Fall 2008, Part 2

Western Classic

For our third tournament of the semester, we once again chose to split up our team X/Y as we were committed to giving our rookies opportunities to play with and learn from the vets. This ended up being the right decision, as we saw throughout the weekend. We arrived Saturday without sufficient time to warm-up like we would have liked, but and it showed for my team (ISU X) in our first game against Truman State X (Note: Truman State only brought one team to this tournament, and as such they were by no means split-squad). Truman quickly went up 3-0 (at least) before we got our first score, skying and breaking us like nobody's business. This looked more like an A team playing a B team than two supposed split-squads. They took the game quickly 13-4, and we moved to our next field a little dejected and looking for something to lift us up and give us a shot at hanging with our next challenge, Illinois Y.

The game started off slow and sluggish from both sides as we traded points until half, 7-6. The Illinois Y squad was made up of primarily rookies with a couple vets helping out including Sean O'Brien's brother (whose name unfortunately escapes me at the moment) who played nearly every point, as did I. He showed us why Illinois is a contender for Nationals every year by putting up some great hucks and pulling down a few as well. After more point trading it came down to Universe point where there would be at least 2 turns by each team and where I came up with two layout (more like fall over) D's, showing both teams how bad I wanted the win after our embarrassing loss against TSU. Illinois would end up making the last turn as we put the upwind point in to take the game 13-12.

X's final game of pool play came against Knox College, a team who we've played many times and have a great relationship with. Knox was suffering from a short roster with only 2-3 subs which gave us the advantage in numbers. This combined with some tough defense and good decision-making (for the most part) led to a quick win for X, 13-8. Lots of credit to Knox for fighting hard the whole game, even when it must have seemed out of reach. Gotta love those guys. Also, the guy in the yellow short vs. Peteo was probably the most entertaining matchup I've seen since Eric vs. Peteo. We took 2nd in our pool.

ISU Y also took 2nd in their pool, but took a much different route. Instead of coming out sluggish in their first game they came out hard and won a nail-biter against North Park X on universe point. To be honest, I think it was that victory that spurred X on to win their second round game against Illinois Y. Good teamwork, guys. Anyway, the final game of the day turned out to be a crossover game pitting X vs. Y. Props to the captains for splitting up the teams evenly because the game went, like it always does, to universe point. Steve came down with the disc in a crowd after a 20 yard bladey huck from Hollywood. Not a great ending to the game, but I'm sure it gave those two a much needed ego boost. The victory for Y would put them in the winner's bracket and X in the loser's bracket with an opportunity to place no higher than 9th place.

I'm going to fast forward to the last game on Sunday, because writing is exhausting and I just want to get the good stuff. The placement game on Sunday placed Illinois X vs Illinois State X in the game for 9th place (winners of the loser's bracket) on field 5 and Illinois Y vs Illinois State Y in the game for 5th on field 3, which somehow ended up being next to each other. All 4 teams shared one sideline along with most of our women's team and somehow it never got crowded. I can't speak for Y, but I know that X was winded and tired from the weekend and I personally was not looking forward to playing an Illinois team since they always seem to have twice as many players as any other team. On this day it was doubled. Looking on from the opposite sideline it looked like a sea of orange with only a few white jerseys poking through. Illinois' historic cheer of 'I-L-L...I-N-I' was answered with an enthusiastic 'G-N-O...M-E-S' led by Sam and Vicius of team Y. You could cut the tension with a knife, and all 4 teams were in it to win it. I couldn't have asked for a better ending to this tournament

I'll be honest, I was not optimistic about this game. Although I knew we could win I was tired and my team was suffering from a few injuries leaving us with 3-4 subs to Illinois' 10-12. Only 2 points in there was a questionable call on the goal line and I let my emotion get the best of me when I got into an argument with the Illinois coach about the call. I let this argument get into my head and I wasn't much of an asset to my team for most of the first half as I handed over the captaining duties to Doug and only played when he called me in. Illinois took half 7-6. We played from behind the entire second half I think (I say I think because I deliberately didn't pay attention to the score in an attempt to get my head back in the game). To their credit, everyone on my team played their hearts out the second half and deserved to win this game. Again, not knowing the score, I heard the hard cap go off in the middle of a point which ended up being 10-10. Most of the point is a blur but I'll never forget the last throw. Afryl Lavigne made a hard cut to the right front cone of the endzone while I had the disc trapped on the line. Seeing that his cut was shut down I faked hard to the force side getting my mark to jump over as I pivoted to the break side and let the disc go hoping that Jeff would make the cut that I wanted him to. Sure enough, he did, curling around his man like Jerry Rice on a hitch route, and the play looked as if it had been laid out before the point. Illinois State beat Illinois on Universe point 11-10.

