Fall Series Sectionals
UPA Fall Series, Northern California Sectionals, Mixed Division...
Davis, CA September 15-16, 2001
The pools:
Donner Party RedFish BlueFish Rippit Bumpy Knuckles
Feral Cows Clear the Room Grind Venceremos
Sassy Sassafras Hot Valley of Love Butter Big Wreck All Stars
Ebb 'n Flow Frizbee Nation PIMP Monterrage
Game 1 vs Butter.
Off to a slow start.. Butter went up 0-3. But we climbed back up to tie it
at 4-4, including three layout blocks and finishing on a huck from Keebler
to Alan. Butter called timeout. We discussed our strategy which would
apply in every game on saturday.. with the level of defense we faced in
these games we should be able to get open, so don't turn it over! We went
on to win the half 7-5 and hold onto a 1-2 point lead up to 9-8. Then
Butter came out with the first (and only) zone of the game.. miscommunication
on our side and we turned it over.. Butter tied it at 9's. In an encore
performance of our game at Labor Day we took the last four goals to win 13-9.
We had only one turnover in this stretch and converted goals after getting
a stall (when they were near the endzone) and after blocks by Tommy and Alan.
Game 2 vs Grind.
In a reverse of game 1 this time we started up 3-0, playing zone in the
third point and getting the turn. But they got their zone O going in the
next point and scored, making it 3-1. We traded up to 5-3 playing man..
then a handblock by Mike setup a quick goal and another successful zone
to take the half 7-3 and receive the pull. Now Grind put on the zone..
we worked it up to the endzone but turned it over.. they turned it and
played the zone again.. again we turned it and this time they scored, 7-4.
We traded up to 11-8 with just a couple zones by us (successful, but we
turned it over again), and a couple long points with many turnovers.
Finally we broke the cycle and scored the last two to win 13-8.
Before the next game we learned that Clear the Room beat RedFish BlueFish.
We then determined that:
A) Donner Party, RFBF and us would be in the same half of the playoff bracket.
B) The unusual tournament format allowed losers of quarterfinals to finish
no higher than 5th place (no backdoor).
C) If we finished second in our pool instead of first we could go into the
other half of the bracket.
D) We had already won the pool! Throwing the game wouldn't help..
Game 3 vs PIMP.
Some zone to open the game.. they beat our zone, we dropped it in theirs
(down 0-2), then we beat their zone. Now to man defense for both teams and
we pushed up to a 5-3 lead.. we went on to win 12-5, scoring 10 of our goals
with no turnovers.
In the break before the scheduled crossover game we brought up the
format issue (no backdoor for losers of quarters), but after a vote
the schedule was unchanged.
Game 4 (crossover) vs Bumpy Knuckles.
The wind was picking up a little bit in the afternoon so we opened with
zone. It was quite successful, but our offense took a few attempts..
after getting three turnovers with our zone we scored. Man defense and
we traded up to 3-2. Then two successful zones, each converted for goals
with no turns. In the next point Alan caught a breakmark pass and sent
a long backhand to Margie for the upwind goal. Back to zone.. Shane zipped
past a popper to get the block and we scored to take the half 7-2.. Bumpy
called a timeout. They came out with their first zone of the game, but we
worked it up to score again.. perhaps we got a bit lazy with our 8-2 lead
as we gave up a couple in a row, but Bumpy didn't make a strong effort to
come back either.. we finished off with a strong 13-5 win.
Saturday summary:
Rippit 13 - 9 Butter (SF)
13 - 8 Grind (bayarea)
12 - 5 PIMP (SouthBay)
13 - 5 Bumpy Knuckles (bayarea)
We headed to Dos Coyotes for some grub and then retired to our hotel
(nice party suite with couches and a few connected rooms!) to play
schieze and watch "Grease". We earned a first round bye for Sunday,
so we got to sleep and have a leisurely breakfast at Bakers' Square.
At the fields we had a nice surprise as the semifinal matchups were
swapped to be the standard 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3, putting us on the opposite
side of the bracket from Donner and Fish. We got warmed up and even
scrimmaged ourselves a few points to make sure we were ready to play
quarterfinals, as our opponents were playing prequarters and would not
come out cold.
Quarterfinals vs Clear the Room:
In this game we had a mix of seemingly easy goals (successful pull plays and
a strong deep game) and points where we struggled on offense and had multiple
turnovers. CtR always worked hard for their goals as we got them to many
high stall counts and gave up very few hucks. But CtR was tireless and
managed to keep scoring.. we started out going down 1-3 but tied it at 4's
with hucks from Kevin to Sarah, Max to Donna, and Dave to Alan. Margie
blocked their huck in the next point, but then got to watch as her person
laid out to catch the mack for the goal. Later, a block by Bernhard followed
by a nice crossfield flick to Alan in the endzone gave us our first lead, 6-5.
We traded goals until we won the half 8-7 and got to receive in the second
half.. CtR called a timeout. In our pull play Ron looped a visionary flick
to Keebler, over the middle of the field to the sideline far from our stack.
Keebler promptly hucked it down the line to Sarah, increasing our lead to
9-7. We traded a pair and then with a huck from Mike to Max we increased
our lead to 11-8. But then an unsuccessful zone by us and a long point
where we turned it over 3 times and they closed back to 11-10. Three points
in a row with no turnovers by either team, 13-11.. then a block by Max gave
us the disc and we worked it up for 14-11.. a huge goal in a game to 15.
Donna got the block in the next point, but we didn't get the goal.. CtR
scored, making it 14-12. Then we dropped the pull and CtR closed to 14-13!
We received the next pull and worked the disc up the field.. with a nice
swing and continue we got the disc to Sarah, trapped on the sideline just
5 yards out from the endzone.. Alan cut from behind the disc on the far side
of the field and caught the game winner, 15-13.
We gathered in the shade of a nearby tree to rest and watch the end of the
quarterfinal with Feral Cows playing Grind.. we would play the winner in
semis. It was a close game and it ended up tied at the cap, game point for
either team... what followed was one of the most amazing hell points ever..
at least 6-7 turnovers by each team, many of them in or near the endzone..
exhausted players lying down on the field on turnovers (no timeouts in the
cap!)... in the end the Cows got the goal and moved on to semis.
Semifinals vs Feral Cows:
Since we knew at least 7 of the cows were very tired and the cows have a
pretty good zone O we decided to stick to man defense for this game.
Watching that last point of the previous game was somehow contagious and
we started the game with very sloppy offense. In the first phase of the
game there were 3 points with 2-3 turnovers by each team.. fortunately we
ended up scoring a couple of them, so we got up to a 3-2 lead. But now
we got our offense back into good form and scored our next 5 goals with
no turnovers, taking the half 8-4. The was one more sloppy point with
4 turnovers by each team and the cows scored to hang on at 10-6, but we
rattled off 4 more with no turnovers climbing to 14-6. It took a couple
possessions in the last point but we got the goal on a cut up the line
by Alan identical to the end of the CtR game, catching the pass from Kate
this time.. 15-6 win and on to finals! We got 9 blocks in this game and
scored every time we received the pull.
Finals vs Donner Party:
Donner Party lost to RedFish in the saturday crossover game but advanced
up past Venceremos in quarters and then won the rematch with Fish in semis.
There was a decent crosswind and we opened the game with zone.. but with a
long series of short passes they worked it up to score. After we hucked it
away against their zone and dropped it in the next point they converted each
to score and take a 0-3 lead. They ran an O using a lot of short swings and
dumps and a lot of hucks.. they were successful with many hucks, even jumping
to catch some that we covered pretty well. They ran hard on D.. our offense
was not clicking and we were dropping the disc and putting up passes that
Donner was able to D. But their offense was inconsistent as well.. in the
next two points we had 7 chances on offense but didn't score either goal..
On our third possession in the next point we finally got on the board, 1-5.
We tried our first zone since the opening point, and this time got the turn
close to their own endzone and converted for the goal, 2-5. Another zone
got us the disc but Kevin twisted his ankle and was out for the game :-(
This time we turned it back and gave up the goal. They tried a zone but
we worked it up to score, 3-6. Then our offensive troubles returned and
our defense couldn't get the disc back.. in the next six points Donner
scored with no turns after we gave up the disc.. in the other point we had
3 chances on offense but still did not score.. Donner blazed ahead to a
huge 3-12 lead. We fought back a bit and scored the next 3 goals with no
turnovers, but the hole was too deep.. in the end Donner took the section,
9-15.
A tough finish, but overall an excellent weekend. This is the first season
(ever) that Rippit has added a significant number of new players in a single
year.. six new faces: Max, Mike, Margie, Kris, Kitt and Bernhard. Despite
playing only a few tournaments this season we really came together as a team
for sectionals.. everyone seemed to find their role on the team and played
it well. Over the past couple seasons the mid-level teams have been raising
the bar, making sectionals much more challenging and exciting.. way to come
through and finish up at second place! Yay Rippit!
Sunday summary:
Rippit 15 - 13 Clear the Room (SouthBay) Quarters
15 - 6 Feral Cows (SouthBay) Semis
9 - 15 Donner Party (Tahoe+bayarea) Finals
From Jennifer Lee, sectional coordinator:
Here are the final standings from this weekend:
1. Donner Party
2. Rippit
3. Red Fish Blue Fish
4. Feral Cows
5. Clear the Room
6. Venceremos
7. Grind
8. Bumpy Knuckles
9. PIMP
10. Sassy Sassafras Lollipop Experience
11/12 Hot Valley of Love/Butter
13. Big Wreck All-Stars
14. Frizbee Nation
15. Ebb & Flow
16. Monterage
It was a very exciting weekend with lots of close games and upsets -
not one single team went undefeated. Congratulations to Donner Party,
Rippit, Red Fish Blue Fish, Feral Cows, Clear the Room, Venceremos, and
Grind for making Regionals. Good luck to all of you in Blaine.
Davis Ultimate Invitational
From Alan:
DUI Coed Division Champions: RIPPIT!!
Congratulations everyone for a stellar performance this weekend in Davis;
despite some adverse conditions we held our top seed and emerged victorious!
Here's the full story....
It begins with the weather... hot and windy, right? Not this time!
After weeks of pleasant weather a storm blew into California just in
time for the tournament, bringing rain and cold temperatures but only
moderate winds (in Davis anyway.. apparently it was very windy in the
bay area). Our next plot complication involves getting enough players
on the field... we had 11 women play at Spring Fling (trying out some
new players, plus most of our normal players present), but this time all
our potential pickups were trying out with Fury in the womens division
and we only expected 4 women for each day of the tournament!
The coed division had 14 teams split into 2 pools of seven. Pool play
consisted of a full round robin extending into sunday with games to 11..
the top two teams from each pool then proceeded directly to semifinals.
The tournament began with a first round bye for us... it wasn't raining
much when we got out to our field, but it sure was cold! Our first game
was against MUD (Mountain Ultimate Disc).. a friendly bunch from up in
the Sierras north of Tahoe (we also played them last year at DUI).
We played zone and quickly finished off this game 11-1. Kate had not
arrived so Sarah, Aruna and Michelle had to play the whole game!
After some scheduling confusion we determined that we had another bye for
the next round.. the timing worked out well as the hardest rain of the day
came down during this round. Many of us retreated to our cars for shelter,
others watched a close game between Butter and Clear the Room.. there were
a few brief showers during the remainder of the day, but it wasn't too bad..
At 1:30 the tournament really got started for us.. we began with Butter
(formerly known as FAA).. as you might expect they were wearing yellow,
including one guy with yellow pants. They also had few women so we agreed
to 2-3 women instead of 3-4, allowing a tiny bit of rest for our women
(still no Kate!) Butter pulled out a one point win at the cap over Clear
the Room in the previous round.. we were fired up to come out strong (and
glad CtR tired them out), and did just that. We opened up a 3-0 lead before
they scored.. a couple points later Butter put up an errant forehand huck..
Alan jumped up and D'ed it... but then got completely sandwiched between his
own man and some other Butter player running in without looking... luckily
Alan saw him coming at the last second and turned his back side to the brunt
of the collision, so he suffered only a nicely bruised ass. We continued our
solid play up to 7-1.. in the next point Max got a huge block, laying out
side by side with his man and Max ended up _catching_ the disc. We converted
this to go up 8-1. After this we relaxed a bit and gave up a couple extra
goals, but still finished with an 11-5 win. In the second to last point Peter
was turning to cover his man in the endzone, but slipped and did something bad
to his knee :-(
Kate showed up! Yay! The next game was against a new south bay team called
PIMP (Party In My Pants), formed largely from winter league players. We
started out with box zone but they showed good patience and throw selection
and slowly worked it up the field to score first. We got a couple blocks in
the next few points, but still managed only to trade up to 3-3. Finally our
zone started coming together and we pushed forward up to an 8-3 lead.. just
2 turnovers for us in this stretch. A couple long points followed, but we
traded goals up to the end, 11-6.
The last round of the day was against the Feral Cows. We pulled to start,
but even after sky blocks from Will and Sarah we gave up the first goal.
We turned it over in the next point but after a block by Keebler we tied
it up 1-1. The Cows played solid offense and scored 4 goals with no turn-
overs.. in this stretch we got only 1 goal on a huck from Alan to Max.
This put the score at 2-5. Finally the Cows started making some errors and
we were able to capitalize.. we scored 4 in a row to take the half 6-5 with
only one turnover (and we got that one back with a layout block from Dave).
We received the pull to start the second half. Ron had to sub out and JT
came in..and threw it away twice. Luckily the Cows gave it back once more
and we were up 7-5. Perhaps fatigue began to set it for both teams now,
as the last three points of the game we _long_ (and each one got longer).
After 2 turnovers by each team the Cows close to 7-6. During the next point
the hard cap went on.. if we scored we would win 8-6.. if they scored it
would be tied so we'd have to play one more point.. game to 8 either way.
This time each team threw it away 3 times.. but after one more huck TO by
us the Cows tied it at sevens. What followed was an amazing hell point.
It almost ended quickly as Alan completed a huck to Michelle.. but the throw
was too long, just a few feet out the back of the endzone. The point went
on and on; on nearly every possession the Cows worked it up very close to
the endzone.. we turned it over mostly near midfield, or on hucks to the
endzone. Our defense was fired up: we got 3 blocks within 5 yards of the
endzone: a sky block and a layout point block from Alan, and Dave got a layout
block.. after _five_ possessions from each team Alan got the disc.. and put up
a huck to Michelle that was absolutely identical to the one near the beginning
of the point.. again it was complete, this time only one foot out the back!
And once again the Cows worked it up very close to the endzone.. this time
a poach block from Alan kept us in it.. on O Alan caught the disc near mid-
field and heard Dave yelling for the huck.. clearly lacking enough oxygen to
the brain for conscious though (or to hear the screams of "NOOOOOOO!!!" from
our sideline!) Alan put up the bomb (this time in bounds).. Dave skied over
his defender and came down with the disc (thanks dave!).. game, 8-7.
(Alan's 3 throwaways in this point were his only 3 of the day.. saving them
up for the end?)
Saturday summary:
Rippit 11 - 1 MUD (Quincy, CA)
11 - 5 Butter (SF)
11 - 6 PIMP (SouthBay)
8 - 7 Feral Cows (SouthBay)
A good 4-0 start to the tournament, but we knew we had 2 tough pool play
games to go.. our saturday-only players (Michelle and Ron) plus injured Peter
headed home.. fortunately our sunday reinforcements Shane, Leslie and Steve
were on the way.
We had to get up for the early morning 9am round this time.. after another
scheduling mixup we eventually got to the right field. Our first matchup
was Bumpy Knuckles, seeded 2nd in our pool, 4th overall. We started out
pulling the disc and played man defense, hoping they'd make an error while
not yet warmed up... but our defense wasn't warmed up yet either, and they
scored on a forehand down the line.. we did the same and scored on a fore-
hand up the line from Alan to Sarah to tie it 1-1. Again they scored with
no turns, and then capitalized on our first error to go up 1-3. It was
clear that whichever team could wake up and get their defense going first
would have a big advantage. We scored the next and then Max got us started
with a block in the next point, leading to a tie score of 3-3. We switched
to zone and scored three more to take the half 6-3. At some point they
started breaking through our cup so we switched back to man.. but by this
point we were outrunning them pretty well and continued to dominate through
the second half, featuring a block from Keebler and two more from Max.
We took the game 11-5, scoring 10 of our 11 goals with no turnovers!
(they gave us a great phil collins medley cheer)
Our last game of pool play was against Clear the Room. They had been
playing very well, their only loss in the rain against Butter. They also
beat Bumpy by a large margin. Even with that one loss both of our teams
had clinched spots in semis, so we were playing for seed. CtR has come a
long was since DUI last year..
We started the game on defense.. our opponents were athletic, so zone was
one good option.. but we had also observed in previous rounds that they
broke the mark less often than some teams, so we started out trying man
forcing flick. It worked well in the first point and we got them trapped
up against the line, stall count up to 9.. they threw the disc in desperation
to the endzone, but in the pileup actually came down with the goal. We
turned it over in the next point, but again applied pressure on defense..
then sent a pass to the endzone but JT was there to smack the disc.. (catch
those!).. after JT D'ed it his man ran it down and laid out for the goal..
In the next point we dropped it and CtR scored again.. we were down 0-3.
Finally we got on the board in the next point, but then they scored again..
1-4. I'm not sure what happened next.. perhaps our greater experience kicked
in, or tuned our defense against their O.. we went on an 8 goal scoring streak,
winning the half and continuing to push our lead up to 9-4. We played a bit
of zone, but found they had good patience and it still took a lot of exertion
to get the turnovers so we mixed it up with man defense as well.. their
defense still gave us trouble as we only scored 2 goals up to this point
without turning it over at least once. Finally the broke our run and beat
our zone to make it 9-5. They closed the gap to 9-6 but as the next point
began we got hard capped.. we worked it up and got the goal, winning 10-6.
6-0 for pool play! One more round of pool play remained, but we had a bye.
We learned that in the other pool the top 3 teams all beat eachother and
that the point differentials were consecutive.. Magic Bus won the pool by
a single point and Bad Larry missed out on semis also by a single point!
The meant our semifinal matchup was Backyard Ultimate (from Berkeley).
The wind was picking up a bit and the skies were threatening to start
raining again as semis began. We started out with a downwind zone hoping
they would get impatient and we could get the first goal upwind. They
showed us the game wouldn't be that easy and with great patience they
worked it all the way down to score the first goal. We turned it over
in the next point, but a handblock from Kate got it back and we tied it
1-1. We got the turnover in the next point and scored upwind.. on our
4th possession in the next point we finally converted downwind to go up
3-1. Our zone continued to give us opportunities, but we had trouble
scoring and we gave up 3 in a row, now down 3-4. Again another long point,
including 2 ugly hammers from us, but on our 5th possession we tied it 4-4.
But our troubles on offense continued.. they played a very tight trapping
cup.. although we could usually break out of it we couldn't find good options
to move the disc upfield.. another 3 in a row and we were down 4-7... on our
3rd possession in the next point we closed to 5-7. We got warning that the
time cap would be coming soon.. our backs were really against the wall.
(Will said, "we _must_ scored this point, and even if we do we still might
lose") Desperate to force the issue and get turnovers quickly we started
trapping in our zone both upwind and downwind. We were still down 2 upwind
goals with the timecap approaching. Our strategy worked in the next point
and we got the disc near midfield.. Dave got the disc near the endzone..
after a pick call he put a nice forehand over the top to Sarah.. zone again
and we converted downwind with no turns to tie it 7-7. Now the soft cap came
on, game to 9. In the next point we missed one chance to score, but got it
back again. Their tight trapping cup finally started to show some holes and
Alan broke the mark repeatedly to Keebler as we worked it up the field,
finally scoring on another pass from Alan to Keebler. Up 8-7! Now Alan sat
out (after being in 4 in a row, not wanting a repeat of the end of the Cows
game). Again we failed on our first chance to score, turning it over in the
endzone.. but we got it back once more, just 10 yards out. Will picked up
the disc and called for Sarah to cut.. he put up a high release backhand and
Sarah made a great catch right up next to the sideline for the game winning
goal! We scored 5 in a row to take us to finals!
Our finals matchup was Magic Bus. They were missing some players since
DUI has open and womens divisions, but still put together a strong squad.
They beat CtR about 10-6 or 10-5 in semis. We started the game pulling
upwind and they scored first with no turnovers.. it was fairly windy so
we started our strategy of punt-and-zone which we used throughout the game.
