BPUC

Buzzards Defeat Disc of Enlightenment to go 2-0.

2010-06-24T10:05:00.002-04:00

Final score: 13-11 Buzzards at the time cap, and there was never more than a two-point difference in the score. The Buzzards took the half and the win based on athleticism and a good game plan. Disc of Enlightenment played a strong man-to-man defense (go TO THE DISC, you lazy Buzzards) and had a textbook short game which (in my opinion) would have handled a zone defense like fat guy handles pie. The Buzzards benefitted from four (!) strong women in the middle (new Buzzards Trish, Julia, and Alison, and veteran Jeana), LOTS of deep speed (Dan G, Leroy, his brother Devon, and his other brother Devin), and a bench full of solid handlers (Jeff VoB, Karl, Dan P, Jordan, Paul, Sean, and yours, truly).

The ESPN highlight plays of the game go to Alison, who out-legged her defender for a momentum-changing score right in front of the home bench, and to Devon, for multiple defensive plays in the end zone.

We are going to practice the dump and go offensive play this week. It is (or ought to be) a standard play for us. We gave away at least four scoring opportunities on the goal line. Executive summary: on a long completion to just outside of the goal, the receiver should look backwards for an easy, 8-10 yard dump, then take off to the swing side, just INSIDE the end zone line.

Well done, Buzzards! Next game: Monday June 28th, 6:30pm at Anacostia #1 vs. Big Discs. Game #4 two days later: Wednesday the 30th, 8:00 p.m. at Wilson HS #2.

Coming back from sabbatical...

2010-05-12T19:03:00.003-04:00

Posted by Bill -

Three months and no post?!!! That’s no way to run a blog. Let me catch everybody up on the Buzzard Point Ultimate Club if I can. The last two months have seen two successive record setting participation totals in the most recent era of this club (re: since I started playing in uh…’05). This week alone we have had three of the four highest totals of the year – 19, 17, and 21 respectively. I’m bound to forget somebody here but let me make a point to welcome some of the newest Buzzards from the last few months: Shahzad, Mike Cav, Jenny, & Mike F.

Most of the regular cast of characters remain around and we even had a visit this week from an old Buzzard from a couple years ago, Kashyap.

Here are some pictures from today’s huge game with 21!

Animal IQ Test

2010-02-18T10:29:00.003-05:00

Posted by Bill

It’s been said that "Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow." I’m not sure where that puts Buzzards in the animal IQ chain as we got 12 to come out and play Ultimate yesterday (six who were repeat offenders from Tuesday) on a field that, in many places, still hadn’t been trod on and where the snow was probably still in the 12-18” depth range.

Wanted to give a “welcome back” to Nate who was one of the repeat offenders. He’s had fun diving (in most cases needlessly) for discs the past two days and has upped the number of Buzzards we consider “speedy” by about 25%.

There’s a strange thing about this snow. Even normally adept handlers have been heard the last two days swearing at themselves and asking why they cannot complete a pass. There haven’t been a whole lot of opportunities to lead anybody since not too many people have run under a disc. Todd may have been one of the exceptions yesterday as I was able to keep one up in the air long enough for him to run under it for a score.

Brad, after getting the full court press of peer pressure to play on Tuesday, decided not to reply yesterday but show up anyway and play. Anybody else noticed recently that he’s seemed to healed from whatever had been keeping him from running. I’m starting not to like it when I have to mark him. Still, you need to be careful when he’s marking you. Ask Brook who took a full body shot from Brad hurling himself at him. “Oh hey Brook, welcome back yourself!”

I was glad to see Frank out yesterday with long pants and socks after playing in neither back on our first snow game in December. Of course he’s headed out to Monterey soon on a Buzzard Sabbatical. Yesterday the temps there were in the 70’s and it was sunny. We hate you Frank!

The rest of the Buzzards besides Todd, Brad and Nate who have doubled up on the snow games this week have been Sean, Kevin, Eric and yours truly. And three of us are RSVPd for today’s game as well.

The rest of the snow Buzzards who have been out this week are Steave, Brian, Frank, Brook, Bob, Tom and Conrad. And today we’re expecting even some others who haven’t played in the snow yet…Erick and Dan G. Rumor has it there will be a camera out today also so stay tuned for some photographic evidence that Buzzards are perhaps no smarter than cats or dogs but certainly more hearty...Iditarod schmitarod.

Snowbuzzards 2010

2010-02-04T14:00:00.001-05:00

The scary part about this picture is that after 45 minutes of slogging around in 6 inches of powdery goodness, this picture will always be referred to as "the one taken before the snowstorm."

Art Garfunkel where are you?

2010-02-03T13:53:00.002-05:00

Posted by Bill

How good does your job have to be for a lunch time of Ultimate in a “freshly fallen shroud of snow” not to be better than work? That’s the rhetorical question for the day. Matt Caldwell got the first points of the day for correctly identifying the song lyric and calling me “a rock” but then followed up with an immediate point erasure for having forgotten clothes to play and complaining that his shoes would get wet.

Speaking of forgetting clothes… “Newbie” Sean who fancies himself a regular, having come out tirelessly since being introduced to the Buzzards, somehow was not “regular” enough to have shown up with certain articles of clothing today. Reminded of the option of our Coast Guard Exchange right in the same building selling all sorts of textile wares, he still begged out of the game.

Meaghan was actually the first to RSVP for the game today and we found out why later as she broke out her MVP performance with not one but two outstanding diving catches today and assist on the snowman crafting that she and Bridgette put together before the first pull. Sadly Snowbuzzard was decapitated at game’s end as I tried to remove the pinnie.

Fortunately we did get a game today because Karl was making a special appearance from the Charm City to our north. I think that was probably the first time we’d had Meaghan, Bridgette and Karl out on the same field since summer league play. Great to have you all!

