casual ultimate » tournaments

the games are starting in four minutes… march 20, 2008, approximately 7pm - scandal has converged to the hotel Milton in rimini, italy and are waiting patiently in a first floor hallway, excited to see for the first time what the titcombs have in store for this year’s dress code. as has come to be expected, scandal was the best-dressed team at the tournament. the in-game uniform: collared polo shirts (made from the latest technical fiber) in pink and baby blue, paired with plaid shorts (again, technical) in blue and brown. the pre-game warm-up attire: an argyle print longsleeve shirt, and a pair of linen-type pants. the off-the-field attire: a sweater vest, a black sportcoat, and some aviator sunglasses to protect us from the glare from the paparazzi camera flashes. we are dressed for success.

the games are starting in one minute… march 20, 2008, approximately 11pm – scandal has put some food in its belly, and heads for the opening party on the beach. time for the paga-rookies to pay their team dues, acting as wine stewards fighting through the crowd to scoop up the cups of (free) red wine being dispensed from behind a row of tables. the rookies prove to be exceptionally good at their job, which led to some personnel/roster issues the following day, but we’ll get to that later. soon enough, the crowd tires of wine and sand and the cold evening air, and the party moves across the street to the paga staple, a place where the beer flows like wine, and the people flock like the salmon of capistrano; a little place called - the barge. setting the tone for the weekend, car bombs are ordered by the dozen, and most of scandal is out well into the early morning hours.

the time is running… but, unfortunately, many on scandal are not, despite our rather late first round start time of 11:30am. it seems our rookies started us off with a little too much wine, and we all finished the job with plenty of car bombs. but our savvy leader, having been through this before, assembled a team of 16 players, ensuring that we could afford to be down a few players at various times on the weekend. so day one begins with yours truly watching (i use that term loosely) from the sidelines, and i wasn’t the only one to suffer this fate. despite the self-handicapping, scandal takes care of a young british team, super mannschaft, with a score of 14-3. mannschaft had been talking a whole bunch of shit the night previous on the beach, but they couldn’t back it up on the pitch. probably because their jerseys didn’t feature a large phallus. next game starts in a couple hours, so we’ve got time to head back to hotel to deal with some incidents at the hotel for which we’re being held accountable. a meeting with the hotel manager, and one player eviction later, we’re free to take much needed naps to sleep off some hangovers. [that situation sounds worse than it was; basically, one player was asked to leave the hotel as an example to everyone that the hotel was doing something about the incident. but the manager was very reasonable with the whole situation; he made a reservation at a hotel around the corner, paid for it (as we had already paid for our rooms), and allowed the player to still come over to the hotel to hang out and eat breakfast.]

the rest of day one plays as expected – we beat the other teams (10-7 and 13-2 respectively), while playing hungover and missing a few guys. i played game 2, but not really in game 3, as my pounding headache returned later in the afternoon. awesome.

friday night comes and goes, and is generally low-key for most. that was both a planned thing to do, as saturday’s games determine whether a team plays up to 1-8 bracket or not, and the natural side-effect of the entire team getting completely shit-housed the night before. but, the night is not completely free from scandalous activity, as one teammate does not return to the hotel that night, and when he does show up the next day, he is without half his clothing and does not have a wallet. these items are delivered to him later that day by the object of the previous night’s affection. most of the team, and a lot of the tournament, has the good fortune to witness this exchange as it occurs in the front row of the stadium bleachers. comedy ensues.

saturday, scandal picks up where is left off, winning it’s first two games 15-4 and 13-5. in the first game, i realized i might be a better thrower when i have a hangover. despite feeling much better this day, i was chucking up pure garbage; whereas the previous day i threw a couple goals and no turnovers. awesome. that 13-5 game was our first of four games played on the arena field, and we used that opportunity to show the rest of tournament that we were for real. freespeed, our opponent, is a solid team and having beaten us in a previous year, thought they might be able to do it again. we answered that question by getting out to a 5-0 lead and never looked back. as the afternoon rolls into evening, scandal plays its final game of the day, a potential trap game against a fiery bologna team. for the first time in 6 games, scandal finds itself trailing by one for a span of a couple points. the italians are playing well, connecting on some well contested hucks, and scandal is off our game a bit. but one mark of a good team is being able to win despite not playing its best, and we were able to do just that, winning our closest game of the weekend 10-9. scandal is in the quarters. have fun tonight kids, but not too much, tomorrow morning we play sexxxspensive; then it’s on to quarterfinals.

saturday night’s party is back at the club, la otro mundo, after a few year hiatus. scandal scores a booth to chill in while the freestyle competition is going on. this party is, frankly, rather boring, so we leave. we go hit up the two brother’s gelato place , and head back to the barge, our home away from home.

scandal is up for an early game (9am) sunday morning, and we’re greeted by a cold, windy, and occasionally rainy, italian spring day. our first game is a placement game versus sexxxspensive; winner gets the better seed in the quarterfinals. given our history with this team, especially after the events of last year, they have no chance against us. no team with a sexxxspensive player on it will ever beat a team that i am on. its not going to happen. anyway, scandal proves that weather will not hold us back, and we beat the euro all-star squad 9-6. the weather continues to go downhill as the day goes on, with our quarterfinal game against hardfisch (germans?) a zone-heavy, super windy game. our offense plays great, working hard up-wind, scoring after having to complete a few dozen passes; and they do it point after point. we may not have been broken that game, which is a real accomplishment in that wind. scandal wins 12-6, with the final goal coming minutes after the real heavy rain started falling. soaking wet, but feeling great to have that monkey off our backs, we pack up our stuff and head for the shelter of the big tent. scandal is in the semis.

4:40pm sunday; it’s cold, windy, and raining hard. sexxxspensive is beating up on no tsu oh in the first semi-final of the open division. scandal is huddled together in the main tent, trying to be warm and dry, yet still somehow prepare for the upcoming game that starts in 20 minutes. sexxxspensive has just beaten no tsu oh to earn a spot in the final game. and then the we hear that familiar jingle.. the games are starting in four minutes… our semi-final game has been moved up 10 minutes, but no one had the courtesy to let us know. but it cold and pouring rain outside, no one wants to go out there until we absolutely have to, still, we have to warm-up somehow. well, there’s a crappy band playing on stage.. dance warm-up. and so it goes. scandal dances around while the young brits, huck & sea, are out doing a proper warm-up of running and throwing. the games are starting in one minute.. we finally head outside and put 5 on the line. the second semi is under way. the kids from england play a hard fought game, but scandal is better, playing a superb game as if we were playing in the sun while the brits were stuck in the rain. we continue our streak of convincing victories, winning this game by a score of 14-7, and taking the second spot in the open final. holy shit.

