Upwind/Downwind (Centex Sunday)

After the massive shakeup in the order of things on Saturday, this year's parity in college ultimate was evident on Sunday as well. The main theme of the second day of play was the wind - every field was upwind/downwind, and upwind pulls generally went 45 yards into the strong 15 mph winds. Every team dealt with the wind differently - Saturday's Cinderella, Michigan, had to face the consequences of indoor practices, while UNC rode the wind and Josh Torell all the way to the finals. But the clear winner was Florida, whose four-man cup devastated teams and Kurt Gibson got deep D after deep D.

Our Sunday started with Harvard, who played spoiler to Georgia on Saturday and avoided a three-way 4-1 tie at the top of Pool D. Star freshman George Stubbs was still out with a PCL tear, and Harvard looked like they could have used a confident thrower into the wind. Fellow freshman Andre Vogt looked able but overwhelmed, and Harvard struggled against a hard man defense but performed admirably against the zone. Harvard's coach, Josh McCarthy, controlled the team well, and talked Zirui Song out of at least one terrible foul call. We won the game by putting in a handler-heavy D-line and actively seeking an upwind break, then converting the downwind break. We did it once each half for the 13-8 victory. The game also saw the solidification of our only call/response cheer: "We scored!" "Yes!" After our dismal Saturday, we talked about how we should never expect to score and that we should celebrate each goal. And so we did.

Because of the different round times for consolation and the A-bracket, after finishing our Harvard game, I wandered over to the A-bracket quarterfinals. Planting myself between the Pitt-Colorado and Florida-Wisconsin games, I saw several points of each. Florida-Wisconsin was a contentious game, and several arguments between Muffin and Cyle had to be settled by the observers. Florida's four-man cup was doing their job, making every point long, but Wisconsin was working the disc pretty well with handler motion. But some turnovers cost Wisconsin, and Brodie caught a lucky goal over Shane Hohenstein after being layout D'ed by him and launched a vicious spike. Florida eventually eked out the win in the cap.

Pittsburgh was getting it handed to them by Colorado when I first started watching. Colorado's zone was eating up poor hucks and some drops led to Colorado getting an upwind break. Evan Padget swooped on a poor Chris Brenenborg huck and hucked it upwind to Martin, who threw the goal. The downwind break came on a dropped swing pass, and Colorado quickly worked the disc in. Apparently the game was one full of breaks, however, because after Pittsburgh worked the disc down and scored on a Nick Kazcmarek high lefty forehand, they managed an upwind break of their own with some disc movement between Chris Brenenborg and Jake Christian. Pitt, unlike Michigan later, was able to capitalize on loose offense by Colorado and convert upwind, but they were less able to stop Colorado from pouncing back with breaks of their own.

Heading back to the C-bracket, our game was further delayed because UCSD was grinding out a way over time cap come from behind victory over UCSB. We lost to UCSD at Santa Barbara Invite in the rain and wind, but we had a 13-5 victory at Stanford Invite, and we were well prepared to deal with the weather and UCSD's zone. Their blond handler, #7, hucked a lot going downwind so that the Air Squids could set their zone, and it was pretty effective. We only managed one upwind score the entire game, but as in the Harvard game, we actively sought it out with a handler-heavy line and smart disc movement. Match Diesel was on the sidelines for this game, pumping up the Squiddies with some movie magic motivational speeches. We retaliated with "Gladiator" at halftime, but with cap on so soon, we scored twice after half and won 9-6.

We followed that game up with the C-bracket finals against Kansas, a team that will be pushing on the edge of Nationals qualification if the South gets two bids again this year. Picking up star freshman Axl from Rockhurst High School has helped mitigate the loss of most of their handling corps from last year, and Kansas is a solid team with solid handlers and some big downfield receivers. However, their breaks and defense are not yet at a level where they can compete on a National scale with the best teams. We managed 5 breaks in this game - 3 upwinders and 2 downwinders. Kansas was the only team that scored upwind on us all day, to their credit. Their ability to throw in the wind was probably the reason they made it to the C-bracket finals, but their day ended in a 7-13 loss to us. We had 11 breaks and gave up none on the day - a massive improvement over Saturday's dismal performance.

With our playing over by 1, we were able to check out the A-bracket finals and consolation games. Florida was rocking UNC, with Kurt Gibson putting in a Callahan-winning performance, so I focused my attention on the 3rd place game between Colorado and Michigan. It was an intense battle of great downwind offenses and what looked like scared defenses hoping for turnovers. Some silly decisions like hammers from Jolian and hucks to Will Neff in double coverage led to possible upwind breaks, but nothing materialized the entire first half. Occasional turnovers would lead to Colorado's Evan Padget picking up the disc, yelling "Chinatown!" and hucking to Martin as far as he could throw, which usually ended up being 35 or 40 yards into the wind. Martin had his fair share of upwind turnovers trying to do too much, but Colorado finally got the break halfway through the second half and eked out a 13-12 victory. Big defensive performances from Martin, Padget, and Pebbles (a great defender) helped key Colorado all weekend.