Another somewhat unexpected RSVP today came from Mike C. I say unexpected, not because Mike doesn’t like to play with us whenever he can but because Mike is my favorite (only?) SoCal guy and I sometimes tease him that he may be a little fair weathered in his playing patterns. Well shame on me…and chalk up a snow game for the “Howler”.

Todd and I were the beneficiaries of Meaghan, Mike and Conrad’s winter energy and the svelte new disc which sailed long and smooth unencumbered by any cracks, scratches or warpedness.

Joining Karl and Bridgette on the blue team were Kevin, Eric, and Jordan. Both teams had sporadic success and both teams had some….uh, how would we say this at work “areas for improvement”. But really, the snow was great for snowballs which proved to be an amusing distraction for those of us who suffer varying degrees of attention deficit disorder and how good is your job if would not rather have been out there playing with us?
“I won’t disturb the slumber of feelings that have died. If I never hucked I never would have cried”… or something like that. Thanks everybody for coming out today.

Roose, where were you?

There's no Business Like Snow Business...

2010-02-01T13:56:00.002-05:00

Every winter, we hear Buzzards squawking about the mud and goose poop. But today, neither of those hazards was a threat. Mother Nature was gracious enough to provide a blanket of snowy goodness to protect all our feathers from that nasty field. And boy, did we take advantage of it!

Lets hear it for the Buzzards, representing strong with 6-on-5 on a Monday, in 4” of powder. And not the usual Southwest D.C. Columbian Marching Powder, this was actual SNOW! Brian “Plays” Moore, Brad “Hasno” Soule, Conrad “Likesta” Theroux, Eric “I cover no one and everyone from my place in mid-field, for I am Zen” Neussel, Fabulous Frankie Nolan (his real name), Jordan Balda.. Baldez… there’s only one Jordan, Kevin “should not have posting rights to the Blog” d’Eustachio, Sean “Hood Ornament” Rogers, Steve “I’ll get there” Habbert, Todd “jumps to orbit” Akins, and Tom “Pants are for pantsys” Chaleki all braved ice and cold to play a little bit of the frisbee game.

Semper Paratus award to Conrad Theroux, who emailed this morning that he’d “been off the list for a month,” due to some travel and wanted to be back on. “Well, we’re playing today,” I replied. And of course, Conrad just happened to bring shoes and the fourteen layers of high tech gear required to play a little frisbee. You are an inspiration to us all, and if you get double pneumonia from playing in the snow, we promise to flirt with your widow.

The Madison Avenue award for false advertising goes to Eric and Todd, who claimed Hollan Sellers was back in town. Well, he sure as heck wasn’t in the part of town I was covering today (of course, that was a very small neighborhood). Hollan, if you are reading this, we mocked them mercilessly in your absence. Hope you can come back, and come out, soon.

And in science news, the Human Genome Project recently revealed that perennial Buzzard Jordan Baldueza is actually 30% Barn Owl, as evidenced by his ability to turn his entire torso around 360 degrees while still running in a straight line in pursuit of a disc. Although after today, maybe he’s more snowy owl.

Thanks to all who came out! Those who missed it missed an awesome game, and Hollan, if you are reading this, and were at HQ today, I hope your heart aches as much as my calves, you missed a good’un. See you next time, Buzzards!

Pegging out an impossible hand

2010-01-20T11:10:00.000-05:00

Posted by Bill

What do Cribbage and winter Ultimate have in common? Until yesterday I thought it was the number 19. In Cribbage for those of you familiar with the game with pegs, cribs, and holed boards, the score “19” is impossible to get. You can score between 0-29 except for 19. In winter Ultimate when folks have just received power and gas bills in the hundreds and caused many of them to consider billing their in-laws for energy usage over the holidays, 19 is a number of players you don’t ever anticipate seeing out on the pitch.

At 0830 yesterday morning I already had 9-10 positive RSVPs to the game request though and I knew the afternoon would hold promise. At 1115 I went down to the locker room to change out knowing we had 12-14 players on the way. The opening pull had 7’s on either side, one cameraman, another stretching to come in, and more on their way. There were 19 of us at one point in the game. That makes for some crowded passing lanes.

Surprisingly though there were some decent drives on both sides and some effective cross-field passes. The cynic would say it was the unseasonably warm weather that spurred people out. And it may have been but we’ll take it. A couple guys were coming back from injury rehab and it was good to see Matt and Erick back out there. By the way, anybody else notice we had 3 Matts on the field yesterday? Somebody needs to start thinking of some nicknames soon. Throw in the 2 Dans (G & P) and 2 Ericks (N & S – they spell it differently but that doesn’t help) and even Frank could remember all the names on the field by just guessing 1 of 3.

The rest of the cast, if I can remember everybody was Sean, Steave, Bob, Todd, Kelly, Kevin, Jordan, Ron, Paul, Mike, and yours truly.

Today looks promising as well. Just got the 11th reply with 2 more probable and 1 up in the air. Brian, you gotta come out of the air once in a while!

Great turnout everyone. Check out Facebook for the pics and I’ll try and get them up here later on.

Sir Edmund Hillary couldn't flick...

2009-12-23T13:48:00.004-05:00

Posted by Bill

Anybody remember me? I’m the guy that started this blog a little over two years and 150 or so posts ago. I kept it fairly current with a post usually up once a week or ten days or more often depending on how much we played and then something happened this past summer. The Buzzards Point Ultimate Club sent a team into the Washington Area Frisbee Club Summer Corporate League and did very well in fact and Kevin started writing accounts of the league games for the blog which was great because well he was the Captain and that’s what Captains should do besides wear a hand scrawled “C” on their shirt.

Then in the fall something else happened. “Research Foundations” and “Policy in Education” classes and I stopped writing anything for fun. We did manage to get a Facebook group up for the BPUC and some of you have taken part in that arena. Mostly I was lazy. But today has inspired me to get back to the keyboard and chronicle what was certainly one of the more memorable Ultimate events in this club’s brief but storied history.