scandal, you’ve just won your way into the finals of paganello, you’re cold and soaking wet, what are you going to do now? we’re going to the barge! what better way to recover your body after a hard day of playing than by dividing up for boat races of jager bombs versus car bombs? yeah, i can’t think of anything better either, bottoms up; tomorrow you’re playing for a world championship…

hey blog! how’re things? i guess its been a while.. a month? well i guess i’m a bit embarrassed. but honestly i haven’t had anything to blog about except love and romance and the total absurd money pit that is wedding planning. exciting yes. affordable? doubtful. poor papa town. at least i’m the only daughter. i’ll try not to post about wedding stuff but i can’t make any promises.

in other news.. guess who won paganello? bjorn. single handedly i might add.

this just in from our casual ultimate quality control : bjorn had a team. a team called scandal. who knew? i figured he just went out there by himself and ripped beach ultimate apart. either way i believe we can now say chicago is the home of the beach ultimate champions of the world.

the entire globe. think about it.

and in even other other news.. mr. brizzle and miss casual are breaking up their happy home. mr. brizzle has bought himself some real estate. a real home for slider which he so truly deserves.

and in other other other news… our own chicago son, mr. chuckworth townington, is headed to chicago. soon even. stay tuned because im sure shennanigans will ensue and we want you there.

okay thats it. i feel so much closer to you now blog. really. this time has been special.

edit: i expect all the people / events mentioned in this post to be blogged about by their respective casual ultimate staff memebers.

There were a lot of great things that happened this weekend at Nationals. I talked to Becky about life. I said what-up to Vijay after he sent me a benediction last week. I saw that Mischief is a really great group of people who care about each other immensely. I saw Tim Murray as a pretty respectable, mature individual who loves the game (that was really over the course of the season and not just this weekend). I saw the Ring/Backhoe social circles in motion. I saw how nothing really changes in that regard and how the lowest common denominator: drinking, mocking, hooking up, and other pretty dumb things seem to shine through in most cases. I felt the tug towards romance, and resisted it. I struggled not to judge myself and my team-mates at times. By Sunday, some of my better friends on the team had become so irritating to me that it was almost too much to be in a room with them.

Mischief lost in Quarters. Shazam showed up and played hard in all their games. They are good folks. I saw my humor turn towards ridicule and mockery this weekend instead of just light-hearted observation. I saw stress and anxiety bring out the best in some people (our late innings come-back against Shazam really made me happy to be on Brass Monkey). I saw one of the sickest D’s I’ve ever seen AGAIN from Wendy Chan on game-point against Shazam against a guy (Ladd). It was just unbelievable. Better, I think, than the one last year in semis that Wendy had. I saw Nate, the guy I would lie down in traffic for, one of the greatest team-mates and players I’ve ever seen grace a field, not win a title this year.

The sacrifices that people make to be at Nationals and to play at Nationals are unreal. I think maybe the best moments of the weekend were Saturday night after games were over, seasons were over, and dinner was over. Monkey sat around one of our condo units and told stories and gave speeches and just really enjoyed each other. I laughed more on Saturday night than I have since the last session of One Degrees in Tempe. What a soulful, filling experience it is to just laugh with each other.

I got to introduce Nate and Becky on Saturday night. It was like introducing someone to my family. I got to just say, “Look, Becky. This is the guy that I’ve told you about. This is why I love playing for him.” They talked for 10 seconds and Nate drove the conversation as he does the huddle, and it was just pure and simple. She looked at me after Nate had left, and I could just see that she understood. In 10 seconds, she just understood why I like him.

The first time I went to Nationals was in 2004, and I had been diagnosed with mono on Monday and was not able to play at all. My team, Machine, went 0-7, my new girlfriend at the time, Sarah, had way cooler friends than mine (Brood et al), and way cooler ex-boyfriends than me (Michael Jamkung, formerly Namkung). I had a knot in my stomach that weekend as big as a fist and I didn’t play a single point. I do believe the antibiotics that I had taken gave me a skin reaction that made me look like I had frickin pink polka dots all over my body too. I was so terribly unhappy. I was so hurt and hopeless.

My second trip to Nationals was in 2006 with Brass, and I had not played a point of Ultimate (other than the weekend prior) since the end of August due to a horrible ankle sprain. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to play at all. I prayed that my higher power’s will be done and that I could just be present and do his will. I played and played great. I really brought joy to my team, and in our big semifinal loss, I played one point, and I didn’t feel, at any time, like I was being cheated. I wasn’t hurt or hopeless. I was proud and honored to be on this team. My team had a lot wrong with it that year, but it had a lot right with it too. We have a rookie this year named Mike that reminds me of me last year. He’s just happy and proud to be with this group, and that’s a really awesome way to approach Ultimate, I think. On Saturday night last year, I left the team dinner to be with a good friend in a hard moment and grew closer to a few people. I wasn’t the life of the party that night. I wasn’t making some hot girl. I wasn’t doing anything but being me and doing what I thought was right. That was awesome.

This year, I went to Nationals healthy for the first time, again with Brass Monkey. This year, we had something that we didn’t have last year: the ability to pull together and play big in big moments. Our hearts weren’t fragmented and in close games, we were able to play up. I wish that we could have given ourselves a chance against Shazam instead of dropping down to a 7 point deficit and not getting our engine started until 12-5 or whenever it was. We played them to 11-14 and were really close to a couple blocks on that final point. It’s a little too much to ask to score 5 in a row against a great team like Shazam with the season on the line. I wouldn’t have put it past us though, the way we were playing.

On a personal note, I don’t think I’ve ever pulled as well as I did this weekend. They were huge airy bombs and they were all in bounds until the Shazam game. I would kind of like to just go up to Seattle or somewhere and scrimmage Shazam for 4 or 5 hours with Brass. I just like playing against them. I want to play a lot of points against them. It’s really fun. I don’t have very much fun at all against Mischief, and I’m not entirely sure why. I guess I can’t really think of anyone on that squad I like to guard for some reason. With Tyler, I’m usually backing him. With Kyle Smith, I’m usually busy nearly biting my tongue off while he elbows me in the face. With Shazam, it’s just a battle though. I love it. They are good, they are fast, the throws are on the mark, and for whatever reason, I like playing them. I like playing d and beating them and mashing their faces into a fine paste and then dousing their faces in kerosine and lighting them on fire and then breaking their mark, zipping down field for a wide-open 15 yd under and throwing a buttery goal to Nate up the line, while a faceless Shazamer runs after me with his burnt eyes trying to figure out what happened and why he will always be hideous for the rest of his life and never have children or friends. Whoa, sorry about that. What I mean to say is: Ultimate is fun.

This week’s episode of the Chris Farley show:

Chris Farley: Hey, Steve Finn. ‘member when you were on Sockeye?

Steve Finn: Well, yeah Chris, I do.

CF: Man, you guys were awesome…

SF: Why thank you, Chris.

CF: ………God, I’m so STUPID. I’m such an IDIOT.

SF: No, no, Chris, you’re doing fine…

CF: Really?…Oh, man…..You remember when you were on Brass Monkey?

SF: Yeah, yeah I remember, we won it in 2005.

