Top 10 Ultimate Annoyances + Randomness

Top 10
1. Wind – It wreaks havoc on throws and disappears on days when you actually NEED a cool breeze.
2. Rain – Makes the disc slippery, decreases throwing accuracy, and ruins expensive Thorlo socks.
3. Cold weather ( -5 to +5) – Even with gloves, as your hands get colder, you're bound to drop the disc more.
4. Non-ultimate ultimate equipment – Granted, my weird build might be the cause of this annoyance, but it'd be nice to find a pair of ultimate gloves that fit (0 for 3 so far), cleats not designed for soccer or football, or even a pair a shorts that fit my waist and still left something to the imagination.
5. Rules Nazis – Anyone who can quote the 11th edition rules, cite the section and paragraph of the relevant clause, or regularly contributes to the OCUA rules forms should be prescribed to play pick-up with a bunch of hippies.
6. Rules No-nothings – Anyone who has never read through the 11th edition of the rules, has no idea what a pick is, or plays out of control should be confined to play in meaningless league games against a team of Rules Nazis.
7. Injuries – It sucks to sit on the sidelines while others have fun.
8. Players who take the game too seriously – Having broken up a few pushing matches in the past year, I'm always shocked when things get this heated. Essentially, we're playing a game of no consequence, with an implement whose name relates to throwing pie plates off a roof, in a sport with James Bond movie references, started by a counselor whose only goal was to make hyper kids run off their energy.
9. Haters – Don't call a travel when someone throws a 50 yard huck around your ineffective mark. Don't call a pick when someone breaks your ankles on a cut. Don't criticize the ability of others unless they ask for your input. Don't give your teammates a kick in the ass when they make a mistake, at a time when they'll need encouragement for trying something challenging.
10. Trying to explain the allure of the sport to others – I'd equate this with trying to explain to people what an auditor does…impossible!

Randomness

For those of you not familiar with my el-jay, randomness consists of a few unconnected bullet points such as:

- Urban Sprawl had our first "scrimmage" last night. A little 6-on-6 action with one sub that went surprisingly well. I'll admit, I have no idea how we'll stack up compared to last year. It bodes well that our females are very talented. Hopefully the speedy, skilled ladies can make up for the men that are...not as deep as before. The captain had a good strategy of requesting that we be ranked lower to start the season (I think we're 11th) than our 4th place finish last year. This will give us some time to get our offensive and defensive strategies in place, while integrating our new players.
- My mission for Sprawl's first game next week is to learn everybody's names. Since I'll be handling and anchoring our zone defense as a deep, I need to learn names quickly. The bad news is that I'm awful with names, and have a set of sisters that I already confused with eachother in our scrimmage.
- Steve's got a great entry on leadership in ultimate. Again, I'm not sure why you continue to read this blog when his is far superior :P
- Started to read the BigFish playbook. I love the fact that there are more than a couple hucking plays (even if I'll be the chaser). Also can't wait to use "Dice" in a league game.
- Poach motel has orange as the team color, which required a few new t-shirts. Must admit, I had a lot of fun shopping for these two shirts on Ebay.

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It's down at the end of lonely street...

After putting it off for a few days, I sent an email to the captain of my Tuesday team and copied my favourite teammate from last summer (Chris Rootham). Even though it was easy to logically explain how practicing with Big Fish was a better opportunity, emotionally, I felt awful about leaving Chris since he went out of his way to mentor me with my handling last summer. Plus, Amanda is such a great captain, and was so appreciative when Chris and I picked up mid-last summer with the team and led them to a 7-1 record.

Luckily, Amanda was very supportive of my decision, and the door is open if I ever catch a case of Disco Fever on a free Tuesday. Even better, Chris was totally understanding of my decision, and offerred me a spot on his Monday team. Although playing/practicing four days a week will be tough, I couldn't turn down a chance to play with Chris on a tier 3 team. I noticed there's a speedster from IID on the team as well, who will give Chris and I an impressive striker.

