Space Bastard Brodown

Drove the minivan down to Maryland this weekend for my first tournament of the season with Rutgers. I had a car full of kids new to the team, old grad student as my copilot, and leadfoot gumshoe urge to book it down I-95. I had my music all planned out and made it without incident to the destination--first down by at least half an hour. Okay, so I had a few minutes' head start. In any case, I check into the hotel and hit the sack while the new kids traipse over to IHOP for a very early breakfast. It takes me a long time to fall asleep, due to excitement and loud noises from the new kids.

Up at 6:20am, ahead of my alarm by 25 minutes, I relax for a while until some captain comes banging on the door to wake the rest of us up with the news that our first round had been pushed up by half an hour. Luckily I had given my room a generous amount of time to get out the door after waking up, so we hurried over to Dunkin Donuts and hit the fields at 7:30am sharp. We were the first ones there--UMD hadn't even arrived on the scene yet. It was chilly and I had forgotten my hoodie, and I was too lazy to put on UnderArmour (which I would then have to wash), so I tried to stand still and ignore the cold while watching the guys throw around. I found out which field we were on and eventually we started warming up. I didn't want to warm up. The team we were supposed to play didn't show up until 5 minutes after the first round was supposed to start, so when they ambled up to the sideline I walked into the captain-captain discussion and said, "Either you give us everything we want (dark, pulling, from this side) or we're assessing you points." Response: "oh, in that case, sure, sorry about that." Boom. We give them another ten minutes to get on the line, and then:

Game 1 vs Delaware X starts off with us getting D's, giving it back, and getting D's again before finally converting. We went up by several breaks, then gave a few breaks back when we failed to connect on deep shots to open cutters (and a dump miscommunication throwaway). Del starts playing better, but they're plagued by drops and we start putting more pressure on them. We also start cleaning up our shots and put the goals together to win 11-7.

Then we had a bye from 10am to 4pm because they forgot that UMD had booked the fields for some homecoming rugby thing. Nice. We ate gyros and people-watched for an interminable amount of time, got some Cold Stone, sat around some more, then started warming up at 3pm to get ready for:

Game 2 vs George Washington. It started out with something weird. I forget what. I think it was us racking up a bunch of breaks right away. Then things got weirder. After we called a few picks during one point in the first half, one of our newer guys rolled his ankle and called injury. In response, a GW leader-type says, bitterly and half aloud, "you guys call a lot of shit." Sorry, next time we'll try to not let our injuries interfere with your offense. The game somehow became chippy at this point--GW made some questionable calls and used loud voices to contest reasonable foul calls. I remember my mark wrapping his left arm around me and initiating contact, then holding me back as I tried to pivot to the forehand side. I called foul, he said "contest." I said, quietly and politely, "hold on, I'd like to discuss this. You wrapped your arm around me and initiated contact, without giving me disc space, that prevented me from pivoting. That is the definition of a foul." Response from GW player, very antagonistic: "Are you done?" "...yes." "Contest." "Okay...coming in on 4, I guess." So they crawled back by a bit, but we were up 7-2 at half and, after a hellishly long point (made so by lots of turnovers from one of our captains...), we cruised to a 13-6 victory. I threw an AWFUL hammer turnover--it slipped out of my hands because i couldn't look at my target, because the sun was in my eyes, and I had some other excuse too. But I played well overall.

Game 3 vs Catholic was right afterwards. They were a bunch of nice dudes, but we were rolling at this point and let up only 2 points each half. Our deep shots were connecting, and we got back the few turnovers we had. I threw another awful hammer...actually two of them in this game. But I had some really sweet hucks, and ran down a few for goals as well. Like I said, we rolled, 13-4 win. Done for the day, ate at a Chinese buffet, then chilled at the hotel. I watched Chris Rock, then had a two hour discussion with the other team leaders about all kinds of team shit--something we had not done formally yet, which I think really helped us to work through some things and provide a space for working out more in the future. Went to bed at 1am, and had only slightly less trouble falling asleep this time.

Up at 8:15am before the 8:30am alarm, quickly showered and packed up, checked out and hit Dunkin Donuts, got to the fields and warmed up in the wet grass behind the endzone of the fields being used in the day's first round. That's right, we had a first-round bye on Sunday because of the field screwup on Saturday--how cool is that? Anyway, we get up and ready for:

Game 4 vs Pitt B, in which we have a few problems with matchups but overall played more consistently than they did. We exposed their lack of experience and took the game down 13-6 to win the pool. The field screwup meant that our pool win put us into:

Game 5 (Semifinals) vs Pitt A. We gave up a bunch of breaks to start after taking a lot of deep shots that failed for one reason or another--new player dropped it in the endzone, some Pittsburgh goon jumped over six guys for the sky-D, or we got boxed out by the short handler we underestimated. Our handler motion was stagnant and were not putting any emphasis on in-cuts, so huck after huck got ate up and Pitt had the patience to grind it out until somebody got an unmarked throw to a streaking receiver. I was impressed by their composure, frustrated by their overall height, and unreasonably adamant that my teammates stop hucking it deep. Some of our shots eventually worked out, but I for some reason wanted us to only hit in-cuts for a while, just to change up the pace if nothing else. But we got dominated top to bottom, and lost 3-15.

So we bagged our 3/4th place game. I floored it home to see my lovely lady, so long absent and angry at my insistence on attending these damn tournaments every weekend. I was proud of my team this weekend, though--pleased with our performance in pool play, dissatisfied with our semifinals showing, and happy we got out of there before CHS tried to con us into playing some shortened game while Pitt A dismantled Pennsbury. (15-3 says the score reporter) I feel like I played very well on Saturday, well enough against Pitt B, and comparatively well against Pitt A--meaning they were stronger opponents and so I should have adjusted my decision-making process, but my effort was there and my defense was not poor. I think I played well defensively most of the time, but still got caught with my pants down too often. There is a lot of opportunity ahead, and I am hungry for more.