As most of you who will be reading this already know, the D.C. metro area had about 2 feet of snow dumped on it this past weekend. A record December snowfall by any accounts. It closed the Federal Offices on Monday which made for a nice 3-day weekend (at least) for most of us. Yesterday we slowly eased back into work while still fighting the icy side streets of our neighborhoods. At about 1000 yesterday Kevin sends me a message “What? No game?” I guess my expectations had been low and since he was the first to even ask, that seemed somewhat justified, but I sent out the invite anyway and he, Brad, Kelly, and Conrad all admirably RSVPd that they would play but it's all we could persuade and so it went "No Game"

Today I decided to try earlier and got a rousing response from a thinned out holiday mode Buzzards crowd at work. We trekked out to the field to find that much of the snow had been untouched. And it was still fairly deep despite some settling. There would not be much sprinting today by anybody. Tom remarked once he got out “Finally, speed will not be a factor” and he was for the most part right. Pinpoint throwing was more the premium today and we did some of that though Brian and I seemed to enjoy making our pinpoint throws to Kevin who happened to be wearing the opposite color pinnie.

“I couldn’t help it, he looked so darn attractive, I couldn’t resist” Brian protested.

“At least make him move hips and tease you. I mean he was standing still” I pleaded back.

Frank wins the award for coming out with the least weather appropriate clothing on. Shorts and no socks with his cleats. Sean was a close second also in shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt until somebody turned over an extra long sleeved one. Kelly made the first snow layout with a beautiful grab and a face full of snow as she went soaring over the sideline. Conrad, Brad and Kevin also managed horizontal moves of varying degrees of effectiveness. I will say that Brad’s was for a score and even more impressive considering the cantaloupe-sized welt he had on his leg from his weekend kayak sledding accident.

For the first time, maybe since the departure of Matt P for Texas, I heard the claim of being in by one cone if not the other (that is a straight line between those right?) That was Sean I think using the “Peeler Geometric Theorem” Another Matt, the goggled one came out to balance the early uneven numbers and swayed the advantage back to orange for most of the rest of the game but there was not an overabundance of scoring. We don’t ever keep score out here but I’m pretty sure we didn’t reach 15 by both teams.

At any rate, as Conrad reminded me as we high stepped off the field, elements like this usually engender some sort of award or nickname for those who play. It wasn’t actually snowing while we played but the depths of the snow have hereby obliged the issuance of the first ever Buzzards Point Sherpa award. For braving snow depths of double digits in inches, snow blindness, insufficient oxygen (or alcohol), pedestrian garb, and holiday leave. Congratulations Frank, Tom, Kevin, Brad, Brian, Kelly, Conrad, Sean, Matt & Bill. It wasn’t Chomolungma but it was good. Happy holidays to all the Buzzards, their family and friends. I wish you all the best and look forward to seeing you back 2010.

p.s. congrats to Conrad and Juliette new parents of Genevieve Marie.

Conrad Theroux questioned in theft of field.

2009-12-04T14:21:00.002-05:00

Security forces at Fort McNair in Southwest Washington, D.C. are seeking Conrad Theroux, Coast Guard employee, for questioning in the theft of a parade field from the Fort on Friday afternoon. Mr. Theroux was seen leaving the Fort with a significant amount of the field stuck to his arms, legs, clothes, and hair.

Accomplices included several other members of the Buzzard Point Ultimate Club: Tom, Paul, Steve, Eric, Kevin, Matt and Brian. Matt Murtha may be facing perjury charges for a statement he made to investigators “I was the first one out to the field today.” That statement, while true, was so unlikely that anything else Matt says will not be believed for the rest of the day.

In other news, stock in Orange Glo International, maker of OxiClean, jumped 3% on reports of the theft. The late OxiClean pitchman Billy Mays was heard to say “Hi! Billy Mays here for HOLY MOLY YOU GUYS ARE DIRTY! I don’t know if OxiClean can clean that!”

And player of the game honors go to Steve Habbert, for sweet disc handling skills and not one but TWO beautiful box-out catches for scores. We would have given you the medal on the field, but it was the wrong color to wear with your orange shorts, orange sweatshirt, orange socks, and orange fruit of the looms. Steve also played the entire game holding a bag of carrots and wearing a deer-hunter’s blaze cap (with earflaps). Hey, Steve, pumpkins are sooooo October! Get with the season!

Thanks to all who came out for MudBowl 2009. Warm up, rest up and lets play Monday!

Its not the (lack of) Heat, its the Humidity...

2009-11-23T13:54:00.003-05:00

Remember when we were worried that summer would get too humid? Ha!

Nine valiant Buzzards (Steve, St. Paul, Conrad, Frank N., New Nate, New Nate’s Friend (NNF... "Adam"?), John Fiorentine, Kevin d’ and Matt) braved the wind and the rain to go and play a little 5 on 4. Anyone who is wondering when winter disc is going to start should take note: it started today at 1130.

Game disc to Conrad Theroux, first for calling the game (thanks!), washing the pinnies, stepping up with sweet hands, and finally for being the difference on at least two teams. If Conrad was on your team today, your team did well. Of course, Conrad got passed around like Italy in WWII, but every team he was on did well while he was on it.

The only problem with playing in a cold rain is that you wind up not-warm and not-dry. On the plus side, soft ground and wet grass meant lots of pain-free (or, at least, reduced pain) layouts. Hot cocoa and a cold pack is an odd, but good, combination, like oranges & chocolate or bacon & anything.

In automotive news, the 2010 Mazda “Pinnie” was unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show. Just like its namesake, the day after you wash it, it rains. You ever actually read the stencil on the pinnies? It says "Wash. Rinse. Repeat."

That’s probably our last game this week. Lots of Buzzards are flying home for the holidays today and tomorrow, and (God Bless VADM Currier & RADM Brice-O’Hara) I suspect slim pickins Wednesday after liberty is granted. So enjoy your Thanksgiving and come back with pumpkin-pie fueled fire on Monday. Remember: its not about food or football, its about family. Especially family that cooks and has the game on.

