same case in our first game against Davis at Pres Day that we let up in after a good start and ended up losing. Despite a lull in the end of the game, we were able to hold on to our lead and won 11-8.

Next, we played Arizona. The first few points were long and ugly, but we established a small lead over them. Their biggest threat was LP, who touched the disc a lot and had good hucks that she’d used against us in Santa Barbra. We tried to prevent this by having our farthest defender on their ho-stack poach deep, so we’d have two girls to their one whenever they took a deep shot. It was effective when they were stagnant, but they were able to complete some deep throws after they moved the disc around a little and we were disorganized. Hard cap went off when we were up 8-7, but they scored downwind and took it to universe, just as they had in Santa Barbara. On universe, we had no trouble working the disc up the open side and I believe Ashley threw Ultra the score to win the game 9-8.

After spending our bye eating circus animal crackers and applying Kung Fu Panda temporary tattoos, we warmed up again for a game against Whitman, who won DIII Nationals last year. It was an especially fun game because two of their best players went to high school with me, including one that played basketball with Bonds and me and is one of our good friends. Between the two teams, there may have been times when we had six Paly players on the field at once. The wind had picked up and we threw our zone defense of them. Joule got a couple of big hand blocks including at least one on their goal line. Again, we started with a lead and the game was never close. We won 10-7.

Our last game against Pacific Lutheran was our easiest of the day and secured the first seed coming out of our pool. We won it 11-5.

There were some close games in our pool but not a single upset. In the other pool, the first seed was Davis and they lost all four of their pool play games. A three-way tie between NC State, Sonoma State, and Claremont was settled by point differential and NC State took the top spot. The top teams from the lower pools were San Diego State, Oregon State, and Cal Poly-SLO, with San Diego State looking especially dominant.

After our game, we watched Berserk play Stanford-B and helped them out since they didn’t have any coaches with them for the weekend. Stanford-B won and coincidentally, that meant we would face them in the pre-quarters on Sunday morning.

Even though we didn’t allow Stanford-B to score until the second half, the game was just ugly. Points were way long than they needed to be because our offense was messy so we had far too many turns. Our defense was fine and we won 13-3, but it was a game that we shouldn’t have been scored on in because every one of their points came after at least two or three turnovers on our side. Like we had done when we lost to other inferior teams, we played down to their level. That game cast doubts for me about whether we’d be able to make a run for the Championship because I knew we wouldn’t have a shot if we continued to play like we did when we came out.

Fortunately, we were able to pick it up in our next game against Humboldt. We were able to establish flow and looked like a whole new team. Unlike Saturday, there was no real wind, so taking deep shots was an option we brought into play. We played hard throughout the game, promising each other that we would save our usual lull for the shower after our games, and won 12-6. After we won our quarterfinals game, we found out from the TD that none of the other three semifinalist teams wanted to go to the Invite, so our place was secure. From then on, we were just playing for free shorts and glory.
Our semifinals matchup was against Sonoma State. We’d seen them on Monday at Pres Day and beat them 13-2, but they had been playing without their dominant cutter, Maggie Ruden, who had hurt her shoulder that weekend. They proved that they were better than the team we obliterated at Pres Day. We already knew Brinn Langdale was their big handler who held their offense together, but Ruden made lots of big plays as well, including a couple of lay out D’s. It was a much tougher game than the first time we saw them and we won 13-7.

On the other side of the bracket, NC State beat Claremont. After a week of trying to fathom why NC State decided to fly across the country to play in a qualifier in Stevinson, I talked to a couple of players on the team about it. They told me that they thought the tournament was at Stanford and wanted to see some west coast teams. That answer still wasn’t good enough for me but I let it go.

Our finals game may have been the best game we’d played up to that point. It wasn’t flawless, but we played like we really wanted it. Our defense forced their best player to get frustrated and throw at least five bad hammers on a high stall count. I only remember one that was caught. Like almost every game we played that weekend, the finals game was capped. We held onto a moderate lead all game and won 12-8.

