Conn Tourney

We arrived at the fields excessively early, and I had no problem with this. For the record, , however:
As Dave's navigator I recommended that we park on a particular street;
Ariel shows up and tells us all to move the cars to another location;
We end up having our first game on the field adjacent to the original parking location that I suggested.

In any case, we warm up on the dewy ground, move to the field we were at before, and lose both the flip for color and for pull. White, we receive, and we play the game as if we had not warmed up. I don't remember much about this game, but I know it wasn't pretty. We lost 7-13.
I wanted to scream during this game. I didn't.

Then we came out fired up against Yale. We had a grudge against these guys from Southerns, where we gave up a several-point lead to lose on universe point in our last game of Spring Break. The first half was very close, and some of our deep shots were not connecting, but we stepped up the defense and cleaned up the O for the second half and ran off a 13-9 win. This game felt great--we were covering well, won some individual battles and worked fairly within the system to put it in.

Next up was Conn College B. Uh...we rolled, 13-3.

Bye round! Used to take in nutrients and water, then heckle and support Yale in beating Brown in a 13-5 upset. The game was big, seemed a decent huckfest, and Yale was hungrier. Our whole team was cheering them on, even during our warmup jog--we didn't know that Yale's upset would be our undoing. We took our two laps, stretched briefly, ran some EFGs, and got up for the game. The first half was intense--toe to toe with the Nationals-caliber team, we tied is at 5-5. Then they dropped the pull, and we FAILED TO CONVERT. This was, I feel, a turning point. We started playing sloppy, and let them run away with the game. We lost half 5-7, and lost the game 7-13. I was somewhat disappointed because I felt this game was definitely within reach, but we lost the mental focus required. We failed to adjust when their #10 began roasting all of his defenders, repeatedly scoring off hucks, and we failed to change up the defense when straight-up didn't take away those hucks. We kept our heads up, though. We were 2-2 on the day, with a play-in 9am Sunday. It so happened, however, that after Yale beat Brown we were playing them for 1st or 4th in the pool, and we ended up taking 4th. Crazy upsets in both pools.

Dinner at Chili's! Bottomless chips and salsa, shrimp caesar salad, and a neat "paradise pie" dessert. At the hotel, I gathered my moxy for an ice bath: my first attempt, I lasted two minutes before the pain in my ankles and feet became unbearable, and I had to get out. After a five minute break, I got back in and lasted a full 10 minutes. Then, we all watched a DISAPPOINTING PERFORMANCE by the Rutgers Football team.
Goddamnit, Mike Teel. I slept with a bitter taste in my mouth.

Woke up Sunday, Dunkin Donuts egg on a croisant and a bottled tropical fruit smoothie, pre-quarters against Yale B. We won 13-3 with poor defense and a fairly clean offense.

Quarterfinals against Brandeis, we played the best Ultimate of our weekend. They kept it close during the first half, and we traded to 5-5. Then we stepped it up--our defense started really clamping down on in-cuts, forcing them to put up less than perfect hucks, and cleaning up in the air. We played a patient offense, working it up and taking what they gave us--fast break when it was open, the bread and butter at all other times. Our endzone was working, and we went on a 10-2 run to win 15-7. It felt great.

That game set us up for a rematch against Brown in the semifinals. The game started off with bad offense--we let them go up 2-7 on us before we got back in the game. Despite their playing zone in the second half in the moderately strong crosswind, we traded points after 2-7 to lose 8-13 at the cap (we scored the last point). Intensity was high for this game, but we need to come out more consistently.

I remember throwing a lot of leading, moderately nice (read: catchable) hucks to open receivers who, due to general noobness, did not catch them. Apparently, my defense was at times sub-par. I threw completed hucks, threw a bunch of goals, scored a couple, got a couple D's, got shut down by Brown #10 on Saturday but not on Sunday, gave Ariel two heart attacks in one point, and threw a fadeaway jump-shot backhand to Jay for a goal against Brown. I got handblocked once (on Saturday, against WPI), missed maybe a couple layout opportunities (none blatant), and scored a goal on Brown that got taken back because they thought I jumped into the endzone after I caught the disc (false, but I didn't want to argue). We ended up not scoring that point, much to my dismay. I played okay at times, well at others. It was a normal tournament for me, a great tournament for the team--we held seed, came out with a winning record, and improved over the course of the weekend. I am very happy with how things went, but nonetheless was very upset at times.

Todd B., if I recall correctly, caught something like 10 goals for 12 points on the tournament. Does the "B" stand for "Beastly"?