ultimate

Bite, scratch, claw for every point, every throw.  Keep your head up on the field
and on the sideline.  Never give up, never take the foot off the throttle.  No 
mercy, no stopping, and no more excuses.

GAME TIME 

Fire. Me. Up.

Mischief finished second in the (full title here) Ultimate Players Association Club Championship Series Northern California Mixed Sectionals (whew!) in Santa Cruz this past weekend.

Second! Whoo!

Here's how Sunday went:

Since we had won our pool on Saturday, we were playing in the semis against Brass Monkey. We've played them four times before this season, always giving them a good game. In "first games of the day," as this one was, we were 2-0 against Brass Monkey. Overall, however, we were 2-2, I believe, for the season. We knew we had a shot in this first game, if we could catch them flat footed, before they woke up.

Kris and I were talking about the game, and we weren't quite sure how we wanted it to go. Of course, we wanted to win. Who wouldn't want to win. But we knew that the team puts high expectations on itself when we do well, which can lead to our downfall. We peaked at Sectionals in 2003, we don't want to peak too early again.

So, maybe, just maybe, it would be better to lose the first game to get us hungry for the next one.

Maybe.

But not like we did.

We came out hard, on fire, intense for the first half of the game. We traded points for a few, then went up big to take half 8-6, then the biggest lead at 10-6.

Did I mention Brass Monkey isn't a first game of the day team?

Yeah, well, they woke up.

And they woke up angry.

In a completely embarrassing, I can't believe I'm about to document this for myself when I read this in 10 years way, we stopped playing. We froze. We crumbled.

And they scored 9. Friggin'. Points. In. A. Row.

In. A. Row.

We lost 10-15.

And were devastated. Sure, we often let teams come back to make a game close when we're up big. But not 9 points in a row to win it. They woke up. They started playing zone. They started running harder. We didn't adjust. Fundamentally we didn't "fucking recognize!" the situation and couldn't stop the hemmorhaging. And lost.

The energy of the team at that point was the lowest we've been all season. Losing is one thing. Losing by a 9 point run by the other team is another.

To their credit, Brass Monkey came over and cheered us. When they first came over, we were thinking, "Come on, leave us alone. Can't you just let it go?" By the end, our spirits had lifted somewhat.

Earlier in the tournament, Feral Cows, the 8th place seed with hopes of going to Regionals, had lost to CTR, the 9th place seed and a former Nationals-level team. Instead of recognizing in 10 games, they'll lose half of them to CTR, but they can still beat the next team in their pool and make Regionals, they crumbled. They lost to the eventual 19th place team (out of 20) in the next round and hand to fight back to the 10th place overall.

We knew of Cows fate, and didn't want it to happen to us. Yes, we knew we were going to Regionals, our Saturday finish insured that, but we wanted more. We didn't want to go in 6th seed. Brass Monkey's cheer helped us out of the loss-funk to get us back in playing form.

We beat the next team, Wagon, in a snippy, physical, double-game point game 15-14. Oh, that was a fun game. Well, the part I was awake for. I slept through the second half of the game as the painkillers I was taking hit me full blast and I couldn't stay awake. Winning the game, which I woke up just in time to witness, put us into the 2-5 place bracket instead of the 4-7 bracket, and gave us our next opponent: Beer Run.

As mentioned every chance we get, it seems we always play Beer Run or Bender. This weekend, we managed both.

We didn't play well in the beginning, and by 5-10, most everyone had given up. Kris decided it was time to put in the second line and give our top line a rest. He started to call in the second string players.

But no one had told them we were done. No one had told them we had given up. No one told them we were looking to the next game.

They scored.

Kris left them in, and they scored again.

And again.

And again.

They kept scoring. They tied the game. Beer Run scored again. We answered with our own.

We played with heart. The heart we seemed to be missing when we were down. The heart that carried us in other close games.

We won on double game point, putting us in the backdoor 2-3 game against Red Fish Blue Fish who had lost in the finals against Brass Monkey.

And Heidi had caught the score to start our run.

Our fourth and final game was against Red Fish Blue Fish. We knew they would play zone on us. We knew that was the weakest part of our game. We knew they had recruited some amazing players this season.

We also knew we had better athleticism. We also knew we wanted this game more than they did.

The highest point of the game for me was cutting in from the back of the stack, shredding the switching defense and catching a bullet swing pass from Kris. Kris had zinged in it hard, and thought, "Yeah, babe!" when I caught it. I turned and swung the disc to Heidi who continued the pass, assisting on the assist for a score. When I left the field, I thought, "Huh. My hands hurt." Kris later explained he threw that pass very, very hard in order to avoid two men poachers in the area. Zing!

The lowest point of the game for me was during the receiving end of a run-through D on zone when I was caught flat-footed. As Kate says, if we had lost that game, that play would be in a continual loop in my head for the next four days.

Fortunately, that wasn't the case, and we won 13-11.

We finished 2nd in a pool of 20 teams. Shirley was an incredible rock star. I think she's our MVP of the weekend. She rocks!

We're heading to Regionals!

(Please let this not be the peak of our season. Please, oh, please!)