Psycho Season Recap (Part 3 of 3)

After our Centex debacle, we were pleased to still be seeded fourth at Sectionals. It was on our home turf and ten bids to Regionals were up for grabs, so there wasn’t a lot on the line. We were playing for a good seed at Regionals and our pride. We kicked off the tournament with a game against Claremont, who beat us in Austin but was playing without Junior Worlds handler Erika Baken. Claremont had big threats in Carny and Bayliss, who are both smart players that have an advantage in size, but we played confidently and won 11-7. Our next game was against San Diego State, competing in their first College Series. Their style of play was more aggressive than ours but we displayed superior composure and took an easy 13-1 victory. Afterward, we played Occidental and were able to outrun them for an 11-3 win. Nicole Copti made some good plays, but they came in without many subs and they were clearly tired. Our last game of the day was against UCLA, the top seed in our pool. The wind had picked up and the field was rotated 90 degrees from the other fields we had been playing on, creating a clear upwind and downwind. We started off well, going up 3-2, but struggled offensively for the rest of the game. Both teams suffered from many uncharacteristic turnovers, most of which the wind played a part in, but UCLA was able to score upwind when we failed to and we fell 5-7 in hard cap. We took on Long Beach State in the last round of pool play on Sunday. Since we were tied for second in our pool, only the winner of this game would move into the championship bracket. The loser would lose their shot at a top four finish. Guano faced off against her younger sister, Igloo, and showed her that she still had a few things to learn. Long Beach State kept us on our toes, but we hammered out a 9-7 win and moved on to a semifinals game against future College Champions, UCSB. Like our game against UCLA, we scored first, but after trading the first few points, it was all downhill. UCSB was in much better shape than we were, one of several reasons why we just couldn’t hang with them. Ferris hurt her shoulder on a bid in the endzone and spent the second half with the trainer. We lost 7-15 and dropped down into the third place bracket for a rematch against Claremont, this time playing with Baken. They shocked us by taking the lead in the beginning of the game, and forced to claw our way back into it. We came back from a sizable deficit to tie the game as the end approached. An impressive lay out block in the endzone by from Ferris kept us in the game when it looked dicey, but on double game point, Claremont won on a deep shot. The final score was 13-14. When we were standing on the line before game point, we heard UCLA explode in celebration for their upset win over UCSB, which give them the So Cal Section title. I was really happy for them, but it was hard to show it after our game since I was upset with our loss. We played Long Beach again for fifth in a game no one really cared about. My knee had been progressively hurting more and more since halftime of the Claremont game, so I sat out for this game. Score Reporter says we won 15-10. Finishing fifth in Sectionals when we knew we needed to get fourth at Regionals was a blow to our confidence, but somehow it earned us the Sports Club of the Week award. That’s how well they understand what’s going on with us.