Sooo.....as the title of the post indicates, come Mondays this summer, if you happen to find yourself down at the end of lonely street, feel free to visit me at the Poach Motel! Until next time, happy hucking!

I've Been Owned

It takes a big man to admit defeat....or a skinny one with a non-existant ego :P

Steve's an experienced, talented, friendly, open player from Ottawa, who's ulty blog is amazing.

http://canadaultimate.blogspot.com/

One of my "mysterious" readers emailed me to say I was a tad unfair to Open players in my 'Defending Mixed' post. For the record, individually, Open players are uber talented, uber friendly, and uber helpful. Steve's a great example of that. He captained our team in an indoor Open tourny and basically guided me and another relative newbie through some finer points of the game without making us feel like morons. Without him taking the time to break things down for me, there's no way I would have registered for the same tourny this year. He also worked with me on my backhand and told me about ultimatehandbook.com (might not be the right link) at a clinic last summer.

Sidenote - After meeting the Big Fish roster tonight...I'm very impressed. It'll be hard not to improve when I'm surrounded with that much talent two days a week. My only regret is that I was ridiculously hungry by the time the meeting ended at 9pm, since I hadn't eaten since 11am. I know I should have stuck around and socialized, but...my growling stomach and light head told me a quick trip to Pita Pit was more important. Bad decision? Yes. But passing out from hunger seemed like a distinct possibility.

Anyway, why read an inferior blog when you can read Steve's? Until next time (???), happy hucking!

Cut....but....

So after playing a bit better again today at BigFish tryout #3, I got a call tonight from Gavin (one of the captains), who explained I didn't make the team...BUT....they'd like me to practice with them this summer! :-)

Considering how absolutely crappy this week has been (ultimate and non-ultimate), I'm ecstatic with the end result. As mentioned in a previous post, I didn't expect to make BigFish after less than two years of ultimate. Having stunk up the joint at the first tryout, I was happy to play better in the last two tryouts, and was able to identify what I'd like to work on this summer (decision making on offense, and man-to-man defense). Getting a chance to practice with the team, and play against players at that level, and learn from some of the best ultimate minds in Ottawa....damn...I feel so lucky!

My weeks this summer are shaping up to be BigFish practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Urban Sprawl on Fridays. Best case scenario! Till next time, happy hucking!

Tryout Update

Soooo....this has been a pretty tough week. Despite having an ok tryout with the intermediate team on Wednesday, I didn't make the roster. Granted, there were only six spots open for guys, so I shouldn't be too down about it, but I thought I played well enough to claim one of those six spots. There's talk of a "B" team, if they can find enough ladies who are interested, and I'd know the captain since I played with him at a tournament once....but....I'm not really sure what I'll do. There's something tempting about only playing ultimate two nights a week this summer, and taking it easy. I've been thinking of trying to get back into running...or maybe playing beach volleyball.

Just had the BigFish tryout #2 this afternoon. It didn't go so bad. They officially split us up in the "A" group (BFC - the A team) and the "B" group (BigFish). I definitely did better at the drills today, which is a plus. My body was so cramped up, that I wasn't much of a factor in the scrimmage. Had a few nice cuts though, although I'll have to tighten up my D tomorrow. Which is the other bit of news. Since they still haven't made any cuts, I get to go to the third tryout tomorrow. Hope my body can recover a bit tonight, since I might still have a shot at making the team as a cutter....who knows....

To be honest, I'm a little down about not making the intermediate team. It helped that shortly after finding out on Friday about not making the team, I was able to go out and toss with Urban Sprawl for about an hour. I'm not sure how that team will be this summer. We lost two of my favourite guys from last year (Gilles and Luc), and John doesn't seem to be back either (the originator of the Purple Nurple name). Although there's a girl from IID who joined our team. Plus one of the new guys seems to have a really nice backhand....maybe I'll ask him for help with mine.

Well, I'm exhausted from all the drills and scrimmage. So I'm going to sign off and nap a bit. Until next time, happy hucking!