CF: Man, you guys were soooo good….

SF: Thanks, Chris.

CF: …..God, I don’t know what I’m DOING on this interview. I’m such a FAILure….

SF: You’re doing fine, Chris. Really.

CF: You’re just saying that.

SF: No, really, Chris.

CF: Well…remember when you won your third consecutive Masters title at age 47?

SF: Chris, I’m not sure that’s happened yet although I’m sure it will.

CF: Oh….why did I SAY that?! I’m such a MORON!

SF: No, Chris. You’re really giving a good interview.

CF: No, I’m not. I’m making all kinds of mistakes all the time.

SF: Well, Chris. You know I’ve learned over the years that it’s not about whether you do things perfectly or not. Everyone makes mistakes. It has more to do with whether your mistakes ever result in something other than a National Championship. I think that’s where I’ve had a lot of success in my life. I only make mistakes that somehow lead to me being a National Champion.

CF: ….

I saw Ray Parrish’s teeth from about 500 yards away, and a few minutes later, I could see that the rest of him was also there as he continued to walk towards me. That guy was so huge for me at Sandblast when I had heatstroke and couldn’t take care of myself. I would marry him if I were some girl with really huge fake breasts, the way he likes. Sidenote: Can I just say that the reason Starsky and Hutch is a masterpiece is because it makes fun of homophobia? Can I just say that right now? I have made a living on that kind of humor (or no money at all as I look a little closer), and guys acting like they have no emotions and like they don’t care about their friends or anything for that matter is just not human. I care about my friends.

Thank you to Bil Elsinger for all the great photos and write-ups of the Mixed Division this year, which is a real division with uniforms and everything.

Dragon foot, ball of yarn, bamboo pole, Chinese boy…Prune Candy.

When’s Tempe?

cleats? check.
jerseys? check.
toiletries? check.
socks? check.
butler’s rain jacket? check.
OU jersey to trade with Nielsen for haymaker jers? check.
Non-playing Machine jersey for Soda’s Doublewide jersey? check.
one frisbee? check.
book to read on flight? check. (Ira Glass’ New Kings of Non-Fiction…pretty awesome)
UnderArmour everything? check.
cash? working on it…
camera? bill’s got it. check.
OU wristbands? check.
Ipod and ITrip? check.
swim trunks? check.

condors? check.
bravo? check.
doublewide? ohhhhhhh check!

the ability to bring it together? CHECK.
focus? CHECK.
determination? CHECK.
blood-hungry defense? CHECK.
cool-as-cucumber offense? CHECK.

i think that’s all i’ll need for this trip…

love,
vijay

Cheers

So my team does cheers after games sometimes. Not really all that often these days as my room-mate, Henrik (the mastermind behind all of the cheers), is no longer an active player on the team, but we still do some crazily elaborate cover-cheers when he makes it out. Last year the big hit was Gin and Juice (the Gourds - folky version) “mind on my monkey and my monkey on my mind” kinda thing. It was a solid jam with me laying some heavy fiddle on it and Lauren Casey filling it out with some mando. We never did get around to doing a cover version of Devil Went Down to Georgia, although on the train in to work the other day, a homeless guy sitting near my feet asked me if I had a viola in the case, and I said “Naw, it’s a fiddle”, and he immediately launched into the first few verses of that Charlie Daniels classic on a crowded commuter train. Awesome. Thank you so much for doing that. Without grassroots support from people like you, this day would never have been made possible (the words of Aaron W, my former room-mate from Paulina).

Back to the lecture at hand. This year, I have some work to do to cover a really tricky riff from some Chili Peppers song called “Hey-o” maybe and an awesome bassline from a Beck tune. If you are going to Nationals and are in our pool, that’s good news for you. If not, maybe get elinimated before us and then check out some of the post-game magic.

Why do I like the cheers? It really brings this great energy to the team. It is something that is very Brass Monkey, and without it, it just doesn’t feel like the team for some reason. We F around a lot and have a good time regardless, but cheers bring it to another level. It’s also indicative of the idea that Brass plays great Ultimate because we’re having fun and enjoying each other. Last year, in my opinion, we didn’t enjoy each other as much. There was some chemistry that was a little off, and there was a general lack of ease that isn’t there this year that kept us from playing great when we needed to. That is not to say that we will go any further or even as far as we did last year, but I think the soul of the team is intact this season. It feels good and loving. Sidenote: maybe one of the things that I don’t completely like about Open is that this loving piece is pretty much missing. At least it doesn’t show up in the same way as it does in coed. Nothing says loving like spiking on each other in practice and kicking a water bottle. What Open gives up on the positivity scale, it may make up for on the humor scale though. Ladies, I love you, but guys are just WAY funnier. I met this guy once. Oh man. So funny.

Flying, Magic

So Regionals briefly: it was cold, windy, and rainy. Needless to say, I excelled in that environment coming from the Midwest and practicing on the shores of Lake Michigan for 3 years in college. We had a relatively easy road to finals with arguably the easiest pool (Bozos, Night Train, and Denial) and Golden Spike upsetting Mischief to face us in semis. Golden Spike, by the way, is a phenomenal team, and deserves to be at Nationals. However, since they have a couple of guys on their team that are COMPLETE pricks, no one is too sorry to hear that they lost 3, count them, 3 games to go to finish 5th. Our game against Shazam was VERY upwind-downwind, and each team had 2 breaks I believe. 12-11 was the final with both teams essentially holding serve. These guys play really well. I like playing against them because they don’t cheat, they don’t really get chippy, and they play good Ultimate, even though they have one of the stupidest names I’ve ever heard. By the way, there is an awesome story about Shazam in this month’s issue of Poof magazine. With Shazam, everything is so dramatic and flamboyant; it makes me just want to set myself on fire!

Ok, enough. Love from the Left.

a guest post from another of our friends in the dirty south… mike d.

I’ve been playing ultimate for some 12 odd years. I love the game, love the people I’ve met, love the competition. I guess through my career I’ve been blessed with some awesome experiences: throwing the game winning goal to go to college nationals my senior year, being involved in some great back end games to get to Sarasota, coaching a sectional qualifying northwestern team. But, something I had yet to experience was a stomach punch game.

Well, that experience, I’m sorry to say happened last weekend.

As most of you know, I moved to North Carolina this past spring for a job in the big city. I started playing in Spring league and met a couple people from this team called Los(including Haley’s brother-in-law Jb, who is Hales south.) They suggested I try-out. The schedule seemed light enough and the team competitive enough to keep me interested without burning me out like in year’s past. In all honesty, by November for the last 5 years, I’ve vowed never to play this game competitively again because:
a. My body is a wreck.
b. This sport is filled with cheaters.
c. In college, I always ran into this dude on Indiana, who was roughly my size, but like 20 years my senior, 20lbs heavier, looked like Grizzly Adams, and walked with a hellacious limp. He kept playing and playing, looking more ragged everytime I crossed his path. I did not want that to be me.
…So throwing caution to the wind, I ended up trying out.