We spent the week before Regionals pumping each other up with “Eye of the Psycho” necklaces, motivational emails, and nearly a mullet haircut. Regionals were in Colorado and we knew it would be cold. Most of us fitted ourselves out with clothes that would keep us warm, knowing that living in San Diego hasn’t prepares us well for the cold. In the morning on Saturday, we found out that our pool had some minor changes, and instead of playing Midas first, we would play Cal Poly SLO. It was an easy game and we were able to get away with some sloppy play and still cruise to a 17-5 victory. I had a lot of trouble dealing with my cold, stiff hands and had more drops in the first half than I would have liked to have all day, but I was able to cut it out later on. Once we were warmed up, big plays came out of young and older players alike. Playing in what she knew could be the last tournament of her college career, Meeko was a huge mark. She caused several turnovers through handblocks and eliciting bad throws by shutting down the thrower’s options. Meeko was stunning on offense as well, keeping her composure as a thrower despite breezy conditions, and punching in score after score. This is most likely the reason why she wasn’t heckled nearly enough for wearing a glove. This game gave us a chance to adjust to the cold Colorado weather and get warmed up to play UCSB. I knew my knee was a time bomb and I anticipated would give me trouble at the end of the day, hopefully only on Sunday, but I started feeling the pain during our first game. Knowing it would only get worse, I spent an outrageous amount of time rolling out my IT band throughout the day and took a bunch of Ibuprofen. UCSB is clearly the top team in the Southwest region and had a virtual lock to go to Nationals, despite their shocking second place finish at Sectionals. Our next game was our third matchup with them of the season, so we had a good idea of what would be required of us to contend with them, but weren’t going down without a fight. We began the game up 2-0, but UCSB was unfazed and tied the game up at two points apiece. During the next point, UCSB was nearing the endzone when they threw a high swing pass and Guano jumped up for a D. She got tangled up in the UCSB player and fell to the ground in pain. The trainers evaluated her and diagnosed a bad knee sprain with a possible partial LCL tear. Guano would not return for the rest of the weekend, an enormous loss for us since we relied a great deal on her to handle in the unfavorable weather. Later, her doctors diagnosed her with a torn ACL, a huge setback for someone with such an active lifestyle, but she pushed herself in the following months with her physical therapy and was able to recover remarkably fast. As the game carried on, UCSB ran us to the ground with their superior fitness level, making deep cut after deep cut and moving the disc around with ease. As they tired our starters out, they were able to substitute additional strong players and proved that they were the deeper team. The final score was 7-16, which placed us second in our pool of three. We spent our bye scouting the game between USC and Claremont, knowing that we would face the loser of this game in the first round of bracket play. Claremont strategically rested their strongest players during this game and sacrificed a big loss to USC in a game they decided they didn’t have a shot at winning in order to be at their best when they faced us. This tactic proved to be beneficiary, since our game was indeed hard fought and came down to the wire. Kacto was a force to be reckoned with on defense, letting nothing get past her and never looking tired. Sir Robin had spectacular puts all day and Meeko’s long pulls gave us solid field position time after time. In the end, we got our revenge on Claremont. This 12-10 win placed us in the second place bracket, and was their last game of the day. In one of the semifinals games on Saturday, Colorado surprised UCLA with a one-point win and secured their bid to Nationals, which unfortunately meant that we would be matched up against top-seeded UCLA on Sunday instead of Colorado as we expected. Our teams seemed well matched as we traded points in the beginning of the game, but UCLA pulled away with five straight points and took half 8-4. We surged back to bring the score to 10-11, but UCLA found a weak link in our man-on-man defense and scored on a pass to the open side in the back corner of the endzone on game point and won 12-10. This loss moved us down into the fourth place bracket, which meant that one more loss would eliminate us from Nationals. Long Beach State was the next hurdle we needed to surmount on the track we hoped would lead us to Nationals. Tambler let me sit out this game to save me for our upcoming important games since I was hurting a lot. What was a sunny morning turned into a gloomy, windy afternoon. Once again, sloppy play drew out the game longer than it had to be, but we pulled it together in the end and took a relatively easy victory. In our ensuing game, we faced off against Claremont for the fifth time of the season. We had each beat the other twice, but both teams were thinking more about earning a spot in the “game to go” than their pride, as the winner of this game would have to win just one more game to make it to Nationals. The wind had picked up between games and played a huge role. We broke out our four-man cup and had great success with it. Joule’s mark frustrated even the most seasoned handlers by trapping them on the sideline and not allowing them to swing the disc back across the field. Ferris threw some incredibly accurate hucks to Joule in the gusty wind and repeatedly shut down Claremont’s strongest cutter on defense. We won the game 9-4, but long points with numerous turnovers our legs down before our last and most important game. Everything we’d worked for this season came down to our final game against USC, who had just lost to UCLA by a larger margin than we had earlier that day. The rain began to fall ominously as USC jumped out ahead, scoring the first couple points and making us look confused and tired. We wouldn’t give up that easy though. We scored a couple points, but never cut too far into USC’s lead. Each team played a zone defense that cut off most upfield throws, but USC was able to rely on the athleticism of Lindsey Cross and a few other key players when they did get a longer throw off. Loryn was instrumental in working the disc around through USC’s zone and Ferris made crazy grabs all over the field and in both endzones, helping us produce a slight comeback, but it wasn’t enough. USC ended the game with a score to the front, left side of the endzone and their sidelines erupted onto the field as we walked off drenched and crushed.

Despite the devastation of having our goal within grasp and then seeing it fall away, we did accomplish a great deal over the season. Only a year after our suspension, we made a run at Nationals, which few outsiders expected from us. Next year, we should have a few less doubters, but also higher expectations of ourselves.