Where there's a will...

2009-09-24T13:58:00.002-04:00

“Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.” – William James

For all of you who have not exactly “felt” like coming out this week to play Ultimate but have done so anyway I sincerely thank you. Here we are on the 24th of September and we’ve just had our 4th consecutive week of the month with at least 3 days in a row of games. This week seemed particularly challenging after a couple weeks of unseasonably cool weather and low humidity got most of us deacclimated from the oppressive summer weather that frankly never materialized much this past July and August.

But summer staged a last hurrah as we celebrated the Autumnal Equinox this week and as our days begin to get progressively shorter. Three days of mid 80’s and high humidity certainly made it seem like it was still August. To exacerbate the conditions of the weather we also were having difficulty getting any big games called this week and so for two days were at the bare minimum of 8 and another day we managed 10.

So for those of you who willed yourself out there this week…bravo. Erick, Todd & Bob, you guys hit the trifecta and came out each day this week. Thanks for trying to keep me running and putting up with me when I wasn’t. Kevin, John & Frank all got multiple games in this week as well and then our string of solo acts included Dennis, Paul, Matt, Joe, Dan & Tom. Ladies, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but that list does not include any of you. A disappointing week for the girl power.

Oh, also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the alumni visit a couple weeks ago of Rodney who made it down for a couple games. Great to have you back out there. Now if you could arrange to have you Swinny, Phill, Hollan, Thunder & Matty P all show up on the same week...that would be fabulous.

I would like to just make a couple housekeeping notes. We’ve been playing on the south field for the majoring of softball season and the consensus has been…..”Yuck!” The terrain is neither soft nor smooth. I’m not sure softball has ended but I’m inclined to try back to the North starting next week. Also I’d like to throw out my semi-annual plea for starting our game at 1130 rather than wandering out at 1130 (or later). Of course we want you whenever you can make but if we can get the majority of us out on the field ready to start at 1130 we can salvage a little more play time…and get this, it’s a novel idea, have a little stretch time after we’re finished.

So we’re finishing off September next week and the extended forecast is showing highs only in the 60’s on Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m thinking big finish to the month! Stop telling yourself you don’t feel like it or you’ll play when you feel better, or in better shape, or healthier…take the step out on the field, the “feelings” will follow and we’ll all be better for it.

The Phoenix rises...

2009-09-02T08:48:00.004-04:00

Okay, despite what the blog entries would indicate, the Buzzards did survive the Summer Corporate League Season and actually represented very well as we finished in the Final 4. We also survived the scorching weather for a couple weeks after that and have made it to this week, which for disc players, has been close to idyllic. Temperatures in the 70s and 80’s, slight breeze, and low humidity.

We had a great game of 7 on 7 yesterday. One of the few big games we’ve had here at work over the last month. And we had a good game on Monday as well. We aren’t going to miss out on this weather. I want to first of all welcome out some of the new players this summer that I have been remiss in mentioning in the blog perhaps. Want to give a big Buzzard welcome to Dan, Eve, Joe, MattM, Ron, & Pat. Great to have you all as additions to our roster. Dan comes to us as a referral from MattC who also came back to us on his return to HQ as a civilian. Matt your usual “finders fee” is in the mail. Eve comes to us from academia, she’s a local professor of International Studies (I think that’s what you told me) and a “neighbor” of Brad. We won’t hold that against you. Joe is a former player here at HQ back for a 2nd tour. He remembers the days of playing with the soccer goals, and uh, let’s say when this club used to play the “contact version” of Ultimate. He recognized the name of Lindsay and for those of you who remember the Mallard, that is really all you need to know about Joe. To his credit, be blended into this evolved state of disc here seamlessly and I didn’t seem him foul anybody. MattM is a disc player transferring in this summer and a welcome addition to the growing stable of handlers here. And finally Ron joins us admitting his experience has been in some bastardized version of Ultimate/Frisbee football probably resembling more what Joe remembers being played here. Pat is our newest addition, just joining us yesterday for the first time, dragged out by Paul. Let me just say that this is two summers running when we have perhaps added more talent than we have lost which of course is the essential key to this club’s survival.

That is not to say that we haven’t missed the players that have left us. And so as our way of saying so and saying thank you we just want to give a shout out to Phill, Scott, Hollan, Will, Mark, MattP, Swinny, Travis, Rodney, JasonK, JasonN, George, JQ, Alec, Leroy, Kashyap, and hell, even Lindsay. I’m sure I’m missing some folks. Please forgive me and if you’re actually reading this, drop me a line and we’ll get you special mention and maybe even dig up an old pic to post.

Back to yesterday’s game of 7’s. Great to have Eli back out with us. It had been a while since we played with this many people and the early part of the game looked like it as both teams struggled to find spacing. So when you’re having trouble finding horizontal space you sometimes look vertical and it was good to have Dan on the blue team yesterday as he made a couple nice grabs up above the heads of some defenders. Todd, for the orange also had the idea of getting vertical a couple times but then I wondered what Erick was whispering at him as he’d run toward Todd just as he was jumping and Todd didn’t seem convinced his legs weren’t going to be taken out from under him and short-armed both throws. But then he finally found some space on the edges and made a couple of really nice leading throws on cuts across the end zones to Kevin and Dennis where both times a defender was pretty close on the heels.

The rest of the crew yesterday was Bob, Steve, Matt, Paul, Pat, Bridgette, Ron, and yours truly. It was great weather and a great game. A couple of promotions to celebrate – Bridgette & Todd, congrats! Bridgette says hers may hamper her Ultimate playing availability so I’m not sure that’s a great thing for us but it’s good for her. Todd’s thankful the upcoming wedding to another adopted Summer Buzzard, Reagan now has another income source. Reagan, if you’re reading, I’d certainly try and get an extension on the honeymoon with this as consideration.

For the new folks playing and reading this via the blog, please check us out on Facebook. I can’t actually add the hyperlink from here at work since our LAN police have that site blocked. Use your iPhone though if you can’t wait until you get home.