Although our first few punts were not successful we were able to get it
back and get the goal. However, our downwind zone was not stopping them
as they worked it around and through our cup with lots of short passes or
give and go. We traded points all the way to 4-4. Now we adjusted our
strategy for upwind points and tried straight-up on defense. They got off
a long pass down the line but Steve, while twisting in the air to read the
disc, manage to jump up and bat it away.. we then got the first upwind goal
of the game on a pass from Dave to Max. A block from Aruna and we converted
downwind.. then a block from Keebler and we worked it upwind to take the
half 7-4. Now we got to receive going downwind... again it was punt and
zone, but this time our punt was completed as Will caught the huck from
Dave in traffic.. up 8-4. Finally the Bus broke our run and scored, and
then put the pressure back on as they scored upwind (when we didn't punt,
and turned it over near midfield), closing to 6-8. But we answered back;
Alan broke the mark to Dave who sent the upwind huck to Will.. we converted
the next to go up 10-6. We traded a pair, getting our goal on our second
completed punt, from Alan to Dave. Next we got the clincher, an upwind
goal giving us a 12-7 lead in a game to 13. The last point was ugly, but
on our 5th possession we finally got the tournament winning goal.. 13-7.
Sunday summary:
Rippit 11 - 5 Bumpy Knuckles (EastBay)
10 - 6 Clear the Room (SouthBay)
9 - 7 Backyard Ultimate (Berkeley) Semis
13 - 7 Magic Bus (SantaCruz) Finals
Yeah, Rippit!!!!! It was very satisfying to win this tournament, after our
long string of 2nd and 3rd place finishes last year. This is only the
second "major" tournament we have won, the other being sectionals in 1998.
We lived up to our name this weekend, especially in finals, as we were
ripping it left and right... momentum was also big for us in this tournament.
In our games against Butter, PIMP, Cows, Bumpy, Backyard AND Bus we had a
run of exactly five goals.. against CtR our run was eight goals! We gave up
3 in a row to CtR and Backyard(twice), but no other team ever scored more
than 2 in a row against us. And finally, comebacks: we were behind at some
point in all but our first 2 games... just 0-1 vs PIMP and 3-4 vs Bus, but
we came back from 2-5 vs Cows, 1-3 vs Bumpy, 1-4 vs CtR and 4-7 vs Backyard!
Made for a very exciting weekend :-) It was fun to be part of it!
From Ron:
since i scooted my bootie back home after day 1 (too much work piled
up), i can give an update to those of you who didn't make it to DUI.
we went 4-0 today.
- beat MUD 11-1. they were incredibly friendly, nice folks. but not very
good, though.
- bye; some of us watched FAA (now calling themselves "butter") beat CTR
by one at the hard cap. it was raining, so some of us retreated to our
cars. i took a nice nap in my car.
- beat FAA relatively easily, 11-5.
- beat PIMP ("party in my pants" -- winter league team with some pickups),
11-6
- beat Feral Cows by one at the hard cap. last point was a point from
hell: they pulled to us, we turned it 6 times; they turned it 6
times. then we scored. or rather: we threw it away either deep out of
bounds or into coverage, and then we got *huge* layout/sky
blocks. finally, dave busts deep, yelling, "Alan! Do it!". the *entire*
sideline yells out an agonized "No!!!!" but alan doesn't hear us
(selective hearing?), hucks it deep, and dave pulls it down in traffic
for the game.
tomorrow: bumpy knuckles (who lost to CTR 11-4), then CTR.
injury report: peter did something uber-bad to his left knee. the
trainer said potential meniscal tear or MCL; peter came back home
tonight and will likely see a doc first thing next week.
no-women report: sarah, aruna, and michelle were savage for the first
half of the day. kate showed up for the PIMP game, and then they could
start subbing. w00t! (well, actually, we played 5/2 with FAA for several
points.) we did see donna, playing with fury, and trying to hide from us.
unsuccessfully.
From Sarah:
the small but mighty squad of rippit managed to overpower all the
competition, winning DUI!!! very exciting.
I won't bother trying to fill in any exciting details, most of them are a
blur for me anyway. I'll let someone with a better memory (or palm pilot)
do that job. suffice it to say, in spite of the small numbers, it was a
great tournament for us and I hope that everyone there had a super time.
winning certainly helps. I do remember that the last two games were a tad
stress-filled towards the end...maybe just for me as I remember yelling
(robert says whining) a lot when I was in. oops. to everyone who heard me
(ie everyone at the tournament), sorry about that, I'll try and keep those
externalizations better internalized. so I never feel the need to bitch
about it in a game again (ha ha ha)....
1. a stack in the end zone is good
2. walking it in...a good strategy. perhaps better than JACKING IT UP THE
LINE.
but since I, too, tried unsuccessfully to jack it up the line to tommy in
the end zone, perhaps I'll be quiet on point number two.
special thanks to max for playing with us this weekend and catching
practically every swilly pass that was hucked to him in the end zone.
so a great weekend except for peter's injury. peter, let us know when you
find out your real prognosis (ie not what the trainer on the field
said...we hope she was wrong).
Spring Fling
From Alan:
Hi all-
Ben, Lisa and Special K have brought back the Spring Fling tournament!
It was Saturday, March 24th at Independence High School in San Jose.
Unlike last year at DUI where we seemed more prepared than most teams
for the start of the season, this year we were slow to get started,
slow to get our offense going, and.... slow. But we still had a good
time and enjoyed the nice California spring weather..
We also enjoyed playing with some potential new recruits: Kimber, JD
and Mara played with us all day, and Janet Wong and Dave Bailey played
with us in the last game.
We had a first round bye in the jam-packed seven round format.
Unfortunately our first matchup was against Sassy Sasafras.. a team
that runs. We started out fine, pulling the disc and capitalizing on
their throwaway to score first. On the next point Dave got a block,
but forgot to tell everyone he had sprained his thumb and had no
forehand... doh, he got stalled right on our endzone line!
Sassy scored on this one and then rattled off two more goals after our
throwaways. In the next point we turned it over 4 times before Sassy
got the goal... then they racked up two more after our throwaways...
We were down 1-6!! We took a timeout to regroup... we came back out
and scored on a pull play with a huck from Alan to Mara, then we slapped
on the zone. Dave got a block, but we turned it over again.. they broke
it through the middle of our zone and hucked it to Ozzy, their tallest
guy.. Alan was deep-deep, but Ozzy had position.. Alan tipped it just
enough and the disc fell to the ground... it didn't take long for us to
score on a rip from Keebler to Sarah. Finally some momentum on our side.
However, with the short rounds we didn't have time to play zone and wait
patiently to get turnovers.. we switched back to man... Sassy got one more,
but then we got two more before the round ended.. we closed the gap to
5-7 for the final score.
Next we faced Frizbee Nation.. we rolled to an 11-1 victory.
In one huck from Keebler the disc was just falling into Mara's hand...
when Tommy came streaking into the endzone and skied over her, practically
stripping the disc from her hand! Tommy was promptly heckled and booed
off the field! :-) After the game we put in an all-women line and played
zone.. we scored twice before they scored.
Our third game was vs Mixed Plate. Again we had some trouble getting a
good rhythm on defense or offense. Despite starting out going up 2-0 we
slowly fell to a 2-5 deficit.. no goals on 16 possessions in this stretch.
Alan decided to turn things around and went in for the next five points...
we scored all 5 and Alan threw 4 of the goals. We traded the last pair
and won the game 9-6.
Despite our loss in the first round we managed to advance to a"semifinal"
game against Bumpy Knuckles. (Sassy lost to Clear the Room at some point).
Last year we had 2 close games with BK, going 1-1 during the season.. then
at regionals we had a decisive victory when our track workouts seemed to
give us a good edge. We didn't have that edge this time, and it was another
close one. We started out well and worked up to a 4-1 lead... we mixed up
zone and zone-to-man on defense. But they slowly climbed back and tied it
at 6-6.. then took the lead 7-6 when the cap went on. We tied it at
7's but then gave up 2 straight to lose 7-9.
vs Sassy Sasafras 5 - 7
vs Frizbee Nation 11 - 1
vs Mixed Plate 9 - 6
vs Bumpy Knuckles 7 - 9 Semis
From tournament directors Ben, Lisa and Bridget:
Hello Captains and Pickup Players,
First of all, thanks so much to all of you for showing such great spirit
throughout the day. The tournament directors appreciate your flexibility
to change schedules and trust our decisions regarding who made finals.
(You know how hard it is to rank teams when doing a scramble format in
order to give everyone lots of playing time). Spring Fling has
traditionally been a mellow tournament, and true to form, I think we all
had a ton of fun. Every team got at least 4 games...and at least one of
them for each team was a close one as far as point differential.
A special hip hip hooray to Bumpy Knuckles for winning the tournament...as
well as to runners-up Red Fish Blue Fish who always put on a good show.
Also, kudos to third and fourth place (Rippit and EZ Living). Also,
honorable mentions to That's what SHE said (who was undefeated for the
day) and CTR (who only lost one game during the day). Collectively, these
6 teams definitely raised the level of play at Spring Fling. Finally,
three cheers to P.I.M.P. (the newest co-ed team of our region) for putting
in some great games at their debut tournament. You guys did a great job
out of the gates, and we expect to see more from you at future
tournaments! Way to go!
Also, thanks to all of you who participated in our crazy fundraising
schemes. You were part of the first ever officially monitored fantasy
ultimate game (woo-hoo - anyone have a contact at the Guiness Book of
World Records?). Also, proceeds from sales of pizza/drinks really helped
support Peninsula Bridge.
In short, thanks to everyone for making the Sixth Annual Spring Fling
tournament a COMPLETE SUCCESS!
- We had 17 teams competing and having a lot of fun - most of them from
the Bay Area, but some players traveled from as far away as Las Vegas and
Reno.
- Your anti-rain dances worked!!! The rain gods listened and cooperated.
The weather forecast called for rain, but it wasn't until 7:00 in the
evening, as I was locking the gates to the fields that we felt a little
sprinkle and realized how blessed we'd been - especially since we had no
contingency plan for field space on another day.
- Kelly (the representative from Independence High School) sent us an email
today thanking us! She said that we did a great job of cleaning up, showing
positive spirit, and behaving appropriately (guess she missed that special
game of ultimate spear-headed by EZ Living that involved balancing cups of
some sort of liquid) ;-) Thanks everyone for being so good on school
grounds. We appreciate it, and we are welcome back next year!
- Perhaps most importantly, the tournament raised approximately $800 for
Peninsula Bridge. Yay!!!
Coed Regionals
From Alan:
Northwest Coed Regionals 2000 was held in Vancouver, Washington on
August 12-13. Being the first coed series held separately from the
open/womens fall series we expected there might be a few "ringer teams"
with players from top level mens and womens teams.. although there were a
LOT of very talented squads out there, we found that the top seeded teams
were familiar names from last year: Trigger Hippy from Big Sky, Naughtybear
from Seattle, Pigs in Space from Portland; Magic Bus from our section was
the top seed overall.
The first issue for the tournament was adjusting the pools because EZ Living
(nocal #4) was a no-show (too many injured players, and most of them were
driving not flying so it was easier to bail). EZ was originally seeded
9th, so the top 8 spots were unaffected. The rest of the slots shifted up
one. This moved Feral Cows out of our pool (so we didn't have to play them
at *every* tournament we both attended this season) and left us with a pool
of only 4 teams. Bumpy Knuckles was then shifted down a couple seeds so our
pool wasn't 75% from Oregon. We were left with this:
Team (seed, section/place) nc=northern california bs=bigsky
wa=washington,british columbia or=oregon
POOL A POOL B
Magic Bus (1,nc1) Trigger Hippy (2,bs1)
Kibosh (8,or3) Army of Darkness (7,or2)
SOLD (9,bs2) Mystery Machine (10,or4)
Skin & Bones (16,or6) Porn Stars (15,bs3)
Vincelot Link, (17,wa3) Sassy Sassafras (18,nc7)
Ultimate Chimp Lollipop Experience
POOL C POOL D
Naughtybear (3,wa1) Pigs in Space (4,or1)
RedFish BlueFish (6,nc3) Rippit (5,nc2)
Snatch 'n' Tackle (11,wa2) Bumpy Knuckles (12,nc5)
Special K (14,nc6) Velvatone (13,or5)
Feral Cows (19,nc9) Jiggy Jim
We had expected a first round bye, but with a pool of 4 we had no byes.
Starting late was ok because we had only 3 rounds to complete over the
course of the day while the other pools had 5. We played games to 15
instead of 13.
The weather was excellent.. not too warm and just a slight breeze.
The fields were surrounded by tree covered hills, except for a wide
chopped-down strip for power lines that stretched out far into the
distance.. they also went directly over some of the fields.. low enough
that we wondered about discs hitting them, but I never saw it happen.
>>> SATURDAY -- Pool Play <<<
Game 1 vs Velvatone Jiggy Jim (Portland)
It was nearly 11am before our first game got started. Even though our first
round bye was gone we took our time to get properly warmed up.. our opponents
had been warming up for over an hour. This team had decent skills but
couldn't stop our offense.. all except one of our first 7 goals we scored
with no turnovers. We only allowed them to score twice in this stretch,
putting the score at 7-2. Our second point was a layout grab by Kate on
a pass from Dave.. we figured out later that this was Rippit's *2000th* goal.
Offense continued to be the name of the game.. more points with zero or one
turnover up to a score of 11-6. Finally our defense started to get in gear
and Kate and Alan each got a block, our first blocks of the game, and we
built up our lead to 14-7 (Sarah also got a block in the endzone, but it
went back to the thrower for some reason). We gave up a couple goals before
getting the game winner, 15-9. The home team gave us a Britney Spears cheer
with excellent choreography.
Game 2 vs Bumpy Knuckles (Bay Area)
With Bumpy added to our pool we knew there were 3 teams fighting to win the
pool. We finished our first game and went over to watch the Knuckles playing
Pigs in Space. The Knuckles took the game, playing lots of zone defense..
they took a very long time finishing up their cheer and moving over to our
field, trying to get in some rest before our game.
We received the pull and scored the first goal. A block by Alan on the
first or second pass in the next point and we converted it for a 2-0 lead.
We scored 2 more with only 1 turnover of our own. Another block by Alan
in the next point, but he subbed out with bruised elbows (great weather,
but the ground was a bit hard!). A long point ensued, but finally after
a block from Kate we scored (our 5th possession of the point). 5-0!
The track workouts seemed to show in this game, as we were running harder
on O and D. Their zone wasn't too successful so they didn't use it as
much as they did against Pigs. We traded goals up to 9-4 and then went
on another run.. 3 in a row made it 12-4. We allowed them to make a small
dent in our lead, but still won with a very comfortable margin: 15-9.
We scored 11 of our 15 goals on our first possession of the point. That's
tough to beat! They scored 6 on their first possession. They gave us a
great cheer to "Beat It" including a simulated arms-tied-switchblade-duel
at the end as in the video.
We were playing well and running hard, ready to face Pigs in Space..
a rematch from pool play one year ago..
Game 3 vs Pigs in Space (Portland)
Our game in 1999 was the last round of pool play, each team undefeated up
to that point.. we had traded up to 7-7 when we discovered that straight-up
defense caused a lot of problems with their isolation type offense, and we
rattled off 6 straight to win the game. We also had seen Bumpy have some
success with zone defense. We started off the game showing we could still
shut down their offense by playing good defense on the players around and
behind the disc: with Jen marking we got a stall.. however, we turned it
over and they got the first point. The following progression then happened
three times in a row: we scored a quick goal with no turns, followed by
trading a pair of goals on long points with many turnovers. The first
iteration had 1-2 turnovers per team per point, the next had 2-3 (but we
scored 2 goals before trading this pair) and the third had 3-5 turnovers each!
The Pigs seemed a bit inconsistent on offense, and their pressure on defense
was giving us some problems.. the combined result made for some long points
with many turnovers. Fortunately we did mix in some good offensive points
in there, so we built up a lead to 7-4. A few of the shortest points of
the game followed, and a block by Keebler allowed us to extend out lead by
one more, up to 9-5. We traded with us up by 4-5 points up to 13-8.. in one
point Dave skied their 6'+ (5"?) player to block a huck (but they ended up
scoring that point). On the last point in this stretch Keebler caught the
disc just in front of the endzone and Dave ran ahead uncovered.. but Keebler's
marker went straight-up and was able to stop any easy straight throw.. so
Keebler put up the scoober.. way up! It went past Dave but he laid out and
made the grab. After this the Pigs made a small dent in our lead, scoring
two in a row and closing to 13-10, but we finished off the game in good form:
a block by Alan set up the goal from Alan to Dave, and a block by Kate set up
the game winner from Keebler to Sarah.
In this game we turned it over 26 times.. more than the previous two games
combined.. however, we did score 9 of 15 goals on our first possession of
the point while they only scored 2.. since we scored our fare share of the
longer points we came away with the win, 15-10.
Embarrassing side note: since Bumpy beat Pigs by only two and we beat
Bumpy by six, Alan had figured out we could lose the last game and still
win the pool.. we needed to score 11 or more goals. With all the turnovers
in this game Alan somehow flipped out on the point where we failed to score
on five possessions, and got the idea we were behind.. from the point he
started keeping track we traded points so he never realized he was in error..
at 14-10 when Alan thought we were losing but could win the pool with one
more goal was when he was finally informed we were ahead.. doh! All this
and then Alan got the spanking machine from both Rippit and the Pigs
(a Rippit birthday+tournament tradition?).
So we won our pool! With 5 teams advancing to nationals they had an
unusual format with pool winners advancing directly to semifinals.
Magic Bus held their #1 seed in Pool A so they would be our opponents..
a rematch of sectionals finals where we lost by only 1 point..
After our last game we caught the end of the game to take Pool C,
Naughtybear vs RedFish.. RedFish kept within striking distance, but
Naughtybear held their narrow lead to win by a couple goals.
>>> SUNDAY -- Playoffs <<<
Semifinals vs Magic Bus (Santa Cruz)
We got to the fields bright and early for semis at 9am. It was a bit cooler
than saturday and almost no wind.. prime conditions for ultimate. Just
before the game Keebler suggested we play games to 3. Instead of tracking
the real score we would keep track until one team got 3 points and then
start over at 0-0. The point is to keep us motivated to play hard even
when ahead.. good strategy when playing against a team that is very capable
of coming back. Also good when playing a long game to 17..
We started off a bit slow.. we pulled the disc and they worked it up for
the goal. The next point had a few turnovers including a block by Sarah,
but the Bus scored again. Down 0-2 in our first game to 3... it took two
possessions but we scored our first point on a nice long flick from Libby,
over the poaching guy to a wide open Keebler.. then our defense started to
kick in (but our offense wasn't there yet).. after a sky block by Kevin,
a block by Eric, and a layout block by Tommy we still didn't score.. luckily
they turned it over one more time and we tied it up at 2-2. We capitalized
on their error next point and took the lead 3-2.
They tied it back up at 3-3.. now we got our offense into gear as well as
our defense and started racking up the goals. We scored five in a row,
four of them on our first possession of the point! On the middle goal of
this run we had a nice long pull to the back of the endzone.. Keebler
hustled down on defense and made a bid at blocking the first pass, still in
their endzone.. it was a swing and a miss, but the defensive pressure caused
them to drop it. Keebler grabbed the disc, ran back to the endzone line and
threw the one foot pass to Alan for the goal.
After this run of five goals the score was 8-3. Kevin got a block on the
next point, giving us a chance to keep pushing forward, but then he threw
it away and our run ended.. they scored two in a row, making it 8-5.. also
2-2 in the current game to 3.. after Hank kept our possession alive many
times by catching dump passes to the kag we managed to close out that game,
9-5. Then two more stuff-and-score points, up to 11-5. But again they got
two in a row, for 2-2 in the game to 3.. a handblock by Kevin gave us
possession and we won that game to 3 as well.
Again we gave up two in a row, this time down 0-2 in our game to 3.
Alan hucked a goal to Kevin to start our comeback but this time we were
unsuccessful and lost our first game to 3, 1-3.. this made the score 13-10
and the Bus were making their first real surge into the game. It was crunch
time and suddenly 17 seemed so far away... but we rose to the challenge and
scored two in a row, then gave up one. A block by Hank setup a huck from
Dave to Kevin to get us to 16-11. In the next point our defensive pressure
cause another quick turnover near their endzone. We setup our stack and Alan
picked up the disc, calling the play.. Donna and Sarah cut from the back,
one to each side.. Alan threw a breakmark flick to Sarah for the game winner.
This was a great game for us.. we kept up our highest level of play for a
full 28 points with good defense (10 blocks!) and solid offense (11 goals
on first possession of point). And best of all, we qualified for Nationals!!
