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I’m not really sure how it happened. All the points from my previous post still applied, but somehow my winter ultimate team managed to win its final “playoff” game last night, landing us in second-to-last spot rather than dead last.
Been there, done that, got the yellow t-shirt.
This will likely be the last year I play winter ultimate. Of the 3 years I’ve played in Ottawa, twice I’ve been among the players chosen to change teams in a mid-season effort to rebalance the league. In each case, I’ve gone from a strong team that I enjoyed playing on, to a subpar team that had trouble winning a single game…even after rebalancing!
I think I understand why I’m (seemingly) always chosen to change teams. I’m not that strong a player — I’ve never captained a team, I’ve only been to a handful of tournaments, and I’m getting older — but I am athletic, I am consistent, and I am level-headed. The teams I end up on lack most/all of those things.
This year has been particularly frustrating because not only is my team lacking the above factors, but it also seemingly has no desire to get better, or even to compete. We’ve managed to tie one game since I’ve been moved over, making our record an abysmal 0-9-1. This team is happy when we score in double digits. For reference, only once this season have our opponents scored less than 20 points.
What’s most annoying is that we’ve had our chances to win some games: up by 5 with 10 minutes left in one game, up by 2 with 2 minutes left in another. My personal favorite: in one game we were down by 1 with 2 minutes left. This is a situation where you’d expect everyone on the team to be fired up and ready, or at the very least paying attention, but it took us more than a minute to even field a full line. I was so disgusted after that loss that I couldn’t even go out for beer afterward. That’s pretty serious.
I think I’ll take a pass next year.
My “new” ultimate team, Poach Motel, won it’s first game of the current summer ultimate season tonight, bringing our well-rounded record to 1-1-1. I still feel like I’m running at 3/4 speed out there, and sadly, that’s unlikely to change before our first tournament of the year on Saturday.
In vaguely chronological order:
Best wishes to everyone in 2006!
Thanks to everyone who came out to the Clocktower to celebrate my belated birthday on Saturday. There were so many of you!
Thanks also for not breaking me so badly that I was unable to play two games of ultimate the next day. Well, I was on the field at any rate. I will blame my performance on the late-night poutine encounter rather than any turning-30-related decrepitude.
This past weeked, I played in my first ultimate tournament in over a year.
Our team did very well; we didn’t beat our seeding, but we managed to go 3-3 over the two days, winning 3 of our 4 games on the first day, and in so doing, qualifying for the Rec Championship bracket. This was especially gratifying when you consider that my Wednesday night team has only won one game all season.
Personally, I thought I acquitted myself well. I prepped behorehand: stretching properly, drinking lots of (non-alcoholic) fluids, and generally showing more foresight than I would normally give myself credit for. My play was reasonably inspired on day 1, if I do say so myself, and my body didn’t give up on me completely on the second day. Watching one of my teammates, Warren, go over hard on his ankle (he ended up snapping two ligaments) helped everyone else on the team suck up their minor injuries and keep playing. Warren: get well soon!
I will apologize to Bird one final time for throwing away that last pass in our game against Quicksand. Now let us never speak of it again.
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I hadn’t had enough frisbee for the weekend yet, so on Monday I hooked up (somewhat belatedly) with James and Mark for a round of yellows at Jacques Cartier. Didn’t do too badly, but man, is my arm ever sore now.
Luckily, being tired doesn’t mean much on the West coast when your body is still on Eastern time. I overslept this morning and was still on the road at 7:00am to go play disc golf. The Hellyer Park course was decent, despite being located right next to the 101. My play was also decent, despite cryptic (or downright wrong) basket placement signs. I suppose if I were less lazy, I could have scouted each hole before throwing. Meh.
I took some pictures of the course while playing. I now have almost as many pictures of this course as I do of the course I play every week.
…
When I returned to MoFo HQ, Tracy, one of the members of the QA staff, noticed my discs on the desk and stopped by to chat. As it turns out, Tracy is a nationally-ranked pro disc golfer. He invited me to play with him sometime down at the world-famous (well, among disc golfers) Santa Cruz disc golf course. I don’t think I’ll have time for another round this week, but next time we’re both out this way, I will certainly take him up on his offer, and hope that my play will rate somewhere above “comic relief.”
In what is possibly the best come-from-behind victory I’ve ever been party to personally, 7th-ranked Squash! overcame a 7-point deficit in the final 15 minutes of our playoff quarterfinal game to defeat 2nd place Squad Noire by a single point.
The saga continues. After a week’s layoff, I thought I would be out-of-shape and out-of-practice, and I was, but I still managed to play better than (most of) the rest of the team, and we lost convincingly again.
…
Now that business is out of the way, it’s Miller time:
I have a theory.
Whenever I play well, Squash loses, and whenever I suck all ass, we manage to win.
If I mail in my performances for the rest of the year, we should win the “whole thing” which I assume is some sort of beer-flavored prize.
