Sean Ryan Recap

This was our last tournament of the fall season - three tournaments in four weeks. This was also as close to our spring team as we've seen all season. Eighteen of 23 members of Bloodthirsty 2008 played this weekend. It's a little sad to know that we won't play another tournament until Santa Barbara in late January (unless this Bay Area scrimmage happens), especially with CCC on December 1st and 2nd with teams like Wisconsin and Colorado attending. But now we can get together as a team and start developing and talking strategy. We played the entire fall with a rudimentary vertical stack, and until Sean Ryan we only played force forehand and backhand defense. I'm excited and ready for the spring season. It starts at practice today.

The weekend started off slow, and we came out sluggish against Humboldt. Maybe it was the late 11:30 start time. Maybe it was BNeil dislocating his shoulder in warmups (cutting!). Either way, soft cap went on as we took half 8-7, making it a game to 10. They were a huck-first team with athletes and some throwers, but they overshot their receivers a lot. We gave the disc right back as we tried to play the hucking game too, but our throws were all over the place. We only scored on one huck all game - when we worked the disc up the field we couldn't be stopped. We closed out the game 10-8 and moved over to face UCSC B.

The Santa Cruz B game was over quickly. Our rookies played a lot this game, got some layout D's, and made some ridiculous grabs. James caught an overthrown huck with a great layout in the back corner of the endzone for us to go up 1-0, and the game was basically over right there. We won 15-3 and got ready for Claremont.

Claremont had the best sideline cheer we heard all weekend - the zombie chant "Braaaaains!" was hilarious and a welcome alternative to anything out of UCSB. They also hucked a lot, and this game was close solely because our defenders got skied in the endzone over and over again. It would have been better if they'd at least jumped. This was without Stout. Also, during this game I broke a kid's face when I threw a backhand huck endzone to endzone. He jumped in front of my hand as I was throwing, and he got smashed in the eye/nose. Also notable was my lefty high backhand break for a goal and Doug remarking that my shorts were "so tight that I can see your pulse." We won the game 15-13 and drove back in heavy rain on windy, windy CA-17. Think miles of S-curves, Columbia alums.

On Sunday we were scheduled to play UCSB in the quarters after their 17-16 loss to Cal which decided the G pool. The game started fast, with both teams hucking effectively and playing hard defense. Tom played almost every single point in this game. We were playing well, but we had a really hard time stopping their hucks, especially to Tyler, who towered over us at 6'5" or 6'6". We basically traded early on, until they broke the game open with a few breaks towards the end of the game. We ended up losing 12-15, after a couple points where Jameson called a dubious foul on Schlag's deep D and Rory called a terrible foul on Sherwood's point block of his huck.
Rory: I respect you, Sherwood. Can't you respect my call?
Sherwood: Not if it's a terrible call like that!
But my favorite part of the game was Rory yelling at Ethan, screaming, "You're a fucking faggot! You're not going to play another point this whole fucking game!" about midway through the second half.

We moved a few fields down to a confusing diagonal field to play Oregon, who were sans Dusty but plus Stout. Both teams played a lot of rookies, and after going down 3-0 we finished the first half even on breaks 7-8. At one point in the second half, we played with only six players on the field after Luke thought that Stout scored for Oregon (when instead he dropped the disc) and walked off the field. There were also chippy discspace calls by the Unabomber, showing off his angry, wily veteran side. Oregon disagreed, but the 11th edition rules say what they say - let's all learn the rules! At one point Sherwood and Tom just threw to each other for the entire offensive possession. In the middle, Unabomber's deep voice broke out with the classic co-ed heckle, "Throw to your women!" We ended up winning that game 11-10 after Colin got a monstrous layout D on a breakside in-cut, and it was on to our third game of the season against LPC.

LPC beat us on Sunday of every tournament we'd played so far, and Sean Ryan was no different. True, we had a larger and better squad, which explained why the game was much closer. We were even on breaks until 9-9, when we started miscommunicating on offense, dropping discs, and leading receivers out of bounds. At one point they got two breaks in two minutes after turnovers on first throws after receiving the pull. Earlier in the game, we played some great defense and I got a stall in the back corner of the endzone, then turned the disc over on the goalline, and then got it back with a footblock. Put me back on the D team, coach! LPC threw some zone, and we had more silly turnovers. We generally fell apart at the end of the game, losing 15-10 and bringing our fall record against them to 0-3. It's good to have a bogey team to shoot for in the offseason.

Cal ended up winning Sean Ryan over UCSC, making it two tournaments in a row for them. Oregon and Stanford finished 8th and 6th, respectively, but I don't know anyone who expects the same come Regionals. It looks like UBC is back on top of the Washington/BC section after Sundodger, but we'll see where things shake out in the spring. MLC was also this past weekend - Carleton, Colorado, and Wisconsin all sounded strong, even with less than complete squads in attendance from last year's college finalists. College ultimate is exciting again - bring on CCC!