Finals vs Trigger Hippy (Big Sky)
With our bid to Nationals secured and just one more game to play for the
rest of the day, we took some time before the final to rest and watch other
games. Finally we regrouped and took the field to play the final.
Trigger happily agreed to play to 13 instead of 17.
As in semis we started out slow and went down 0-2. Both teams played solid
offense as we traded two goals each, neither team turning it over at all.
That streak ended abruptly.. the next point had five turnovers by each team.
After a layout block by Dave, Alan got a hat trick of throwaways.. but we
still got the goal as Alan tried to make up for his errors by catching the
goal from Keebler and getting a block in the following point. Unfortunately
we gave up that goal, but we turned on the defense to get us back in the
game. Layout blocks by Dave and Tommy in the next two points each led to
goals for us. The game was tied at 5-5. Eric strained his back in that
last point and was out for the rest of the game.
We played decently well for the rest of the game, but Trigger slowly built
a lead and we couldn't climb back again. They scored two in a row to 5-7
and we traded up to 7-9, as a block by Aruna kept us in it. Then they got
two in a row to 7-11 and we traded to the end 9-13. This time our opponents
scored 10 goals on their first possession of the point and we scored only 4.
The guy with flame shorts sucked, er, I mean, got a bunch of Ds ;-)
So we finished in 2nd place in the Northwest Region!! This is a great
achievement, especially considering the huge number of strong teams in our
region. We watched for a while and then headed off to the Belltower to
eat and celebrate.. afterwards we returned to the fields to observe the
conclusion of this amazing story:
Magic Bus and Naughtybear both won their pools but lost semis.
*Both* of them went on to lose in the 3/4 bracket semis (Bus to Redfish and
Naughtybear to Kibosh(oregon #3), allowing each of those teams to advance to
Nationals... then they both went and lost AGAIN in the 5/6 bracket semis
(Bus to Pigs in Space and Naughtybear to..... Feral Cows!) The Cows were
nocal #9 and only made regionals when Alaska dropped out, nocal got an 8th
team and a davis team(Mirage) declined the bid... they were seeded dead last,
but managed to make 3rd in their pool and squeeze into the upper bracket.
They lost in the first round, but went on to beat Sassy Sassafras, then Army
of Darkness (oregon #2; Redfish beat them by only 1 pt in the previous round)
and then Naughtybear to advance to the 5/6 game, the "game-to-go".
Unfortunately they lost to Pigs in Space (lost 3 players leaving for flights,
and 2 others stayed and missed their flights!), but it was very cool to see
the Cows advance so far on sunday!
Summary
=======
Saturday:
vs Velvatone Jiggy Jim 15-9
vs Bumpy Knuckles 15-9
vs Pigs in Space 15-10
Sunday:
vs Magic Bus 17-11 Semifinals
vs Trigger Hippy 9-13 Finals
Final Standings
===============
1 Trigger Hippy Big Sky
2 Rippit Bay Area (south)
3 Kibosh Eugene, OR
4 RedFish BlueFish Bay Area (allover)
5 Pigs in Space Portland, OR
6 Feral Cows Bay Area (south)
7 Naughtybear Seattle, WA
7 Magic Bus Bay Area (santa cruz)
9 Army of Darkness Corvallis, OR
9 Bumpy Knuckles Bay Area (east)
11 SOLD Big Sky
12 Sassy Sassafras Bay Area (SF)
13 Skin & Bones Portland, OR (beer bracket winner)
Yay Northern California coed!!! 6 of the top 12 are from our section,
finishing in a nice even spread: spots 2,4,6,7,9,12. Also Magic Bus was
the only one of these teams to finish lower than original seed.
Rippit, RedFish and Bumpy all moved up 2-3 spots.. Sassy moved up six
(18->12) and Cows moved up 13!!! (19->6!)
From Lois Maykut (regional coordinator):
The 2000 Northwest Coed Regionals was held on August 12-13 in Portland, OR.
The top 5 teams have qualified for Nationals in Blaine, MN.
Getting a bid to Nationals was all about "proving it". There were a
couple of upsets - both Magic Bus and Naughtybear won their
pools, yet did not make it to Nationals. The teams that came in
second in their pools, Kibosh and Red Fish Blue Fish, both
qualified. I suppose it just goes to show that there are a lot of
strong coed teams in the NW region.
The amazing story of the tournament, though, was Feral Cows.
They came in 9th in the Northern California sectionals... winning the
beer bracket. There were 7 slots for No. Cal teams, and they were
disappointed not to have made it. Then Alaska dropped out of the
tournament and there was another bid awarded to the No. Cal
section. The #8 team declined the invitation, and the Feral Cows
were excited to make the trip. They started out ranked last, but
played amazingly all weekend. They lost to Naughtybear and RFBF
in pool play, coming in 3rd in their pool, and advancing to the
A-bracket. They lost one game, but then continued to win and
win... beating Sassy, Army of Darkness, and Naughtybear. They
lost 3 people to early flights and had 2 others miss their flights in
order to play in the back door game to go. They lost, partly because
they were exhausted and had few subs... that last game was a
huckfest. But it takes nothing away from their amazing rise through
the ranks from 9th in their section and 20th at regionals to finish up
6th!
Final rankings of the top 12 teams:
1 Trigger Hippy
2 RippIt
3 Kibosh
4 Red Fish Blue Fish
5 Pigs in Space
6 Feral Cows
7 Naughtybear
7 Magic Bus
9 Army of Darkness
9 Bumpy Knuckles
11 SOLD
12 Sassy Sassafras Lollipop Experience
From Swayzilla (post on rec.sport.disc):
I've admired those posts that are bold enough to predict the top coed teams
at Nationals based on their region or whatever local club teams their players
came from, especially that one that just took 4 of the 5 NW teams and the top
seeds from the other Regions. While arguably the strongest coed region, the
Northwest teams remain largely unknown, with the exception of 2 perennial
Bay Area favorites, RFBF and RippIt. So to help all you Fantasy League Coed
players, this is a brief preview of the teams coming out of the NW Region.
5. Pigs In Space: The Pigs make it to Nationals through the back-back door
by beating Feral Cows in a huckfest of epic proportions that I'm sure will
instill fear in the hearts of their enemies. I don't doubt that more than
one spectator wondered how these two teams managed to beat NaughtyBear and
Magic Bus. The question is, which Pigs will show up at Nationals? The Pigs
that took their 12 team Section 8-0 (albeit without playing Kibosh!) and
finished top 8 at Potlatch or the Pigs that stunk up the field Saturday at
Regionals? Some key players are rumored to miss Nationals, most notably 2
from Schwa, perhaps feeling the pressure or disappointment from Schwa Captain
TrayC. Regardless, the Pigs and their funky German-style offense that
sometimes works/sometimes doesn't, still has a very solid core that can play
D and score.
4. Red Fish Blue Fish. The former National and World Champion Fish surprised
many by taking the 3 seed out of their section behind Magic Bus and RippIt
which earned them a 2 seed at Regionals in NaughtyBears pool. The final pool
play game between NB and RFBF was one of the better games of the weekend with
no shortage of disc waggling and spikes. NaughtyBear took that close game
12-11 or 12-10. Instead of dwelling on the loss, they showed up Sunday to
play and advance. Similar to the posts on the Coed Revolution, most teams
that play them feel they can (and should) beat them. However, the Fish work
very well together, control the disc efficiently, and capitalize on mistakes.
I'm sure that whatever their seed will be, you don't want them in your pool.
They can be beaten but don't be surprised to see them hanging around Sunday
night or even Monday morning.
3. Kibosh!. Of the teams out of the Northwest, Eugene-based Kibosh! has the
highest percentage of open club players, including Aaron 'which team am I
playing for this year' Talbot. They played extremely solid all year winning
a few local tournaments but dropped the 2-3 semifinal game at Sectionals to
Army of Darkness. In addition to their 2 seed behind Magic Bus in their pool,
they received a scare when Portland Men's Captain, Brian Linkfield, put the
foot down on the coed hooligans and threatened the P.T. of those who played
coed. In addition to benching players one day for every day they played Coed,
he also held a double practice the Saturday night and Sunday morning of Coed
Regionals. Herr Linkfield, thinking that Bonzi/PDX has a shot at Nationals
after beating Sockeye at Solstice (hint: they don't), is rumored to enforce
this 'suspension' during the Emerald City Classic next weekend in Seattle.
Should Kibosh! show up full squad to Nationals and not throw too many
scoobers, look for them to seriously challenge for a 2nd place spot.
2. RippIt: The 2 seed from the Bay Area seemed to play with more focus
towards winning this year at Regionals. Perhaps they weren't seriously
challenged by Bumpy Knuckles or the Pigs in pool play but they looked real
good and certainly earned their 2 seed Sunday. RippIt will play an efficient
game with a new (?) iso-offense set that they'll run off a pull or turnover.
Most coed-only teams have been trying to develop offenses that minimize the
cross gender poach and take advantages of mismatches. Theirs isn't much
different. It's hard to D and they exploit poaches well. Similar to RFBF,
they capitalize quickly on turnovers. If they play like they did at
Regionals, they could easily be playing Monday morning.
1. Trigger Hippy. Many of the predictions thus far have focused on the
Mid-Atlantic or NY teams as finalists and have quietly passed over NW Champions
Trigger Hippy, which I'm sure is fine by them. They've boosted last year's
semifinalist roster with more strong, hard runners than last year and upped
the intensity. Their style is pretty straightforward; run hard and run fast.
I'm sure there are starting 7's that can be better than them but for a full
squad, look out. I think the longer a game/tournament goes on, the harder
they'll be to beat. If you play them, be ready to run because both genders
can and will get D's. They made semis last year and I'd assume they'd reach
at least that this year as well.
Coed Sectionals
From Alan:
The first "summer coed series" northern california sectionals was held in
Davis.. the weather was hot as 17 teams fought it out for 6-7 spots at
regionals. Saturday was pool play and prequarters (pool winners got a bye
and 2 vs 3 crossover games played to advance to quarters). Sunday was a
double elimination playoff bracket for the top 8.
>>> SATURDAY -- Pool Play <<<
Game 1 vs Sassy Sassafras Lollipop Experience.
As usual Sassy was full of energy and ready to play for the first round of the
day. This was our third meeting of the season.. previously we had beaten them
11-1 at DUI and 13-9 at CalStates. At DUI they tried an isolation type offense
with a couple players very deep, a couple swings and dumps, and a single player
right in the middle of the field. We shut this down by poaching and went on to
an easy victory. At CalStates they seemed to have given up on this offense,
but scored 3 in a row at the end of our game to show they could play when given
the chance. However, at sectionals their iso offense returned, this time in
better form. They only used their tallest guy as the isolated player and
were very effective at finding continuations once they got the disc moving.
We capitalized on a couple of their errors early in the game to go up 3-1,
but this is as big as our lead would get. Although we had very few turnovers
Sassy's effectiveness on offense kept them in the game. We tried zone a couple
times and both times they put a floaty throw up to the middle of the field,
baiting our deep-deep to go for the block (once for Alan, once for Eric)..
however, both times we did not get there in time and the pass was caught and
then sent to the endzone for the easy score. These results kept us from
playing zone any more, but in retrospect we probably should have given it
another try as those were both lucky plays. We took the half having only made
4 turnovers, but they had only made 5 and the score was 8-7. We traded a few
more and after an unsuccessful huck attempt by Alan they worked it back and
scored to make it 8-9, Sassy's first lead since 0-1. The game stayed within
one point and had 4 lead changes, eventually reaching 13-13. Both teams
continued to have success on offense, but fortunately Sassy made the one extra
error at the end of the game, allowing us to take our 14-13 lead and turn it
into a 15-13 win on a goal from Will to Tommy.
Game 2 vs Not Milk.
After facing Sassy we had a bye. We retreated to the shade as the temps
continued to rise. Next we faced Not Milk, the bottom seed of our pool.
We opened up with zone defense and found they couldn't handle it.. we shot
up to a 3-0 lead. To make the game more interesting we switched to man
defense, but then we made some mistakes on offense and they tied it at 3-3!
After that we mixed up our defense and bit and slowly increased our lead to
win 15-8.
Game 3 vs Feral Cows.
As with Sassy, we played the Cows at both DUI and CalStates this season.
Previous results were 11-7 and 13-7. This was possibly our most comfortable
game vs the Cows as we were never behind and the only time they almost caught
up was at 5-4. However, it was good preparation for Sunday as we started to
get our defense in gear, with 8 blocks in the game. We ended up winning 15-9,
holding our 3rd seed overall giving us a bye until quarterfinals on sunday
morning. Notable point: Sarah got a block in the endzone to stop a score,
caught a huck to get us near the endzone, dumped it and then ran and caught
the goal too!
<<Other pools and Prequarters>>
This year's sectionals featured an amazing number of close games.
The competition to qualify for quarterfinals was fierce.
In pool A #1 seed Magic Bus was challenged by #8 seed FAA, but they held
on for a 13-11 win and this pool stayed as seeded. Pool B had some big
surprises.. RedFish BlueFish clearly had not recovered from their poor
performance at CalStates and lost 2 games in pool play. First to #15 seed
(not well seeded) called The Mirage (or Davis B; many college players,
quite athletic, especially the women).. this one was 15-12. Next the fish
played Special K.. apparently after getting a few lucky catches to keep the
game close the cereal squad decided they had a chance at this, and with some
inspired play them pulled out the 16-14 win. But despite their 3rd place
finish in the pool, RFBF easily qualified for quarters with a 13-3 win over
Hot Valley (Davis). Special K on the other hand had another nail-biter in
their prequarters matchup with FAA.. a 13-12 finish put Special K into
quarters. Finally, in pool D the Special K splitoff/stanford squad (Clear
the Room) upset Bumpy Knuckles with a 12-11 win to take second in the pool,
EZ Living came out on top. This setup Cows vs Bumpy and Sassy vs CtR for
the prequarters matchups.. both were very tight games. Sassy and CtR was
a race all the way, similar to our game with Sassy. At 11-11 this time it
was Sassy who reeled off the last two goals for the 13-11 win. Cows and
Bumpy had an even first half, up to 7-7. Bumpy then got 3 in a row.. they
traded to the end, but the Cows couldn't close the gap and lost 10-13.
For pools C and D it was the 3rd place finisher that made quarters, not the
2nd. In pool B both 2nd and 3rd made it. A lot of great competition!
Disappointing for some very good teams that did NOT make quarters:
Feral Cows(coming off a 4th place finish at CalStates), FAA,
and Clear the Room.
>>> SUNDAY -- Playoffs <<<
There was some debate about how to do the initial seeding for quarters.
The 1 vs 8 and 4 vs 5 pairings did not create any rematches, but the 2 vs 7
would replay Special K vs the Mirage. Captains voted whether to swap with
3 vs 6 so we would play Special K and Mirage would play Bumpy Knuckles. We
voted for the swap, but Bumpy voted to go with straight seedings and play us.
Jo (sectional coordinator) broke the tie and made the swap, stating that
pool B had some misseedings and the strength of the pool needed to be tested
against other teams.. so:
Quarters vs Special K.
The cereal crew couldn't find the magic they had on saturday and we saw a
repeat of our score from CalStates, 13-3.
This put us into semis and ensured us a spot at regionals (we could finish no
lower than 6th). Kevin's back was still not doing well, so he started icing
and would probably be out until part way into the next game. Our quick
quarters game also gave us time to watch Bumpy vs Mirage.. we would play the
winner in semis. That game was close all the way and had a number of long
zone points with a bunch of turnovers.. (sunday was cooler and there was a
pretty steady breeze).. we hoped this game would tire out both teams as we
waited to see who our opponent would be. In the end it was Bumpy Knuckles,
winning by just a point or two...
Semis vs Bumpy Knuckles.
We were 1-1 vs Bumpy this season, losing 10-15 at CalStates and winning just
11-10 in Livermore.. each time their squad looked a little different and at
sectionals again we saw some different people. Kate got them to volunteer
for dark shirts (yay!) but then Jimmy came over and tried to flip for color.
Kate said no and we stayed white.. Keebler said something like: "never, ever,
flip for what you already have." The wind was blowing and both teams played
a lot of zone, both for upwind and downwind points. We started out up 2-0
after a block by Michelle, but after a few more long points we discovered it
was 2-3. More zone, this time we were on O going downwind. Alan threw a fake
and got their middle-middle to dive to the ground.. Alan saw the opportunity
to make a longer pass out to Donna, but the disc only went about half the
distance before hitting the turf. Bumpy setup their stack and Alan covered
that same defender who was called as their first cut. He faked deep and got
open cutting back in, but slowed up on the very last step and Alan got the
layout block. We scored this point, but continued to trade with the score
tied or us down one, up to 6-6. Finally we scored upwind to take the half
7-6. We got to receive to start the second half but Kevin threw a high
release over their cup that got blocked by a wing and the got the upwinder
to even it at sevens. In the next point we worked it upwind very patiently
against their zone; Alan broke the mark repeatly for short gains to Will,
many times with help from Shane popping to create holes. We got the goal
from Keebler to Eric and the time cap went on, 8-7 game to 10. This time we
were able to convert out advantage and scored downwind to make it 9-7. With
finals just a point away we fired up some good defense for the next point..
Tommy got a block, but Keebler turned it over.. then Keebler got it back for
us with a sky block.. a couple quick passes and Kevin zipped a forehand up
the line to Michelle and we won 10-7. On to finals!
Finals vs Magic Bus.
Tested only by FAA on saturday, the Bus had greater challenges on sunday.
In quarters they faced RFBF and in semis it was EZ Living.. but they finished
off both without too much difficulty.. it seemed the Bus was stacked, as
expected. For this game we moved to field 1 across the street, so now we
had a steady crosswind instead of up/downwind points. For defense we played
some zone and a lot of force-downwind. Fortunately we were not intimidated
by their previous results, we came out to play our game. However, since we
were definitely in for regionals we told Kevin not to play this game and rest
his back.. we would all have to play just a bit harder, and Alan was stuck as
the only person to cover Cribber, their tallest player.
Like semis this game stayed very even through the first half. It stayed within
1 point up to 6-6 with 3 lead changes. We had the chance to take the half, but
turned it over and gave up the point. For perhaps the first time all weekend we
had to pull after the mirror half and they converted to take a 6-8 lead. A drop
by us on the next point and then it was 6-9.. the game was starting to slip
away. The next point had 4 errors by each team; fortunately we came away
with the score to stop their 4 goal run. Back in gear, the Bus scored the
next with no turns to make it 7-10. Time was running out in this game to 13..
but we were up to the challenge.. Alan threw the next goal to Ron, and after
a layout block by Dave, Alan put in the goal to Shane. The next point was a
long one.. the wind had picked up and both teams had trouble on offense.
We got very close to the endzone a number of times, but each time made a throw
that floated way up over the intended receiver. About the third one of these
was a short throw from Will to Alan.. the wind caught it and the disc started
shooting up, but Alan jumped up and just barely got it on his fingertips,
landing just inside the endzone to tie it at 10-10. Now it was anybody's game.
They scored the next and we worked it up against their zone trying to keep it
tied.. Keebler sent a forehand up the line to Eric in the endzone, but Cribber
got there in plenty of time to... completely whiff with both hands as he went
for the block! Eric had almost no time to react as the disc appeared in front
of him, but somehow it stuck like glue to his fingers and we were at 11-11.
(Eric says "watching cribber slump over in complete disbelief was priceless")
Another long point was next.. we got *4* blocks on defense (Kate, Will,
Michelle*2), but couldn't manage to score the point, and we traded up to
12-12. Here we decided to time cap the game at 14... zero-zero, game to two.
Kate got a block and threw the goal to Keebler, putting us at 13-12!
A layout block by Tommy in the next point gave us the disc with a chance to
win it... we got the disc to Kate near the sideline about 10 yards out..
she broke the mark with a throw to the endzone but unfortunately the defense
was there and the pass was intercepted.. they worked it back and tied it up
13-13. We were receiving the disc, next point wins. The Bus worked their
Magic and sent us an amazing, bladey pull that we let drop.. it looked like
it would roll out the back, but it curved at the last second and came to
rest just a few yard from both the back and side of the endzone. Kate had
picked up the disc and she was running out of time.. Alan made eye contact and
gave her a final option with a cut away from her running across the endzone.
