ultimate

Even observers can cheat

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 00:10 on 4 July 2005

Before one of our games at Potlatch today, I talked to a player who is trained to be an observer for games played during the UPA Club Championship Series.

Observers are persons trained in how to watch ultimate in order to dispute calls during a game if requested. The "if requested" is important, as ultimate is still a player refereed game: players make active calls, not referees. The observers are potential referees, in as much as they will settle disputes between two players, but they usually just watch (observe) the game.

Because they settle disputes between players, observers have to know the rules really well. They also know the little tiny nuances of the game, as well as the quite esoteric, but legitimate, interpretations of the rules. In the end, they interpret the rules the way the UPA would interpret them.

The observer and I were talking about fouls on the thrower, and I learned a bit about how various situatuions which are fouls, and some that aren't, but seem as if they should be. It was an interesting discussion.

Later, we played against the team the obsever was playing on. She was defending against me, and behind me when a call was made as I was streaking across the endzone in an open cut for the score.

When I say open, I mean open. I was about three yards or so in front of her when I recognized the call was made. I hadn't seen her the entire point (as she was behind me the whole time), and didn't realize she was my defender until I stopped and turned around to look.

As required by the rules (10th edition and fair play), I started jogging back the way I had run in order to move back to where I was when the call was made. I knew about where I should be standing, but not exactly, so as a courtesy, I asked her about where I should be.

The woman indicated where she thought I was when she recognized the call. I moved to the spot she indicated and watched in dumb-founded amazement as she positioned herself one step in front of me.

In. Front. Of. Me.

My first thought was, "HEY! No freakin' way!"

My second thought was, "Eh. Doesn't matter. I'll still outrun her when the disc comes in."

I was very careful not to move before the disc was tapped back into play (which would be a violation, causing play to stop again), and exploded towards the sideline when play did start.

My third thought as I caught the disc?

"Hmph. Even observers can cheat."

Accepting Disappointment

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 14:29 on 2 July 2005

I've been disappointed, as in soul bruising, bone crushing disappointed, only twice in my life. I'm probably lucky it has been only twice.

Which isn't to say I haven't been disappointed more often than that in life (how boring would life be with no expectations and no hope), just that I've had only two of the really, really difficult to overcome disappointments.

And thankfully, only twice.

The first time was when I applied to graduate school at Caltech.

I was an undergraduate there, and through a bizarre series of course work counting snafus on both the registrar's and my parts, I missed graduating in four years by three credits. Those three credits are the equivalent of 1 credit at most universities, as 436 credits were needed to graduate from Caltech as an undergraduate.

So, there I was, not graduating, but needing only one small engineering elective to be done. Since I would already be enrolled for a full term, I figured I'd use the opportunity to get my Master's degree.

Caltech has a B.S./M.S. program where a student can take up to an extra year and receive both degrees. It seemed to be a good scenario for me, so I applied. I didn't apply for any funding, just the opportunity to get my Masters.

My application was declined.

I was devastated.

I was already taking the courses in anticipation of continuing my studies. As a result, I wasn't taking any spot away from another student for quotas. I wasn't expecting any funding, so I wasn't costing the school any money. My grades were, admittedly, not spectacular, but they were on par with my fellow classmates. I saw no reason for the declination.

I talked to various professors to appeal the decision, to no avail.

I left Tech bitter. Sure, with a B.S., but still bitter.

Eventually, my bitterness faded, and I can now remember the good parts of my undergraduate work, but it took a long time. Time. And the eventual recognition that my expectations were probably unreasonable. Although I still see no reason for declining my application, I also see no reason to accept it. I wasn't a stellar student, nor a successful researcher, so from the school's perspective, it was easier for them to just cut me lose.

Fair enough.

The second disappointment was far more recent. It is also based, tragically more so, on unrealistic expectations. In retrospect, completely and totally unrealistic expectations.

Earlier this year, I applied for Team USA, representing the United States in ultimate for the 2005 World Games in Germany on a mixed gender ultimate team.

Originally, the application process included an online application, tryouts and a by-committee team selection.

When applying, I had nothing to lose. I'm not a well known player (in terms of my play) in the ultimate community. I don't know most of the women's-only players, so I couldn't be intimidated by them. I had been training with Geno for months and had strength and quickness I had never possessed before.

No, I had nothing to lose.

Except the selection process didn't go as planned. I was training hard for the tryouts; they didn't happen. I had no chance to go up against the well known women's players. By name recognition only, I was a complete unknown.