Great to be back up here. Will try to be better about keeping you amused, bemused, confused or just used. I only want you for your flick.

Pull!

BUZZARDS LOSE SEMI-FINAL TO GREENSPIN 15-5.

2009-08-14T08:59:00.003-04:00

The Corporate League Buzzards' (Bill, Brad, Bridgette, Brook, Devon, Jason, Jeff, Karl, Kevin, Leroy, Meaghan, Reagan, and Todd) summer 2009 Corporate League season ended last Monday with a 5-15 loss to Greenspin, the team from the Federal Reserve. Greenspin’s tenacious defense prevented the Buzzards from making the second & third passes that rack up the big yardage, and their completion-prone offense moved the disc quickly and well. The Buzzards finished their inaugural season with a respectable 8 wins and 4 losses (counting playoff games), and made it all the way to the round of four.

Looking back on the season, we’ve got a lot to be proud of. I certainly appreciate every Buzzard’s dedication to the team. The RosterManager schedule pages are full of “On my way up from Norfolk, but should be in time for the game,” or “I’ll be there unless I miss my connecting flight.” Many people would use jet lag as an excuse; we use it as a reason for being early.

Thanks also for letting go of some other-than-Spirited play that we saw this season. We cannot prevent someone else from being a jerk, but we do decide whether to rise to the bait. In a recent game, one of our opponent’s players was complaining to me about other people complaining from the sidelines about him being a jackass. First, if he wasn’t such a jackass, people wouldn’t talk about him so much. But second and more importantly, immediately after his rant, two of his teammates approached me and apologized for his ‘tude, and we all got along fine after that. This certainly would not have happened if anyone on our side had “responded in kind.” Teams often consist of fourteen nice folks and one jerk, and running into “that guy” certainly brings out the worst in me, but I’m really proud of the way the Buzzards handled poor-Spirited players all-season.

My personal Thanks to Brad, for setting up the RosterManager site (a huge data-entry job) and for doing a lot of the other grunt-work associated with running a team, to Bill, for taking over the catering (we didn’t always play our best, but we always ate well), and to everyone else who paced off fields, worked the grill, or brought goodies.

Here’s something the Buzzards do that no other team does: we show up on time. It sounds silly, but it works. In at least two games (including both of our playoff wins), the fact that we were ready to play at 6:30 meant that our opponents had to start with whoever they happened to have around. The PPC Complexificationizers started with three women and four men because that’s what they had. In the Wesleyan game, at least one of their best players didn’t play until the second half. And because of the way Ultimate halves work (by score, not by time) it is much harder to come back once you are behind.

I have no rules clarifications or strategerical lessons for this post. I offer one observation, which occurred to me while setting an offense this season. Being a handler is not about having amazing throwing skills, it is about having the judgment to only throw passes you will complete. Not can complete (on a good day, no wind, dry disc, no mark…), but will complete, every time. Disc gets thrown, disc gets caught, repeat. We have about half-a-dozen budding handlers out there, and if my saying it saves you the twenty years it took me to realize it, you’re welcome.

Thanks again to all of you for a great season, and I’ll see you at McNair!

BUZZARDS OVERCOME WESLEYAN 15-6, to Advance to the Round of Four!

2009-08-06T04:21:00.010-04:00

If you want to know what a patient dump/swing/repeat/repeat/... Zone Offense looks like, contact Wesleyan Corporate C league (the real Wesleyan, from Waterbury, CT), because they showed it to us all night long. The Buzzards (Bill, Bridgette, Devon, Jeana, Jeff VoB, Karl, Kevin, Leroy, Meaghan, Paul, Reagan and Todd) pulled ahead early, but Wesleyan, a team of great heart and fantastic Spirit, did not give up and played a much tougher game than the final score suggests. It was a lot of fun playing you guys, and we definitely look forward to seeing you again.

One of the things that made the game so much fun was that we were able to resolve rules questions in the Spirit of fun and fair play. Here’s a rule thing that I had wrong(!). If you get fouled in the end zone, there are two possibilities: either you caught the disc and had it stripped out of your hands (AKA Bridgette, last Monday) or you went up for the disc and were interfered with and didn’t make the catch (AKA Todd). If either of these fouls is contested, the disc goes back to the thrower. If uncontested, Bridgette gets the disc at the spot of the foul and scores a point. Todd gets possession of the disc at the spot of the foul, and it becomes “live”, but he must carry it out to the nearest spot on the goal line and play from there. “Live” means the game is on, no need to check the disc in again, play it like you just picked up an out of-bounds throw. Kudos to Wesleyan for knowing the rule and to Captain Natalie for not rolling her eyes at my ignorance. See the 11th Edition Rules FAQ page for where that all came from. FYI, if you make the catch while airborne, but are pushed out-of-bounds, you are Bridgette, not Todd.

A fond Buzzard farewell for the next two weeks to Paul St. Pierre, departing for Norway for a well deserved rest. He’s leaving behind a legacy of second- and third-chance catches and a textbook on how to make popper cuts. You couldn't ask for a better send-off than to score the game winning point to advance to the semi-finals. You will be missed, we'll keep you updated on how it goes.

The thing that made our Zone offense work and that Wesleyan struggled with was moving the disc up the field after a swing. If you played wing during this game (Leroy, Jeff, Karl, Devon, Kevin, Bill) I’m talking about you, shuttin’ em down. And speaking of closing the door on the offense...

Reagan, you are tougher, per linear foot, than anyone else on the team. Yes, we turned it over too often in the second half. Many of those were the Buzzards trying something a little different for the purpose of player development. This is a good thing, but it still meant 15 minutes of cup for you.

In fact, all of the Buzzard women have made us proud all season long (under "budding handlers," see Jeana, Kelly; under “Defense wins games” see Mariam, Meaghan, Rachel; under “Just tougher than you,” see Annette, Bridgette). You are the stubbornest disc chasers in the league, and every time the Buzzards get the disc on the opponent’s own twenty-yard line, it’s the cup that put us there.