BRO Life

We won CSULB No Regrets' first year tournament, BRO Life (Best Regret Of your Life) a long time ago, but I’ve been lazy with this blog and not posted about it. We mainly played in this tournament to support Igloo and Long Beach State in their effort to get it going, but ended up having an amazing time and coming away as champs. Our plan was to send an all-returner team, and thought we talked UCLA into doing the same thing, but UCLA dropped out of the tournament a few days prior to it. We came in as the top seed, and unlike the round robin format of the UCLA One Day Tournament allowed us to, we could play to win this tournament. First things came first though. We decided to get all bro'd out. This meant sporting muscle tees, headbands, bro hats, and most importantly, a bro attitude. No one on our team took warming up too seriously, so we strolled up with Robit blasting the Space Jam theme song a half hour before the first round game against SDSU, cleated up, took a quick lap, and huddled up. In the first couple points, it was clear which team warmed up for an hour and which team brought four discs. They went up 3-1 and then we realized this tournament wouldn’t be a walk in the park and we would actually have to play hard to win. We buckled down and started playing our own game. It didn’t take long for us to catch up and pull ahead. Somewhere in between our mini comeback and winning the game, a girl on SDSU bid for a disc intended for me and instead hit me around the knees and flipped me over. I held on to the disc but landed hard on my head and can't remember much of the end of this game or the next. We played Cal Poly Pomona and won, probably by a lot. They're a first year team led by two third year girls that used to play with the men's team. Our third game was against Long Beach. We always have fun playing them and this was no exception. They gave their rookies a lot of playing time, so the number of times Igloo broke me inside was minimized. Cuervo was a D machine in this game. She just wouldn't let up. I’d never really played with her before, so I didn’t expect this and she blew me away. My play of the game was a face plant from tripping on my girl's cleats. I think Igloo thought about that and laughed at me every time she saw me for the next two days. I’m not sure what the final score was, but we won handily. Our last game matched us up against the second seed, Cal Poly SLO. They came out pumped up when we weren't and went up by a lot in the beginning. Then they took half 7-2 or 7-3. Our end wasn't pretty and they were playing well. I don't know any of their names, but they had one player that was making great decisions with the disc and seemed like seasoned. However many rookies they had out there weren't getting in the way or disrupting their flow. We mustered up a little bit of a comeback, probably because they were low on subs as well, but it wasn't enough and we lost 8-12 on hard cap.

On Sunday, we were down three players (Tidal, Ritz, and Mahi) but were up two (Penny and Kacto) with fresh legs. In our first game against Redlands, our play looked clean again. We quickly won 13-3 and had plenty of time to watch the Cal Poly SLO - SDSU game unfold. SDSU was down by two and pulled it back to a tie, but then lost by two. Cal Poly SLO would be the first seed, we were second, SDSU was third, and Long Beach was third (they had the same record, but SDSU won the head-to-head matchup). If SDSU had won that game, it would have been a three way tie for first and would have come down to point differentials, which would have either gone our way, putting us in first and matching us up against Long Beach in the semis, or come out the same as it did. We played better in our semis game than we did in our first game against State. Loryn threw scores over and over again and was so good that I’m fairly certain they called timeouts entirely to talk about how they could minimize her damage. We won 13-7 and moved onto the finals. I've made it to quarters at Pres Day, semis in DUDE, and the C-Bracket finals at Lei Out, but I've never actually won an ultimate tournament, so I was ready to tear it up. It was a fun game, mostly because I love winning. We jumped out to a 4-0 lead before they scored, but I didn't feel comfortable until we took half 7-1. It was a really tiring game since most of us had to play nearly every point, but we pushed through and it was completely worth it. Since Loryn threatened to put it deep every time, they desperately tried to prevent that and it was easy to get open on an in cut. We'd easily get two or three passes up the open side and then dump it back to Loryn and have her throw the score. A couple times more than we would have liked, we turned it in the red zone, but usually would get the disc back with good field position and were able to score on our next possession. The final score was 10-1. Overcoming the loss from Saturday made the win that much sweeter, but a tournament victory on any terms is fine by me.

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.

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!