Of all of the 37 woman applicants, I was the only one who was a true Mixed player. I've been playing mixed ultimate since I moved to the Bay Area in 1997. I've been playing with Kris since 1998. All the other women applicants play in the women's division. There was one other woman who recently "retired" to mixed, but no one else whose career was Mixed.

Which I believe helped me in the selection process: I made the first cut and was one of 14 women on the short list for 6 team spots and 2 alternates.

Exciting!!! (And, yes, that excitement deserved the usually avoided multiple exclamation points.)

Unfortunately, it also raised my expectations for making the team.

In a completely irrational way, I began to hope. Wow, I might make Team USA. Omigod, how unbelievably cool would that be?

I started working out even harder. My usual 3-4 hours / day, 6 days a week workouts became 4-5 hours / day, 6 days a week. I gained weight. I gained strength. I gained muscle like I'd never had before.

Yes, I was definitely excited and motivated. For the first time in my life, I was motivated to do well in sports. I wanted to make this team more than I thought imaginable. I worked out physically. I worked on my mental game. I did everything I could do. I ate, slept, dreamt ultimate.

Kris warned me.

He tried. Oh, he tried. He tried very hard to reduce my expectations. He knew what was coming. In retrospect, I should have, too.

Truly unsurprisingly, I didn't make the team. And rightly so, actually.

I can say this now. I realize now that I'm not at the elite women's player level of play. I can hold my own, but I'm really not a Team USA level player.

I can't say it's impossible for me to become physically capable of playing at the elite level. I've tried only once, and that was earlier this year.

What I can say, however, is that I don't have the confidence or mental game to play that game. I can also say if I had started playing years before I did, I might have learned that confidence. But I didn't. And I don't. And I can't play at that level.

Phew! That said (and I can say that now), at the time of team announcements, I was disappointed. Bone crushing, soul searing disappointed.

All the small injuries I had been ignored rushed at me. I lost any desire to play ultimate. Playing became a chore. Every failed throw, every bad cut, every drop became a demonstration of how bad of a player I was.

I stopped having fun.

So, I stopped playing.

I quit Mischief. I took my name off all the mailing lists and team signups. I stopped going to practice. I stopped going to tournaments. I stopped running.

Citing injuries, I started to fade from the local ultimate scene. I pulled away from my friends. I pulled away from Kris.

I wanted nothing to do with the thing that caused me so much hurt.

But it's hard to stay away from something that has been such a big part of my life for over a decade. From something that somewhat defines my relationship with Kris. From something that encompasses my social network in the same way most religious groups form communities.

It almost hurt not to play. It mostly hurt my relationship with Kris. We no longer had the strategy discussions, the after-tournament reviews, the workouts, the commuting time to and from practice and tournaments.

As Kris said, "I knew this day would come, I just wasn't expecting it so soon."

So, unlike my disappointment with Tech, I could actually do something about this disappointment. I started playing again. This time, though, on my own terms.

I've been playing the games I want to play, running the workouts I want to run, and learning, once again, you get out of life what you put in.

And I've learned to accept disappointment. It hasn't been easy, and it's a lesson I should have learned long ago, but at least it's (mostly) learned now.

When I have expectations, I have to be aware of potential disappointments. And the greater the expectation, the bigger the disappointment. I don't think I'll stop having expectations. I will, however, try to put them in perspective.

That way, when I swallow that bitter pill, maybe it won't be so big.

Good luck, Team USA.

Just because they can't throw...

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 11:03 on 28 June 2005

... doesn't mean they can't catch.

Or run.

And if they catch the disc in the endzone, they won't have to throw.

I managed to play for a half hour last night at my first ever SFUL league game. I was terribly late because I had a bug I just had to fix. Managed to do so, then dash up to the City, using Raphael as my carpool buddy.

When I arrived, I put my cleats on quickly and, against my better judgement, didn't run to warm up. When I watched from the sidelines the players weren't running too hard, so I hoped I would be fine in not warming up too much.

I, then, asked one of my teammates to throw with me to warm up my arm. He said sure, and stood about 5 yards away from me.

What the?

Dude, step back to 15.

I threw him the disc, a gentle backhand. He responded, "Oh, good throw. Nice!" in the most annoying, condescending way, and threw the softest backhand ever back to me.

Heh.

Yeah, mister, I suck. My fingers can't handle your throws, and I don't know how to run.

I actually didn't know what to expect. I wasn't sure of the skill level and didn't want to open my mouth to offend anyone or play at too high of a level.