On the next field the story was a little different. They too heard the hard cap go off during their point, and they too scored the point, but theirs was to tie the game at 10-10. With the X vs X game being over all eyes were on this final point of the tournament. After a turn by each team Illinois Y would put it in, evening up the series at 1 each. I guess we'll have to play a tie breaker this spring...

Again, it's late, so I'll do Glory Days tomorrow

Fall 2008, Part 1

I wanted to write a post to summarize all that happened this fall, but I definitely don't have that kind of time and I probably wouldn't remember it all anyway. Here's what I do remember:

First Practice

I hope it didn't show, but Steve and I were pretty nervous about running the first practice. We had a group of guys at the informational meeting that was probably double the amount from last year, and last year we had only retained (I think) 1 sophomore by the end of the school year. So, we sat down and carefully planned out a practice that would both challenge the new players and not scare them off. Shockingly, it went exactly as planned and we only lost about half of the guys that came out (Sounds like a lot, but it isn't. Ask any captain of a college program). By the end of the first day the noobies were throwing dumps and cutting better than a lot of the returners did at the end of their first semester. By the end of the first week they were starting to develop flicks and after a month they were starting to understand some of the more subtle nuances of the game such as giving solid fakes as a thrower making space for other cutters. Needless to say, this batch of rookies made me pretty excited and kinda made me want to stay around until they were seniors just to see what they'd look like then. I'd imagine they're going to be pretty sick.

Stanley Cup II (or IV)

Again things went almost completely according to plan. I think this is karma for how hard we tried last year and how Murphy's Law kicked us in the ass over and over (i.e. Western being cancelled, losing our bid to Whitewater, taking 6 months to order jerseys). We split up into 3 teams of equal strength and Doug and Emily got their first experience captaining a mixed team (and Doug his first captaining any team). They ended up getting 9th, the lowest of the ISU teams, but I think that was mainly a result of a lack of a solid handler core, forcing some of their better cutters to play the handler position for most of the weekend. I know that their game against X was hard fought, and I don't think their finish was a good representative of what they were capable of. ISU X (Squirrels/Sextacy) and ISU Y (did they even have a name?) made their way into the Championship Bracket Sunday only to be knocked out in Semis and Quarters respectively. The party went great, and I think we ran a good tournament that teams are going to want to come back to (Thanks mainly to Gamehube, he did an awesome job of being TD, and also to Reynolds and Sam who nursed their injuries at the scorers' table and helped everything run smoothly). It was a great showing for 3 teams composed of more than 50% rookies, and also a great way to start our season. Opening the season with a home tournament was great because it allowed almost all of our rookies to get some experience without having to travel far or sleep on the floor, and the level of competition was just right - no teams that were out of our league and no teams that didn't give us a good run. Hopefully it goes just as well next year, I'm sure it will.

Hucktoberfest

Wow, what can I say about this tournament? It was awesome. We got stuck in the Open (B) Division which I wasn't crazy about at first, but in the end it wasn't the worst thing that could have happened. Having originally planned on bringing an X/Y split squad to this tourney, seemingly everyone had something to do and we were forced to bring one team with the awkward roster size of 22. With such a large roster we were forced to call lines on every point, and nobody played more than 2 points in a row until the last game Saturday against St. Thomas. This game was to decide the winner of our pool and although everybody played at least a few points in that game, the lines were called much tighter than earlier in the day. Purple Reign came out hard, with excellent handler movement and cutters that wouldn't stop moving. We traded points for most of the first half until The Ultimate Player Formerly Known As Puddles came up with a huge layout D, the first of his career, allowing us to put it in and take half 7-5. The game was capped and we ended up winning 10-8.

After a great day of ultimate we hit the showers, set up our tents at the campgrounds, and headed into town for dinner. The minors went to some place that doesn't matter and the 21+ went to Fat Jack's, the host of the Tournament party. A lot of stuff happened, but all that really matters is that we got free pitchers of Long Island iced teas, a $5 pitcher of lunchbox, and some great food while we soaked in the beauty of winning our pool for what may have been the first time ever (Fact check me, Pat) in ISU history. Then we went back to the campgrounds and got over $2,000 in drinking tickets for the minors. whoops...

Sunday was a lot cooler and cloudier, with the wind picking up a little also. We stuck it to a solid Valpo squad in our first game and fell victim to shitty marks and bad throws into the wind in our Semis game against DePaul. They deserved the win, and we went home tied for 3rd in the B bracket (I'm still not sure why this game wasn't played out, and a littled bit p.o.'d too).

It's getting late, and I'm getting tired, so I'll pick this up tomorrow or later in the week and I'll end with a list of some things I liked about this fall:

-A huge freshman class that made me feel a lot more comfortable about the future of ISU Ultimate
-A combined record of 17-13 as X/Y teams
-Winning the pool at Hucktoberfest
-Free pitchers of Long Island, and a $5 pitcher of lunchbox
-Not being the only captain - It was awesome to have Doug and Steve to turn to for help/support
-1 Large Powerade