Youth Club Championships

This past weekend, in Blaine, Minnesota, the UPA put on the Youth Club Championships for the third time. For the second time, New Jersey had a bid, and for the first time, we accepted and assembled a team. In 2005, we had a mixed bid but low interest, and here in 2007 we created a team with some of the best talent in the state. Unfortunately, a lot of good players could not or would not participate, and we set out with two practices and a tournament under our belt for the eight Columbia and nine other players that we took to Blaine. Under the direction of Columbia coach Anthony Nunez (CHS '98) and Rutgers coach Emilio Panasci (CHS '00), we were determined to break seed and knew that if we played to our potential, we could win the tournament.

Our flight was out of Newark at 1:00 on Friday, so we assembled around 11 at the airport and checked in and got to the gate. We had about 45 minutes before boarding started, so I put Stanford vs. Carleton from Nationals on my laptop (thanks UVTV!) and everyone gathered around. Sherwood absolutely did play out of his mind in this game, and he looks good in the ripper for the interview after the game. After a little more UVTV, we boarded and I broke out my Pride and Prejudice. I rode my combination of reading and sleeping all the way into Minneapolis, and we disembarked, got our bags, and proceeded to the two giant rental vans. It was about a half hour drive to the hotel, which was AMAZING.

This was honestly one of the best hotels and definitely the most fun that I've ever stayed in. While the motel at nationals was ridiculous amounts of fun, that was down to the people and the Kohls parking lot. This hotel made its own fun. There was an indoor water park. How ridiculous is that? I guess they took a cue from the Mall of America, and we thank them for it. Three water slides began indoors and then circled around outside of the hotel. There was a lazy river. And a giant bucket of water that tipped over every 15 minutes or so. It was wonderful. And maybe even better than the water park was the "Beach House Bar and Grill," the hotel's restaurant. With happy hour from 4-7 (meaning half-off appetizers), dinner was affordable AND delicious.

We had a team meeting at 8:30 where we talked about our expectations and rules for the weekend, as well received our kickass jerseys - a green Punisher skull overlayed on a green outline of the state of New Jersey. Even the lettering was badass. We hung around for a while until our 10:30 bedtime, and got ready to wake up at 6:30 the next morning. We wanted to be at the fields by 7:30 in time for a long warmup and plenty of time to cleat up and tape.

When we arrived, we were immediately struck by the lush green fields and immense facility. After practicing and playing on the rock-hand and dusty fields in Princeton, playing on actual grass and soft ground was going to be a real treat. We noticed the wind as soon as we got there too - that did not bode well for us, as it probably meant zone. For some reason, Columbia (and by extension, NJ's YCC team) does not do well against zone. True, we never practiced it, but we'd played against it at Nucci's Cup and done well. But there was no wind then, and no pressure.

New England came out excited, as their hard D and turnover-prone offense showed. The first two points were both long and filled with drops on our side and throwaways on New England's. On the third point we got ourselves under control, and we scored our first O point in three tries when I calmly hit Zander in the endzone to make it 1-2. Our D team came out strong and fired up as we tried to tie the game, but inability to convert on D-team offense hurt us. Once again, we managed to create turnovers, but eventually New England was able to break us down and score. The next point, Jesse threw a loopy forehand to me on what was basically an upline cut in a 2v2 situation, but the disc hung and I fought through fouls by two players to layout between them and catch the disc toeing the back endzone line. I got up excited and angry, punched the disc away in celebration, and roused our sidelines.

Unfortunately, this is when New England threw their zone. It went quickly from a 3-2 game to an 8-3 game, as they began to pull away. Until this point, we had been stopping their offense with our straight-up marks and fronting defense, and our offense had started to judge the wind and stop dropping the disc. However, their zone took us by surprise and stupid decisions led to our downfall. At halftime we talked about breaking the zone and came out a lot stronger. We started trading again, and even got in some breaks. Nobody on their team stood out besides Alex Kapinos, and Zander and I took turns containing him while other players prevented hucks to him. He was the only player we faced all tournament that I felt was impossible to shut down on defense - he could only be contained, unlike every other player we played against. He proved his worth even on defense, when he caught his own point block for a Callahan, stopping our run and putting them on top 10-6. It was the second Callahan we threw in that game, and it really took the wind out of our sails.

Still, we managed to break their zone several times in the second half, and on defense we could still force them to turn it over. It was a disappointing loss, because had the conditions been better or their zone had been taken out the equation, I had no doubt that we would have been able to beat them. But unfortunately, their zone proved too much for us to handle, and in the windy conditions our overhead throws struggled or weren't even attempted. Some of the bright spots included the defense of Jake Rainwater, whose long arms and surprising speed created a lot of D's, and Alex Kinsey's smooth handling in the zone. We moved on, tired, to Derek Gottlieb-coached Denver, the 3rd seed whose first game had been an easy romp over Madison.