Especially a high level one, like this weekend's tournament.

I slept 10 hours last night. The first night I've sleep more than 6 hours since the night before BarCamp. I think my body needed the time to figure out exactly what the heck I just did to it, as I woke up sore.

Sore for the first time in the longest time.

The anti-inflammatories I take daily mean regular exercise won't faze my muscles at all. That muscle soreness and stiffness that sets in 1-2 days after exercising? The feeling that tells you, hell yeah, you've just done something great for your body? That feeling that I like so much, but most women think is icky?

Yeah, haven't felt that soreness since February. (Hmmm... I thought I had written about it, but I can't find it anywhere, so I must have been mistaken. So, how about now?)

I take anti-inflammatories daily. I have been since February, after a series of migraines late last year caused some subtle, but annoying, vision problems for me, and a doctor prescribed blood thinners that were causing me to bleed for hours with the smallest cut. I switched away from the blood thinners and onto the anti-inflammatories, and have been fine since.

Except I'm never sore after working out.

Which is unfortunate, because I like that feeling of soreness from a hard workout.

Taking a lot of painkillers in order to play ultimate is a double edged sword. On the one side, I'm able to play. I can run, jump, throw, pivot, fake, catch, fall, the works because I can move without pain. With enough ibuprofen, and the weakness in my left leg disappears, the pain in my hamstring lessens, and I can have fun again.

And, on the other side, I don't notice when I injure something more. I don't notice that maybe my achilles don't like this sprinting full tilt from our endzone to the opponents' endzone and back on the turn. I don't notice that, whoops, there goes that other toenail, didn't need that one either.

Though, at one point, I did realize that if I can feel where my marker's cleat stomped on my ankle when I pivoted to the forehand, and that I felt it through six Advil and half a Vicodin, that maybe, just maybe, an injury sub would be good to see just how much damage that cleat caused.

Not much yesterday, but I'm feeling it today.

That, and the delicious muscle soreness.

Finally.

Our first game was against Red Fish Blue Fish. Kris was calling subs, and called me in third point on defense. He obviously recalled I need to be in early to get the burst of hurried activity to burn off the extra andrenaline and nervousness, in order to calm down and play my game.

Not that I particularly managed to find that groove today. Not on a night of alcohol-induced, disaffected sleep (cursed Drupal meet-ups and their alcohol happy people!).

Switching verb tenses here. Which I hate doing, but, it works better this way.

So, the pull lands out of bounds and the Fish line up with Archer with the disc, and Rebecca deep.

Yeah, we know where this one is going.

One step fake in, and Rebecca cuts deep. I have no idea what the mark on Archer was like, but it must have been good, because three hard steps downfield later, I hear the up calls, and find the disc over my left shoulder in a ridiculously high r-squared arc.

I'm still five yards behind Rebecca at this point, and I need to catch up now. Full dig, I can get there, the disc is floating. Run hard run hard run hard. I catch up as the disc looks like it's going to float right. I lose Rebecca as she drifts right for the disc.

Back out of present tense.

Somehow (somehow!), I, who rarely read a floater disc well, managed to find the exact spot where the disc was arriving eight feet off the ground and went to it, successfully batting the disc away (missing the catch I was actually attempting, but the end result was the same).

We scored the point from my D.

Later in the game, on a turned disc when we were on offense, I was running a continue cut for Emily, secretly praying she wouldn't put up a huck, while still, admittedlym running deep anyway for her, when she put it up forehand.

Now, normally, I would have been able to see the forehand come over my right shoulder and run it down easily, as my defender was on my left (and wouldn't you know, it was Rebecca again). In this case, however, the throw was wildly shanking left, and dropping fast near the sideline.

Rebecca had found the disc in the air and went to where it was dropping, one step behind me. Because of the angle of fall, however, her attempted swipe at it as it dropped down over her head was a trailing edge attempt (trailing edge is the false god!), and she missed it by mere inches.

I didn't. Less than six inches from the ground, I plucked the disc from the air, in a brilliant trailing edge grab.

As we were deepest, I had no one to throw to immediately. Kris was ready as my dump when his defender ran past him to poach on my throw, so I dumped the disc to him.

We eventually scored that one, too.

My moments of brilliance.

Not that it helped much. We lost that game, and the next, and the next. We played vert tentative. We were afraid to cut, we were afraid to throw the easy throws to the open cutter. We played scared.

My only other memorable play of the day was in the Monkey game, when we turned over the disc on our goal line, and when I looked downfield to find the deepest threat, I saw some tall guy running deep, looking over his shoulder, arm raised calling for the huck. Deepest threat, go go go.

I sprinted two thirds of the field length at full tilt to catch up to the guy, running by two of my teammates, and arriving at the player, just as the sideline he was nearest to opened up for a huck to him. My presence thwarted the huck and all other throws to him long enough for my teammate (and this guy's true defender) to catch up. I was pleased with my defense, but the play wasted my legs for the rest of the game.

So, as a team, we played poorly. We lost all our games today. We haven't had that happen before.

Welcome to Northern California ultimate.

I wonder what tomorrow is going to be like when the painkillers wear off.