Kate got just enough on this throw to get past Cribber and Alan caught the
disc.. but again running out of time Alan tried to put a little air bounce on
a short downwind pass to Will.. with no lift under the disc it fell short of
the target, turnover in the endzone.. the Bus ran their endzone O and got the
game winner, 13-14. A disappointing loss, but we definitely gave the Bus
a good challenge. Chad (of RFBF) estimated a 13-9 win for us if Kevin had
played... other oddities in this game: a high number of our blocks or
throwaways by the Bus that went back to the thrower for various "reasons";
Gus can't remember the rules (wanted to pick both side and pull after
winning flip, and wanted to sub people during a timeout).
We had some time to rest before the last game.. our opponent would be
the winner of RFBF vs EZ Living who were coming up through the backdoor
bracket. This was yet another very close game, but this time RedFish
finished off in their more typical fashion, and got the last couple goals
for the win. We saw a lot of hucks in this game, and many not so good ones,
from both teams..
Backdoor Finals vs RedFish BlueFish.
Yup, our old rivals were back. Despite their performance in pool play and
losing in quarterfinals to Magic Bus they had made it to the 2/3 game.
For once we felt like we had the upper hand, as we had played one fewer game
and had more consistent results through the weekend. The fish set the tone
for the game, which would only affect seeding at regionals, by mocking our
warmup sprints with a slow, slow walk across the field to warm up..
It always takes some time to adjust to playing the fish with all their
different zones and their offensive style. We went up 2-1, but then gave up
4 straight to 2-5.. we called timeout and finally started to get our heads into
anti-fish-mode, but could only manage trading points up to 6-9.. and this was a
game to 11! We knew we could take this game, but we were really running out of
time. Keebler was telling us repeatly how our man defense was all over them
and could shut them down.. now we started to really believe it and make it
happen. We scored one, Kevin got a sky block and we scored another, then
we forced another turn and worked it up against their zone to tie it at 9-9.
They turned it over on the next point and surprisingly we faced man defense.
Alan ran a 50 yard cut pulling away from Scruffy and caught the huck from
Tommy for the 10-9 lead. The final point was the Sarah and Tommy show..
Sarah got a block but a foul was called.. the same player cut again and
Sarah got the block again! (this time with no call).. this game us the disc
but we turned it over.. next a good mark by Sarah forced a high floaty throw,
and Tommy came down with the sky block. Some patient work against their zone
and Tommy sent a pass to the endzone.. with a guy right on her heels Sarah
caught the game winner, finishing off our run of 5 goals for an 11-9 win.
Winning the backdoor final put us in second place overall! (and just a
single goal from first..) We played a lot of competetive and good spirited
ultimate.. we focused well and kept up consistent play to help us come away
with the win almost every time.. great job everyone!!
The final standings were:
1- Magic Bus
2- Rippit
3- RedFish BlueFish
4- EZ Living
5- Bumpy Knuckles
6- Special K
7- Sassy Sassafras
8- Mirage
9- Cows
Our game scores:
Saturday:
vs Sassy Sassafras 15-13
vs Not Milk 15-8
vs Feral Cows 15-9
Sunday:
vs Special K 13-3 Quarters
vs Bumpy Knuckles 10-7 Semis
vs Magic Bus 13-14 Finals
vs RedFish BlueFish 11-9 Backdoor Final
Davis Ultimate Invitational
From Alan:
We made it to finals!!!!!!
and then lost to (guess who...) RFBF, 10-13.
Saturday
vs Sassy Sasafras 11-1
vs Hillary for Senate 11-1
(^^this is the special-K splitoff/stanford team)
vs Feral Cows 11-7
vs MUD 11-0
Sunday
vs Frizbee Nation 10-3
vs Hot Valley of Love 11-3 quarter
vs Magic Bus 13-7 semi
vs RedFish BlueFish 10-13 final
We played extremely well.. as you can see from the scores we really shut
down some teams that could have easily scored more points on us.
We had a good game with redfish.. our offense looked great.. we continued
to work it both around and through their zone.. towards the end they were
playing some man-on-man defense. We did have a number of unforced errors,
perhaps due to being nervous about being in finals and playing fish...
Our defense was solid, but we still allowed them to complete a few hucks
and quite a few break mark throws. We lost the first half 4-7, and then
played even 6-6 in the second..
Great job, Rippit!!!
-----
Saturday, pool play.
Game 1 vs Sassy Sasafras Lollipop Experience (SF).
Sassy runs the intimidation factor with team jerseys and lots of team
warmup/drills (the whole team was there doing a warmup lap at 8:30am!)
But we came out strong and took the game 11-1. We scored 6 of our points
with no turnovers. In the longest point Ron, Alan and Bharat each threw
it away.. then the women showed us how it's done with Jen throwing the
goal to Shane to take the half.
Game 2 vs Hilary for Senate (SouthBay).
HfS is the splitoff team from Special-K, merging with a number of stanford
players. This team clearly had more throwing talent than our previous
opponent, but they couldn't find the options in their offense (perhaps
they need more time playing together). We came out strong and were able
to dominate the rest of the game.. we won 11-1. We scored 5 points with
no turnovers.
Game 3 vs Feral Cows (SouthBay).
The Cows were seeded 2nd in our pool (#5 overall, we were #2).
In contrast to Hillary the Cows have been playing together as long as we
have, so their offense has a much better flow. We wanted to continue our
solid play from the first two rounds and not give the cows a chance to get
into the game (which we have a habit of doing). We pulled the first point,
Keebler got a block and then we worked against their zone.. Keebler found a
wide open Libby and hucked it for the first goal (Libby made a nice catch with
the defense rapidly approaching). We continued playing well and ran up to
a lead of 7-1! But then Keebler bobbled a pass from Kevin and strained his
back in an attempt to catch the disc as it dropped to the ground. He sat out
for the rest of the game. Coincidentally (or perhaps not?) this is when our
game began to slip a bit. We traded the next few points up to 9-3 (Peter got
a *huge* layout block in the endzone to stop a goal, allowing us to get to
9-3). The cows started coming back, finishing on a 4-2 run, but were too far
behind so the game ended 11-7. Not the ending we wanted, but I much prefer
building a big lead at the beginning, rather than letting the game stay close
at the start and having to dig deep at the end to pull away.
5 points scored with no turns.. 4 of them in the first half (up to 6-1) and
then the last goal of the game.
Game 4 vs MUD (Mountain Ultimate Disc).
Not much to say here. This was a fun crowd of people from up in the Sierras
north of tahoe.. but they don't know too much about ultimate. We lost our
focus a bit in this jungle disc match, but still won 11-0.
Sunday, playoffs.
Our Saturday women (Leslie and Michelle) were substituted with the Sunday
squad (Kate and Donna).. however, we lost two guys to stomach flu (Peter
and Hank) and were down to just 6 guys.
Prequarters vs Frizbee Nation.
The tournament format only gave the #1 seed overall (RFBF) a first round
bye, so we had to play at 9am, and in a #2 vs #15 game. My car arrived at
8:50 and we were the first people at our field site! We were slow getting
started, and at one point I had to call timeout to get our heads in the
game. After one point where we turned it over 4 times before they scored
(maybe this was when I called timeout?) we finally did get into gear and
rattled off the last 4 in a row with 2 blocks and no turnovers to win 10-3.
Quarters vs Hot Valley of Love (Davis).
The Davis folks gave us a good game at Sectionals last fall. However, it
looked like this early in the season they didn't have the energy or motivation
to put up as strong a fight. We continued to build up momentum and went out
to a 7-0 lead before they got their first goal! We won the game 11-3.
We score 8 goals with no turns!
Semis vs Magic Bus.
Magic Bus is basically a pickup team for high level players. They have won
at least a couple coed tournaments in the past. They had cruised through
pool play on saturday, beating ShutUpAndKissMe. We had made it to semis and
we knew there was no messing around from this point on. We pulled to start
the game.. Kevin's defense helped force a turnover but we threw it away and
gave up the first goal (the first time all weekend we were down 0-1).
We tied it up at 1's with no turns. The next point was a long one.. after
3 turns by us and 4 by them we finally scored. We played box zone on the
next point.. rather than looking down the middle they kept throwing high,
floaty passes out to the sides... after seeing a few of these Kevin somehow
managed to poach in from deep-deep(!) and swat down the disc.. he was of
course running full speed towards the other endzone, so Alan (playing middle)
picked up the disc and hucked it for the goal. Maybe this was a wakeup call
to the Bus.. at this point they buckled down on offense. Our offense
continued to be on fire as well.. we traded from 3-2 up to 7-5, all goals
with NO turnovers from either team! At some point in this stretch we played
box zone and they started running give&go right up the middle and scored..
I think we played mostly man from that point on. So we won the half 7-5
and got to receive the pull (mirror half). At halftime we discussed just
keeping up this level of play all the way to the end of the game.. we
executed this plan beautifully! We scored 3 in a row to start the second
half, taking us to 10-5. The women on their team were weaker throwers, and
good pressure on the mark from our women were forcing some turnovers.
Our offense continued to click and we sped to victory 13-7, finishing on
a huck from Alan to Kevin (4 of these in the game, plus 2 from Keebler to
Kevin... the KAK show combined for throwing 10 goals, catching 8!).
We scored *11* of 13 goals with no turnovers!!
Finals vs RedFish BlueFish.
Yup, our familiar foes cruised their way into finals, with a first round
bye on sunday and winning semis 13-4 over ShutUpAndKissMe. We lost the
flip for shirts, but TK graciously allowed us to go white anyway.
We opted to play all man defense, and not allow them to simply survey the
field and find the open person against a zone. We knew their break-mark
and huck offense, so we wanted to try to shut that down... unfortunately
they completed a huck on the first point and it was 0-1. We traded up to
2-2, but a series of unforced errors on our part let them get up to 2-5.
To cut a long story short, the game was 8-8 from that point on and they
won 10-13... more comments: our offense against their zone looked great..
I can remember us breaking it in many ways (at least dump-swing, up the
middle, backdoor, over the top), with good use of fakes and both poppers
and deeps finding open space. We did well enough that by the end of the
game they had switched to man defense. On defense we still struggled to
stop the breakmark throws and hucks, even though we knew they were coming.
In the first half we played constant-force.. in the second half we switched
to force-middle.. we had some problems early with always calling out the
force, but once we got into it the FM definitely slowed down their offense.
Instead of 1 or 2 quick passes and an instant huck each thrower would end
up holding the disc for 4+ seconds against our FM, which seemed preferable
to them completing their hucks. Our biggest deficit was down 4-8 and 5-9.
We picked it up a bit in the second half and started using Donna more in our
offense.. she caught two goals in a row and we closed to 10-11. At this point
I should have burned our last timeout just to rest our guys, as it took us
about a minute to get a 4th guy out to the line (we had used another timeout
earlier to rest, after a point we had just scored!). Not surprisingly they
scored that point with no turnovers. In the next point we completed a long
pass to Aruna just in front of the goal line and here we did use our last
timeout. We setup a dishy play, but they surprised us by switching markers
from one of their women to Gregg Wolff (this reset the count from 3 to zero,
but I guess they figured it was worth it for the wingspan).. unfortunately
the trick worked and their defense got the block.. they worked it down and
scored the game winner, 10-13.
Overall an *excellent* start to the season.. yeah, Rippit!
Our defensive pressure was good, and it will only get better as we get
back into shape. Our offensive flow was great, although probably we had
an easier time this tournament because we were more organized that the
defenses we were facing (early in the season).
Things to work on: keep our heads in finals and/or playing fish so we don't
make unforced errors. keep working on our offense and make sure it continues
to flow well against more stifling defense.. at this tournament we could
simply rely on being faster to get us open.. against teams like Naughty Bear
we need to make sure we can beat the teams that are running really hard on D.
World Ultimate Club Championships 1999
From Ron:
Day 1
-----
Conditions were very windy, gusty, and cold.
1. RippIt over Gael Force (Scotland) 15-1
I wasn't here for this game -- by the time Dave and I finished the
2hr drive from Glascow, the game was long over. I only know that Gael
Force held a brief lead at 0-1, and that local boy Max (picking up
with the Scots) broke Kevin's mark for the score. Doh!
2. Red Fish over RippIt 15-9
Painful, painful. We came out to a strong lead and took the half
8-3. Unfortunately, we lost the second half 12-1. Alan sprained his
hand (happily, the ONLY injury on the entire team all week) making a
hot D just before halftime and was out for the rest of the game. In
the second half, Detterman stopped throwing away his hucks, and they
began to play well while we started making mistake after mistake.
Day 2
-----
Conditions were worse. It was really quite cold, and especially down at
the lower fields, tremendously gusty. Alan sat out the entire day to
rest his sprained hand. In the game versus Brazil we warmed up in a
sheltered section of the field and then got a rude awakening since the
rest of the field was windy.
1. RippIt over Aged to Perfection (Canada #3 team) 15-0
Not much to say here. Everybody played hot. On one point we tried a
downwind rolling pull that they failed to stop and so had to play from
the back of their own endzone. Brutal.
2. RippIt over Brazil 15-6
They played a rather physical game and weren't very disciplined about
making safe plays. They ran a ton of picks, hacked and fouled a lot on
the mark, Sarah got a goodly shove from behind while making a D, and
so on. After playing down to their level for a while we picked it up
and put the game away. Their post-game spirit was great, but their
in-game spirit was awful.
Day 3
-----
Less wind today. We played the team seeded below and above us in our
pool, so we knew it was a big day.
1. RippIt over Blue Arse Flies (Britain) 15-10
The Brits ran an offense that we saw from many of the European teams-
handlers flat, mids and deeps toward the sides, and lots of cuts
toward the middle of the field and reliance on inside-out throws. They
ran pretty hard and had no qualms about jacking up the hammer. We
traded points for most of the game before shutting them down at the
end.
2. RippIt over Manitou (Canada #1) 17-15
A *huge* game. The Canadiens (their name means "Great Spirit") were
fun people to play against. They had height and speed -- one guy
named Shaggy was their version of Kevin -- and their women were both
tall and fast. One of their women made an absolutely sick catch for a
score -- racing after a huck, she leaped while turning to get her
hand on the leading edge and fell into the endzone. We were up by two
for most of the game, but they caught us at 14s and even pulled up
15-14 to be one point from victory. But we scored the next three to
take it, with hot playing by everybody. Kate had a hot sky grab down
the sideline during the second-to-last point, and on game point (for
us) Joey got a continuation down the right sideline and put an anxious
forehand down the endzone line that Kate pulled down in traffic for
the game.
Day 4
-----
Less wind, even some sunlight peeked through the clouds. We delayed the
games for an hour for the eclipse, and some of us peeked through floppy
disks (Mike's invention) to see the crescent-shaped sun. Cool.
1. RippIt over DiscConnection (Freiburg) 15-6
The Germans ran the same offense that the Brits did, but not as well.
Either that or we defended it better. One of their better players, a
tall guy named Roo, knew Dave and Peter from the Rimini tourney.
Although we found that we could run them pretty well and they had
problems with the box zone, the game was actually closer than the
score indicated,
With that win, we secured 2nd in our pool (behind the Fish). Since we
had been seeded 3rd in our pool, that was a nice improvement and it
meant an easier cross-pool game.
2. RippIt over Fingers (Switzerland) 15-3
We had watched Fingers give Pira Haku a good scare earlier. (Pira
didn't do so well. They went 5-2 in pool play and ended up 5th
overall, I think.) But when we played the Swiss they had some problems
running with us and handling our zone. The game was never really in
doubt.
Day 5
-----
We had to beat the team HUT (Finland) to make semis, since they had lost
to the Canadiens (Manitou). Some of the Fins had joined us in playing
cards the night before and so we knew a few of their players, but we
were a little anxious since HUT had emerged as the top seed in the other
pool.
1. RippIt over HUT 15-5
They seemed much slower or more tired. Clearly they hadn't been
running Kate's workouts. (Seriously, I think those workouts were
extraordinarily useful. HUT had been running much harder earlier in
the week and they looked like they just got worn out.) Some highlights
-- Dave absolutely skying their tallest (6'4"?) person in the endzone
for a great D, Peter making a hard cut and tripping over a small hill
in the endzone. Their standard offense seemed to be a swing, dump,
swing, dump, HUCK! It didn't work all that well against us.
Now we were in semis. We just had to beat Japan and we'd likely face the
Fish in finals. We felt fairly confident; they were a smallish team and
they'd lost to HUT and just barely beaten DiscConnection.
2. Osaka over RippIt 17-16
Let's just say that they were all really fast. They did a great job
covering our cuts and the dump, they did a good job only throwing the
safe throw and were able to break us seemingly at will. They had had
problems in some wind, only today there was almost no wind whatsoever.
But we were up 8-6 at half, and even up 12-8, before they came back to
tie. As the cap to 17 came on, they took a 16-15 lead. A huck to Kevin
got us back to 16s, but they worked their break-mark offense right
back to take the semis. We were disconsolate after the game, but they
had earned the win. We couldn't have played any harder; we might have
played better, but we certainly left our hearts on the field. Some
great endzone D by everybody -- some examples are Kevin and Alan up in
the sky, Kate poaching and laying out to stop a certain score, even
yours truly laying out and causing a minor seismic event -- but I'm
leaving out examples of hot playing by everybody.
Day 6
-----
On our hoped-for off-day, we ended up having to play Manitou again for
the 3rd/4th spot. They had lost to the Fish 16-14 and we figured they
were out for revenge against us.
1. RippIt over Manitou 15-8? (not sure of this one)
This didn't seem all that close. After Loco got a sweet poach block
and then ran down for the undefended score we saw that they didn't
seem to want it as much as we did. Aruna skied one of their tallest
guys on zone D (which made it into our bitter cheer).
So RippIt ended up with 3rd in the world. After this game we gave
Manitou a good cheer. They asked if we wanted a good spirit or bitter
cheer in return. "Bitter!!!! Be really, really bitter!!!" we replied,
and we prepared a rebuttal bitter cheer (including lines that rhymed
"Manitou" with "0 for 2"). Ask somebody else about their cheer to us. Oh
my god. Amazing. It was not only bitter, it was also sexually loaded and
explicit. I learned things from their cheer. About oxen, fisting, and
various discharges. All in good fun, of course. After the cheers we all
went back to the main tents and Manitou and us played drinking games.
It's hard to summarize an entire week of ultimate, but I was so proud to
be a part of our team. Every last RippIt player played well, ran his or
her ass off, and had great spirit on and off the field. We had loud and
active (sometimes too active!) sidelines helping us on D, we were pumped
up on the field and between points, and we just had a great time. We did
well, we showed the world some hot Bay Area coed ultimate, and we had
fun.
The only thing we really failed to do was to go out and get some haggis.
-Chubba
From Tom Kenny (TK) of RFBF:
The Coed Division Finals featured a rematch between RedFishBlueFish (USA) and
Osaka Natto from an earlier crossover game. RFBF won the earlier match 15-10,
but both teams had already qualified for the semis, and were possibly conserving
strength and strategy for their semifinal matches later that same afternoon.
To reach this point, RedFishBlueFish had won all of the games in its pool,
including victories over the other semifinalists, Rippit and Manitou. In the
Semifinals, RFBF defeated Manitou in a very close game 16-14. In this game,
Manitou rallied from a 13-8 deficit to tie the game at 14 when the cap was
applied, but RFBF scored the last 2 goals to seal the victory.
Osaka Natto had a different path to the finals, overcoming a 6th seed with a
15-14 victory over Pira Haku (USA) in their pool, and winning against
Disconnection (Germany) 15-14 in a crossover game. The semifinal was against
Rippit (USA), and was a hard-fought game that came to the last point 17-16.
Osaka Natto is clearly a team that can rise to meet a challenge - all 3 of
these critical games were 1-point victories in their favor!
In the 3rd-place game, Rippit defeated Manitou handily in a game that bore
little resemblance to their narrow 17-15 win in pool play 2 days earlier.
The final was played in periods of wind and very heavy rain. RFBF started out
with a lot of match-up zone and some clam on defense, while Osaka Natto played
a force-forehand man-to-man. This led to many long, patient possessions by
Osaka Natto interrupted by brief possessions by RFBF. There were more than a
few turnovers on most points, but RFBF managed to build a lead that grew to
7-4 mostly on long throws to taller players or by breaking marks for moderate
gains. Then, Osaka Natto mounted their comeback to tie things at 9 by tossing
30-yard hammers across the RFBF zone and consolidating before taking more
yardage. A long point finally ended with a goal for RFBF and a 10-9 lead. The
rain was very heavy at that point and persisted throughout the halftime and
into the second half. Osaka Natto began the half taking a 11-10 lead by
patiently advancing the disk on short throws through the zone and breaking the
mark to escape traps on the sideline. Points were traded to 12-12, when the
time cap was applied. The next 2 points featured several turnovers due to very
good defense on both sides, but RFBF managed to score them both for a 14-12
victory.