Unknown to me, there was a talent influx, including 5-6 former ring players, some out-of town ballers, and a bunch of talented college kids. I could tell within the first practice that there was a lot of unharnessed talent. It was just a question of if there was enough time to gel.

Flash forward 4 months to last Sunday…after battling in the ac regionals, including a revenge victory against a team we were 0-3 against on the season, we met up with pike for the second time on the weekend in the third place game to go.

I can’t remember the exact play-by-play, but we took half 8-5. I had a couple of scores(I play offense now, who would’ve thought), one from chasing down a play, the other off of a tipped pass on an underthrown disc. The celebration is seen here…

Dance for me monkey…

Anyway, after the first half, we turned it up, making some sick athletic plays including…

…this from a sick defensive freak named Matt Thomas. I’ve seen him get more lay-out d’s in a weekend, than most teams get in a tourney…

a sweet hammer catch off a blading hammer…

and Ray Parrish being…

…a crafty…

…veteran…Score!

Anyway, we run the score up to 14-9. And from here it is kind of a blur, but we had several scoring opps, including a couple endzone drops/throw-aways, and a game winning score called back because the thrower’s foot was in the endzone.

This is a picture after said score…

…not so fast Los.

So, Pike battles back and rattles off 5 straight, then takes two out of the final three to win 16-15…season.

So, I’ve experienced the stomach punch game and it is more painful than I could ever imagine, but unlike the past 5 years, I really have a desire to get back on the ultimate field already. This year’s experience of meeting all these young and hungry players, mixed with the crafty veteran talent you need to have a national caliber team has rekindled my fire faster than years past. Hopefully, my teammates share this desire and grow enough to bring Los to Sarasota next year.

Anyway, good luck this weekend Chi-town teams and my Iowa boys and girl. Hope you all make it and maybe we’ll meet up next year…or in 10 years when I look like a hobbled garden gnome.

mike d out

Ring and Backhoe dominate their respective divisions. Ring cruises through the double-elimination format defeating Truckstop in Finals, while Backhoe’s Sunday semis and finals opponents (Scandal and Wicked) score 3 and 2 points, respectively. Tourney champs line the sidelines with some well-deserved brewskies to cheer on NC’s Los in the game-to-go. Los seemingly has the game in hand, leading 14-9 when the cap goes on. Unfortunately, Los blows the lead – maybe nerves and inexperience got the best of them. It was hard to watch and we feel for our los buddies and wish they were making the trip to ’sota with us.

Can everyone please stop moving west to play ultimate? It’s so frustrating to only see “real opponents” twice a year - sorry if this is rude or offensive to our recent opponents, but come on. Backhoe faces their serious competition only once before nationals when the team spends over $10k (and countless travel hours) to fly across the country to face all the tough teams at once at ecc, which takes place over 2 months before Sarasota. And probably more than 2 teams from the northwest region that failed to qualify could paste many of the teams that get bids from other regions – let’s spread the wealth around!

What’s the solution? How can I be casual about this?

In other news…. Nope. I have no other news. Life is ultimate right now. With the exception of griping about fast food establishments – I would normally avoid fast food at all costs, but driving to tournaments dictates otherwise. Due to a massive pile-up traffic mess on hwy 95 on Sunday, we were forced to an exit that had McD’s and Wendy’s (which had failed me on Friday) – we stop at the golden arches. Why do fast food places insist on putting cheese on burgers that don’t come with cheese? I specifically order the Big’n'Tasty b/c it doesn’t have cheese. “Do you want cheese on that?” NO. Get my burger… they’ve added cheese. I go up and get a new one. I hate doing that shit but I hate processed cheese even more. Friday’s Wendy’s experience, I order the “regular” ¼ burger whatever that doesn’t come with cheese. Do I want cheese? No, thank you. Not once, not twice, but 3 times I get the wrong order, once with cheese, once with absolutely nothing, and the 3 rd with cheese again (can I get some extra spit with that?) I’d better stick to fine dining.

BIIIIIIG shoutout to all my teams that have regionals this weekend. Obviously good luck to Machine, NEMESIS, Mr. Briefcase in TULSA-town (sorry ’bout it), and my other fave teams: Brass Monkey, Golden Spike, Ambush, Black Molly, Olio, Boneyard, list goes on. DOMINATE!

My team-mate Coco likes to say that the most meaningless stat in sports is the halftime score. The second most meaningless stat is who won Northern California Mixed Sectionals (unless you count last year when that team went on to win Nationals). I’ve lost my point.

Reset button.

Brass played great. The sun shone. The children laughed and danced. That one kid shouted angrily and just gritted his teeth for 8 bars when I gave him one of my solos. There was singing and laughing and guitar-playing and fiddling. There were beers to be drank and teams to be heckled. There was a full beer can to be thrown at my chest by a girl named Molly who thought that would be funny. You’re not funny, Molly. Go away and give me back any beer that you have on your person.

Mischief was missing Tyler and it was windy. Both of those things played to our strenths. I am still very happy about a decisive win over Mischief. Of course, Sectionals means nothing, and the score is officially 0-0 again. Nothing that happened counted. The Flycoons are really frickin good (even with Tim Murray on the roster), Mischief is really frickin good (’06 champs), Shazam is really frickin good (’04 champs reloaded with 1 loss on the season), and then there’s Family Style (SC studs with awesome women), CTR (deep and good), Horde (formerly Whore$hack), Golden Spike (punked us at Labor Day on Sunday morning), and at least two more teams that could play big at any time and beat damn near anyone. I hate our region sometimes. Other times I really love it. Regionals should be fun. If we get out of our region, then there’s a bunch more teams, not the least of which is Slow White who is the only team that has beaten us at Nationals since 2004 (2005 in pool play, 2006 in semis). My captain, Nate, always responds to news of really good teams or great players being picked up by our rivals/opponents with “Great, I wouldn’t want to win any other way.” Or something like that. I like that attitude. I want to beat all these teams at their best. I want us to be our best and to just be better than their best. That would be fun.

Oh, details? Yeah, I don’t know many details really. Our deep game was clicking against Mischief, even in the high winds, and we took half by a lot and never let them back in. Final score: 15-8? Not really sure. This was not Mischief’s best effort by any stretch.