Safari Beer Pong Tournament

This 16-team fundraiser tournament was split into four pools. Bonds and I dressed up in green basketball jerseys and NBA headbands and called ourselves the Bausten Ballers. We were in Pool A with Meeko and Jamison, Iris and her girlfriend, and Annie and Allen. Meeko and Jamison won the pool without much competition. Meeko went on fire twice in our game against them, and even though we were playing as well as we could have hoped to, they beat us by at least two. We beat Iris' team when Bonds sunk Iris' death cup when we were up 6-2. Like champs, they drank all eight cups. Allen's defense was impressive in our last game of pool play against his and Annie's team. A few times it seemed like they weren't paying any attention, but he would come out of nowhere and swat our bounces away. He never missed a chance to tell us that he's on the D-line.

The pool winners went straight to quarters while the third and second place teams played pre-quarters games. We finished second and won our pre-quarters and quarters games. Neither were too exciting. Once we got to semis, though, we realized we actually had a shot at winning the whole thing. Something magical happened at that point. We rose to the occasion and played beer pong like we'd never played before. I think we won that game by six, earning our place in the finals. We expected to play Meeko and Jamison again since they'd been so dominant, but MA and her partner pulled off an upset, knocking them out.

I'll do my best to tell the story as it happened from here on out, but I can't make any guarantees. As it was 3am, we also didn't have many fans still standing that can confirm or deny the sequence of events. We went up in the finals and took MA's team to 4-1, but then couldn't sink the last cup. MA started her trash talking and it was working on us. They pulled it to 1-1, hitting the rim of our last cup a couple times before I sunk theirs. Like ameteurs, we celebrated our win before our opposition's rebuttle. MA's partner missed his shot, but MA made hers, sending the game to overtime. Back at 1-1 in overtime, our opponents continued to hit the rim, stopping my heart every time, but sometime later, one of us sank the last cup again and they couldn't match it. Neither of us can remember which of us it was that made the last cup or how long it took but I suspect it was Bonds after quite a few turns. In euphoria and disbelief, Bonds jumped into my arms and we celebrated the Cinderella win nobody expected.

Psycho Season Recap (Part 2 of 3)

