When was the last time I played on a competitive men’s ultimate team in a tournament. My first year of law school, maybe? It’s been several years. This weekend I played at Terminus with an Atlanta team. Surprisingly, I’m not nearly as rusty as I expected to be.
Friday went with Jenn to meet a bunch of other Atlanta ultimate folks for Sweetwater happy hour. It was an absolutely gorgeous evening and I met (and re-met) a bunch of people. It also never hurts to drink a little beer. Went for Pizza afterward and came back relatively early to prep for the next day’s games.
Saturday was the first day of pool play. It went pretty well. We lost badly in our first game, but came out strong in our next two before getting kicked around a little in the second half of our last game. I feel like my play was somewhat hit-or-miss. I’m definitely a step slower, especially in getting to top speed after the first few steps. I feel like I get to 80% really quickly, but my acceleration slows down a bunch, so it can take a while to catch back up to someone. That’ll come back. We’re also running an offense I’m not particularly good at or happy with, but improvement will come there, too.
Scout came out to the fields with me on Saturday. I had to tie him to a tree so he could be near us but still restrained from running out onto the field like an idiot. Probably wise. Every point I was in he stood at the very end of his leash and stared intently at me as I ran up and down the field. He didn’t do anything else until I came off the field except whine quietly to himself. Such a pathetic little Scouters.
Tournament party that night was at WhirlyBall. If you’ve never played this game, think bumper cars + basketball + whiffle lacrosse. I didn’t end up playing because I got sucked into a rousing game of the drinking version of Up Jenkins. I ended up being pretty good at that. After the party was the after-party, which lasted until the second bar closed at which point we decided to call it a night since a) we were losing an hour of sleep and b) we all had to actually get up and play ultimate the next day.
My alarm clock? It knows what time it is. By that, I mean that it sets itself through some magical technology. Unplug it, plug it back in, carry it across timezones, whatever. It knows. What it does not know, however, is Daylight Savings Time. So when my alarm went off at 7:30 so I could be to the fields by 8:15, it was actually already 8:30. And when I didn’t notice that until almost 9:00, I knew I was kinda screwed. I missed almost all of our first game today on account of that. Our second game was against the Birmingham team, which comprised a whole bunch of folks I already knew. We beat up on them a little bit, and I felt like I played a really good game both offensively and defensively. We ended up losing in the semi-finals to the eventual champions, but all-in-all it was a great tournament.
Now I’m tired, sore, and sun-burned. First day of work is tomorrow, too, so that’s a good thing. I was getting a little tired of having nothing to do, and I’m pretty sure a number of my friends will be happy that I’m not constantly harassing them on GChat anymore.
Tags: AFDC, Terminus, ultimate, WhirlyBall
Hope your first day goes well!!