I somehow missed Revolver beating Jam at Sectionals. That is pretty cool. Idris blogged that Revolver would pretty much have to be the 2 seed at NW Regionals with Furious as a 4 seed or else there would be some flawed logic. Idris is always right.

sectionals sends machine out to the plush polo fields of naperville for the third weekend in a row. if meningitis doesn’t take down our team, this three week stretch of running on concrete will. one layout was enough to let me know that i didn’t ever want to do that again; i think the grass out there is currently more abrasive than that old-school astroturf. fortunately, we weren’t going to have to hit the ground too often to make it through to regionals.

saturday morning greeted us with crisp fall weather - clear skys and chilly air, with temps in the mid 40s. good hittin’ weather, as john madden would say. the open bracket consisted of 7 teams, which makes for a less than ideal schedule, with 2 guaranteed spots to move on to round two. but with regionals in scenic tulsa, it stands to reason that pretty much any team that wants to make the trip, will get to play. oklahoma, the sunshine state. gorgeous. gorgeous. anyway, first game puts the 1 seed (machine) against the 2 seed (haymaker), because that makes perfect sense. whatever. the game goes to machine 13-7. i think, you’ll have to verify with score reporter. during a game, i, at best, know what half we’re in. what’s the score? i don’t have a fucking clue. when people start shaking hands, that’s how i know the game is over.

next game puts machine against the wizards of ball state. for a while, i was worried they weren’t going to show, it’s not sectionals without ball state. the one thing you can ALWAYS count on from ball state - as a defender, you have no fucking idea when, how, or from where they are going huck the disc; but huck they will. they don’t give a shit if their receiver is 5′2″, 50 yards downfield, and double covered; that disc is going up. i think they scored 3 on us, in a game that lasted about 35 minutes, resulting in an hour and half wait until our next game. sweet. i love sectionals.

next game was against some team, presumably from indiana somewhere, and apparently not good at ultimate. i wish i had more to say on this one, but i don’t know what happened, i blacked out. 13-2.

at this time of the day, we’re scheduled for a 4th round bye. as is the team we’re going to play in the 5th round (illinois). and there’s an open field. wtf? i love sectionals. captaining occurs, and machine vs. illinois gets under way promptly. good work guys. illinois comes out fired up, as they always do against us; we come out mildy awake, as we always do against them. half is 7-5 machine, with our offense getting broken twice (good work us). but, we will not have a repeat of 2005, and machine takes the second half 6-1 to make the final score 13-6 (again, score reporter, it’s highly possible that i’m an idiot).

saturday night’s entertainment was supposed to be watching the michigan/notre dame game (tivoed), with tbrizzle and pfil doing shots for their respective team’s miscues. two 0-2 teams.. two rookies QBs.. the scouting report said tbr was going to be hammered quick, and that’s almost as entertaining as drunk cho. but someone had to go throw a wrench in those plans. dissappointing to say the least.

meanwhile, back at sectionals sunday morning. first round bye for machine, awesome. apparently some team bailed saturday night, which left the schedule at one more game of round robin, then finals. the last round robin game was illinois B. we almost let them score a point, but brown bear had some sweet goal-line D to deny the youngsters. 13-0 machine. saturday afternoon, illinois had beaten haymaker in a tight game to take over the #2 spot and earned the right to play us again in the finals. again, illinois was hanging around early in the game, thanks to some offensive miscues by machine. but again, we woke up at halftime and only let them get one in the second half. 13-6 maybe? yay, machine is sectional champs. sweet.

at this point, some rookies went on a beer run, and we settled in to watch the haymaker/illinois rematch game-to-go; or some meandered over to heckle the briefcasers. post-tourney shenanigans included:
- watching football on a tv that schulz brought out (plugged into tbr’s truck for power).
- brown bear trying to make me do a shot of soco with him. no way i’m sharing a bottle with menigitis boy, so i suggest we wrestle for it; he wins i do a shot. i think you can guess what happened.
- kolb getting hammered off 2.5 old styles and running around the coed field between points.

i don’t know what to say about this weekend other than (a) puppet regime is an awesome team to play with and (b) we won our section. i am so psyched to be able to play this fall - i realized at around 10 am on saturday morning, as i was changing my pants on a sideline filled with strangers, that i would have gone nuts without playing some sort of organized ultimate. plus, it was great to play with justin again (same attitude, different glasses) - no carrie this weekend but i’m looking forward to seeing that lady again. i also ran into tucker of 30-year-old spring break fame, although apparently i’m blacklisted because i couldn’t score her a sandwich. sorry.

enough mushy stuff, onto the weekend. thankfully we had a first-round bye saturday, because it was raining cats and dogs and quite cold. we pulled up to the fields just as the sun was coming out. after a round of introduction, running, stretching, tossing etc. we played mako (15-4 - they seemed to do better in other games later that day), then levitation holmes (15-6), then a long delay followed by sandwiches and then AMOB out of brooklyn (12-3) and harpoon, the new haven team (12-6). it was windy as hell, every point was upwind-downwind. puppet’s offense did very well against the wind, aided by a number of h.o.t. lady and gent handlers.

a bunch of us went for dinner at el bandito, a killer local mexican joint in middletown, ny that serves tequila shots with the check. luckily we didn’t have to pick up that check, because the TD was with us and bought us dinner in exchange for garbage and cone pickup on sunday. we drank the tequila shots anyways, then watched men in black II and went to bed.

the best thing about going into the finals game on sunday morning was the 11:30 start time. the hotel crew ate a hearty meal of pancakes, french toast, oatmeal and lots and lots of butter at a local diner. seriously we each had a half a stick of butter on our meals. that gave us all the energy we needed to power through a game of long and windless points against crafty, another brooklyn team and the #2 seed (shocking sectionals spoiler: top 3 held seeds). we ended up beating them 15-11. i felt like there was a bit more competition than we had last year in the
central plains section. apparently there are a few former puppeteers playing for crafty.

that’s it for the east coast correspondent. the surprise in the region was in the east new england tourney, where slow white lost to quiet coyote and had to play through the 2nd place bracket on sunday, eventually beating quiet coyote to take 2nd place overall (tandem was first).

So at ECC this weekend, the Buzz Bullets descended on the US. They won worlds in Perth, AUS last November, and everybody kind of wrote that win off since a lot of the top men’s teams didn’t make it down to Worlds. They came to ECC this weekend though and really frustrated teams. I saw some of their semifinal against Jam and most of their final against Sockeye (which they lost on double-game-point after being up the whole game).

On D, they run a transition zone-man-zone that my friend Stephen was trying to describe to me, having played against them before in international competitions. They apparently come down in zone, flip to man, and then they go BACK into zone or something like that. It’s pretty confusing, and I’m no strategist, so you’ll have to read more about it from the “thinkers” out there. One other thing they do is bid huuuuge. They are springy and explode on their lay-outs.

On O, they force throws through traffic and jam it up the line and throw outside-in hucks that don’t hang in the air and just are faster than their opponents a lot of the time. A couple of throws went up in the final that just looked like poor choices really, but BB read them well and were really effective even against the big guys. In the rain, they all had these really cool gloves too. I’ve gotta look into these gloves because the catches they were making in traffic were pretty fantastic.

They are sponsored by a “shutter company” (not sure if it’s camera shutters or window shutters), and most of them work there. They’re all really tight and play and work together, and they all have all the skills. That was a really noticeable difference: they’re not specialized like US teams. (Note to self: move to Japan for that reason alone.) On Sockeye, you’ve got Chase and Nord dominating in the air, Ben Wiggins and Jeremy Cram exclusively behind the disc, and a bunch of other highly specialized O and D players. The Buzz Bullets all have great skills, all play both sides of the disc well, and are all EXTREMELY FAST and hyper-intelligent…and hairless.

