Mixed Hat Tourny Recap

"I know, let's cheer 'Purple Nurple' on three!"

A. Mercier - Prior to first game of purple's undefeated run.

Although I didn't write down the scores, I thought I'd provide a brief recap of my memories of the holiday mixed tourny for your enjoyment. Obviously my purple team won (duh!). Afterall, it'd be impossible for us not to win when we were wearing purple.

Purple vs. White

We got off to a quick start in this game (5-0ish), and white was never able to come back. At best, they traded points with us for a while at the end. Strangely, even though I kinda feared white (mainly Bryce and Matt from Open), this was probably my best game. I got a couple of assists and a goal. My guess is that the final score was about 13-8.

Purple vs. Yellow

Yellow was a bit of an easier game, since they weren't stacked with Open players. I'd guess the final score was about 12-5. I remember Derek on Yellow made this ridiculous layout bid for a hammer when the game was out of reach. Also in this game, I made my own layout for a point on a misthrown backhand by Anne. This was also the first game I got skyed by an Open player in (final sky count: Open players 3, Nurple 0).

Purple vs. Black

Black had lots of Open players, which made for some fun match-ups. I got a nice high D during this game, but also got stalled down by Sharpe when he chose to mark me. This was probably the game when captain Colin started yelling me for not cutting in quick enough to open things up for our ladies (this was basically our strategy for the tournament - send the Stella ladies and Phil (Open) deep constantly).

Purple vs. Blue

Blue was a tough team since they had World Champ Jeff Sward and one of my personal Ottawa ulty heroes, John Haig. High-light of the game for me was definitely scoring while Haig was marking me. Granted, he wasn't putting in a tonne of effort at the time, but, still, I scored on one of the best players in Ottawa. We ran away with this game....14-5ish.

Purple vs. Red

We came back to tie Red after last point was called, and then won on universe 13-12. Red had a bunch of Open players, and PMo....who I'm admittedly not a fan of. The reason Red kept it close was that they had some great women (Deb, Love, Nat), BUT...our women were simply better. Plus, Colin played all game....for better or worse. My best chance for a sky was my only miss of the day. A Red Open player got a peice of a high huck from Colin, and my legs just didn't allow me to get up and get as much hand as I should on the throw

Lessons Learned

1. Open is definitely not for me. I'm amazed at their speed and aggressiveness, and give them huge props.
2. Sometimes, it's more fun to play, than to win. Although Colin seemed like a nice guy when talking to him one-on-one, he came off a bit...different on the pitch.
3. Quality women will always be the difference in mixed. We had some RIDICULOUS women on our team (Anne, Alex, and Sam).
4. Open guys mark overly aggressive...and I have to call that. There were multiple times last night I should have called disc space, and didn't.
5. I really need to get sports hernia surgery. I was in all kinds of pain after the 5 games in 4 hours last night.

Once upon a time, I wrote an entry about how during pick-up, comp players threw to comp players, intermediate players threw to intermediate players, and league players just picked up the scraps....yea...that still happens. Within the 'comp players' category, I can further break that down and say 'Open players throw to Open players, Stella players throw to Stella players, and Mixed players throw to Mixed players'. Honestly, I felt bad for the two non-comp. players on our team (who got yelled at), since I wasn't seeing the disc a bunch, I can only imagine that they weren't happy with the amount of touches (and PT in general). What was supposed to be a fun holiday tournament, just wasn't.

Have a safe and happy new year. Until next time (in 2009), happy hucking!