Santa Barbara (or what I saw of it)

This was supposed to be a weekend that got Stanford Ultimate off on the right foot. I'd been looking forward to this tournament since Nationals last year, where a sprained ankle relegated me to stats duty. It was the first chance for a new-look Stanford team to play against high-level competition, and even the abbreviation of the tournament to just 6 teams was a blessing - each game would be tough and a chance for us to prove ourselves.

But before the tournament even began, things started to go wrong. Tom and Ezra both headed home for family commitments, and on the way down to Santa Barbara, the car carrying me, Sherwood, and Jacob Speidel crashed into the center divider on Rt 101 (I'd prefer not to go into too many details here). Sherwood had a bad bruise on his chest from the seatbelt and a cut on his forehead from the airbag, and Jacob came away with a minor concussion. We finally got to bed around 4 am Saturday morning.

So it was a good thing that we didn't start playing until 2. Everyone warmed up with the exception of Sherwood, who wouldn't start playing until later. We came out strong and fired up against Cal, with strong winds playing a role in the game, but pressure defense came out on top for Stanford as we took at 3-0 lead, including 2 upwind breaks. Our one downwind score in the run came after two ridiculous layout D's from our only two juniors, Chris McCarty and Steve Scardato. We moved the disc well, not forcing deep throws and consistently hitting underneath cuts and easy swings to march the disc downfield. Cal also had a lot of smooth movement, but some bad decisions on hucks and some great D's had us up.

Cal scored for the first time, and receiving at 3-1, I threw an upwind huck to Schlag about 10 yards outside the endzone. A few swings later, I was cutting for a breakside swing from the front of the stack and what I got was an 8-foot-high bullet streaking out of bounds. I laid out, swiped at the disc, got fingertips on it, and then landed squarely on the back of my wrist. Payne came over and asked me if I could wiggle my fingers - I could, so he responded "Well, you'll be okay for tomorrow." The trainer at the fields was not very encouraged by the odd, uncontrollably scrunched position my hand was in and the swelling, so he sent me to the ER.

It turns out that I had dislocated my wrist and broken my scaphoid, and now I need surgery to repair the bone and possibly two ligaments, and I will probably only regain 85% of my previous mobility and strength. It also turns out that I missed Jacob and Sherwood at the ER, getting chest x-rays to check for internal bleeding from the accident. Both of them turned out okay, and they ran into Burning Skirt Kaela Jorgensen, who Sherwood and I met at Nationals last year (and walked through the McDonalds drive-thru with). She recognized Sherwood and asked him if he wanted his black ripper back, which he'd given to Katie Barry, who'd been on crutches that night at Nationals. She returned it during our huddle before our first game on Sunday, to the astonishment of most of the team.

When I got back to the fields, the team was just about to start their final game of the day - a rematch from last year's pool play at Nationals against Williams. I was shocked to find out that we'd gone 0-3 in close games against Cal, UCSD, and UCSB. The game began extremely sloppy. The rain was pouring, hucks were flying but none were completed, and every in-cut was a potential drop. Stanford only had a couple vets left, and inexperience showed against a balanced, senior-heavy group from the NE. Still, we took half 7-5 through a combination of zone and not throwing bladey hucks out the back of the endzone. But the second half was a different story, as we failed to close out the game. Williams began cutting down on drops and converting more and more hucks, while we continued to drop the disc and force throws. At 10-10, Williams ripped off a 3-1 run to take the game 13-11.

Disappointed and dejected, we regrouped as a team at Outback Steakhouse and worked up a desire to win on Sunday and a $700 bill. We were in good spirits, me especially after the two hydrocodone pills I'd had at dinner when the pain started to grow. We got back to the fields on Sunday morning in time to watch Superfly 2008 stomp UCLA in an ugly, zone-filled finals. Blu had a couple standouts, but Stanford's energetic and relentless D gave them more short-field situations and breakaway possibilities. One glaring thing about both teams - players on the field were not clear on the rules, almost letting one Stanford player throw the disc away after she got a D and then regain possession, and actually letting UCLA walk a pull up to the line that had landed in the endzone.

We came out flat in our first game on Sunday. Santa Cruz used their zone effectively and our marks and downfield defense were atrocious. Poor over the top throws and bad decisions doomed our offense, as we fell into a 2-7 hole at halftime. But in the huddle, Mike Payne challenged us to define our season by the next three halves of ultimate we played. We responded amazingly, as we went on a 9-2 run to beat Santa Cruz 11-9 in the pool play game, and then we won the first half of our next game 7-5, and closed out the day going 6-1 against a dejected UCSC team that started making throws and cuts with a lot less zip and enthusiasm. After an 0-4 Saturday and a terrible start to Sunday, Stanford looked like Stanford again.