Since both semis and the final were so close, this final might have turned out
with any of the 4 semifinalists wearing the gold. All of these very important
and highly competitive games were played with tremendous spirit, and an almost
complete absence of calls, proving that Coed ultimate represents the best of
our sport.
Fall Series Nationals, 1998
From Peter Wolfenden:
We took a red-eye out of SFO at 1:30AM on Wednesday morning, 10/21/98,
connecting through Dallas and finally arriving in Tampa at about noon
local time. This brought our ticket prices down to about $300, which
(barely) made it possible for all of us to go. Though I would have
preferred to leave later on Wednesday and arrive in the evening,
taking the red-eye one day early probably made the time adjustment
a bit easier than it would have been otherwise. When our trio of
minivans ("Speedy" (not) driven by yours truly, "Dave is Good driver",
driven by Dave (Cookie-face) Brokaw, and the "Chuh-bus", driven by
Ron (Chubba) Ho) arrived in Sarasota, we went splashing in the warm
waters of the Gulf of Mexico. While playing some very slow-moving
aquatic ultimate, I stepped on a broken shell and lacerated the instep
of my left foot, which really annoyed me at the time but fortunately
turned out not to affect my play much at all.
Some of us went out for Italian food on Wednesday evening, but I opted
for the Winn-Dixie fried chicken and broccoli au gratin so I could turn
in early. The greasy food and warm weather reminded me of my salad days
in the North Carolina, and I had no trouble falling asleep by 10PM.
On Thursday morning (after a complimentary breakfast of grits and
scrambled eggs) we arrived on the polo fields about half an hour before
our first game, which began at 9AM. The fields were immaculate (they
even had painted sidelines and those orange foam rubber corner marker
thingies that squoosh out of the way if you fall on them), but slightly
damp - I think it had rained during the night. The sky was gray, there
was a light breeze, and we had a brief drizzly episode in the late
morning. I didn't play much in our first game against Mon Ami Burundi
from Toronto, since the game was close and I wasn't yet feeling warm
and confident, and because I didn't feel that I was contributing well
in the points that I did play. This game was an evil one injurywise -
Dave Brokaw pivoted on his left foot while faking a dump and stepped
on his defender with his right, twisting his ankle and putting enough
pressure on the outside of his foot to snap something (he'd been having
problems with his feet for some time, and in retrospect it appears he
may have had a stress fracture). He was unable to put any pressure on
his right foot at all for the rest of the weekend, and so this put one
of our best players out of the tourney. Later in the game, one of the
Toronto players landed on his left shoulder after catch, and his
shoulder separated in a weird and gnarly way - dislocating the joint
backwards instead of forwards (which I gather happens more frequently).
He, also, was out for the rest of the tourney. We won at the cap by 3
points, mainly due to fewer errors, I think. During the cheer, one of
their women gave me the quizzical "Don't I know you?" look, and indeed,
it was Julie, a friend of a climbing & ultimate friend who was in the
Bay area a few months ago interviewing and with whom I went climbing
during her stay. Small world.
The wind grew stronger during our second game, against Cobb from
Chicago. This game was close, but I don't remember that much about it
except that we won by 2 points. I think we were behind early on, and
then shut down their offense by playing zone both upwind and downwind.
Or maybe that was against Toronto. Hmm. I'll have to wait for Alan's
write-up on http://www.moshpit.org/RippIt/
The wind kicked up by the time we played our third game against Ultimate
Addiction from South Carolina, and we pretty much walked over them since
they couldn't move the disk upwind against our zone and they couldn't
stop our offense in either direction. They scored 4 points to our 15,
and left us with a 3-0 record for the day.
That evening we went to a Cuban place for dinner (fried plantains, mm!),
and split a Vermonster (a huge bucket with 20 scoops of ice cream and
lots of bizarre toppings, like brownies and gummi bears) 15 ways at
Ben & Jerry's.
On Friday morning our first game against <XU> from Philadelphia was at
10AM, so we had some more time to get warmed up. <XU> couldn't really
do much against us, and we rocked them 15-3. Pira Haku from Colorado,
on the other hand, was a different story. They put on a show with some
extremely quick handlers and one guy (number 2) who could put hammers
almost anywhere at any time to any of several receivers. They scored 2
upwinders before we figured out how to prevent them from crashing our
cup, and went on to win a time capped punting war 9-4 as neither team
was able to work it past mid-field upwind again. This left us 1-1 for
the day, and since Pira Haku had lost 2 games to other teams in our
pool we placed first in the pool overall with a record of 4-1.
We spent most of Friday evening playing cards, reading, and exulting
in the fact that we were able to win our pool even without one of our
key players. Dave complained that we were lame for not attending the
party (which we undeniably were, but the party sounded like a sort of
half-assed arrangement with beer, no food, no music, and everybody
out at midnight).
On Saturday morning we played our first game against Bad Larry from
Colorado, and this was a hard fought game. We established a lead with
two upwinders, and held on to win 15-12 with a combination of man and
zone. Near the end of the game, Alan Harder took a fist to the face
on the follow-through from a huck, and was out for the rest of the
tourney with a broken nose. This again reduced our strength, and we
were fearful going into a seminfinal rematch against Pira Haku. But
we came out strong and were up 6-3 after a couple of very hard-fought
upwind scores and some very effective man defense. I think I played
my personal best for the tourney during this game, but was frustrated
on a couple of missed D attempts. The worst was a play I made on a
swilly floater into the endzone by Pira Haku, which led to a colision
on the goal line. I sprinted around the left side of the pile, laying
out from the side for a grab which while airborne I thought I had a
90% chance of getting, but which was snatched away from *above* by
one of their taller players just before my hand closed on it. Bob Byrne,
(the UPA director) who I was guarding during the point, complimented
me on the effort, noting that I had managed to make a play on the disk
in a crowded situation without endangering anyone. Unfortunately, I
was too frustrated at the time to be gracious. Pira Haku went on to
win 7 more unanswered points using a funky double isolation play on
offense, and trapping the disk on the sideline with their zone defense.
At 6-11 we were too far down to recover, trading downwind scores to
finish 9-14 at the time cap. D'oh.
The final between Red Fish, Blue Fish from SF and Pira Haku was
quite something to see. Mark Dettman on Red Fish was throwing
crazy full-field upside-down passes both upwind and downwind for
scores, and Pira Haku's number 2 couldn't keep up. The Red Fish Blue
Fish women put on a smothering zone cup that Pira Haku couldn't break
through, and most of Pira Haku's long passes floated enough to give
the Red Fish deeps enough time to make a play. I think the final score
of 15-8 fairly reflects the effectiveness of the two squads. We've
never beaten Red Fish, Blue Fish (though it's been an ambition of
ours for two years, now), and we came out ahead of them at Sectionals
only because they (perhaps missing players, or being half asleep)
lost to teams that we were able to beat.
That afternoon we all went to the beach after the final, played
some aqua-box (I wore Tevas this time!), and ate dinner at a Greek
place that was quite good. At the party we danced to Rai from a
group called "Orchestra Tata" (Dave was a trooper, dancing on one
leg with crutches and even hopping around for a while without them
until he got too tired), and I played the first sport-climbing
game I've ever seen at a party - you start lying on top of a table,
and (as someone holds down the far end to keep it from tipping) you
crawl down over one end, back underneath the underside without
touching the floor, and back up over the other end to the top again,
at which point you are presented with a cup of beer for your efforts.
Crawling along the underside isn't hard, since you can hook your
heels over the edge on each side. The tough part is getting your
legs and feet from above the table to underneath without flopping
them down onto the floor. I rate the move as a 5.8+ or 5.9.
On Sun morning we got up at 4AM to catch our flights back to SFO.
Now we're back at work, wondering if we'll ever make it that far
again. Rumor has it that future UPA series will be split between
Spring and Fall, making it possible for people to play in both
the Open/Women's and Coed divisions during the year. This would
make possible the formation of hugely stacked coed teams, stiffening
the competition a good deal, and probably pushing us down a bit in
the rankings. But at least I'll be able to tell my grandkids one
day that I made it to the semifinals in a sport that, by that time,
will no doubt be encrusted with commercial endorsements, televised
coverage, and all the associated virtues & sins. Wohoo!
From Alan:
UPA National Championships
Sarasota, Florida
October 22-25, 1998
Twelve coed teams from all around the continent travelled to Sarasota,
Florida to participate in the first year of a coed division in the UPA
Fall Series. The teams were split into two pools with three regional
champions and three regional runners-up in each pool.
Pool A Pool B
------ ------
Central: #1 Flying Cob (Chicago) #2 Better Living (Chicago)
Through Chemistry
Mid-Atlantic: #2 (Philly) #1 Blind Date (DC)
Northeast: #1 Mon Ami Burundi (Toronto) #2 W.U.P.A.S.S. (NYC)
Northwest: #2 RippIt (Bay Area) #1 RedFish BlueFish (Bay Area)
South: #1 Ultimate (S. Carolina) #2 Disclicious (Denton, TX)
Addiction
Southwest: #2 Pira Haku (CO Springs) #1 Bad Larry (Denver, CO)
The schedule was for 3 pool play games thursday, 2 on friday, and
quarters,semis,finals on saturday. Our schedule happened to give us
the three regional champs the first day, and playing the other #2's on
friday.
Most of the team arrived in florida around noon on wednesday, taking a
redeye from california. We got in some early beach action and met up
with the rest of the team at the Days Inn in the evening. The weather
was not as hot as it could have been; excellent conditions for a few
days of disc. The wind had a definite presense, making its effect known
in many games. We arrived at the fields on thursday morning.. the site
was amazing! The grass was great, the fields were lined (with no other
confusing lines either!), and the "cones" were strofoam orange things
attached to the corners (safe to layout on!). The coed division played
on six fields along the edge of the polo grounds, perhaps the windiest
area out there. Open play was near the middle of the area, and womens
games were so far away they were barely in sight..
Our nationals opener was against Mon Ami Burundi from Toronto. They won
the northeast region and rumor had it they were one of the strongest teams
out there (where do these rumors come from?). They were the only canadian
team to make it to nationals and were sporting some flashy red jerseys.
It was a bit cold in the morning and the grass pretty wet (dew? night rain?).
The game began and both teams got off to a shaky start with a couple
throwaways each point, but we jumped ahead 2-0 with goals from Dave to
Eric and Kevin. In the next point when Dave had the disc he pivoted and
stepped on his marker's foot, causing a great deal of pain. He tried to
stay in, but after we turned it over he came out of the game. This injury
pulled him out of the rest of the tournament, a pretty tragic blow to our
roster. We found out later he broke the fifth metatarsal in his right foot,
but Dave suspects he may have had a hairline fracture already and this
incident just finished it off.
Play continued and Mon Ami answered back, tying the game at 2-2. The wind
wasn't too strong, but the wind combined with the wet conditions was enough
that we occassionally started a punt and recover strategy going downwind.
We had a number of throwaways and wet-disc drops, but traded to 4-4.
JT dropped the next pull and they scored (upwind) to take their first lead
at 4-5. After a long point the got the next, 4-6. After two unsucessful
offensive chances on the next point Mon Ami again scored upwind, 4-7.
Mon Ami was showing their strength, but we clamped down and scored a pair
ourselves, closing to 6-7. They quickly scored downwind to take the half
6-8. We had started the game downwind, so now we had to pull upwind again,
twice in a row. Injured Dave had been observing Toronto's success with the
long downwind throw and suggested a downwind zone so we could poach off
those throws. Since we had to pull upwind we started right off with the
downwind zone, with Kevin and Alan as the two deep-deeps. Mon Ami pulled
back many of their deep throws and moved to a shorter game. Kevin and Alan
each got a block on ones they did put long. The strategy was giving us more
chances to get the upwind goal.. on our fifth try we finally did, with a
goal from Alan to Sarah. We played the box zone when they were going upwind
and got the next goal to tie the game 8-8. More downwind zone.. this time
they did manage to score, but not until their 7th possession! We scored
much more quickly as Tommy hucked one to Kevin who threw a quick goal to Don,
now 9-9. The downwind zone paid off quickly this time, as we scored on
our first upwind possession. Sarah came down with a punt from Alan off the
pull on the next point, giving us the lead at 11-9. We traded to 12-10.
Again we took advantage of their turnover and scored on our first upwind
possession, going up 13-10. We were heading towards the end of the game
now and thanks to the downwind zone we had a good lead. Mon Ami wouldn't
roll over, however, and after a lot of unsuccessful punts on our part they
scored upwind and got the next, closing to 13-12. Another incomplete punt
by Alan in the next point, but we got it back and used it this time, going
up 14-12. We knew Toronto had the ability to come back so we wanted to
finish strong. We put up the downwind zone with Alan and Eric deep.
After a couple TO's a block by Eric led to our upwind goal to win the
game 15-12.. we were 1-0 at nationals!
Game two was against Flying Cob from Chicago. We had seen them warming up
for round one, and they looked pretty intense. We started the game
pulling upwind. They turned it over and then slapped on a zone defense.
We worked it all the way up and got the first goal from Eric to Michelle
which also happened to be RippIt's ONE THOUSANDTH tournament goal!!
We traded downwind to 2-1, but then Chicago showed us they had the skills
and patience to score upwind as well, and tied it 2-2. We then traded
all the way to 5-5.. the first few feature solid and intense play from
both teams. There was a slight momentum shift in the last pair as it took
them 5 possessions to finally score downwind, and then we quickly hucked
one from Ron to Kevin. Rolling with this, a block from Michelle setup the
upwind goal from Tommy to Alan. Chicago showed no signs of crumbling,
however, as they received the pull and worked it upwind to score with no
turnovers. Now tied at 6-6, we traded and they took the half 7-8.
We had started the game pulling upwind, so now we got to receive downwind
and we tied it at 8-8. Another long point where they struggled to score
downwind.. it took us many tries but we scored on our 7th possession,
after a block by Tommy. This would prove to be a pivotal point in the
game, as it was the last upwind goal scored. We took advantage of their TO
in the next point, going up 10-8. A lot of intense play followed, but we
prevented them from closing the gap with good defensive pressure, and strong
downwind offense. We had two successful punt/block/goal drives, and one
we took down and scored with no turns. Right on our heel, Chicago refused
to give up.. at 14-13, game point for us, they prevented us from taking the
game easily, and continued to work the disc up close to the goal. We punted
the disc downfield three times in the point, and finally scored on our
sixth possession! Phew, we eeked out this big win and now we were 2-0!
Game 3 was against Ultimate Addiction from South Carolina, #1 from the
South region. After two extremely close and intense games we were glad for
a break, as this team just couldn't handle the wind (they said "there's no
wind where we come from!!"). Our zone both upwind and downwind caused
plenty of pressure to force the TO. And against their zone we were able
to gain yards just on the dump and swing, and the poppers broke it up
the middle quite well too.. We took the half 8-1 and rolled on to a 15-4
victory.
Thursday night we took down the Vermonster! (lots o' ice cream) Mmm!!!
Friday morning... it was chilly in the morning, but not wet like the first
day. Our first matchup of the day was from Philadelphia, #2 from
the Mid-Atlantic region. In the last round on thursday we had seen them
come back from a 1-8 deficit to beat Pira Haku to win 12-11 at the cap.
We knew we could not let up in this game. The wind was not too strong
yet, but was still a factor. At this level I think the wind was to our
advantage. This team clearly had better skills than the Carolina team,
but still our zone defense was always able to shut them down. We won 15-3.
The fun story in this game began in one point where we punted the disc
downwind to Sarah, but their tall deep player was ready and waiting..
however, with a tragic misread he jumped up and the disc flew inches over
his hand.. Sarah jumped up in the endzone and caught the score, and then
went galloping off the field in fits of laughter! Later in the game as
a point began the same tall guy started out covering Sarah. She realized
this must mean somewhere else a guy would be covered by a woman, so she
yelled out "mismatch!".. to everyone else, of course, this sounded like
she thought she could easily beat the tall guy! He proceeded to grab Sarah
and try to tackle her! :-)
We were now 4-0 and ready to face our final pool play opponent, Pira Haku
from Colorado Springs. They were 2-2, beating Toronto, but losing to
Chicago and that crazy comeback from Philly . We started off poorly,
unable to play effective defense and making some errors on offense.. we
dug ourselves a 1-6 hole. At this point the wind really picked up, the
strongest it was all tournament.. neither team was able to get past half
field going upwind for the rest of the game and we traded downwind points
all the way to a 9-14 loss.
Even with this loss we managed to win our pool since Pira Haku had already
lost 2 games and we won head-to-head with Flying Cob who also went 4-1.
On Saturday we proceeded into quarterfinals against Bad Larry from Colorado.
This time we started out strong up to a 5-1 lead. But in the next point
Alan leaned in too close and took the followthru of a huck right in the
facing, popping off his hat and breaking his nose... not a particularly
"bad" break, but enough to take him out for the tournament. Aruna was also
out for a while to drive Alan to the hospital. The team battled on.. Larry
climbed to within 3 a couple times, but we held our lead and won the game 15-11.
Semis vs Pira Haku.. rematch from pool play.. not as windy, but we continued
to struggle with their double-teaming trap zone and they worked their offense
well with quick short passes through the zone and longer pinpoint passes from
one player. The game ended with the same score as our first matchup, 9-14.
We finished with a better record than the remaining semifinalist, so we
ended up in 3rd place overall!!!
From the UPA web page:
1998 UPA Championships
Coed Division Schedules
Coed A Coed B
4-1 Flying Cob 0-5 Better Living Through Chemistry
2-3 <XU> 3-2 Blind Date
2-3 Mon Ami Burundi 4-1 W.U.P.A.S.S.
4-1 RippIt 5-0 RedFish BlueFish
0-5 Ultimate Addiction 1-4 Disclicious
3-2 Pira Haku 2-3 Bad Larry
Pool play, Quarters & Semis to 15/17, Finals to 17/19
Thursday, October 22, 1998
Time Team Team Score Team Team Score
9 Flying Cob - <XU> 15-6 B.L.T.C. - Blind Date 5-15
to Mon Ami Burundi - RippIt 12-15 W.U.P.A.S.S. - RedFish BlueFish 6-15
11 Ultimate Addiction- Pira Haku 8-15 Disclicious - Bad Larry 11-15
11:45 Flying Cob - RippIt 13-15 B.L.T.C. - RedFish BlueFish 5-15
to <XU> -Ultimate Addiction 15-7 Blind Date - Disclicious 15-6
1:45 Mon Ami Burundi - Pira Haku 12-13 W.U.P.A.S.S. - Bad Larry 15-7
2:30 Flying Cob - Mon Ami Burundi 15-6 B.L.T.C. - W.U.P.A.S.S. 9-15
to <XU> - Pira Haku 12-11 Blind Date - Bad Larry 15-8
4:30 RippIt -Ultimate Addiction 15-4 RedFish BlueFish - Disclicious 15-9
Friday, October 23, 1998
10:00 Flying Cob - Pira Haku 15-7 B.L.T.C. - Bad Larry 10-15
to <XU> - RippIt 3-15 Blind Date - RedFish BlueFish 1-15
12:00 Mon Ami Burundi -Ultimate Addiction 15-6 W.U.P.A.S.S. - Disclicious 15-5
1:00 Flying Cob -Ultimate Addiction 15-10 B.L.T.C. - Disclicious 16-17
to <XU> - Mon Ami Burundi 11-15 Blind Date - W.U.P.A.S.S. 10-12
3:00 RippIt - Pira Haku 9-14 RedFish BlueFish - Bad Larry 14-7
-----
Saturday, October 24, 1998
Quarters
Rippit vs Bad Larry 15-11
W.U.P.A.S.S. vs Pira Haku 8-15
RedFish BlueFish vs Mon Ami Burundi 15-9
Flying Cob vs Blind Date 11-15
Semis
Rippit vs Pira Haku 9-14
RedFish BlueFish vs Blind Date 15-8
Finals
RedFish Blue Fish vs Pira Haku 17-7
1998 Coed Champion-RedFish BlueFish
Coed Final Records
8-0 RedFish BlueFish
5-3 Pira Haku
5-2 RippIt
4-3 Blind Date
4-2 Flying Cob
4-2 W.U.P.A.S.S.