Deciding to keep the whole skillset underwraps, I threw another two or three throws, then went out to the line. We were down 5-10, game to 15 or time, which expired in 20 minutes. When asked what I like to play, throw or run (heh), I responded, "Sure." They told me to go long, asked if I knew what a stack was, because they weren't stacking, and received the pull.

Three points later, the score was 8-10, with my having caught, threw or assisted each of the three scores.

So much for keeping that underwraps.

I desperately wanted to run around, so I stayed in most of the 20 minutes without subbing. I was worried about taking up too much game time, but the other women, thankfully, didn't seem to mind.

On one swing pass I received, when I turned, one of my teammates was open on her woman, cutting in hard, but still 25+ yards away. I wasn't sure if she could catch, and her "hard" was still very slow, but her timing was brilliant. You have to reward that. I threw the disc right into her chest, a soft throw that bounced out of her hands.

She may have dropped it, but I has very, very happy I threw to her. She'll make that cut again.

We lost the game 12-15, after trading points for the last few. When we went to write a cheer, the stand-in leader (Charlotte, our captain, wasn't at the game last night) told me I had to write the cheer because I had been at this game the longest because of my UPA number.

D'oh.

Busted.

When I told Kris about the evening, he told me I was Kramer, referring to the Seinfeld episode where Kramer learned karate with a bunch of 10 year olds.

When asked why he was learning with 10 year olds, Kramer responded, "I'm dominating."

Remy

Blog Posted by kitt at 09:20 on 26 May 2005

Remy started playing with Mischief a few weeks ago, and played with us a few weekends ago in Ashland at Cramp-Up.

That's pronounced like Amy, but with an R.

She's cute (if I were male, younger and not attached, I'd be asking her out), just a bit shorter than I am, and wears her dark blonde hair in a perfect bun when she plays. Now, when a woman (or man, for that matter, but I'm ignoring them for the sake of gender-correct pronouns in this sentence) can play ultimate and keep her hair in a perfect bun, she has really long hair.

And Remy does.

On Sunday, she pulled her hair down and began twisting it into a bun. It was the most gorgeous hair I'd seen a long while. Long, slightly wavy (probably from the bun the previous day), light and dark blonde streaks. Very pretty.

I complimented her on her hair. And, to my surprise, she responded, "Thanks. I can't wait for it to grey. I have two hairs that are grey and I'm excited about them."

Blink.

Blink. Blink.

"I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not."

"Oh, I'm not. That's the first thing I noticed about your hair."

Great.

She continued. "I love grey hair. I think it looks dignified. Classy. I really like grey hair. Paul has grey hair, too. It's cool."

Pei, sitting next to Remy, readily agreed.

What the?

I'm thinking of coloring my hair to cover up these shocking white hairs and everyone around me loves them? I'm so confused.

Actually, that's not entirely true. I'm not so confused about the white hairs as fascinated. Do they grow in white, or turn white? If they turn white, how? If they grow in white, why do I have hairs with white (and I mean white) ends and black roots? Do the cells responsible for color just take a break, then start back up again?

And is the amount of white dependent on my stress level? Because I started getting a lot of white when the girls showed up.

Odd.

To play, or not to play

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 19:22 on 14 May 2005

Today is a day when I think about retiring from ultimate. A day of incredible frustration, and displays of my personality that I prefer to keep buried, hidden, unexposed.

We were playing at the Ashland Oregon Coed Cramp-Up, a mixed gender ultimate tournament that has been held annually for 12 years.

We lost our first game handily. I'd like to say it was because we didn't warm up properly, play intensely, or gel very well as a team. That statement is certainly true, but it doesn't justify crappy play.

We won our second game fairly handily (13-8) against a team that played a very close game to a rock star team that crushed us in the third round.

Against a team that I became quite pissy at. And that frustrates me.

A lot.

Last weekend, we played at Quincy's MUD Classic. One of our opponents was Donner Party D Pool, a reunion team made up of players from the disbanded stellar mixed team Donner Party.

Now, playing against Donner Party (DP) is the absolute worst ultimate experience... DP does not, and never did, understand the concept of Spirit of the Game™. To them, any call against them is "bad spirit"; any call for them is "good spirit." The same is true for any legitimate call that goes against them, or for them, respectively. They pretend to be "spirited," but when a game is close they become snippy, claiming no calls go their way, if their opponent wasn't so unspirited this game woyld be better. They also try to get away with decidedly cheating play such as claiming a disc caught after bouncing off the ground was still up and in play. All while calling a player inbounds from the opposite side of the field.