Nord got skyed twice this weekend by guys that were about a foot shorter than him on the Buzz Bullets. Pretty sick springy bids by these guys. All in all, they really won over the crowd and everybody was rooting for them and at times booing certain members of Sockeye. It seems like BB is on to something that the rest of the world may need to get wise to or be overtaken, like in so many other areas other than sex, by the Japanese.

I guess the only other comment I wanted to make was that this game was played really cleanly. There were no cheap calls that I could see, and Sockeye did not make any calls to give themselves the edge. There were a couple of times that I expected a foul-call when the Buzz Bullets made a physical play on a high disc and in Sockeye’s defense, they did not stop play and just hustled back on D. I thought this was awesome. It inspired me to play cleaner Ultimate and really take it on myself to win the damn disc, no matter what.

In the coed division, Brass played pretty poorly. We are ironing out some things and were not short on players by any stretch (with 20 or so). We lost to Flaming Moe, Shazam, Slow White, and Mischief. We beat Horde (Whoreshack) and Flycoons (they are really good this year having picked up Tim Murray and what’s-her-face). There was a great moment where I called a foul on an accidental collision Basically, I started coming under after a deep cut and then Greenough ripped a bomb to the back of the endzone and so I turned back around and ran into my defender who was trailing by about 10 yards and didn’t see the disc go up. Timmy yelled from the sideline, “No one from Northwestern could’ve gotten that disc.” Luckily, one of his other team-mates standing close to me said I had a play on it. Nice spirit, guy.

Shazam handled everyone except Mischief who gave them the game after being up 7-2 only to lose on double-game-point. I think the rematch in the final went to Shazam as well and it was not a 1-point win. I don’t know the score though. They beat us in a rainy, zone-y, game in which we took half and then lost 11-15. Their trap zone looked pretty good, and they were trapping on both sidelines.

That’s all I have to report from ECC. I saw Becky and met her boyfriend, Pat. I approve.

the first competitive summer league tourny went down in history with bill finn’s team beating team pizza pizza beer in crushing final on saturday. it was a long day (3 pool play games then semis and finals) and hot as blazes but the games were fun and mr. baker deserves accolades for the season and tournament.

unfortunately russel’s team had to forfeit their game after he drove miss casual all the way out to naperville. so he took off into the air conditioned truck just as pizza pizza beer finished up their first victorious game against the benjamin team. second game was bill finns team and ppb lost a tough fight in this game. last game ppb squeaked out a win against professor berg’s team. so being the 2 seed in our pool put ppb in the semis against the clark team.

we had expected to face the 1 seed from the other pool, a team with many cu friends on it lead by jake cooper. there was some drama in the pool play however which left three teams going 2-1 and cooper’s team being eliminated from afternoon play by point differential.

ppb won their semi game with lots of time to sit in the shade and wait for finns team to battle out a long game against bakers team. both teams were playing hard and trading points but eventually bakers team lost out and we faced our earlier opponents in the final. we played a great first half and were up 7-6 but the second half was all theirs and they beat us by 4 points i think too be the first competitve league summer champs.

highlights included : lyrica handblocking the s%!t out of bill finn himself in the final game and then scoring for pizza pizza beer which gave brown bear material against his new roommate for the rest of his natural life. a great blob tag game with team pizza pizza beer as a warm up for the semis. rick bollinger and joe little being absolutely everywhere at once. and bk showing up in time for semis with tons of cold stuff and those spooky demon eye contacts.

miss casual was too wiped out to enjoy the post tournament festivities at rwip and brown bear’s but it was a great time and hopefully someone will post some comments about the after parties.

on a last note cu will dearly miss two of our friends lyrica and tiger who are taking off for the east coast very shortly. you guys are the bee’s knees. send us posts from the east coast.

(this just in for ms. mimms, our nemesis correspondant)

It’s been an exciting week to be a Nemesis player.

Last Friday, the eleven of us that got into Boulder early went on a rafting trip where we almost, but not quite, managed to launch Candice out of the raft going over a class IV rapid. That girl is tenacious.

Saturday we mostly got whooped on by other teams (ok, all our games were actually close but we only won one, grrrr), but that night featured a pre-hot tub group shower and an exciting 45-minutes of full-contact pool keep-away. During keep-away, we learned that Candice “has no off switch” and that Val thinks it’s amusing to pretend to lick the ball.

Sunday brought one more win (Layuma - avenging a Boston Invite loss), and two other losses by small margins. It’s clear that we need to learn to close games. That night 6 of us didn’t get into Midway until 2am due to a delayed flight. Thanks to Brownbear, Bill Finn, and other Machine boyz for making the time fly by.

Wednesday featured practice followed by the Beefster’s 21st birthday celebration. I think she said it best, so I’ll just reproduce her “morning-after” email verbatim:

“First and foremost, thanks to everyone who came out and bought me drinks last night. I had a great time and it just reminded me how much I love Nemesis. Seriously. I love you guys and couldn’t have asked for better teammates.

But now to recap:

From 9pm to around 10pm I consumed more shots than I can remember. I tried to count them this morning and came to the conclusion that I consumed AT LEAST 10 drinks between 9 and a little after 10.

10:30 - Ended up in the Black Beetle bathroom (that was inevitable) at which point Yaya decides it’s a good time to head home. Good call, Yaya. So we head home and I’m going to assume we teleported back to Hyde Park because I don’t remember the 30 minute drive home AT ALL.

The next thing I know it’s 4 in the morning and I’m waking up on my bathroom floor. So, I crawl into bed and wake up 3 hours later at 7am to get ready for work. While walking to the bathroom I was shocked to discover that I didn’t have a headache and wasn’t feeling nauseous.

And that’s when I realized I was still drunk.”
Finally, Thursday involved an email exchange with the TD’s to Cooler, at which point we realized that Nemesis does not in fact have a bid. They won’t just add us because 9 teams is wacky, so we’re now exploring a situation where we split into two teams. We have no idea whether that will work out, but opposing team names are being solicited nonetheless. Meagles favors Autobots and Decepticons. Beef’s suggestions include: Unicron and Primus (more transformers), Apocalypse, nemesis of Cable (more X-Men), Ares and Cheetah, nemesises of Wonder Woman, Deacon Frost, nemesis of Blade, Doctor Doom, nemesis of the Fantastic Four, Judge Death, nemesis of Judge Dredd, Sabretooth, nemesis of Wolverine (X-Men, again), The Legion of Doom, nemesises of the Justice League. Candice votes for Dumb and Dumber. Your suggestions appreciated.