2-4 Mon Ami Burundi
2-4 Bad Larry
3-3 <XU>
1-5 Disclicious
0-5 Better Living Through Chemistry
0-5 Ultimate Addiction
Game for 9 & 10
<XU> 17
Disclicious 10
Game for 11 & 12
BLTC
Ultimate Addiction
Fall Series Sectionals, 1998
From Charlton Shen, coed sectional coordinator:
The first annual Northern California Coed Sectional Tournament was held on
the weekend of September 12-13. Nine teams competed for 3 spots to regionals.
The teams, in order of seeding, and their homes were:
1. Red Fish Blue Fish (A) - Bay Area
2. Ripp It (B) - Peninsula / South Bay
3. Donner Party (B) - Lake Tahoe Area
4. Mixed Nuts (A) - Davis, CA
5. Pad Thai No Sprouts (B) - San Francisco, CA
6. That's What SHE Said (A) - Marin County, CA
7. Marin (B) - Marin County, CA
8. Ebb and Flow (A) - Peninsula / South Bay
9. Huck n Pray (A) - Peninsula / South Bay
The top 3 teams were expected to have quite a battle for the top spot in the
section. RFBF has been the showcase coed team in the Bay Area for the past
several years and were psyched about the new division in the Fall Series. Ripp
It had a very close game with the Fish just weeks ago at the SF Coed Revolution,
barely losing and wanting another chance at the Fish. Donner Party was also a
very strong coed team in the section. Though not having the opportunity to play
the other teams as often because of the distance to the Bay Area, they had shown
themselves to be a formidable opponent.
The first day of play took place at Peterson Middle School in Sunnyvale, CA.
Temperatures in the high 80's tested the teams' fortitude and endurance all
Saturday. The teams were broken into 2 pools (pool A and pool B, with the teams
designated in the list above), with 4 rounds of pool play ensuing, each team
playing 3 games minimum. Games were to 11, with an hour and a half time cap.
After pool play, the teams were ranked in their pools and placed into a double
elimination bracket (Huck n Pray withstanding since they could only play 1 day)
with the first round of the double elim occurring at the end of Saturday.
Double elim games were to 15, with a 2 hour time cap.
In Pool A, the Fish had little trouble - no team scored more than 4 points
on them all Saturday, though Ebb and Flow did wake them up a bit with a game at
6-4, causing the Fish to raise their game enough to cruise in with a victory.
That's What SHE Said surprised Davis at the end of pool play, beating them 10-2
and taking second in Pool A while relegating the Mixed Nuts to third. In Pool
B, Marin turned out to be the surprise team of the tourney. Losing close games
to Ripp It and the Donner Party, 9-6 and 9-7 respectively, they beat Pad Thai No
Sprouts decisively and looked to move up in the field. The game of day pitted
the Donner Party against Ripp It. The game was hotly contested with neither
side giving an inch. In the end, Ripp It would prevail 11-9. In the first
round of the double elim, the Fish, Donner Party, and Ripp It won their games
handily, sending Pad Thai, the Mixed Nuts, and Ebb and Flow to the losers'
bracket. Marin and That's What SHE Said played a close game, with SHE conceding
to Marin 10-7.
The long, hot Saturday play took its toll on several teams. Though Huck n
Pray was expected to drop after the first day, Pad Thai and SHE also decided
against coming back for a second day, all of Pad Thai's women dropping out
while SHE, poetically, had all the women staying and the men dropping out! This
would have its repercussions on the other teams on Sunday as Ebb and Flow and
the Mixed Nuts would get a first round bye. Donner Party, Ripp It, Marin, and
RFBF, by winning their first round double elim games at the end of Saturday,
were in a good position to advance to regionals. A win in the first round on
Sunday would guarantee a top 3 finish. Ripp It would face Marin, while the
Donner Party had the unenviable task of taking on the Fish. Marin was psyched
up by its performance Saturday and felt they had a very good shot at beating
Ripp It. The Donner Party knew they had a big game on their hands but having
beat the Fish before, they felt that if they played well, they had a good chance
at beating the favorites.
Sunday's games were played at Dublin High School in Dublin, CA. The weather
would not give the teams a break as temperatures reached the mid 90's in the
scorching sun. As the Mixed Nuts and Ebb and Flow waited for the next round,
the winners' bracket games were hotly contested. Marin and Ripp It would play
an intense game. Though Ripp It led by a couple of points midway through, Marin
played very tough making Ripp It work for everything. In the end, however, Ripp
It took the game 15-8. Ripp It was elated and ready for its opponent. Alan
Harder of Ripp It would relate that the team had since its inception wanted to
challenge RFBF and its near miss at the SF Coed Revolution made it hungry for
another chance to play the Fish. But that chance would have to wait.
The Donner Party and RFBF were locked up in an intense game. The game
consisted of small 2-3 point leads that would be built up by the Fish only to be
eaten up by the Donner Party. Ties occurred at 3's and 7's. Again the Fish
built up a lead; the score was 11-8. The Donner Party responded to make it 11-
9. At this point the game was hard capped at 13. Another Donner Party point
would bring them within one. The Fish's momentum was unraveling and they needed
to stop the bleeding. But the Donner Party was on a roll and would finish off
the game. Scoring 5 straight points, the Donner Party stunned the Fish with a
come from behind 13-11 victory! The Donner Party erupted in celebration. The
Fish, meanwhile, put on their game faces; they knew they some serious disc to
play in order to get to regionals.
The second round on Sunday consisted of two losers' bracket games and the
finals of the winners' bracket. RFBF would meet Ebb and Flow again, while the
Mixed Nuts would meet Marin. In the game for the sectional championship, Ripp
It and the Donner Party would get a rematch of the pool play game. The Fish
quickly dispatched Ebb and Flow in a 15-2 trouncing.
Before the beginning of the other losers' bracket game, it seemed that Marin
would have the edge on the Mixed Nuts. Marin had played very well against stiff
competition on Saturday, while Davis had not played to the its seeding
expectations. Kevin Morris, the Nuts captain, however, had confidence in his
team and fully expected his team to fight its way through the losers' bracket to
regionals. The rest in the first round would allow Davis to conserve energy,
warm up well, and plot a good strategy; they were ready to take on their
opponent. Marin, on the other hand, was spent from their first round effort.
As a result, the Mixed Nuts came out of the gate hot and never looked back.
Marin played valiantly, but the hot sun and previous game left their tank empty.
The Mixed Nuts 15-8 win earned them a chance to play the Fish. The winner of
that game would take on the loser of the sectional championship game to settle
2nd and 3rd place in the section.
In the sectional championship, the Donner Party was seeking to avenge their
only loss of the tourney thus far. Their athletic prowess and height allow them
to play a game which banks on speed and leaping, often unmatchable by opponents.
Ripp It's strength is their consistency as a team. Having practiced and played
together almost weekly as an integral unit for two years, the individuals know
each other quite well and flow is often the key to their game. Ripp It's
experience showed in the championship game as they took a lead in the beginning
of the game and maintained it throughout. The Donner Party would play a tough
game but unfortunately it wasn't enough. Ripp It's 15-10 victory earned them a
trip to regionals at UBC as the Northern California Coed Sectional Champions!
The Donner Party, meanwhile, looked for shade as they would need to wait to see
who they would play for second place in the section.
The match between RFBF and the Mixed Nuts would determine the team who could
make it to regionals. The Mixed Nuts knew they had a tough game ahead. But
they were undaunted and confident. The Fish were also sure of themselves. They
knew that if they played the kind of game they were capable of, a trip to
regionals would be theirs. The hot midday match began with the Fish quickly
taking control of the game. Playing lots of zone D to conserve their energy,
they quickly built a 8-3 lead. The Fish looked to be on track for a rematch
with the Donner Party. But Davis was not about to roll over.
The typical high afternoon winds of the Tri-Valley area had not showed up
and thus the Fish Z was not getting help from the 8th man. As well, the Mixed
Nuts had only played one game while the Fish had played two. The heat began to
take its toll on the Fish. As the cup began to sag, the Mixed Nuts began to
punch passes through. After 3 more points, the Nuts had closed within 2. The
Fish were making uncharacteristic turnovers and getting frustrated. They tried
to chill, figuratively and literally, but conceded the next point. With the
score 8-7, the Fish called time out and tried to regroup. Davis was stoked.
Their confidence was soaring and emotion flowed everywhere. The Fish knew they
were not playing the kind of disc they were capable of. Receiving the pull,
they made another unforced turnover which the Nuts converted for a score. The
game was tied at 8's. The Mixed Nuts had scored 5 unanswered points and the
Fish looked dead in the water. Tom Kinney of the Fish would later reveal that
he began to think about whether he should make other plans for the weekend of
10-11 of October. Was this possible? Would the dominant coed team of the Bay
Area for the past 5 years not make it to regionals? Were the Mixed Nuts about
to pull off the unimaginable upset?
The Fish received the next pull and marched the disc down the field, putting
the disc in the endzone. The Fish sideline exploded with emotion. And just
that quickly, new life flowed through the Fish. They scored again and their
confidence returned in full. The cup tightened up. Suddenly, the Nuts couldn't
get the flow they had a few points ago. They began to turn the disc over more
while the Fish continued to convert when they got possession. The Fish rolled
and the Nuts couldn't score another point. With a 15-8 victory, the Fish had
averted the upset and solidified a place at regionals. But the Mixed Nuts
played some excellent disc and secured 4th in the section.
The final game of the day would be a rematch of the game earlier in the day
between the Donner Party and RFBF. The Fish came out strong and played more Z.
The wind had finally kicked in a little. But the Donner Party looked up to the
challenge. At 4-4, the game looked to be another long struggle between 2
outstanding teams. But the heat of the day finally began to take its toll on
players of both teams. Heat exhaustion and cramps seemed to plague a new player
each point. The Fish began to string together point after point. The Donner
Party just couldn't respond. Of the 7 games they played during sectionals, 4 of
them were against either the number 1 or 2 seed in the tourney and 3 of them
came on Sunday. The Donner Party had fought bravely, but were just too tired.
Conceding the match 11-4, they could take solace in the fact that they had
secured a spot to regionals. The Fish, meanwhile, had secured second in the
section and could take pride in the fact that they had completed the longest
road. With 4 tough games on a very hot Sunday, they certainly earned their spot
to Vancouver next month.
The final standings of the tourney were:
1) Ripp It - Sectional Champs!!
2) Red Fish Blue Fish
3) Donner Party
4) Mixed Nuts
5) Ebb and Flow
6) Marin
7) That's What SHE Said
8) Pad Thai No Sprouts
9) Huck n Pray
Thanks to all the teams for coming out and playing. They should all be heartily
commended for playing hard and with great spirit. The individual spirit award
was split among many individuals, a testament to the great spirit exhibited by
all at the tourney. The team spirit award was also widely distributed in vote,
but there was a tie between Red Fish Blue Fish and the Donner Party. The whole
section wishes the best of luck to Ripp It, Red Fish Blue Fish, and the Donner
Party as they advance to regionals.
From Alan:
Congratulations,
1998 Northern California Sectional Coed Champions
*** RippIt ***
Yay, RippIt!! We went 6-0 at sectionals, taking first place! Now we're
headed to regionals in Vancouver! Wahoo!
Our section managed to field nine teams. The top contenders were RedFish
BlueFish, RippIt and Donner Party. Davis and Marin also brought fairly
strong squads. The first day of play was at Peterson Middle School in
Sunnyvale. These fields were ok back in March at Spring Fling, but I guess
a full summer of soccer tore them apart, and there wasn't much grass left.
Despite the hazardous layout conditions, pool play began..
Game 1 vs Marin. They were extremely late, but we were nice and did not
assess any points (but we could have assessed six! already halftime!).
We started out going up 3-0, but then they got their act together and
answered back to 3-3. Many of the guys on their team had good inside out
throws, allowing them to break the mark and work the disc up the field.
Meanwhile our offense was a little shaky as we struggled to get warmed up.
A handblock by Sarah allowed us to take a two point lead at 6-4. At 7-5 the
game got capped at 9. We traded to 8-6 and a handblock by Kevin on their
goal line setup the quick throw to Alan to win 9-6. We scored only 2 goals
in the game without any turnovers. Also in this game Michelle sprained
her ankle, pulling her out of play for a while. Fortunately it wasn't too
bad and she was able to play some on Sunday.
Game 2, Pad Thai No Sprouts. 11-0 shutout, not much else to say.. we had
a few ugly points, but did score 8 of 11 with no turnovers.
We finished the last game quite early and then had a bye, so we had a nice
long lunchbreak. We got together well before our next game to do a full
warmup before our biggest pool play game: Donner Party from Lake Tahoe.
We chose to pull and Shane started off the game with a block. After a pair
of turnovers we got the first goal, then traded to 2-1. Our efforts at
warming up seemed to work for our legs, but perhaps not for our brains..
in the next point we had *six* throwaways before they finally tied it up 2-2
(there were also 3 blocks in this point, Sarah was the only one with a block
and no throwaway). A pair more to 3-3. Now we got our game together and
went on a four goal run. Our only turnover in this stretch was a drop on our
"free" possession when receiving the pull after the mirror half. A bit of a
crosswind was starting to pickup now, and we mostly forced downwind all the
way. We also got one turn from the box zone. They received the pull and
worked it up to score the next point, breaking our run. They tried a zone of
their own in the next point, but we worked it up to about 15 yards from the
endzone. Don sent a long throw to Sarah in the back of the endzone, but
their tall deep-deep closed the gap and jumped up with Sarah for the disc..
but Sarah skied the pants off the guy and we were up 8-4 in a game to 11.
Things were looking good.. however, hell point #2 came next and it broke
our momentum in a big way. Four throwaways by us and they scored making it
8-5. They rattled off four more in a row, not only coming back but actually
taking the lead 8-9! In this five point run we had eleven possessions with
no goals. Finally we broke the streak and tied it up 9-9. At this point
the game got time capped to 11. Our big lead was gone and now it was 0-0
in a game to two. Dave got a big sky block in the endzone to prevent them
from going ahead. Then we worked it up the field with good flow and some
break mark throws, finishing with the goal from Eric to Sarah. On the next
point they worked it up to about half field when Kevin got the sky block
on a swing pass, actually knocking the disc way upfield. On O, Alan caught
a swing pass and pulled his marker way out of position with a good fake.
He then sent the disc to the endzone on the weak side and let Kevin run it
down to take the game 11-9. With solid play and intense defense we pulled
out the top spot in our pool!
RedFish BlueFish also won their pool and took the top seed going into the
double elimination playoffs; we were seeded number two. The first round
quarters were played at the end of the day on Saturday. Our matchup was
Ebb&Flow. Although they scored the first goal, we were up 6-2 before anyone
realized we weren't doing stats. We rolled on to a 15-6 victory.
Sunday morning in Dublin.. first round semis were RedFish BlueFish vs
Donner Party and RippIt vs Marin. We had eeked out a 9-6 win over Marin
on Saturday and knew of their ability to break the mark. So the focus for
our game was intensity on defense. Playing extremely tight man defense we
could neutralize their offensive threat.
Our mental and physical preparation paid off. We started out going up 3-0
before giving up a goal, and then another 3-1 set making the score 6-2.
In that last goal we were losing our focus on offense and didn't score until
our fifth possession. We racked off two more, making it 8-2. Our
intensity on D was showing as we got a stall in the last point. At this
point was relaxed our pressure a little and they got three in a row to
8-5. As we decided before the game, we called timeout when they got three
in a row. This got us back together and we came out with two more to 10-5
(even though Ron was shooting for the hat trick with 2 TO's in the last
point, always overthrowing his receivers in the endzone). Marin closed the
gap to 3 points at 10-7 and 11-8, but we kept playing hard and rallied off
the last three to win 14-8 (time capped). Alan finished off the game with
two hucks: a long backhand to Dave on a nice S cut, and a quick flick to JT
for the game winner after a bogus travel call (this guy called travel on half
the guys on our team!). This win qualified us for regionals, so now we
were playing for seeding. Our strong play in this game boosted our
confidence heading into finals..
We postponed our cheer for Marin to go watch the end of the other semifinal.
It was 11-11, capped at 13. Donner Party kept up their solid play to the
end and took the game 13-11. Our destiny to face Fish in the finals was
averted and instead we had a rematch to take the section. On Saturday both
teams had demonstrated their ability to take control when they got momentum
on their side (each side got 4-5 goals in a row at some point), so this was
anybody's game.
The game started out with solid offense from both sides. We pulled first
and three goals in a row were scored with no turns, making it 1-2, their
lead. This game was very intense and with the skill of these teams everyone
knew to value the disc. We continued to trade points to 3-3 when we
capitalized on their error and took our first lead at 4-3. More trading
to 5-5, but then they retook the lead 5-6. We received the next pull and
tied it up at sixes with no turns. So far neither team would give an inch.
Our offensive skills and strong women running deep kept us going. Donner
Party was running a dominator with their guys which we were having trouble
stopping, even with our D on pretty hot. The middle of the game was the
ugliest part, but it was also where we built up the lead that would last us
to the end. We played points where we had 2, 1, and 3 turnovers, but we ended
up getting all the goals. Including the one that tied it up at 6-6 we got
five in a row to 10-6. We also got the psychological victory of winning the
half 8-6 and then getting to receive the pull, working it up with no turns
for 9-6. In the final stretch both teams played better, but we showed our
endurance and our lead slowly grew. In the last point Donner Party received
the disc. Alan had been covering the same player for a large portion of
the game and was starting to learn their fake and throw technique. He
managed to guess the play this time and was already running right at the
disc as it was thrown. He got the block with the intended receiver on his
heels. We worked the disc up near the endzone, and Alan's defender poached
onto Ron as he cut for the swing from Shane. Ron yelled out "poach!" as
he pulled two defenders, and Shane sent the hammer to Alan.. quickly
yelling "I'm so sorry!" as she saw the disc heading too far and close to
the sideline.. but it stayed up just long enough for Alan to run it down
and make the huge layout grab right on the sideline, just a couple yards
from the endzone. Still dizzy from the landing and with his hat almost
falling off, Alan kept his composure and threw the break mark throw to
Tommy to put us at NUMBER 1 in the Northern California Section!!
Winning the final was also rewarding in that we didn't have to play another
game. An interesting stat about the final: combined for both teams, there
were just 1.44 turnovers per point, compared to 1.09 in the 1996 UPA
Nationals open final (DoG vs Sockeye). Throwing out the two worst points
in our game and it drops to 1.04 turnovers per point!
In other games; we must have tired out a few teams that day, as Marin went
on to lose to Davis (Mixed Nuts) in the backdoor bracket. The Fish beat
Davis to face Donner again in the backdoor final.. this time the Fish were
victorious, taking the #2 spot.
SF Coed Revolution
From Jim Hayes:
I'm feeling healthy again, finally. That means I am back behind my desk
and can get things cleaned up. Mainly I just wanted to thank you all for
participating in the SF revolution event and putting up with my problems.
A special to thanks to all those that donated $ to the cause of making
the tournament less costly to me. I am sorry that my financial situation
became a cause of its own. Don't worry about it now.
I thought everyone played well and had great spirit and consideration
throughout the weekend. To me it was great just to see all that space
being used for Ultimate Frisbee in San Francisco. Due to your positive
feed back I am planning on and have applied for the use of the fields
again next year. The event will probably happen the weekend of July 31
and August 1, 1998, I hope. So spread the word around the coed ultimate
scene over the next year so we can have more visitors next year. Also,
tell your open teams that there is a real ultimate tourney that weekend
and you will be playing hard with your coed friends.
So here is some final info:
BEST CAUSE (as voted by you):
Binge!: San Francisco Bicycle Coalition
Red Fish Blue Fish: Yoplait Containers Killing Wildlife
Tree Huckers: Save our forests
We need to work on this for next year, you got a long time to think about
it.
BEST SPIRIT (as voted by you):
Ebb & Flow
Note: nearly every team got at least one vote for spirit.
FINAL STANDINGS:
A-POOL:
1. Magic Bus (final 15-7)
2. Tea Bags
3. Donner Party (lost to Tea Bags in semis 16-14)
4. Red Fish Blue Fish (lost to Magic Bus in semis 15-7)
5. RippIt
6. Zero Pop
7. Tramps
8. Jabberwock
B-POOL
9. Los Bandidos Locos (final 16-14)
10. Squeeze from Bottom (Hammer & Flickle)
11. Binge! (lost to Los Bandidos in semis 15-3)
12. Pad Thai, No Sprouts
13. Kiss Off (lost to Squeeze in semis 15-4)
14. Ebb & Flow (won B-pool consolation bracket)
15. Fog Liberation Front
16. Tree Huckers
TEAMS WHICH WON BIDS TO COED CELEBRATION
(Lexington, Kentucky, September 5 and 6, 1998):
1. Magic Bus - for winning tourney
2. Binge! - for having the best cause
TEAM GOING TO COED CELEBRATION:
1. Red Fish Blue Fish???
TEAMS PLAYING IN COED SECTIONAL:
1. Red Fish Blue Fish
2. RippIt
3. Pad Thai, No Sprouts
4. Ebb & Flow
5. Squeeze from Bottom??
6. you??? - contact Charlton Shen (cshen@ca.sandia.gov)
If you have any other questions or comments please let me know.
