Troubled in Vegas, Part 2

After that first "power pool" game on Friday evening we had another bright and early on Sunday morning. We stopped at the Jack in the Box again for sustenance, watched Ariel's van give a ride to a hitching girl's team (whom Dan Johnson immediately asked, "so how good are you?"), stocked up on Powerade and Monster, and made it to the fields without much time for idling. I wore my athletic pants and jacket liner for the warmup, wanting to make sure I got good and loose before the game, which was against Georgetown. They had a lot of goons--tall dudes who were not particularly athletic or skilled, but got the job done if you gave them opportunities. Which we did. Another frustrating day for the offense, which seemed to think mental errors won games. The wall defense looked better in this game, though, so it wasn't all bad. We did lose, but the team is starting to (inconsistently) gel. I remember having some good handler motion in this game.

After a bye we had Virginia Tech, a team we lost to at Southerns last year. I remember our wall defense improving more but our offense still giving up the disc in silly ways. Same story for our next game, vs Chico State (again), although our man defense got a little better here too, whereas before it was pretty flimsy. I remember baiting an in-cut in the Chico game, getting the D on my dude, sprinting deep and catching a huck for the goal. I spiked the disc, full of energy and fired up, but now regret it. There really wasn't any reason to do that--we were down by a pretty bad margin and the point was to improve our game, not be jerks. Anyway, we lost both of these games. Afterwards, we stretched in a circle and then sat down to talk about, as a team, our impressions from the tournament so far and how we wanted to move forward. I heard some really good feedback from the freshmen, some things that really give me hope and pride for the future of our team, so long as they can back it up. A lot of the guys went back to the hotel at this point, but a few of us, myself included, stayed to watch Wisconsin vs CUT and Florida vs Arizona. Sick games, especially to watch the intensity and speed of play in the Wisco-CUT game. Something to aspire to.

We headed back without Dan Johnson (who apparently got a ride from Hector Valdivia, who was freestyle rapping for his car-ride companions?), showered up and headed to the Freemont Street Experience. Browsing the various gift shops, we saw all kinds of shot glasses, trick brandy glasses, playing cards with naked ladies on 'em, plastic slot machines, dice, and cheap t-shirts galore. There was a life balancing-act duo, and also one of those steel cages with up to 3 dudes on motorcycles whirling around inside. Ladies bedecked in weird glittery costumes welcomed you into the casinos lining the street, some guy was spray-painting these awesome pictures, and there was some kind of Chippendales gazebo with half-naked dudes posturing for cameras. There were tons of daquiris in the hands of the pedestrians, cheap disgusting foods hawked from a couple of corner stores, and bums all around asking you to buy them alcohol. I stopped in the Playboy store, which was nothing but women's t-shirts and bunny ears (no porn, no novelties, quite tame in fact), and took a peek into the Harley Davidson shop (which was more impressive, with biker gear everywhere). We even got to see a 3-woman dancing show going on inside one of the casinos, though we all had to stand outside of the store-front-wide "door" because we were underage. We wandered around for an hour or two, ogling like everybody else. The giant screen on the roof of the whole walkway was pretty neat, showing clips and short movies from time to time and claiming to be the largest TV in the world. In short, it was a terrific, gaudy smorgasborg--definitely a good way to pass some time if you've never had the pleasure of immersing yourself in the seedy fakeness of Sin City.

But eventually, we made it back to the hotel for some pre-gaming before heading over to the party. I grabbed a sub from Subway, sipped a Monster-bomb (which really peeved Thales, who thought it was a travesty to not gulp it down like you're supposed to), and we walked to the bus-stop on the other end of Freemont. There was supposed to be this bus that would take us to the general location of the tournament party, but when we got there we found out it would cost us like $3 per person and we'd need exact change. That, and the fact that a thousand people were trying to cram onto these busses, made us rethink our plan. We called Pete to pick us up in the minivan, I told four girls that there wouldn't be room in the car for them, I got yelled at ("There's always room for girls!") and then we packed 15 people into a 7-passenger van. Driver, shotgun, four in the middle, five in the back, four in the trunk. That automobile was riding so low, we could only make it up to around 60 on the highway and I was worried that some cop would pull us over for ridin' dirty, and we'd catch some serious shit. Either that, or somebody would cut us off, Pete would have to swerve, and we'd all die in the crash. Thankfully, we made it to the supposed location of the party unscathed, searched for a parking space well away from the lot guards, and proceeded to amble around looking for a large group of very drunk individuals. At first, all we saw was some random girl with her back against a dumpster, pants around her ankles, peeing in the parking lot. Eventually, though, we found the "party." It must have been at least 400 people walking through the (full) parking lots behind casinos, yelling like fools and drinking jungle juice from gasoline canisters. Most of us were not impressed, but a few joined the crowd right away while the rest of us shook our heads. The predictable few elected to stay at this "party" but the rest of us rode back to the hotel. A couple freshmen pledged to find some girls and have their own party, others probably played a few drinking games to close out the night, but I ended up going to sleep--after all, we had another 8am game the next morning.

Well, an 8:30am game, as it turned out. Another trip to Jack in the Box, a long warmup in the chilly air, and a few stories about what went down at the "party" the night before--I'll say no more than to mention that one particular person exposed himself to a group of girls in exchange for some fake money. Yup, didn't I wish I was there to see that. In any case, Syracuse showed up to play us, and we only sort of showed up to play them. Our offense would look great one moment, disorganized and shitty the next, and we had some problems transitioning from wall to man. It was a close game, and I feel like we definitely should have closed it out, but again we killed ourselves with execution errors and mental lapses and gave it up. On the plus side, we played in our darks for the first time all tournament. Next, we walked over to where our final game was supposed to be, but found out that our opponents had bagged. I think that's really some bullshit, that a team ditches and we, who came all the way from the east coast, missed out on our "guaranteed" 9th game. Instead, I played "how fast is your flick?" (45 mph for both backhand and forehand), scored some sweet shorts from the 5Ultimate tent, and then got back to the team for a hammer-cut drill. We then split into three groups--mine went back to the hotel, showered, ate at the buffet, then made it to the fields in time to watch the second half of the semis and all of the finals. Sick games, all, and it was really nice to just chill with teammates in the sun and watch some good Ultimate.

The trip back was quicker but no more enjoyable. It was excessively windy coming into Newark International, 30mph gusts that rocked the plane on approach--I was not a happy passenger. I did drink at least 64oz of fluids during the flight back, though, which probably helped get me through the day. We got back to Rutgers at 7:30am, ate a huge breakfast at Brower, and everybody headed back to their respective homes for some rest. Except I didn't go to sleep--I checked my email, showered, and went to class. I have four classes on Monday, and went to all of them (physically, at least...I was mentally absent for perhaps 30% of the time). The only way I lasted through my final two was with a healthy dose of Monster and an iron will.

It was a terrific experience, and I'd do it again in a second. My only hope is that next year, we are more prepared and more in tune as a team, so that the tournament brings us a little more success and a little more productivity--the closer your games are, the more you get to work on your game. For what it was, though, it was good--three days of the most perfect weather for Ultimate that I've ever had, a ton of teams, and a good time in a ridiculous city. Next up, Ultimaxx.