A Busy Week of Ultimate...That Paid Off

"The miracle isn't that I finished...The miracle is that I had the courage to start."
-John Bingham (Runner's World columnist)

Another eventful week of ulty to recap. Including…*drum roll*…the first outdoor tournament of the season!
- Monday's game was unique in that I found out what the second half of OCUA's 30/30 rule meant. When lightning is in the area, players have 30 seconds to get off the field. The second 30 refers to the captains' discretionary power to decide to continue the game after 30 minutes if the storm has passed. The second 30 minutes should be used to eat ice cream at a nearby McDonalds / Quickie Mart while the storm passes.
- Remember how I thought we might get pummeled on Monday night? My predictive powers continue to amaze. We lost 15 – 5 to a comp player filled team. Personal high-light of the game was marking an open player who is 6'7…and not letting him scorch me. Personal low-light was turfing a pass well short of a cutter and having captain Chris comment "That reminds me of last summer". Sad, but true.
- I continue to love practicing with the Fish. Since it was Glen's b-day on Tuesday, Jameison brought a 24 of Lakeport and captain Sandra brought home-made brownies.
- Despite perfect layout conditions on Tuesday, I managed to refrain from taking the plunge. The soggy field conditions made cutting tough.
- Speaking of field conditions, my arch-nemesis Rigid got slagged by MHJ in the OCUA forums. Apparently Rigid's post regarding field conditions was "ignorant". After considering being a gentleman and coming to Rigid's defense, I thought better of it and decided to let MHJ do his thang. MHJ is as amusing as his hammers are accurate.
- Apparently I'll be without gravity defying backhands to chase down during huck drill at BF practices til later this month *sigh*.
- Thursday's BF practice was optional, since the team was preparing to head to Gender Blender. Even for an optional practice, it's impressive to see how the players step up their intensity close to a tournament. In particular, the veterans bring their game up a notch and aren't afraid to call out others who don't follow their example.
- During warm-up stretches, I confused a physio stretch and a BF stretch *gasp* After being questioned about it, I'll have to ensure that never the two sets of stretches shall meet again!
- My favorite parts of Thursday practice were "cone golf" at the end (3 over par) and the scrimmage with the Red Devils (a Thursday league team) against BF. Julie, Tron, Rowboat and I played with the Red Devils. I had a blast! My first BF scrimmage pull wasn't half bad, I hit Tron with a 20+ yard O/I flick for a score, fell on my face when I jumped too soon to D a disc against Matt, and completed a few longish back hand breaks.
- Glen mentioned that a few of the Red Devils players were in Coached League, but didn't play on the team he captained. Coached League represent!
- Friday's game against the Ultimate Warriors was odd. We were down 4-1, and ended up taking the half 8-5, and winning 15-7. With the temperature around 30, we had four male and four female subs, while the UWs had one of each. Survival of the fittest!
- Saturday's CHEO tourny with House of Representatives (Poach Motel + a few) was a blast. We went 4-0 in pool play, then took on a comp player fortified squad in the finals of the rec. division (Arrested Development went 0-3 in the competitive division). No excuses, I ran out of steam after a day of cutting, and only caught 3 or 4 goals in the final. We lost 15-11.
- One of the nicest compliments I got was from Carl Sharpe (pretty sure that's his name) who's an open player who picked up with our opponents. He commented that I had a "hell of a game". Coming from him, that really means a lot to me.

The ulty high-light of my week was an e-mail Friday morning. Due to some injuries (including one team-mate's "broken ass"), and my continued presence at practice, I got offered a chance to play the Northern Flights tourney with BF! A few weeks ago, Julie had mentioned it might be a good idea for me to travel with the team to North Bay and see what multiple day tournaments are like. Although I was considering the idea, I'd been offered a spot on a decent Brittania Beach team that same weekend. Luckily, I hadn't committed (my fear of commitment pays off once again!). To say I'm excited about getting to play a tournament with BF as a competitive player is a huge understatement…ecstatic is more like it. My only reservation is work related, in that I'm trying to get done a bunch of stuff before vacation, and the week before and after the tournament are heavy. Having said that, there's no way I'm passing up this opportunity. Although I'm more than happy to be a member of the practice squad, having a chance to play with the team at a tournament is the proverbial cherry on top of the delicious sunday.

Now I'm going to drink a flavoured water and sleep for 12+ hours. Until next time, happy hucking!