Thanks for all your hot play and participation.
See you all on the field soon,
Jim H.
From Alan:
Hey all-
To make a long story short, last weekend up in Golden Gate Park totally rocked!
But don't worry, you'll get the *long* story too...
This was a groundbreaking new tournament put on by Jim Hayes: a 2 day 4/3 coed
tournament held IN San Francisco, complete with dinner, party, beer and bands.
On Saturday we went 2-1 in pool play including a great game against Tea Bags,
featuring a few talented players from Double Happiness. We also won our
cross pool game putting us at 3-1 for the first day. Our excellent point
differential actually placed in *3rd* place overall after saturday, behind
Magic Bus (even more stacked with double/saucy guys) and Tea Bags. To avoid
other teams repeating playing eachother we played the 5th seed in quarters
on sunday, RedFish BlueFish. We had an *amazing* game with our old nemesis,
coming back from 11-14 to tie it up in a game capped at 15. We had three
possessions in that last point, including one throw sent into the endzone,
but ended up losing 14-15. We finished strong in our last game against
Jabberwocky and won 15-13. At this point we were too tired to go on, so
again (like potlatch) we bailed out.. this time we went out and ate some
yummy thai food!!
Saturday:
RippIt 15 - 4 Ebb&Flow
15 - 5 Kiss Off
12 - 15 Tea Bags
15 - 12 Los Banditos Locos
Sunday:
RippIt 14 - 15 Red Fish Blue Fish
15 - 13 Jabberwocky
Fog ruled the skies on Saturday keeping it nice and cool. The polo fields
in Golden Gate Park are in a nice protected area so it isn't too windy.
We had a good warmup game against our old friends Ebb&Flow. Despite an 0-2
start after 2 drops by JT, we rolled on to a 15-4 victory.
We opened up game two against Kiss Off with another drop by JT.. however,
this one bounced off his hands and was promptly caught by Alan in the endzone.
This team had decent throws, but generally couldn't stick with us when we
cut back to the disc. We continued playing well and won 15-5.
Our final pool play game was against Tea Bags. They demonstrated their
offensive ability by capitalizing on our throwaways, scoring two straight with
no turns. Led by Dave and Sarah, we showed them that we could play too. Dave
caught the first from Sarah, then got a layout block and threw the goal back
to Sarah. We used their throwaway in the next point and Dave hucked the goal
to Michelle. Now we were up 3-2 and the Tea Bags had their wake up call.
They worked the next up and scored. 3-3, six points with never more than
one turnover in a point! The battle raged on, but we only scored one of the
next 6 points. On 3 of those we had more than one possession... score 4-8.
We scored 2 in a row here, trying to stay in it, but they answered with *4*
in a row of their own (3 of those scored with no turns).. now 6-12!
Dave hucked one to Michelle and then we traded up to 9-14.. game point for
them. But we wouldn't roll over.. we scored three straight to 12-14, and
even worked it upwind all the way to the goal line in the next point, nearly
going to 13-14.. however they capitalized this time and we lost 12-15.
The last game of the day was a cross-pool against Los Banditos Locos, with
some talented guys from Love Gun. We traded up to 2-2, finishing with a nice
huck from Hank to Alan after Janis controlled who had possession for a while
(block by janis, dropped by janis, block by janis!). A block by Tommy setup
the first upwind goal and we went up 3-2. We threw the box zone and got the
turnover (lucky- they actually broke the box and then threw it away), but
then they capitalized on our drop and tied it back up 3-3. They got the next
downwind and we traded up to 5-5, again finishing with a huck. This time
from JT who strategically bounced it off a defender's hands right to Janis
for the goal. Tommy again got the block giving us the chance to take the
lead. Dave threw it away, but got the D back and then hucked the goal to
Michelle. At this point Dorothy paid us a visit, back from injured reserve
and on her way to Toast practice. We scored the next two while Dorothy was in,
the 2nd setup by her block. Then Sarah came in and caught two more goals;
she also got a block setting up the second one. We were up 10-5. Like we had
done to Tea Bags this team wouldn't roll over for us.. they continued to play
hard and scored seven more, but we held on to the lead and won 15-12.
Sunday morning, no more fog, A bracket quarters.
Our opponent: RedFish BlueFish.
I don't think I'm exagerating when I say this game was among the highlights
of the tournament- for us, the fish, and the fairly sizable crowd that had
gathered on the sidelines by the end of the game. Both teams demonstrated
their high level of offensive abilities: six goals for each team were scored
with no turns after receiving the pull. A total of six goals (4 for RippIt,
2 for Fish) were scored by pulling the disc, getting the D block and the
resulting goal with no turns. That's over half the game with "stuff & score"
or just "score" !! The game overall had just 1.45 turnovers per goal!
It was quite a spectacle of high quality coed ultimate.
Fitting with tradition in all our games against them, the Fish got off to a
slow start. We received the first pull and worked it up for the goal. We had
a good long pull and the fish threw it away in their own endzone on the first
pass (the rule for the tourney was to play the pull where it lands if in
bounds). Dave boldly called for the Red Sea play but we weren't able to
convert and the fish took the disc and tied it at ones. But then we got three
in a row, all with no turnovers; the first on O and the other two setup by
blocks from Tommy and Kevin. The fish came back and closed the gap to 4-3.
We traded two goals each up to 6-5 with no turnovers from either team!
Two chances for us in the next point but they tied it at sixes. The next
poing was also long and we risked losing the lead, but we scored on our third
chance after a block by JT. We took the momentum and scored two more with
no turns, one after a block by Janis. At 9-6 and again threatened by the
growing lead the fish closed the gap back to 9-8. Another pair of solid O
points and the score was 10-9. After a brick call on the next pull Dave got
handblocked on the first throw allowing the fish to tie it at 10-10. We had
two chances in the next point but we couldn't break their four person cup and
the fish took their first lead of the game at 10-11. They capitalized on our
error in the next point to go up 10-12. We traded a pair with no turns to
11-13 and then the game got hard capped at 15. Crunch time!
Another long zone point with three chances for the goal, but they scored
making it 11-14.. looked like the fish were swimming away with the game.
The fish had one chance to win in the next point but turned it over, and a
huck from Dave to Michelle gave us the downwinder; 12-14. Now we had to
defend the downwind goal to stay alive. We stayed with the defense we'd been
using most of the game: the backhand force.. giving them the big huck if they
wanted it, but we would expect it. The defense held and the fish threw it
away, but they were ready with the dreaded zone. They played a very tight
four person cup with the marker behind the disc stopping the dump pass.
Quick reactions to the thrower's movements from the cup and the backfield
made this a tough D to break. Despite an errant dump and a drop by Dave the
fish O had gone cold and on our third chance we worked it up and Dave threw
the goal to Tommy, getting a lot of cheers from the spectators. With
confidence growing we tied the game at 14-14 after a block by Libby in the
next point! Now it's double crunch time!! One more defensive stand against
the downwind attackers! We stuck with the same D and it worked. They looked
for the backhand huck but Alan was ready and had good position to sky for the
D. Back comes the zone. We worked it slowly towards half field.. but then
Alan fell victim to the painted line on one sideline which was actually a few
yards out of bounds. He threw a pass to Hank heading out. Fortunately Hank
was very aware of the sideline.. he jumped up, caught the disc and sent a
backwards pass all the way back to midfield, caught by Tommy! GREATEST!!
(two tourneys in a row now!) That fright over with we had to continue against
the zone. We took it up slowly, breaking the cup and gaining some yards
occassionally, but never able to find the continuation passes and the zone
would reset and push us back. We approached the endzone and broke the cup
once more, this time up the middle with a pass to Libby. She sent a short
give and go pass to Alan, breaking thru from the backfield. He caught it
just five yards from the endzone and sent our first potential game winning
pass into the endzone for Hank. Tragically the pass was too far outside and
Hank's valiant effort this time couldn't keep it in. The fish were looking
for the quick kill and tried the huck again.. this time sending it too far.
A hammer from Tommy to Hank got us out of the zone in our own endzone, but
we threw it away again. Another quick strike from the fish went too far.
Again we took our time and worked it up slowly.. we saw an opening and got
one of our first continuation passes up the line, but unfortunately dropped
the pass. The fish this time took the possession all the way and won the
game 14-15. An amazing finish to an amazing game. Congrats to both teams!
(the winner had to play the well-stacked Magic Bus, so we rejoiced singing
"we don't have to play magic bus" as we approached with our post-game cheer)
Tired from our long fish ordeal we next faced Jabberwocky in the consolation
round. Jabberwocky varies in level depending on their pickups.. this day
they were definitely in top form. We received the first pull and broke
their zone for the first goal. We got the following downwinder for a 2-0
lead and then traded a pair each to 4-2. Jabberwocky broke the trading
trend and scored upwind to tie it at 4-4 and capitalized on our throwaway
in the next to go up 4-5. We traded, always tied or right on their heels
all the way up to 8-9. The receiving team scored every goal in this stretch,
5 with no turns (Alan to Ron,Janis and Sarah, and 2 by jabberwocky) and 3 with
one turn by each team (the d could not capitalize). Finally the D did take
advantage.. they scored after our throwaways in the next two points going
ahead 8-11. We traded with no turns to 9-12.
We definitely had less intensity in this game than with fish, but our ability
was still there. I don't know if we dug deep and found a little extra or
if they thought they could hold onto our lead and ride it out, but what
happened next was one of our best comeback victories ever.
We scored the next in turn (continuing to trade) to 10-12. A block by Janis
broke the trend and we used it to close to 11-12, scoring upwind. We
capitalized on their error and tied it up at 12-12. Again our D forced
the throwaway and we capitalized, scoring upwind from Libby to Tommy to take
our first lead of the game since 4-3, now at 13-12. A block from Tommy
setup the next one, now at 14-12!! All we had to do was get one more without
letting them tie it up (we did NOT want to play past 15 and we had no cap!).
They were heading downwind this time and they got it.. 14-13. This was our
goal now.. on the line Alan preached high value of the disc.. just keep
possession and we would win. Then, catching the disc at half field Alan
promptly hucked it to Sarah on the S cut in the endzone for the game winner
(after the initial celebration, heckles of "do as I say, not as I do" could
be heard :-)
This was a great weekend for RippIt in many ways.. first, we had a great
time! (always top priority!) However, we also demonstrated that we are
becoming a higher level team:
I was very impressed in the first two games that we did not succumb to the
usual "play down to their level" syndrome. We played well throughout and
won by large margins. Second, we started displaying a trait that is even
more difficult to attain: finishing power. We never let a game that seemed
to be over just fall away. We scored three in a row at the end of the Tea
Bags game giving us the point differential to rank us third overall after
saturday. Against RFBF we closed a three point gap at the cap and even got
a shot at winning the game. Against Jabberwocky and the end neared and we
needed six goals to their three we proceeded to score five straight and take
the win 15-13. These are all great achievements.
We got there by playing solid defense and even better offense; giving us
possession of the disc was a big risk to our opponents. We scored on 44.1% of
our possessions, and actually had only 81 throwaways compared to 86 goals!
(28 drops put us down to 44%) As far as I know this is our best percentage
ever (covering potlatch 97&98, a ncul and spring fertility in 97, and spring
fling 98 which was the closest at 42.8%).
Great job everyone!!
Potlatch
From Alan:
Hi RippIteers-
The 9th Annual Potlatch was again the biggest coed tournament ever, this
year with 78 teams!! Karma was on our side as the tourney director deemed
this the "Year of the Frog" and put us in the Frog pool..
It was damp and drizzly Saturday morning and we got off to a slow start
losing 2 games by large margins. Then we rallied off 5 victories in a row
to advance to the finals of the B bracket on Sunday (out of brackets A-E).
By this point we were down to 8 players with people leaving to fly home and
various injuries, so we forfeited the final and allowed the team we beat in
semis to play. This put us in at 18th place out of 78 teams!! An all
around great tournament and a great performance by RippIt!! Congrats everyone!
THE SUMMARY:
Saturday:
RippIt 4 - 11 Legion of Doom (Vancouver)
5 - 11 Apparent Victory (Seattle)
11 - 6 Poultry in Motion (Seattle)
11 - 5 Santa (Anchorage, Alaska)
Sunday:
RippIt 11 - 7 Catch of the Day (Seattle)
13 - 12 Funky C Funky Do (All Over) Quarters
11 - 10 Amy Racecar (Seattle) Semis
THE WHOLE STORY (LONG):
The weather did not cooperate too much on saturday morning. It wasn't really
raining, but more of a light off-and-on drizzle. Our first matchup of the
morning had the ominous sounding name "Legion of Doom"- and they had the
skills to match it. Despite a couple of wet-disc drops in the first few
points we traded up to 2-2. They scored the next three goals without turning
it over, demonstrating their ability to shred both our zone and our mark.
At 3-7 we seemed to make our last attempt to stay in the game, with blocks
by Tommy and Kevin, but we still couldn't get the goal. We scored one more
along the way, and after a tragically long final point with 5 turns by us and
4 by them, we lost 4-11. A rough start for the weekend, but we felt MUCH
better when we found out this team WON the tournament.. :)
Notable stats:
Ron: No TOs or drops, 1 goal caught.
JT: 1 goal thrown, 1 caught, no drops, only 1 TO.
Second game: Apparent Victory from Seattle.. still wet weather. Again we
started off even, trading to 2-2. Then we went cold, as when it was 2-3
and our turn to score again we had 3 throwaways and let them score. This
got our spirits down and they got 2 more making it 2-6. We got moving again
as Dave threw a goal to Alan in a point with no turns. After Kevin's layout
block in the next point Dave threw another one to Alan to get us at 4-6. We
had 2 offensive chances in each of the next 2 pts, but couldn't get the goals.
In the end it was 5-11. This team was a better match for us skillwise, but
we still didn't have our game together enough to give them a good challenge.
Notable stats:
Dave: 3 goals thrown (1 huck), no drops, only 1 TO.
Aruna: No TOs or drops, 1 goal caught.
We were a little depressed with our 0-2 start, but after our lunchtime bye
the weather was improving and we knew our next game was our best chance for
victory: Poultry in Motion from Seattle. We started the game off right by
pulling the disc but getting the first goal, from Kevin to Janis. Then we
traded a pair, each with no turns. A block by Kevin set us up to get 2 in
a row and the first upwinder of the game. A drop by Don cut us short, but
we got it back and Don redeemed himself throwing the goal to Dave. After
trading 2 downwinders each they came back with an upwinder to make it 5-4.
Giving them the next downwind goal would tie it, but we wouldn't have that.
We answered with an upwinder of our own with no turns. We got a chance for
the next point, but allowed them to approach again. Again we answered scoring
with no turns. Finally we got the downwinder to build on our lead. After
trading a pair we had a crazy point: after a great sky block by Alan to stop
the huck Alan tried the upwind huck to Sarah which was tragically short. But,
with a big "swing-and-a-miss" by her defender Sarah was able to catch the disc
just a couple yards short of the endzone. She turned to throw the goal to
a wide open Leslie, but didn't see the poacher coming from the other side
of the endzone. He jumped up and spiked the disc hard.... right into Leslie's
raised hand.. sticky-fingers Leslie didn't even bobble it. GOOOOOOAAAALLL!!
:) Another crazy point with 2 blocks by Tommy finished off the game, 11-6.
Our first win..
Notable stats:
Alan & Kevin: Each with No TOs or drops, 2 goals thrown, 1 block.
Ron: No TOs or drops, 3 goals caught (in only six pts played!)
WOMEN: NO DROPS all game, Sarah had the ONE throwawy! Hot!!
Plus combined 3 goals thrown, 5 caught and 2 blocks!
We were a bit intimidated (well, Sarah and Alan were) heading into our next
game against Santa from Alaska. The sixth team in our pool, who we were not
playing, was the Flying Nones from Texas. This was a fairly talented squad
who Dave and I had played (and narrowly defeated) in Chicago last labor day.
In addition, they had picked up some highly talented bay area stanford/saucy
guys Mark, Jorah and Jay. Apparently Santa had defeated this team earlier in
the day...
Again we started out the game right, pulling and scoring. We traded a couple
and then started to build a lead after a sky block by Kevin and a resulting
goal from Kevin to Julie. We let them back in a couple points later when
we couldn't score with 3 opportunities including one created by a layout
block from Keebler. But we scored the next with no turns, then Kevin got
a layout block and we put it in again with no turns. They got the next one
but then we went on a 6-1 run to win 11-5!! This rally was started by a
great upwind huck from Keebler to Sarah. We capitalized on their error and
got the next one. The next point was pretty ugly. On our third possession
of the point Aruna got the disc right on the sideline. Kevin made a give&go
cut up the line and Aruna sent off the 20 yard pass.... but just out of
bounds. Right in stride Kevin jumped up from in bounds, grabbed the disc and
sent the no look throw back into the field. Tommy jumped up in a little crowd
and came down with the GREATEST!! He turned and zipped the quick goal to
Michelle. We ran around and celebrated this amazing event (and accidentally
let them get the next goal) but with this sort of momentum we rattled off the
last 3 goals with no turns.. this was an impressive victory against a team
that could have done much better. The margin of victory combined with their
win over the Flying Nones gave us a good seeding for sunday- 4th in the B
bracket or 20th overall.
Notable stats:
Keebler: No TOs or drops, 2 goals thrown (1 huck), 2 blocks (1 layout)
Kevin: 4 goals thrown, 2.5 blocks (1 layout, 1 sky), (no TOs, 1 drop)
Michelle: No TOs or drops, 4 goals caught.
Julie: No TOs or drops, 2 goals caught.
Next we took great advantage of our *last round bye* YAY! * and had plenty of
time to shower and still got over to dinner with no line for food. I had much
fun hacking and playing mini-disc walking-beer-ultimate...
Things got moving VERY slowly on sunday morning. Among other things we had
to rearrange the schedule as we were slotted to play Santa again! Around
10:30 or 11 we finally got going in our first game vs Catch of the Day from
Seattle. They started off pulling to us and playing zone. We worked it
patiently all the way up the field and scored upwind in a very impressive
point. Unforunately a go-to error on our part in the next point gave them
possession near the endzone and they tied it 1-1. We traded downwind to 2-2.
The next point was LONG! A handblock by Alan gave us the first chance.
2 throwaways by them gave us 2 more chances. Then they sent a huck down the
line which Alan ran down and blocked(although jamming his thumb and subbing
out). Another turn by us.. Got 2 D's and still no score :) Two more
opportunities after TO's by them.. no. Finally they got the goal on their
7th possession. We got nothing from SIX chances!! Yikes! We played a lot
of punt-and-recover and traded all the way to 6-6. Finally we broke them
and capitalize on a turn to go ahead 7-6. We pulled and played the box zone.
We got the turn, but Alan threw it away. More zone, but they were working it
up the field. Just a few yards from the endzone they sent a short quick pass
looking for the goal, but Tommy saved us with the endzone layout D! We worked
it down the field and Alan threw the goal to Janis to build our lead up to 8-6.
They got the next one and after a throwaway by us in the next point they had
the chance to tie.. however, we then pulled out a GREAT finish getting three
D-blocks and scoring with no turns after each one!! The blocks were by
Alan, Aruna and Ron. We won 11-7.
Notable stats: "women on fire"
Aruna: No TOs or drops, 1 goal thrown, 1 caught, 1 block.
Sarah: No TOs or drops, 1 goal thrown, 2 caught.
Libby: No TOs or drops, 2 goals caught.
The next game against Funky C Funky Do was one of the closest I have ever
seen. The game was tied at EVERY score except for 6-6 and there were 3 lead
changes. The game started out with very strong O from both teams. 9 of the
first 11 points were scored with zero or one turnover in the point. The lead
changes were also in this stretch: they scored first; a block from Tommy got
us the lead at 2-1; a drop by us gave it back at 2-3; and we eventually scored
on the first fairly long point to go up 5-4, then traded to 6-5. Now the
points started getting significantly longer (thanks in part to Alan who had
nearly half his throwaways for the whole weekend in the second half of this
game!). There was an average of just over 3 TO's per point (combined for both
teams). We never scored again without at least one TO. The only two point
lead of the game came at this point when we went up 7-5, but we quickly gave
it back to 7-7. We then traded points ALL the way out to win the game
13-12!