Game for game..here we go

Game 1: Jam
We go up 6-3. Offense was flawless. Defense got breaks, but we never really created a turn, Jam just dropped a lot. Then there came the timeout. Jam decided to stop sucking. We decided otherwise. They went on to win 15-6 if I’m not mistaken.

Game 2: SubZero
Zero got rid of some scrubs, got rid of some old guys, and took the top half of the College Champion Wisconsin Hodags team. They were solid, and we came out like chumps. Another spanking.

Game 3: Revolver
We finally got acclimated to the mile high air. We finally got pissed off at our piss-poor performance. We decided to hurt on Revolver. Offense was literally FLAWLESS. It was beautiful to see. Defense decided to put a hurt down and got some sweet layout D’s with breaks to boot. Fun game.

Game 4: Boston Ultimate
The combo Dog/Twisted team has had a rough start so far this season. Lots of big names still. Tight game the whole way through with us trailing most of the way. At the end, Boston is up 13-12, and straight to 14. Offense scores. 13-13. We pull, Mini gets a layout D and then puts up a perfect flick to Joel Wooten streaking into the endzone. Game. First time Chicago beats Boston.

Saturday overall: 2-2. Started roughly with us craving EPO more than Floyd Landis. Ended beautifully. We got our pizza, tried to watch the showcase game b/t Rare Air and Ozone, but got rained out.

Went back to the hotel (Boulder Outlook..awesome), and jumped in the pool/hot tub with Nemesis. Well, everyone did but me. I like the first shower.

Team dinner at some restaurant that wasn’t memorable, and then most of us are too bushed from the day and the lack of oxygen to do anything that night. Except for Hens. He parties it up with the Ambush ladies and says that Jam was out in full force that night also. I hate those guys.

Sunday

Game 1: Johnny Bravo
First time I felt like a team had a bunch of dudes who just plain outran us. And I’m not talking about Beau alone. Home fields, the entire team, and acclimated to crazy thin air…recipe for success. I’m not sure what was with us either, but we were NOT ready for this game. We came out flat and timid. 15-6 or something embarrassing like that.

Game 2: Truck Stop
TS came off losing to Boston on universe point. This was our game to win. We ended up losing on universe to them. I can’t describe how disappointing this game was to us as a whole. We should have crushed this team.

Game 3: Condors
Once again a slow start buries us. To be honest I don’t remember much from this game. Offense wasn’t looking good. Defense was getting the turns but crashed and burned when it came to converting. Looking forward to a very cold Boulder Brewery beer near the end of this game.

Thoughts from the weekend (basically the real stuff that I paid attention to):

1. Mike Shiel is awesome. I mean AWESOME. Best player in Midwest?
2. Mini. Man I’m glad we stole this kid from Briefcase.
3. New guys. Awesome. Ed, Andy, Denis (and Mini, Mike S.) Made contributions all weekend. Are gonna be pivotal come Regionals/Nationals.
4. We were missing some of our BIG names…Timmy, Bill F., Kolb, Gary, Cash, IU boys (Dave Campos and Gravy). Could this have been a completely different weekend?
5. Bjorn Gunderson. He’s starting to love grass again. It ain’t all beach in his world anymore.
6. Joel Wooten. He’s good. Like better than Mike Shiel good.
7. Will I stop turning the disc over?
8. Are we doomed without a small, squirrely Asian handler? (Cho-bot and Tyson are both gone this season)
9. I’m pretty confident about this team. I think we will be better than last year. (I realize this weekend’s results are not reassuring..but trust me). However, I wonder if we can break into quarters/semis? Playing Bravo (not so much Jam) was a real awakening. These guys are solid top to bottom. And I mean SOLID.
a. Beau Kittredge. A lot of us talk about how we are athletes, etc etc. The truth is most club players are still at most, really good ex-high school athletes. (Hens is also an exception). Beau is the real deal. That dude is an ATHLETE. On 2 different occasions I saw him run down hucks where he was the 4th dude. He outran THREE guys ahead of him (including his own teammate) in a span of like 40 yards. That is nuts. I am by no means the first person to notice this, but I guess it really struck me this weekend (I was pretty drunk during semis last year at Natties…you can hear Bill and I arguing on the UV disc during the game about who is better…Beau or Alex Nord).
10. As you can tell..I have crushes on many dudes in ultimate.
11. Machine. Cooler, CHC, Sectionals, Regionals, Natties. Not much time, but I am confident that things are gonna fall in place real quick. A tourney like this creates a massive learning curve. I’m glad we started out with such intense competition; we know what we need to do now to get to the next level. Watch out Bravo. I don’t plan on ever feeling like I did after that game against you in Boulder. You’re on the shit list.

Good Morning, United States.

Now I will begin vomiting all over this blog, much in the same way I vomited all over the finals of Sandblasty except instead of red gatorade, it will be metaphors. Also, I *think* I can use capitalization and punctuation because my sister is no longer able to stop me. If this sentence and the title of the post aren’t followed by a bunch of commas, then I am wrong. , , , , , ,,,, , ,, , , ,, , , ,,, ,

I’d update you on the West Coast, but what is there to say really? It’s way better than everywhere else, people are open-minded, the straight-male-to-straight-female ratio is 1:10 in San Francisco, and the straight-male-to-gay-male ratio is also 1:10 in San Francisco. In other words: I’m kind of a big deal out here. I’ve been walking around the city, whipping my hair wildly in the summer (50 degree summer) breeze and occasionally turning abruptly to freeze a whole block of Market St. with a little “blue steel”. I usually arch my back when I do that…like a dragon.

Enough about casual though, what about Ultimate? Well, here’s the deal. July out here is for the most part everyone’s break for the season. Players enjoy kayaking, hiking, camping, surfing, and making sweet love on their wives. What have I been doing? Oh, the usual: almost dying at Sandblast, writing profiles for the Brass website (http://brassmonkeyultimate.googlepages.com), and not hating my parents anymore. Yeah, you read that right. I sort of stopped doing that a few weeks ago and by communicating that across the internet, I am making it even more real.

The team I took to Sandblast was called Dago Tea (pronounced “day go tee”) and was dedicated to my mom, Mary Jane, aka Mama Town. We celebrated our Italian heritage and family, and I think that was part of a shift that really took place the following weekend at this thing called the Landmark Forum. Now, Landmark is a little weird, but it sort of gave me permission to make some changes in my life that I really like, and it talks a lot about keeping your past behind you, living a life of possibility, and creating whatever meaning you want, instead of letting your past dictate the meanings of things in your life.

One of the possibilities I created was being responsible for loving my Mom and Dad, exactly as they are and with all of our history. I always have the choice to resent them and in doing so avoid responsibility in my own life. “If my parents hadn’t raised me the way they did, I wouldn’t be such a moody bastard right now.” It’s a fun game with big payoffs and even bigger costs. The costs are that I am not present in my life a lot of the time, and I don’t take responsibility at times for my work, my play on the field, and for my relationships.