Unlike its name suggests, the Stanford Invite was not held at Stanford University, but rather in the town of Ripon, which lies about an hour and a half east of the campus. It was initially disappointing to have to travel to what seemed like the middle of nowhere instead of two of my teammates’ and my hometown of Palo Alto, where the tournament was held in the past. As it turned out, Ripon wasn’t so bad. The population of Ripon is around 10,000, yet somehow we had an old teammate that lives there and she kindly offered up her house to the team. We quickly discovered that Ripon had other things to offer, including endless almond orchards, possibly the nicest people in the world, and, fortunately for us, a brand new soccer complex with beautiful fields. We’d been warned about rain, but the weather was gorgeous on Saturday morning and throughout the weekend. 16 teams were split up into four pools, and we were seeded third in a very strong pool. Our first game was against our pool’s top seed, Washington. First-game jitters plagued us at the start and Washington hucked it for a quick first score. We hung in for a while, but couldn’t adjust to Washington’s accomplished deep game. They were able to stretch out the field again and again, handing us a 13-8 loss. In the second game of the day, we matched up against Berkeley, the second ranked team in the pool and finalist at the Santa Barbara Invite. We started the game with intensity and built up a 5-2 lead. Joule essentially neutralized Cree Howard, preventing her from gaining excess yards on us by forcing her to cut in every time, but Berkeley had other tools at their disposal. Our spirits were high at first, but we disappointingly let our lead slide away. The score was close for most of the game, but then Berkeley went on a hot streak to finish us off with a 13-8 win. Our last game of pool play was against North Carolina–Wilmington, a team ranked fourth in our pool, but above us in the latest NUMP poll. We had watched them beat Berkeley during our bye, so we knew that a win against them would put us into a three-way tie for second in our pool, which would come down to point differentials. The top three teams would move on to the Championship bracket. Before the game, Ros gave us a pep talk about what she called “drunken hookup defense” and “relationship offense”. The idea was that on defense, you have your hands everywhere grabbing at everything and it’s exciting, but on offense, you should stay calm and keep your composure because you know you’re going to score. The talk seemed to be effective because we quickly pulled away in the beginning. However, UNC–Wilmington refused to go down without a fight, and a fight it was. Even though the game was under the watch of two observers, we experienced more vicious contact in it than they did in the whole rest of the weekend. Two key players went down with injuries after opposing players collided into them. First, Ferris hurt her ankle. Lying on the edge of the field in pain, the first words out of her mouth were, “Was it a turn?” She was out for the rest of the game, most of this time spent waiting for the trainer to arrive. Later in the game, Ziggy went down with what we would later discover was a torn ACL, ending her season. We had expected the game to be a little dirtier than the others, but you can never plan for injuries like that. Despite the losses, we held on to our lead for our first win of the tournament with a final score of 13-8. This set up a three way tie for second place in the pool and point differentials placed us in third, which was good enough to move onto a pre-quarters match up against Western Washington. Perhaps this behavior should no longer surprise me, but Ferris toughed it out and played on her hurt ankle. Western Washington perpetuated the trend we saw from the other Washington team and favored the deep game. Alyssa Weatherford was a threat to throw deep every time she had a hand on the disc and they had several fast cutters that would chase her throws down. They swiftly pulled away before we began making adjustments to our defense and we couldn’t catch up. The score was the same as every other score that day, 13-8, and we were knocked out of the Championship bracket. On Sunday morning, we set our clocks forward and our sights on a ninth place finish. It would be a great day for me that I now attribute to be the turning point in my ultimate career when I first realized I could be a valuable member of the team. We arrived to dark, foggy fields covered in a thin layer of Northern California frost. After a valley sunrise, we geared up to play Texas. They scored the first point, but then we went on a long run, pulled far ahead of them, and never let our lead slip away. Seven first-possession scores helped us decisively win the game 13-3. Our next game against North Carolina–Chapel Hill was offensively dominated. With eight first-possession scores, we didn’t spend long on defense, but when we did, it was apparent that some of us were beginning to feel the fatigue of the weekend in our legs. The composure of the older handlers played a huge roll in our eventual 13-10 victory. This win sent us to the Consolation Championship, where we would play USC for ninth place. The game began pretty even, but USC began to pull ahead with the help of a few goals pulled down by Lindsey Cross. The wind picked up to a breeze and we switched our defense to a 3-man cup, but USC continued to find ways to move the disc up the field. USC wrapped up the game with a well designed open side cut off a dead disc, beating us 13-9. We finished 10th, dissatisfied after that last loss but true to seed. I was undaunted and bought a ticket to Nationals when I got home to prove it. Like Pres Day, UCSB took down Oregon in the finals. For another recap and some stats, check out Meeko’s only blog post.