Cup, if you start flagging because the offense isn’t getting it done, you have two tools: when next on offense, call for a timeout. Only the person with the disc can call for a timeout (Rule VI.B.4), so communicate with that person that you need a break. This is something we as a team should have done better to support the cup in this game. In 11 games we’ve had 44 timeouts and called maybe three.

The other thing you can do in the cup is play the passing lanes, not the distance. At ten feet from the disc (the minimum legal distance) you cut off a lot of passing lanes automatically. But if you are unable to keep up with the movement, put yourself in the lane where they want to throw: cut off either the up-field popper or the swing. If you cut off that lane, you buy yourself time to get into position.

The Michael and Janet Jackson Award for Wednesday, August 5th goes to Devon and Leroy for sweet moves and possibly being the same person. Speed in the backfield means we could play the 3-3-1 zone (as opposed to 3-2-2) and really pressure the disc. Here’s some math: Which takes longer? A disc thrown from midfield traveling up the sideline or our deep man coming from the center of the goal line to get the block? I’m not saying what answer I put down, but my grade was 15/6.

The reason you shouldn’t both be in at the same time is because its considered poor Spirit to get the block, then have another defender make a play on the disc, and then, after a commercial break, have the intended receiver appear. Also, somebody’s gotta throw the thing.

A special wave of the feathery wing to our cheering section: season-ticket-holder Jack, mom Marianne (not Jack's mom. C'mon, keep up!), wife Mariam, sig-o’s Mary and Angela and future roommate Danielle (“She’s filling in for Ian. No, wait, I mean…”). We should have brought those bleachers from Bluemont with us. First ten fans get to take a Buzzard home with them. No home for you, Jeff. Get back to the NAC.

Our next game is Monday, August 10th at the Polo Fields (2B). Game at 6:30, cookout at 5:45. I’m not certain who our opponent will be (apparently, google docs is that hard to use), but best bet is our Sligo nemesis, Disc of Enlightenment. Bring your “A” game.

BUZZARDS DEFEAT PPC COMPLEXIFICATIONIZERS, 15-7, and Advance to the Round of Eight

2009-08-03T22:28:00.006-04:00

Show up on time and put it up deep. That pretty much defined the Buzzards' key to early success (taking half at 8-3) in their first ever playoff win against PPC Complexificationizers, a company team of consultants who consult on the things that their company does, which is consulting (we think they may be ninjas).

The game started promptly at 6:30, possibly a first in Ultimate history, and PPC took advantage of a careless turnover at our own end zone to draw first blood. But the Buzzards (Todd, Reagan, Paul, Leroy, Kevin, Kelly, Karl, Jeff, Brook, Bridgette and Bill) stepped up, taking the game to 2-2, and then on a 6-1 run to half.

A big Buzzard “Welcome Back” to Devon Clark, Leroy Posey’s evil twin brother. Together, the twins scored probably 70% of the Buzzard Points on deep throws to the end zone. You can tell which one is evil because of the evil one always has facial hair (“I’ve got sensitive skin!”) and the good one reads the Washington Post.

Some more Complexificationizers showed up by halftime (including someone to make the twins work for the disk in the end zone), and the Buzzards gave up three quick points getting adjusted to PPC's zone defense. At 8-6, the Buzzards decided it was time to get serious, and eight points later it was 15-7 and “Good game, blue”. The second half was classic Buzzard flow, with nice popper cuts from Paul, Bridgette, Reagan, and Kelly, and relaxed, high-percentage handling from Todd, Karl, Jeff, Bill and Kevin.

Plays of the game (tonight on “the Ocho”):
Bill “maybe if I lay out it’ll fix my back” Putnam, for digging the disk like the volleyball powerhouse he is.
Kelly “Garot is French for 'Handler', boys” Garot, for not being afraid to put up the deep stuff.
Paul “Popper” St. Pierre, for making the cup look over their shoulders and cry one big teardrop, like at the end of that Prince video.
And Bridgette “strip me again and I will gut you like a fish” Barchek, for showing Jack that Mom is NOT to be messed with.

A rules clarification: Contact which affects your ability to make a play on the disk is a foul. In short: shoving on the way up is a foul and should be called, shoving on the way down is poor Spirit and should be avoided. On a receiving foul, if the foul is contested, the disk goes back to the thrower. If uncontested, the disk goes to the fouled player.

From the 11th Edition rules :
XVI.H.3.b.(1). If a player contacts an opponent while the disc is in the air and thereby interferes with that opponent’s attempt to make a play on the disc, that player has committed a receiving foul. Some amount of incidental contact before, during, or immediately after the attempt often is unavoidable and is not a foul.

but...

XVI.H.2. Contact resulting from adjacent opposing players simultaneously vying for the same unoccupied position, is not in itself a foul.

see also...

XVI.H.3.b.(1) The Principle of Verticality: All players have the right to enter the air space immediately above their torso to make a play on a thrown disc. If non-incidental contact occurs in the airspace immediately above a player before the outcome of the play is determined (e.g., before possession is gained or an incomplete pass is effected), it is a foul on the player entering the vertical space of the other player.

And, of course, pushing an airborne player out of the end zone is a no-no.

Things to think about for next time:
The Zone offense is all about smooth flow. The Buzzards did an excellent job of not forcing bad passes, but the dump-swing-repeat could flow a little faster. Remember, the mission is to run the cup ragged so that they are out of position when you want to go deep. The middle handler’s primary look is a quick continuation to the swing. He’s got about ¾ of a second before the cup gets there. If the middle handler dallies, then the swings are going to start looking for arcing passes across the width of the field. This is low-percentage play and exactly what the cup wants. Keep is simple and keep it moving.

On man defense, if your man is playing deep, cover him deep. But if he is playing middle or short, don’t be afraid to get between him and the disc. If they put up a deep throw, our own deep cover will be there to back you up. Don’t be afraid to commit up close, cut off the passing lanes and get the layout D.