Notable stats:
Alan "the good and the bad": threw *6* goals, caught 1, 3 blocks..
BUT, 10.5 TOs!! and 0.5 drop.
Michelle "scoring machine": No TOs or drops, caught 4 scores, 1 block.
This narrow victory advanced us to the semi-finals of the B bracket, thus
surpassing our performance of last year when we lost in quarters. According
to the schedule there was a bye before playing again, but we were so far
behind that we searched for a field and started as soon as we could.
The game was against another Seattle team, this one called Amy Racecar.
We knew people were leaving for flights soon so we decided before the
game that we wouldn't play the next round even if we won.. but we didn't
tell our opponents yet because we didn't want them to not play hard..
The game had an offensive start as we traded to 3-3 with all upwind goals
(the wind wasn't too strong, but it still seemed amazing to get that many
in a row). Two goals from each team in this stretch with no turns. In the
point to tie it at 3's we worked it all the way up the field against their
zone. In the next point a block by Aruna setup the goal from Kevin to
Michelle for our first lead of the game at 4-3 and the first downwind goal.
Now we threw on the box zone. This team was very confused by it- they
didn't know what to do at all- but had good patience and worked the swings
for quite a while. One guy in particular was yelling a *lot* and telling
people what to do. He got very angry when his team turned it over, and when
we got the resulting goal (he was latered dubbed "Aggro Man" by Michelle).
We capitalized on their error in the next point to go up 6-3. At this point
it looked like we could roll to an easy victory, but we let things slip.
We had 4 possessions in the next 3 points, but gave them up.. back to 6-6.
We traded a pair to 7-7. They capitalized on our error in the next point to
score upwind and take the lead at 7-8. We threw it away in the next point
giving them an opportunity to build a lead, but luckily we got it back.
We worked it up to about 20 yards from the endzone and Keebler got the
disc. He looked to the endzone and saw Alan with his defender fronting him
and put up the high forehand. Alan stepped up and skied the pants off his
defender, who turned out to be Aggro Man. He walked away very quietly after
this one. This also turned out to be the last upwind goal of the game,
now tied at 8-8... we got the turn and scored downwind to go up 9-8 and
they tied it back up at nines. Now things started to get really crazy.
The point was long. There had already been two turns by each team. Aruna
got the disc just behind midfield. No one was open so she turned to throw
the dump pass to Alan who was again being guarded by Aggro Man. As Alan
grabbed for the disc Aggro Man jumped up and swatted both the disc and Alan's
hand. When Alan instinctively called the foul because of the contact, Aggro
Man went beserk. Alan basically refused to talk to him in this state so
the call stood. In the next five seconds again we couldn't find a pass,
but this time Aruna decided to punt it. Amazingly the player who got there
was Alan, who had just streaked down the line when the disc was checked in
to pull Aggro Man out of the play. He had stayed back to guard Alan tight
on the short pass and was caught totally surprise as Alan run down the punt.
Alan stood up and zipped the goal to Peter, wide open in the endzone as
defenders had strayed towards the previous throw. Next point was quicker
as they tied it back up at 10-10. We had decided early on to hard cap the
game at 11, so it was game point either way. It was a heart wrenching
point as we gave them two chances to work it up and win, but we got it
back once more. The disc was turned over about a yard from the sideline
near midfield. Keebler picked it and he was guarded by... yep, you guessed
it, Aggro Man. The first throw got blocked, oh no! They picked it up and
went for the quick win, but Alan managed to force a miscommunication and
they threw it to no one.. phew! But wait! What was going on with Aggro
Man?? Yes, he called a "violation" because Keebler's foot was not on the
line when he threw (this of course did not matter because the disc was
never out of bounds!). So we brought the disc back to Keebler. Disc in
play again. This time the first pass was complete and we sent continuation
passes all the way down the line and Dave threw the game winning goal!! Yay!
But wait, what about Aggro Man?? Yes, by now he had totally lost it and
made the bogus travel call.. bring that disc all the way back here!
One more try. We worked it up again and Keebler got it back, right near
the other sideline about 15 yards from the endzone. Alan who had been
playing kag saw that Aggro Man chose to trap here and seized the opportunity.
Catching his own defender by surprise Alan streaked up the line calling to
Keebler for the pass. The D was close but Alan jumped up for the game
winning goal... 11-10. Yay, RippIt!!
Notable stats:
Keebler: No TOs or drops, 3 goals thrown, 1 caught.
Michelle: 4 goals caught, 1 thrown, (1 TO, 1 drop).
Sarah: 1 goal thrown, 1 caught, (1 TO, no drops).
Alan: 2 goals thrown, 2 caught(1 sky), (3 TOs, no drops).
JT: 2 goals thrown, (1 punt, no drops).
We were losing players slowly through that last game as people headed for the
airport. At the end we were down to eight people.. so we forfeited the B
bracket final and let the other team play. By winning in semis we finished
18th out of 78 teams in the tournament.
Great playing and great spirit by everyone!! It has been fun watching
RippIt grow and learn over the past 2 years.. I look forward to many more
great tournaments with you all!!
From Peter:
Hey RippIt!
Congratulations on a respectable showing in a powerful
'frog' pool on Saturday, and a strong 3-0 finish against
some local Washington talent yesterday (those folks were
sooo lucky we had to leave by 6 ;-).
Yay us!
Thank you:
Alan & Aruna, for organizing entry, housing, etc,
Aruna, for a most excellent collection of gifts,
Kevin & Tommy for the first successful "greatest"
I've ever seen executed in real life
Dave, for a most impressive collection of epic cheers,
and everyone else (Ron, Aruna, Tommy) who
produced a musical adaptation which we can
now use in future tourneys
Sarah, Keebler, and the Snamans, for picking up my
stuff as repeatedly abandoned it on the field -
especially my spirit bag, wohoo!
Everyone, for a classy combination of spirit &
competitiveness.
From former teammate Anne Haycock:
It was great seeing everyone this weekend...and it was great to see
RippIt do so well!!!
My team, Bare Bottoms Up, was in the Semis in the D pool against the
Walla Walla Onions when I had to leave, so I've no clue what the end
result was for us, other than a weekend of great fun. I think I was
probably lucky to leave when I did...the cheer for the game before
began the trend to nudity for many of my male teammates...no telling
what the next one would require.
Cheers and here's to next year's Potlatch...though I hope to see folks
before then for our annual skitrip.
Grass Roots Ultimate Benefit
From Peter:
For those of you who were unable to join us in Boulder this weekend,
you'll no doubt be able to read a summary on Alan's website soon after
he returns. Highlights include:
* Perhaps the most meticulously manicured fields upon which I've ever
seen ultimate played, ever
* Stoppage of play on Saturday afternoon as static electrical buildup
on the ground made our hair stand literally on end, and we took cover
as thunderclouds passed overhead
* A wonderful collection of skilled and spirited pickups - in addition
to our SF friends Heike, Lara, Jim, and Cameron, Alan filled the spots
vacated in the last minute by Steve and Jessica with Mark (aka "Fat Boy")
and Aaron, two experienced Eastern fellows who played hard and were fun
to have around. Alan was heard to describe the weekend as "the best
pickup experience I've ever had" (wink, wink)
* Dave ("Mr Cookie Face") Brokaw's cry of exultation as he skied over
two taller defenders in the endzone to catch Alan's no-look huck for
the game winning score against Telluride, the top-seeded team in our
pool. He actually started yelling while he was still in the air, and
didn't stop until he and his defenders were in a pile on the ground.
Adequate.
The only injury of the weekend on our team was a broken tooth, sustained
on Sunday afternoon by Mark (aka "Fat Boy") while laying out in the path
of a huck and intercepting, unfortunately, not the disk with his hand,
but the follow-through with his face. Lara quickly arranged a collection
to help offset the cost of a cap (having recently left his job, Mark was
without dental insurance), and both teams contributed.
From Alan:
Hi people! Here's the story from Colorado. We had our ups and downs, sun
and calm and wind and rain, and of course, Mr. Cookie Face.
Here's the quick summary, then the whole scoop..
Saturday:
RippIt 4 - 12 Team Love
8 - 9 Scrapple (approx score- it was a loss by 1 at cap)
15 - 8 Captain Fantastic
8 - 5 Telluride (was it Big Love or Bye Bye Love?)
Sunday:
RippIt 11 - 15 Tongue 'n' Chick (Quarterfinals)
8 - 15 Kafkaesque
The weekend's excitement started out early when Anne decided not to play
early in the week before the tournament, and then Steve McCrosky and Jessica
Gaylord pulled out on Friday, the day before playing! This dropped our
numbers down to 6 guys and 4.5 women (Lara was unsure how well her achilles
would hold up..it turned out to be ok)...
So at the captains' meeting on saturday I was toying with the idea of
increasing our ranks, but I wanted to be selective.. I was able to pick the
cream of the crop, as the pickups flocked to our meager team size.. I
couldn't find any women, but snagged two guys from New York, Aaron and Mark.
(New York? Yes, I too was concerned about bad spirit, but after talking with
them a couple minutes I knew it would be ok..)
The tournament consisted of 20 teams... 10 in the A division, 10 in B.
We were in the A division and seeded 3rd in our pool of 5 teams:
Big Love (Telluride)
Team Love (CO)
RippIt
Scrapple (CO,I think)
Captain Fantastic (CO)
The fields were *amazing*... it was no lie when they told us these were the
best fields in Boulder. There were 10 fields all at the one site.
Game 1 was against Team Love. In a word, we sucked. We spent this game
getting used to the elevation and getting used to playing together. We lost
4-12.. ouch!
Game 2 was better. We were starting to be able to run, and our offense was
coming together. The game was against Scrapple, and was close all the way.
It came down to game point for either team at the cap. We had possession three
times, turning it over twice around mid-field, and once about 10-15 yards from
the endzone. Unfortunately we didn't finish it off and ended up losing.. doh!
Then we had our bye. I went behind the TDs back and pulled a little field
swap so that we could stay where we were after game 2, and wouldn't have to
move the rest of the day.. :)
Game 3 was good. Our offense was solid, defense was more coordinated. We
took a huge lead, but gave up 4 points in a row at game point before winning
15-8.
Near the end of game 3 it started sprinkling a little. We were told to finish
our current point and then stop playing to let the storm pass over.. I was
VERY glad we scored that point to end the game..
There wasn't any lightning, but some people's hair was standing on end, so I
guess some charged particles were out there.. however, it was decided it was
safe to play, so as the rains subsided we got back out there to play the #1
seed in our pool, Telluride.
This game rocked. Both teams played well, with solid offense and defense.
The wind was picking up a little, which was to our advantage as we used both
the box zone and clam to confuse our opponents. We were up 6-5 when the game
got capped, and scored the next to go up 7-5. In the next point Telluride
turned it over about 20-25 yards from their own endzone.. I was near the disc
and ran towards it in case any quick opportunities presented themselves...
I heard Dave screaming "Yeah! Yeah!" from the far sideline and figured he was
open running deep, so I grabbed the disc and put up the no look huck.......
........
Now, I will defend my choice of making the throw and maybe even that there
wasn't enough time to really look around before throwing.. however, I make no
excuses that this throw turned out BAD.. I didn't judge the wind at all and it
floated excessively... Dave got under the disc first, but was quickly joined
by his own defender from behind and another defender in front of him as the
disc descended. I wish we got a picture... all three went up with Dave in the
middle, extending those key inches above the others.. as he wrapped his fingers
around the disc he let out "the yell", heard across the field..
A great end to day 1...
We hit the showers at Super 8 and then drove 15 miles up the mountains to
Nederland for the dinner/party. The dinner was yummy.. we took a little
walk to a local store for desserts, leading to the dubbing of Dave as Mr.
Cookie Face and Mark as Fat Boy....
Sunday morning we waddled out to the fields after a sizable breakfast..
We learned that they used head-to-head for rankings before point differential
so we ended up 4th in our pool instead of 3rd, even though we beat the top
seed.. ranked below Scrapple who beat us by 1 and also beat Captain Fantastic
only by one... this was a little disappointing, but turns out it probably
wouldn't have mattered since the team we would have played if we were ranked
3rd ended up winning the tourney... this ranking was also cool cuz we got to
play a non-colorado team..
So, quarterfinals began.. our opponent was Tongue 'n' Chick from Louisiana,
whose shirts went a little beyond pg13.... this was a great game! It was
close all the way, with a number of layout blocks by both teams..
unfortunately we couldn't hold it together thru the end of the game and
finally crumbled 11-15...
Tongue'n'Chick ended up losing in finals to Two Fingered Stimulators (yikes),
a team they beat on Saturday!
In our final game we played Kafkaesque, who had gone 0-4 the previous day and
this was their first game sunday.. we were nice and let them win.. :)
No, actually they played decently well and the fire that lit our defense in
the first game had gone out... I think that every point Kafka scored except
maybe 1 or 2 we not only had possession, but worked the disc to within 10 yards
of the endzone and turned it over on a pass into the endzone.. yikes, our
heart was not in this game... it ended 8-15...
This was also the game where Mark tragically chopped off half a tooth going
for the huck block, but taking the hand to the face...
So, a 2-4 record but all in all a *great* weekend... this was my second year
playing this tournament and I hope to return again next year. I really like
the location, the fields, the level of play and the dinner/party. I will
get on their case next year to advertise and hype up the event more to keep
it big; the 30 team event last year had more non-colorado teams which was
cool to see.. (we played an Iowa team and a southeast team, Georgia I think).
Thanks to everyone who made the trip!
Potlatch
From Alan:
Hi everyone! Here's the story from Seattle...
A total of 14 bay area teams made the trek up north to play in the biggest
coed tournament EVER... the 8th annual Potlatch... 75 teams in one location,
that's about 1200 ultimate players!! RippIt did quite well, going 3-1 in pool
play and qualifying for the B bracket on Sunday (out of A, B, C, D brackets).
On Sunday we went 1-1..
Saturday:
RippIt 13 - 3 Jabberwock (Berkeley/Bay Area)
6 - 13 Burn (Northwest)
13 - 10 Jekyll & Hyde (Vancouver)
13 - 8 Acme (Eugene)
Sunday:
RippIt 11 - 5 Hucking Fooligans (Vancouver)
5 - 13 Against All Odds (NE / Mid-Atlantic)
Below are the game descriptions.. it is long with some details, so peruse
at your leisure! But first I want to mention some generalities about the
weekend..
First, the New Zone was a great success!! It wasn't very windy at all up in
Seattle, but I think we used the zone in every game.. we're getting good at
playing it against a standard zone offense, which is what we saw most of the
time. We need to modify it a little to work against other types of offense..
Second, I was very happy with our use of the kag! I decided not to call it
as part of the offense, but just hope that our practices would help us
integrate it as a part of our game... and it worked.. I saw many good uses
of kag throughout the tournament. Good things seem to happen when we dump
it back quickly! Especially near the endzone.. when we keep going to the kag
quickly our opponents can't keep a good force, and we eventually find the
open cut...
Third-- new stuff! Yes, even with only a couple weeks to go we are going to
do some new stuff before colorado. Goals- keep practicing kag on offense.
New defense: Clam. I have come up with a clam defense that it similar to
New Zone, and we can switch back and forth easily too. We also need to
practice switching from New Zone to man defense.
** We will start learning clam on tuesday 7/22, so BE THERE!! **
Game 1 was against Jabberwock from Berkeley. Nell Griscom and Tom Arns
(Random Blues, Red sbul team) were on this team, as was Drew Tulchin.
We lost the first point, but then built up a 3-1 lead. When they came back to
3-3 we decided it was time to bring out the New Zone. This team couldn't
handle it at all, and we rolled over them scoring the next 10 straight to win
13-3, playing zone almost the whole time!
This team went on to make B bracket *semis* on sunday, so our use of strategy
definitely helped make this an easy win..
Game 2 was the tough one, against Burn from the northwest. They boldly started
out with an all women line and pulled the disc to us. After an unfortunate
drop by us they took control and were able to score as we couldn't seem to
remember the force, or get a marker near the disc at all..
The next bunch of points were pretty good, with both teams capitalizing on the
other's mistakes. Tommy got a layout block and Alan threw the goal to Dave to
get us up 2-1, but they scored with no turns on the next point, and then
capitalized on the next two points as we dropped it and threw it away.
Another drop in the next point, but we got it back with JT's handblock, and
Alan threw the goal to Wayne. Burn made a drop in the next point, and we got
the 1 throw offense as Alan picked it up and hucked it to Wayne. This tied
the game at 4-4.
The next two points were UGLY! We had possession of the disc *3* times in
each of these points, and turned it over IN the endzone at least once each
point, but Burn got both of the goals.
It seemed like we got our heads back in the game as we scored the next goal
with no turns, but that was the LAST time we used our possession well.
In the rest of the game we scored ONCE in TWELVE possessions of the disc,
Burn scored 6 of 13... and for our one goal it was our third possession of that
point.. yikes!
Burn was a good team, but this game was one where we took away our own
chances at winning. We had 8 drops, 5 of which resulted in goals for Burn,
and a lot of scoreless possessions. (this was nearly half of all drops for
the whole weekend!)
I don't know if we would have won the game with more solid play on our side,
but we definitely would have had a chance!
Our sucking period from the end of game 2 lasted well into game 3 against
Jekyll & Hyde from Vancouver. We started down 0-3 before we got a couple
goals.. then they got 4 more to get us down 2-7!! We finally got started on
the comeback trail with a huck from Alan to Don. Then we started capitalizing
on their mistakes. We scored from Julie to Don and Dave to Sarah with no
turns, and only one turn in the next point but still got the goal from Alan
to Libby. Unfortunately Libby's defender then crashed into her, fell over
and landed on Libby's leg, twisting her knee as Libby let out a horrendous
scream. Luckily not quite as bad as it sounded, but Libby was done for the
day. We traded the next two goals, but then our rampage continued.
We scored five straight with only three turnovers in that period. With
victory in our sights at 12-8 we let them get a couple more before Alan came
back in to throw the game winner to Don... fitting to end with the same
connection that started the comeback! Great job, RippIt!! That was an 11-3
run to come back and win!
Game 4 was against Acme from Eugene, Oregon. In our typical manner we started
out down 0-3. Then we realized we were better than this team, and tied it up
at 3-3. For the rest of the game both teams kept scoring, but we just scored
a little more often, taking the game 13-8. Alan got caught once playing in
a little too far as deep-deep in the new zone.. he ran down the huck and got
the sky block, but slightly pulled his lower back again, and was out for the
second half of the game. Fortunately with some ice, rest and stretching he
was able to play on sunday...
End of pool play.. 3-1!!!
Sunday.. we missed the first round bye by ONE spot in the seedings. So we
had to get out there and play the Hucking Fooligans from Vancouver. Once
they finally all rolled out of their tents and got out on the field we
started playing. We got down our usual 0-1, but then scored 5 straight with
only 2 TO's. Then a Fooligan caught the disc almost in the endzone
(straddling the line?) and spiked the disc (I think it was this point).
We graciously gave them back the disc, and we played good endzone D and held
them for a while, but they did get the goal.. the spiking player was nice
enough to apologize after the game. Both teams played pretty well, but we
continued to dominate the scoreboard and won 11-5.
Our final game was Against All Odds, from the NE + Mid Atlantic. For once
we started out the game well, with blocks from JT and Peter and two woman to
woman scores: Aruna to Anne and Sarah to Aruna. Then they scored with no
turns and we scored with no turns, making it 3-1. The next point was ugly.
4 TO's from us and they finally scored, then they capitalized on a HTO from
us and tied it at 3-3. We traded up to 5-5, no points with more than 1 turn.
Then they *stopped* making mistakes. They ran off 8 straight goals without
a turnover! For the last seven we received the pull, but could not score.
And each time we made an error, we didn't get it back. Ouch.
Another note about this game.. this team did NOT play zone O against the
New Zone! They had a few players who could throw pinpoint hammers, so they
didn't bother setting up the dump-swing. They just spread their players
around the field and threw hammers to the ones we couldn't cover man-on-man.
In future we should loosen up the cup to stop this (the points shift forward
as there is no dump or swing to cover, allowing the mids to move back a little
and be close enough to those hammer receivers that they can run over there and
make a play on the disc when they see the hammer go up).
The other option here is to switch to clam.. it covers the hammer a little
better, as you will see on tuesday.... :)
That's it.. all in all a great time! I want to thank everyone for coming out
and playing hard. I had a blast...