…

I feel a little bit like Ron Burgundy after he says, “And that, of course, was our newest reporter, Veronica, Corningstone. She’s really great. I’d also like to share with you that we are currently dating and that she is quite a handful in the bedroom.” Maybe I shouldn’t have broadcast all that to the world, but what can I say. I love my parents, and I wanted to sing it from on top of a mountain, but I didn’t have a mountain, I had a blog and new priveleges from my sister…

So back to disc, Brass starts practices up again next week, ECC (or Spawnfest for the coed division) is in 3 weeks up near Seattle, and the coed division is crushingly good this year. Mischief is returning its all-star cast (including Tyler Grant who played Dago Tea at Sandblast), Shazaam Returns is a Seattle powerhouse team that went out to Boston and dominated for the most part and boasts one of the all-time greats in Steve Finn (Let’s recap his last 3 years of Ultimate, shall we? ‘06 Masters National Champion with Throwback catching a callahan on championship point, ‘05 Mixed National Champion with Brass Monkey, ‘04 Open National Champion with Sockeye), and Slow White is making the trip out from Boston after losing in Finals of Nationals last year to Mischief and beating Brass in semis. It should be a good time, and I hear that they have decided to have Open and Women compete this year as well. How fun for them.

I just joined a new band out here called The Wayside State which you can check out here: http://www.myspace.com/thewaysidestate. They have really good, original songs, and all they want me to do is solo on the fiddle. Perfect.

I’m the CTown Hustler; you stay classy, planet earth.

well this weekend was quite a marathon of frisbee and beer so we need to break it down into three pieces. hence the post title courtesy of the king of r&b, kels. (when is that new album dropping anyway?)

the show

baker had told us very directly that we were not allowed to get crunk the night before the tournament so friday night the cu staff prepped for the spring league tourny by hanging with the ladies of cnd in the double deuce and neglecting bike tricks in favor of dinner and lively conversation. jessi’s newly finished bike is so pretty it makes unicorns jealous. then saturday am it was road trip dance party with dp and liz and the cu staff. all of team paulina was singing my humps by 830am. the first game for teamocil was a close one which we lost by a single point inspite of heroic leaps by rory and rob. so into the loser brakcet we went to face off against our own it dept. and his partner in crime ms. angela. baker tried to psych us up by performing some sommersaults on the sideline and yelling and jumping a lot but to no avail.

thats when the beer came out.
and then it was on to our last game which we won long after everyone stopped caring. our only sustenance was old style and pizza that tasted like cardboard. it was hot and we were tired. however in spite of all the hardships and the fact that we are the most underperforming team in cusl history, we had more fun playing with teamocil than we deemed possible. funnest. team. ever. we watched the finals in which there was briefcase on briefcase action, mr. phillips vs. the volkmans (or team earmuffs as we like to call them). team ledonne took it to the house and won spring league again. nice work people. must be in the dna.

our team’s spirit award went to mel (seen above avec beach towel even thought she ditched us later on) and the league spirit award went to teamocil although it was totally unmentioned and apparently means nothing at all. our cu spirit award goes to vijay and his bumble bee shorts and new moustache, seen here flexing for the camera. on the way home listening to my humps again, the part about mixing ‘your milk with my cocoa puffs’ came on and all that could be said was ‘im not sure what a cocoa puff is, but ill bet ive seen vijays.’

the after party

after being comatose and icing the heck out of various body parts we lost our ride to the lee-martins wedding celebration. congratulations to you two. you are the best and most fun couple ever and were sure you have many more years of love and happiness and winning summer league together. we ran into some people coming from oak park at twisted spoke. the spring league party ended up being very nice. beautiful night out. great location. fun crowd. we spent the evening chatting with the coopers and baker and rob. lets just say middle names were changed in leaglly binding contracts and im getting a package in the mail which i am not allowed to open at work. the real insanity began after miss casual went home to dreamland so im gonna let ms. ulty explain since she brought her a-game to the hotel lobby portion of the evening.

the hotel lobby

…that two-hour dinnertime nap must have done the trick, because after closing down the party at twisted spoke ms. ulty followed rob, jake and much of the spring league committee (sans baker) to carol’s for some country style dancing. technically we dragged jake, by dismantling his bike and putting it in sparks’ car before he knew what was happening. we’re tricky that way. man carol’s is fun. we even ran into one of ms. ulty’s former neighbors; we couldn’t be friends because our parents were feuding like the hatfields and mccoys, and now whenever we run into eachother it’s some sort of awkward hello. but what’s more awkward is when rob and jake start yelling her name in a bar. repeatedly. there was dancing, pitcher beer drinking and even sleeping on tables. not sure whose idea it was to stay until the 5 am close (probably the friend of the blog who wished to remain nameless), but it almost killed poor devin/david. next it was an ill-advised trip to the burrito joint next door and then over to chalet sparks for a sleepover party. thank goodness sober was driving - you’re the best, not sure if we told you that enough on sunday morning. i’m still not so sure how i feel about going to sleep when the sun is coming up and the birds are chirping, but it couldn’t have been with a better group of kids (unless miss casual had stayed awake, of course).

well the summer league tournament was an affair to remember. even one of the b(r)s showed up with slider. (thanks for coming out carlo…represent). after a stellar season, team M went down early, losing to mike d’s assassins in the first round. but we couldnt have lost to a more casual team. ms ultimate was greatly missed but hopefully she did something she’ll regret in california. after miss casual’s best attempt to tackle mike, we played the 3-4 game against lyrica and tiger’s team, who went down to cho, thor and liz. it was a fun game, especially since we were drinking high life before, during, and after the regulation play.

after the comissioner and i went on a beer run, we played another game in the loser bracket (for no apparent reason) while thor’s team took down the assassins. miss casual tried to get out of the game by playing drinking games with the casual crew (pfil, dp, lyrica, tiger, mike d, and joe little) but got guilt tripped into playing by jason, baker, and the cutest kid around, quinn (the kales’ little one).

after winning that game, the team M love fest broke up in time for some spirited sideline adventures during the finals. dp (the big spirit winner) and pfil kicked his disc’s ass while baker and mike d. spooned. at one point mike spiked the game disc onto the field and made some dude in spandex call for a new disc. (buddy shoulda called for some frickin pants while he was at it. its a family program bro.) baker even blushed at some of the heckling… and at mike and i ripping new holes in the already disappearing shirt on rob. rob, who was making fun of yours truly for her casual lifestyle with dan benjamin, admitted he “love(s) the blog” before being permitted readmission to the casual collective.

the post title comes from thor, who reigns victorious with his team after the finals on saturday. he was talking about the precision with which cho plays ultimate. sometimes he seems to calculate how much awesome-ness to put on any one throw, so as to save some for later. his awesome-ness suffered later on that evening at the real world house when he was still roaming around wearing his championship medal. (how lame is the medal? if he ever leaves the house wearing it i give you permission to tell people he won the long jump at the gay games.) but bk’s cooking brought us back to life as usual and all is well in the casual universe.