We started this game lackluster and uninterested, once again going down 2-0 and 5-2. Fortunately, Denver's offense was predicated on hucks to their tall, athletic receivers, but once we managed to clamp down on the marks, the hucks stopped and our quicker defenders were able to stifle the in-cuts downfield. After trading to 7-5, we scored 4 straight to take half, then go up 9-7. Then it was our turn to collapse, as Zander threw his second Callahan of the day, their deep pulls continued to pin us back, and nervous throws and a lack of cuts sent them on their own 4-0 run to go up 11-9. But calm and collected, we stormed back with yet another 4-0 run, inspired by strong downfield defense that frustrated handlers into forcing hucks against our marks that all ended up either far beyond the arms of the receivers, or in our defenders' grasp.

Receiving at 13-12, Josh hucked to me and I almost killed myself with a futile layout into Will Deaver and a golf cart, but I slowed up and saw that the disc was well out the back of the endzone. We got the disc back quickly enough, I picked up, and saw Zander curling around the breakside towards the openside back corner of the endzone. I threw the backhand, hoping that the winds that pushed Josh's huck out the back wouldn't do the same to my throw, and Zander reeled in the throw 50 yards away in the back corner of the endzone in front of two defenders, with a couple feet to spare. The last two points were turnover free, and we closed out the game 15-13 for the upset win.

Denver was a team that relied a lot on their handlers and big receivers going away from the disc. We were able to limit the damage their handlers could do with give and gos and upfield resets, while taking away the deep options with our marks and shutting down in-cuts with our legs. Standout players on Denver were handlers #8 and #12, along with #10 who was their go-to guy downfield. He came up huge on a lot of early grabs, although we thankfully managed to limit his damage later on. We did have two ridiculous plays of our own - Jesse hucked backhand around a forehand forcing mark, throwing a bullet to the breakside of the endzone, which Stephen tracked down, utterly roasting his defender. And earlier, Jake Rainwater annihilated his defender on a jump ball just outside the endzone, for his first real sky of the weekend. We called the play "Make it Rain."

Our final pool play game was against 0-2 Madison, who had just come off of a 15-7 loss to New England. We started strong for once, and we took half 8-5, finishing the game 15-9. Madison, like Denver, loved to huck. But unlike Denver, they had a massive disconnect between their handlers and receivers. Their handlers would huck whenever they got the disc, regardless of whether or not the cuts were there, and the receivers were usually well-covered and indecisive cutters. Except for one receiver, #14, they never had anyone on the receiving end of the countless hucks they tried to unleash on our straight-up marks. The game passed pretty uneventfully, as we worked the disc on the breakside easily on offense, and on defense we didn't have to work for turns, they gifted them to us.

That left us 2-1, in second place in our pool, awaiting the winner of the Minnesota-Cincinnati game from Pool A. We had a bye now, and I chose to go over to the Atlanta-Philly mixed game, a preview of the finals. It was an exciting and back-and-forth game, but hard cap put a damper on Philly as they fell 12-9 to a strong Atlanta team. But drops looked like Philly's main problem, and if they could cut those out then they would be even with Atlanta. Eddie Peters had some great D's on Ollie, and the teams looked pretty close.

Afterwards was "dinner at the fields," which turned out to be nothing more than salad, cheese, and two half-slices of pizza while watching a slideshow. After we ate our free food, our team just got up and left; there was no reason to be in there. Interestingly enough, I was the only shirtless person in the room. We quickly returned to the hotel, where we showered and waterparked. The hot tub felt amazing, as did the lazy river. Fun times, and we headed back to the hotel restaurant for a late-night meal, since the dinner we'd been provided was not sufficient. Soup and salad at the hotel bar and grill was delicious. I wish we had one of these places everywhere we went. Wow. In bed by 11, we had to get up at 6:15 because our games started at 8:30 the next morning.

When we made our way down to the hotel lobby, we had a table set up with bagels, croissants, bananas, etc. for us to munch on as we waited for everyone to come down. The day before, when some people went to Mall of America I asked for them to pick me up some long green socks to match our uniforms. Well, there was a much-anticipated presenting of the socks, and it turns out that I got fuzzy green frog socks. The foot was basically a frog sticking its tongue out. Cute, comfortable, and completely unexpected. I wore them and played great. They even had little grips on the bottom!