We mistakenly drove 100 miles out of our way towards San Antonio on our way to Austin for Centex, and maybe we should have just stayed there. There’s no way around it- Centex was a disaster for us. A week in Surfside for Spring Break left us with one casualty before the tournament even started and there would be many to come. Ferris had a busted-in tooth, but toughed it out and played on the Vicodin she had been prescribed by a dentist she found in Austin. We began pool play against Ottawa in a strong, gusty crosswind. The two teams traded points in the beginning of the game, and we were up 3-2 after five very long points, but it was all downhill from there. It was a game of field position, so we forced a lot of deep throws, many of which fell incomplete. However, Joule did well catching in the unpredictable wind and came down with some spectacular grabs. Our zone defense was effective at first, but Ottawa was able to break it down later on and we fell behind in the end. We lost to the eventual tournament champions 11-6, but this was the closest score they would see until the finals. Our next game was against Western Washington. After seeing them in Ripon, we knew their greatest threat was the deep game, which we anticipated would be debilitated by the strong winds. They instead worked the disc up the field with shorter throws and were able to run away with the game 15-8, a greater margin of victory than our previous game. We faced Dartmouth in our last game of pool play. The wind was calmer than the hurricane we had experienced in the morning, but was still strong enough to affect most throws. We threw our four-man cup at them and were able to severely minimize upfield throws, often causing Dartmouth to turn the disc over on a swing close to their own end zone. I started experiencing some lateral knee pain early on in the game, but kept playing because it wasn’t that bad. Unfortunately, it was more serious than I thought, and I aggravated it so much that I couldn’t move left during one point while I was playing in the cup and had to take an injury. It was a reoccurrence of ITBS that I didn’t fully recover from until a couple months after the end of the season. Bonds was huge on defense, managing to get a hand on the disc wherever she was on the field, helping us snatch our first victory of the weekend. This would also be our last victory. Long points against formidable opponents clearly were taking their toll on our bodies. In our game against Colorado for a spot in the quarterfinals, we were beginning to get low on numbers. Dada was fighting a knee injury and Ferris had been whacked in her injured tooth, so they both had to sit out. Our healthy players were fatiguing faster with so few subs and Colorado easily beat us 15-6 with their higher intensity level. Losing so severely to a regional competitor was a let-down, but the team still had the spirit to go out and celebrate Bonds’ and my 21st birthday, which was that day. Tambler bought us our first legal beer and we rocked out to a live band at the Tiniest Bar in Texas with some of my favorite people in the world. We called it an early night since we were serious about doing well in the consolation bracket, but I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday celebration given the circumstances. In terms of injuries, Sunday was even worse than Saturday. I thought I felt a little better in the morning and cleated up, but had to walk back to our sideline halfway through the warm-up lap. Sir Robin was too sick to play and Meeko was hurting everywhere on her body except possibly her left forearm. We suffered a few tough losses to Claremont, Arizona, and Michigan State, all teams seeded far below us. The 11th seeded team finished 32nd, otherwise known as dead last. Out of a roster of 20 players, nine were active by the end of the day on Sunday. It was difficult for the team to play without the talent of a few of the top players on the team, including both captains, but the situation provided a unique opportunity for other players to step into leadership roles on the field and gain valuable experience. One of the few positive thoughts we took home from Centex was that this excess game experience could be advantageous for our younger teammates to develop into big time players. In a much different bracket, UCSB found themselves once again in the finals after an amazing comeback victory over Wisconsin, but this time, Ottawa took the win and came away as Centex Champions. A lot of good stuff about other teams and a little bit about how big of a disappointment we were can be found in the Huddle feature on Centex.

Psycho Season Recap (Part 1 of 3)

2008-2009 was a season of varied expectations, mild highs, and remarkable lows. A great deal of uncertainty regarding how the team would recover after our one-year suspension surrounded us. We lost many key players that played important roles in the past due to either graduation (Beignet, Spipit, Brenda, Slavia, and Yahtzee) or traveling abroad (Ultra and Ashley). Of the 22-woman roster from 2007-2008, only nine players returned. Fortunately, these nine included a solid handling veteran core of Meeko, Sir Robin, and Guano (and Ferris against her will). After we played Sean Ryan in Santa Cruz and hosted the So Cal Warm-Up, our try-out tournaments, six B-Team pick-ups and five rookies were added to those original nine to make a the team complete.

Our first tournament after the split into A and B-Teams was the Santa Barbara Invite. It gave us a preview of our regional competition and some other nearby teams. A total of 16 teams came to the UCSB campus to compete, all from California except Scorch. We were seeded sixth and began pool play against Stanford-B (Pretty Fly). Bonds had a huge game. On the first point, she got the D and then immediately the score. A light sprinkle turned into a heavy rain by midgame and our inexperience with a slippery disc resulted in lots of drops. Despite this sloppy offense, our defense was able to hold them out of the end zone for the most part and won 11-3. In the second game of the day, we played Irvine and won 13-3. Then, we faced BLU in our third and final game of pool play. We fell behind immediately as they scored a few quick points, and then the wind began to pick up. The rest of the game was characterized by frequent turns and long points. We lost 4-9 on hard cap. Since we finished second in our pool, we had a pre-quarters game that afternoon against Midas, which we easily won 13-1. On Sunday morning, we were scheduled to face UCSB, the overall top seed, in the first game of the day. The field conditions were appalling, with several huge mud patches extending across the field and high winds. The mud was the worst I’d ever played in (since we didn’t go to Vegas this year). There were four fields, and the field we were on was by far the worst. More mud than grass was visible and it would build up in your cleats until it was like you were wearing platform shoes from 1972. Then, everyone would slip around making huge banana cuts because it was the only way not to fall over. The wind was a factor as well, so both teams ran zone defenses, capitalizing on the difficult throwing conditions. It was questionable whether a zone was the most effective defense, though. It would take our cup too long to run across the muddy field on their swing and, needless to say, running though mud is incredibly tiring, so it would get worse and worse as the point wore on. Despite some encouraging moments, we lost 5-11 and were bumped out of the championship bracket. We played Scorch in the 5th place bracket in the same windy, muddy environment, so once again, we got to practice our zone offense and defense. The conditions were so bad that it was less of a competition of which team was better and more of which was struggling the least. We took the lead in the beginning but lost 6-7 and tied for 7th overall. Our last loss was surprising and startling for those of us with high hopes, but we came out of the tournament with what we hoped for going into it. The goal was to come out as a more experienced team. It was the first tournament with A-Team for the majority of the team and playing time was evenly distributed, so rookies and other younger players were able to benefit immensely from the experience. Stanford was seeded fifth and was never really tested, beating Berkeley in the championship game to win the tournament.

