CHUG Recap

Our total numbers for the weekend:

• 5 returners
  
• 4 freshmen
• 5 sophomores (4 B team)
• 1 junior (B team)
• 3 seniors (B team)
• 3 grad students (1 B team)
  

We brought a squad that wasn't used to playing together, but we could have two or three experienced handlers on each line to control the game and let the rookies cut. Our first game was against UCSC and their massive army of 47 players that they brought for the weekend.
The game started out sloppy and close, but our downfield defense really took it to Santa Cruz and we found ourselves up 7-2 at halftime. Danny Karlinsky played maybe three points, and both teams played a lot of rookies. They ran both a spread and a vert, and we had success against the spread when we held our marks and didn't let cutters get open deep. In the second half we got a little complacent and they started hucking a lot more, scoring a few goals in a row. Once we started taking those looks away again, we closed out the game 13-6. Our freshmen scored a lot in this game, and our marks got better as the game went on.

The next game was against Barley, the Chico B-team, which included George Van Pelt, former NW All-Region (2006) and UCSC player. They scored early but only once in the first half. The game ended 13-3, and we were coasting. But Barley was making it easy for us, dropping discs, macking D's right to us, etc. The game was pretty forgettable, although it was a confidence-booster for us. But our complacency followed us into our next game, against Oregon State. We saw them at Regionals last year and won 15-7 in pool play, but that was with a full team. This time they were virtually at full-strength, and we were overconfident following our stomping of Barley.

The game opened with a long O point for us that we eventually punched in. But things quickly got out of hand, as their deep pulls and tight downfield defense intimidated our inexperienced cutters and handlers started to get impatient and force throws. We also started tunneling in on our experienced downfield cutters in Tom and Steve, and we quickly found ourselves down 7-1 at halftime. OSU typically ran a ho-stack with three strong handlers back, all looking for the unmarked huck. They had two strong receivers in the middle of the field, and they looked deep a lot. We managed to slow them down a lot more by switching to a backhand force and stopping their break throws and dishy passes. The second half also had every lucky deflection and bounce go straight into an OSU player's arms, and we lost 6-5 for a final score of 13-6.

It was a little bit of a wakeup call for us, but we learned a lot of lessons in fighting back in the second half. The newer players also got their first taste of playing against a tight defense and teams that will do whatever it takes to get their gameplan going - hucking at all costs, in this case. The loss left us with a bye before our prequarters game against Redding, and we stopped by at the stadium field to watch Superfly give UC-Davis a thumping. We left to warmup at halftime, when the score was 7-0. Apparently it finished 13-1, and Superfly went 2-2 on the day.

The game against Redding was pretty fun to watch. They were a community team with some old guys, some young and inexperienced guys, and some mix. They had one baller who came down with two or three jump balls in the endzone, but for the most part we were able to get D's on them and work the field with relative ease. We took half 7-4 and I played one point in the second half, as we had a bunch of all-rookie lines out there that took care of business. We won 13-5, securing a berth in the quarters and first round bye for Sunday. On the next field over, UC-Davis was playing UN-Reno and called an "RSD line," where every player's first name began with R, S, or D. I appreciated it.

The tournament party was that night, and the theme was "boatracing" aka nautical aka pirates. We raided a local thrift store owned by a creepy old lady who us about dislocating her toe and asked us to help her over piles of clothes to the cash register side of the counter. We went to the party prepared and excited after watching Stanford pull off a last-minute win over Arizona. There were plenty of people, seven kegs of disgusting Butte Creek organic pale ale, and a bonfire. Our women's team was also encostumed, although only a few people were noticeably pirates. Some commotion was had when someone had to be convinced not to jump over the towering bonfire (although someone much taller did it later when it was much smaller). Eventually we lost a boatrace to Oregon by a few seconds (rookies need to pull their weight!) and the popo rolled up, sending us back to the house. We watched Knocked Up and ordered pizza. It was sweet (in an "aww" way, not an "awesome!" way).

Sunday morning saw us pack up and head to the stadium for our game against LPC. The last time we played LPC was at Sectionals, when we barely held on for a 16-14 win after leading 10-4. They had done a great job of jumping and poaching on our dump sets, as well as coming down with a lot of hucks to Robot and their other cutters. This game would be different, but not really by that much. The wind was extremely strong upwind/downwind, which made throwing really difficult for the rookies. We jumped out to an early 5-3 lead, capitalizing on some swilly crossfield throws and utilizing our patience to work the disc up the field and punch it in. Our grad student and Unabomber lookalike from UChicago made some great throws into the wind - so did Schlag. But then LPC started poaching on the dumpsets again, and we started killing ourselves with drops. We didn't throw into poaches or get stifled, but drops, decisions, and wind-related throwaways led to four quick goals for LPC and we were down 7-5 at halftime.

LPC did a great job of running their ho-stack with dishy passes. We shut down their handlers during their dump sets and hardly got broken, but we got killed on dishys to streaking handlers who would launch hucks to cutters who took advantage of their defender watching the disc instead of the man. It was really well-executed, and they took what we gave them. We'll absolutely have to work on stopping the dishys and ho-stack in practice, but it killed us in the second half. Robot had some great D's and goals, and we struggled a lot in the second half with the wind and decisions. We only got two (maybe three?) goals, one on Schlag's beautiful upwind huck. On the plus side, our rookies got a lot more experience cutting and cutting well on experienced, aggressive defenders, and our vets handled the poaching dump defense a lot better than we did at Sectionals. Marks were *much* improved. Loss, 13-7 (or 8).

The loss dropped us into a 5th-place game against Hops, aka Chico A. We were hungry after losing to LPC, and we jumped out to a quick lead against a Hops squad that was also looking huck-first (aside: are we the only team that doesn't live and die by the huck?). But we learned from our mistakes and defended the hucks a lot better in this game. We pressured them extremely well on defense and worked the disc really well on offense. After letting them back into the game with some costly turnovers, we ran off an 8-1 run to end the game 13-5. We played a lot more all-rookie or one-vet lines. Chico threw zone on a one-vet line, but we didn't miss a beat - we broke through the cup with a hammer from Colin, a sophomore from the B-team, and the freshmen worked it up to the endzone. Win, 13-5.

Overall, we came in a tie for 5th, and LPC won the tournament. Almost every team we played ran some form of the ho-stack, which was difficult to defend against when our players have only ever played with and against a vertical stack. Hopefully we'll work on this at practice before Santa Clara in two weeks, and we'll also be able to work on communicating switches and team defense, which can really shut down a ho-stack. I was definitely pleased with the progress the team made over the course of the weekend, especially with our marks and cutting.