Our quarterfinal matchup was against Minnesota, a team that had been shellacked by Seattle and Pittsburgh the day before. We came out strong and started to do the same. Our man defense and offense took us up 5-2 before long. There was a hell point that we won mainly as a result of our defense forcing turnovers closer and closer to their endzone, since they absolutely could not work the disc on our defense. Fred Tsai and Jake Rainwater got D after D, and Freddy even scored two of our first 4 goals. Ben Feldman was consistently D'ed up by Zander, and if not, he would throw the disc away right afterwards. After my huck was just out of reach of three of our players, I got a layout D right outside the endzone. It was my first baited layout D in a while - I hadn't quite gotten the hang of it in college, and most of my tournament so far was focused on completely denying my man the disc. A few points later we scored twice, as our first goal, a huck from Freddy to Bo was called back on a travel. Right afterwards, Josh hucked to Jake, but Brian Li spoiled the party as he skied both Jake and Jake's defender and put us up 5-2. Minnesota went into a huck and set zone D right after receiving the pull. Our D line was caught by surprise and turned it over quickly, but we worked it on their man defense again to go up 6-3.

This was the turning point in the game, when Minnesota threw their four-man cup and absolutely shut us down. We started moving the disc well enough, but silly drops and turnovers brought it quickly to 6-5. With the heavy crosswind, they trapped us on the sideline where any hammers or overheads were directly into the wind, and we couldn't cope. Our handler give and gos weren't gaining us any yards, and the downfield poppers and wings were not getting us anything. At 6-5 we turned it over after working the entire field, and again at 6-6. At 6-7, we started moving the disc better, but all it took was one throw to put us on defense and them just outside our endzone. After a D, one of their players laid out to get the second-effort in the back of the endzone, for them to take half.

Coming out in the second half was more of the same - although there were turnovers both at our own endzone and theirs, we could never punch it in, no matter how many times we stopped them from scoring. At 8-6 we dropped a hammer in the endzone. Up 9-6 Minnesota called a timeout, and during the timeout we discovered that hard cap would go on in 5 minutes. Throughout the whole game they'd been taking a lot of time between points, which resulted in me yelling "90 seconds" to them a whole lot and then my team yelling at me to stop being an asshole. But when it came down to it, I was right and they were wrong. After Minnesota took forever on the timeout, they scored and we received at 10-6. Our strategy was reminiscent of wildwood - go for the two-pointer, aka big huck. My throw to Zander was just out of his reach, but our man defense forced a turnover close to their goalline and we scored quickly. Hard cap could only have been minutes away. We pulled, went down, got the D, and hard cap went on. Demoralized, we turned it over, before playing good defense again and I threw the game-ending goal to Zander for us to lose 10-8.

It was a real heartbreaker. With our man defense and man offense, we outscored Minnesota 7-2 in that game. Unfortunately, we could only score once on their zone defense. That was the difference. The crosswinds stopped the majority of our crossfield hammers and overhead throws, leaving us with swings and quick handler motion that they could stop as they flooded the middle of the field. I really, really wanted to play in the semifinals against Seattle. This game was especially brutal because when we finally did break their zone, we scored again but didn't have time to complete our comeback. It's games like these where I wish we had observers or timekeepers or something to keep timeouts short and limit the time between points to 90 seconds. I have no doubt that we could have had 15-20 minutes or 4 or 5 more points in that game.

That led us into another game against Madison, 15-1 losers against Seattle. We started off strong, going up a couple of breaks, but our defense was extremely lackluster. Our marks were terrible, and we gave up too many hucks to open receivers. Despite being up 12-8, we found ourselves receiving on universe point, which we scored without any turnovers. The Madison team played as we expected them to, basically the same as they did when we beat them 15-9. But we did not come out sharp at all, and we almost paid for it. I don't remember much from that game, besides our terrible marks and equally terrible decisions on offense. I think this was the game where I basically threw a blade to Freddy, who made an amazing catch about ten yards out of the endzone. As soon as he caught it, I walked off of the field and hid behind a trashcan. He threw to Zander for the goal, and my defender was puzzled, I'm sure. We faced Denver again next, who wanted to play a shortened game. We agreed to play to 9.

This game was never in any question. We came out harder and actually focused, and Denver played like we did in the last game. They turned the disc over a lot and made poor decisions, while we played hard defense and played reasonably good offense. I had a few turnovers in this game before Nunez reminded me to play simple, and I started to move the disc faster and smarter. We had one point where all seven of us on the field touched the disc that was probably our smoothest offensive point of the tournament. We closed out this game 9-4, and it was an amicable, good-spirited game that gave us plenty of time to decide what we wanted to do after we finished.