Our next tournament was our own Pres Day Invitational. Loryn and a few helpers brought Pres Day back in a huge way, enticing the best teams in the country to come, and making it into one of the top tournaments of the preseason. It was a three day tournament with roughly a day of pool play, a day of power pools, and a day of elimination brackets. We were seeded fourth in our pool of five. Our first win of the weekend was also our biggest win of the weekend. It came against Carleton, who was seeded second in our pool. They jumped out ahead initially, but we clawed back in the second half to win on universe point. This game was probably a poor representation of how Carleton would be playing late in the season though. Since it gets so cold in Minnesota, they have to practice inside during the winter and couldn’t have been prepared for that gloriously sunny San Diego Saturday. We took on Stanford in the next round and were brought back to reality as we lost 13-5. The wind picked up to a slight breeze by the time we were scheduled to play Sonoma State, the Pres Day Qualifier Champions. Our four man cup effectively shut down their handlers and they were able to produce very little offensive. They had most of their success throwing over the top, but even that wasn’t very effective, so they spent most of their time near their own end zone unable to get a throw upfield. We took the game 13-3. We needed one more win to finish in the top two places in our pool and move into the power pools on Sunday. This win would need to come against Colorado, seeded third in our pool. We pulled it off with a 10-4 victory and secured our place in the power pools. It was an exciting game for more reasons than just was riding on it though. It gave us our first idea of the type of competition we would see at Regionals. I found out later that their whole team wasn’t there since they had also played at Vegas the weekend before, so they may not have been representing their best play. Our power pool was stacked and we didn’t have much of a shot of sliding through to quarters with a top two finish. Our first game on Sunday was against Oregon, a well-balanced team that was ranked as the best team on the west coast at that point in the season. They absolutely dominated without even having an obvious star player. They had great spirit, which is easy when you’re winning, but also managed to be really vocal without being annoying at all. I’m really fond of that team. We fell to Ottawa in the second game of the day, but no one fell harder than I did. A concussion during that game put me on the sideline for the rest of the weekend. Finishing last in our power pool placed us into pre-quarters later that day against Illinois. Tania Reitz was phenomenal. She seemed to be able to do anything, but it wasn’t enough to get the win. On double game point, Ferris hit Joule in the end zone and sent us to quarters. Rain was in the forecast for Monday, and we had to move the tournament as moved to our backup fields in San Bernardino for the final day of play. Meeko saved the day before it even began by bringing extra cleats and letting Godiva wear them since she forgot hers. Not only was it raining hard, but it was cold, which not every team prepared for as they packed for San Diego. The weather affected play tremendously. A slippery disc and rigid hands combined to make offensive play difficult, but we counted on efficient handler motion to move the disc up the field. Our veteran handlers stayed composed throughout the challenging conditions, drawing on mostly short passes. Our top players had to stay in all game because they got too cold when they stopped moving for a point. Sir Robin and Meeko had lots of D’s and shut down their deep option. We made them work hard for their 11-5 victory, which ousted us from the championship bracket. Like nearly every other team, we chose not to play our next game and were done for the weekend. The most surprising move of the tournament was a forfeit from Ottawa. They destroyed UCLA in quarters, and then dropped out, giving UCSB a free ride to the finals. Of all the teams that couldn’t take the cold, I didn’t expect a Canadian team to be suffering the most. Later, an Ottawa player told me that this was their spring break trip and they hadn’t brought any warm clothes. UCSB eventually became tournament champions with a win over Oregon in the finals.