Be proud of your performance, Buzzards. You played tough D against a team with good throws. You played smart O, and forced them to play your game. And you advanced to the round of 8.

Our next game is Wednesday, August 5th at the Polo Fields #1B. Our opponent is either "Air it Out" or Wesleyan. Game at 6:30, cookout at 5:45. See you there!

Is that a wet towel on me?

2009-07-30T07:43:00.001-04:00

It’s here! You know that feeling you get when you walk outside and you feel like you’re swimming wherever you walk. When, no matter how leisurely your pace, everything you’re wearing is drenched by the time you get where you’re going? Any of you who are familiar with the D.C. area during the summer are familiar with this phenomenon called “humidity”.

As a native Northern Virginian I grew up with this and really thought nothing of it. I mean it’s what drove me away from other sports with lots more clothing and equipment like football. I remember that first summer of pee wee and having all those pads on and long pants and heavy jersey and just thinking there have to be better ways to have fun….I was 8 was playing for the Cardinals with all my other friends in Elementary school and though many of those guys went on to high school stardom at Gar-Field and Woodbridge Senior High Schools respectively, I don’t have much regret about not sticking with football. But I digress…other than the football experiment I don’t recall minding the humidity too much.

But I have to say, this July has been pretty darn nice…right up until about 3 days ago. This week, the humidity has moved up into the 90% range, the temperatures have hovered in and around 90 and evening thunderstorms have visited the area. This is summer as we metro D.C. area denizens have come to love it.

On the Ultimate pitch it means that we are in the season where the pinnies need to be taken home and washed almost every night. Please feel free to step up and volunteer for this duty occasionally. I’m pretty happy with my new Bosch washer and Dryer but I just feel funny saying that, I have a laundry room full of stray leaves that have found their way into our mesh bag, and it would just be nice to share the load (pun intended) once in a while.

We’ve had a couple decent games already this week all things considered. Thanks to those who have come out so far. July is typically a tough month to call games. Lots of people on leave, transfers just settling in or having left us, and oh, did I mention it’s humid. We want to give a bit Buzzard welcome to Marcia joining us for the first time yesterday. She’s newly arrived from Port Arthur, TX. Yes she’s the player we traded MattP for, no word yet on what type of towels she uses. Matt, did you leave her any princess motifs in the office?

Kelly was the star of yesterday’s game. She and Todd worked some great give and go drives late in the game and she make a couple great leading throws for scores. Great throws were not to be found much on the blue side as myself, Kevin, & Erick did not give Marcia a good first impression of the quality of game she can sometimes find out here.

Our theory of trying to force mark worked on and off. I remember having a really strong mark on Bob at one point and taking away the backhand completely and forcing flick. Then Bob finally relented and threw a flick that defied physics for half its flight, finally flattened out, never got more than about 2 feet off the ground and sailed into Todd’s hands for a score. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him make that throw out here before.

Low throws abounded though…ask Paul how it was affecting his pulls yesterday. Okay, so the air was a bit heavy. Did I mention the humidity? Marcia told me this wasn’t really even hot compared to Port Arthur. The flip side of that “truth is relative to the perception of the individual” theory (Mr. Bunn, 11th grade, U.S. History) is that Meaghan last week when the weather was still relatively comfortable (for around here) wondered if she hadn’t been transferred to the face of the sun. Of course she was coming from Seattle.

Welcome to D.C. everyone, welcome to summer, and just keep plugging along. Your playing in this will pay huge dividends when fall rolls around. You’ll feel like a seasoned tri-athlete…okay well at least like an 8-year old pee wee football player.

Pull!

Buzzards Throw One Away to Disc of Enlightenment

2009-07-28T04:47:00.005-04:00

The “Disc of Enlightenment” defense made a strong showing Monday, aided by the Buzzard’s unquenchable desire to throw the disc away. The Buzzards (Brad, Bridgette, Brook, Karl, Kevin, Leroy, Mariam, Meaghan, Paul, & Todd) played hard but fell to a team with good spirit, good throws, and lots of hustle, 15-7.

Spectacular marking by DoE may entice some Buzzards to practice throwing against a mark. Here's a good, three person drill: http://www.menalto.com/ultimate/view_play.php?play_id=197.

Something to think about as well: in the first half, we forced flick and got outscored 8-3. In the first eight points of the second half, we forced middle and went 4-4.

This next paragraph actually causes me pain to write. Todd pointed out that we never really took advantage of our vertical game. In other words, we didn't throw a lot of overhand- and high floaty passes and rely on our height and athleticism to bring the disc in. This is an area we left unexplored; maybe we shouldn't have.

In other news, food did not happen, largely because I am a slacker who didn’t feel like hauling the grill up the hill, and also because we’d have had to prepare and roast a child, since there was no food for the grill. But we had plenty of children, including Bridgette’s Jack and Mariam & Kevin’s Grace and Sam, plus some other little poison-ivy magnets on the other team. Welcome kids! Each week we designate a teammate to forget that you are there and talk like a dirty sailor, so be sure to bring a notebook and an unabridged dictionary.

Stay turned for more craziness. The Playoff schedule should be coming out tonight(!). Right now the schedule shows one “play-in” game (no idea what that is) for two as-yet-unnamed teams this Thursday July 30th and then single elimination games Mon/Wed/Mon/Wed per roster manager.

So, lessons for next time: Practice throwing against a mark. Visualize making smart, energetic cuts. And let's bring food, or at least snacks- 6:30 is a long way away from lunch. The the playoffs are next week: We’re 6-3, and I imagine we're gonna some of those “3" again before long.

Finding our lunchtime groove...

2009-07-22T08:39:00.001-04:00

Lunchtime Ultimate had been suffering from expected transfer and vacation season flux and July temperatures rising (though this hasn’t been your normal July in D.C.), and the unexpected oversaturation that the Corporate League had perhaps added to. Yesterday the 1130 crowd was back out in force thanks to newcomers Meaghan (who has been playing Corporate with the Buzzards) and Dan, a basketball player looking for another exercise outlet (thanks Matt, you’re finder’s fee will be in the mail), and also to John who was back out with us after a bit of a hiatus.