Half of us decided to stay and watch the finals, which unfortunately were happening at the same time. I started out watching the open finals, but after a few boring points typical of a finals game, I decided to head over to watch the mixed and girls finals. I did manage to catch Alex Kapinos being an absolute beast, but New England was still losing. On the girls side, Seattle jumped out to a quick 6-2 lead. I'm convinced that if Oregon had started sooner, they would have been able to win the game. As it was, they closed to within 9-7 but no further, as they ended up losing 14-10. Seattle tore through Oregon's zone early on, and I wonder if that was the ultimate difference.

The mixed final was where the action was. As I got there, Philly took a 6-4 lead that continued to 7-5. For one of the goals, Aman took Grant deep and skied him for the goal - that was a familiar sight for the Philly and NJ players, but not the Paideia sidelines! Then Noah pulled a fast, bladey backhand that one of the Atlanta girls dropped. Afterwards, we found out that we both called a drop if Atlanta had a girl catch it. Noah told Grant that he was going to break him for the goal, then proceeded to throw the around backhand to Justin Principi to take half 8-5. But Atlanta was a changed team after the half, as they methodically worked the disc down the field and opened the game up with hard defense and big hucks.

It didn't hurt that Philly started trying to huck to their girls - I counted three overthrown or misread hucks to girls that looked perfect on the release, as well as one huck from a girl that tailed out of bounds. Atlanta took advantage, at tied at 9-9, Mark Dundala tried to lead Noah into space on a dump throw that got picked up in the wind, and Grant skied Noah for the Callahan for Atlanta to go up 10-9. After the previously mentioned girl huck that tailed out of bounds, Atlanta went up 11-9 before Philly could stop the bleeding. They almost got a break when Scotty came off his man to get a poach D on a girl, but the disc floated more than he anticipated and he could only lightly tip the disc, not enough to get it away from George, who was waiting patiently behind him. Atlanta, 11-9.

During that point, incidentally, I saw/heard some of the nastiest and really uncalled for comments by some Paideia parents. When Noah made a clean bid on Michael Terry (nearly getting the D), his momentum caused him to roll on the ground afterwards, coming up on Terry's ankle/achilles from behind. Mike Terry crumpled to the ground and had to take an injury after this accidental and freak injury. But the Paideia parents accused Noah of trying to injure him, saying that he'd been making reckless and unspirited bids all game, which was just a ridiculous claim. First of all, Michael Terry had taken injury subs earlier in the game after no contact with Philly players, meaning he was nowhere near 100%, and also, Noah's bid was completely clean, as were all of his during that game. It wasn't a no-chance bid where he landed in his knees from behind, it was a legitimate bid where he bumped him from behind after rolling on the ground. Rob Olson and I got loud and obstinate defending Noah at that point.

After the goal, Philly finally managed to punch it in, after working the disc cleanly and calmly down the field. But they couldn't manage to break Atlanta, no matter how hard they tried. By this point, Atlanta was playing George, Grant, Ollie, and Allen Jarvis, trying to prevent the break as much as possible. In fact, Atlanta's next three goals were all thrown to girls - Sophie, Paula, and Lane for the win. Lane's goal was a really nice layout grab at the front cone of the endzone to end the game - if she hadn't made that catch, the game would have almost certainly gone to universe point. All in all, it was a great game that I loved to watch as a fan, not just because I knew 75% of the players on both teams.

We saw Ben Swerdlow pick up yet another individual spirit award, and somehow New England got the team spirit award with a perfect 5. Stephen and I wanted Ben to give them a 3 or 4 after our game, but Ben gave them a 5 anyway, robbing Cincinnati of their deserved glory. Oh well. I'm just wondering what Pittsburgh did to have a 3.5, even lower than our 3.83. Back at the hotel, we enjoyed a dinner made up almost entirely of half-price appetizers. We were sitting nearby the Philly guys and had some nice conversation and banter - they're really my favorite team/area, probably because we play the game the same way - take no prisoners defense and hard, gritty play.

Later, when we tried to get back to the restaurant for half-price desserts, we found out that the kitchen was closed (oh no!), so we walked to Wendy's after some SEPDA kids to get some Frostys. After yet another walking through the drive through adventure, we had our delicious treats. Back at the hotel, I spent about an hour or 90 minutes hanging out with SEPDA and a few North Hills kids (who never actually did come inside the room) before heading to bed before our 5 am departure. Thankfully I packed before bed, unlike Brian Walter, who held the whole team up in the morning. But it didn't matter, as we got to the gate right as the plane started boarding - perfect timing!

My next post will be more of a reflection than a summary of YCC's, and if I'm feeling ambitious I might even write about what it feels like to play in my last-ever juniors tournament. *sigh*