Actual conversation between a Donner player and me last weekend. We were standing on the home sideline as two players discussed if another Donner player caught the disc inbounds or not.

Donner player:

Me: Except two cones.

He shut up.

So today in our third game, the one against the top team in our pool coming into the tournament, in one point, I'm called first in the string. Meaning, I'll catch the disc from thw pull and put the disc into play for that point.

The disc floats funny and takes a low line out of bounds, landing on the line and bouncing two feet out of bounds. I call brick and ask Kyle Schleifer if he wants to take the disc as the first thrower. There's some noise downfield, and eventyally the question, "You're taking at the line, right?" floats into my consciousness. I reply, "No, I called brick." Another person, this one closer to me, replies to me, "It landed in and rolled out." "No, it landed out. I had best perspective. I was standing right there. It was out." "You looked at the cones first. That guy," he points to a non-player on the sideline, "says it landed in." I turned to this player, while walking back to the stack, and said, "That guy isn't on the field. Best perspective on the field makes the call. I had the best perspective. And I called it out."

The conversation ended at that point, but I was incredibly annoyed. The disc was two feet out of bounds. I was standing over the freaking thing when it landed. I felt like I was playing Donner all over again with the complete lack of respect for the calls of other players.

And with any emotion of irritation, I try to figure out why I'm just so angry about the whole incident. Why, after another game and dinner, am I still obsessively thinking of this on incident? I stood my ground. I was assertive. And now I feel as if I've done something wrong and it sucks.

Deep down, maybe I think I'm becoming one of those pissy Donner players. And that's what I fear the most.

I apologize when I foul someone. I apologize when I even accidently bump my opponents. I don't participate in on-field discussions when I didn't have any perspective on the field. I try to contest and move on if I disagree with calls against me. I take myself out of games when I'm getting too hotheaded, sometimes to the detriment of my team.

But situations like the pull today make me wonder if I'm as nice as I think I am, as I want to be. Did I dig in my heels because I was right, or because I wanted to be right?

Zoom!

Blog Instead of being asleep at 22:00 on 10 May 2005, kitt created this:

Today was track practice, as are most Tuesdays during the season. Kris and I have been incorporating the pylometrics, abs and power workouts we learned at ASA, and helping train our teammates. We've also been integrating longer distance, endurance running into the workout to give us a base this early in the season.

I often wonder if a 1.5 hour workout once a week can really help much, but it's better than sitting on my ass every Tuesday night.

I guess.

Last week after the plyometrics, we ran 3 800m relays: in groups of 3, each person ran 800m, then rested as the other two runners on his team ran an 800m, too. I ran with Heather, as there were 4 women at the track, and Heather likes to run with a partner. I told her I would be running at an 8:00/mile pace, if that was okay. It was, and we were actually able to run the 800s in 3:57, 3:56 and 3:47.

This week, however, we ran a 400, an 800, then a 400. We ran a reduced run because we had a tournament last weekend, and another tournament this weekend. Fair enough.

My plan was to run a 2:00, 4:00 and a 1:50, keeping with my 8:00/mile times. Brynne, Heidi and I all ran at the same time, because we were partnered with Kris and Chris in the relay. Heidi wanted to run fast, fast, fast, so I slowed her down on the first 100 of the first 400.

The back stretch of the track had a nice back wind on it, so running fast in the first 200 yards was very easy. The front stretch, on the other hand, was a bear! That head wind was almost enough to stop a runner. Ugh.

I ran my first 400 in 1:47. Faster than I expected, but good none-the-less. I was a second behind Heidi and 2 seconds behind Brynne, who kicked in the last 40 yards to pass me at the end. I minded little because we had two more runs to run.

I ran the 800 in 3:46. Faster than my expected 4:00, and pretty good with that darned head wind. And not bad after all the plyometrics we did. I was feeling pretty good at the start of the run, and ran faster than a jog, but pretty much my natural running pace, with a kick at the end. Heidi came in at 3:57, Brynne at 4:21.

My last 400 I didn't even bother to run with Heidi and Brynne. I just relaxed into my pace, making sure I kept my arms swinging forward and backward (and not side to side as they used to do when I used to get tired), and my knees up. Before I started, I was trying to decide if I wanted to run it in 90 seconds or 100, and settled on 100. I ran a 1:37.

It's very hard to run a 1:37 400m and realize I used to run them 33 seconds faster (my best time of 64 seconds in college). But I couldn't play ultimate, and couldn't catch a disc then, so it all balances out.