We had our first 7 on 7 game in about a month. We were rewarded with another unseasonable temperate July day. Though the humidity did increase some, it was still in the low 80’s somewhat overcast and even a bit breezy again. I heard Meaghan on the field saying something about “I’ll get used to this heat and humidity soon” as she has come to us from Seattle. Any of the rest of you who have the pleasure of living or visiting the Pacific Northwest, know you can declimatize from this mid-Atlantic oppressiveness pretty quickly. Now reacclimatizing may not happen as quickly and I just didn’t want to tell her that it really hasn’t even gotten bad hear yet. Normally by this time in the summer we’ve had a couple weeks of solid 90/90 days.

You couldn’t really tell John hadn’t been out there in a while as he made several great pinpoint passes for the blue team. He and his receivers were finding the holes in the orange team’s porous zone. A good strong cup defense is difficult to play when you know you won’t be getting any substitutions for the full hour we’re out there. And even more difficult when you take a play off to discuss work business (as I found Dennis and Brian doing on one play). Before we could recover from that diversion blue had made two passes and were well over mid-field.

Also out with us yesterday were Steve, Kevin, Brad, Leroy, Mike, Tom & Frank. Thanks everybody for getting back out for a great lunch time game.

"One small step..."

2009-07-21T08:33:00.002-04:00

Blasting off on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing the Buzzards took their own respective “giant leaps” yesterday, if not for mankind then at least for that 175 gram pie shaped piece of plastic. And unlike our Summer League games where we routinely spot the opposing team a good decade at least at many positions and which has been getting most of the press here in the blog of late I would guess that most of our participants yesterday were alive for that historic event in 1969.

In fact Tom gave me that look of incredulity again yesterday as I was dividing up the teams. “You did it to us again, didn’t you Bill?” he asked. Somehow insinuating that I had conspired to put the bulk of the old slow guys on the same team. What I also did, but what did not pay any immediate dividends, was to give us an extra player. Of course that did not stop the blue team from scorching us early and often as Kevin and Bob worked the disc around nicely, throwing to Leroy occasionally sprinting long, Frank, gliding across his old familiar haunts at the back of the end zone and Dennis, looking for every long pass he could throw.

For our part, the orange team struggled to find some rhythm early on. We had Doug back out with us for the first time in a long while after his soccer brethren abandoned a fabulous weather day… low 80’s, overcast, and breezy. Oh, also, I’m not sure I’ve formally welcomed out Ron who’s been out with us a few times over the last couple weeks. Please join me in giving him a fond Buzzard hello.

We put Doug to good use having him fly around as safety knocking down as many passes as we could but we just couldn’t seem to find him very often on the offensive side of the field. Brian’s chicken wing pass looked a little rusty, Tom was the recipient of a lot of contact on passes in the end zone. I saw him get hit by Bob, Dennis, & Frank on 3 successive possessions. Then finally when he was able to lurk around behind Doug and let him get hit instead, he was able to come down with a deep pass.

Mike made some nice grabs and passes while working up some short drives later in the game as blue started to come around some and make things a bit more competitive. I got caught trying to out jump Leroy on a couple long passes. The first one our lets got tangled up, and my knee went right into his calf and neither of us came down with it. The 2nd one we were able to avoid contact and both got up to the disc but he hauled it down with a nice 2-handed grab and then made the subsequent pass for the winning score.

Walking back to the sideline Tom offered his wry assessment of the final score. “Bill you’re old and you can’t jump, what did you expect?” To be fair, Leroy isn’t even old enough to legally drink, let alone have any recollection of Neil Armstrong taking that first step on the cratered surface of the moon. I could have used a little anti-gravity situation to out jump him.

Battle of the High Seas - Coast Guard vs Navy

2009-07-16T06:45:00.002-04:00

Or more aptly, battle on the concrete fields of Anacostia between the Coast Guard and Navy teams last night with those of the smaller boats but longer hucks prevailing 15-10 as the sun was beginning to set and we were closing in precariously on “Taps, taps, lights out”.

The Buzzards were represented last night by Annette, Bill, Bob, Brad, Howard, Jason, Jeff, Jeana, Karl, Kelly, Leroy, Meaghan, Paul, Reagan, & Todd. We also had somewhat of a cheering section show up…welcome Connie, Elena, Stephanie & her Basset Hound that I’ve forgotten the name of, hopefully she won’t be offended…I mean I did offer her one of the leftover Italian sausages from the grill as we were leaving last night.

Arriving at the field yesterday evening, we found the wind to be blowing fairly well and thought we might have to rely more predominantly on a short passing game. For those of you keeping score at home and who have watched the Buzzards once or twice before you know we tend to like to throw long occasionally. We…well I say we, but really I was outvoted on this…decided also to stick with zone defense which apparently worked phenomenally in my absence Monday night. And it worked fairly well tonight too (more on that in a bit).

With another great turnout we had a full A & B squad for substitutions plus 1 additional women so there was no excuse for getting tired. But we started slow and struggled to find a passing rhythm with the first rotation and at first substitution we were down 0-2. The B team came in feeling energized and quickly got two scores – both to Howard – after needing to learn the hard way that one of the Navy players, Ben I believe his name was, had a wingspan similar to some small planes and was knocking down passes thrown anywhere near him.

At any rate, I heard Howard as we were coming off the field saying “I wonder if I’ll ever be able to say again that I’m so far responsible for 100% of my team’s scoring?”

The A team got back on the field and settled down some and found their scoring groove finally with some nice short passing in the lanes. Jason made some really nice catches in traffic, Brad did a great job last night of cutting back to Karl & Jeff and giving them that extra short option as the Navy did a good job of clogging the middle up most of the time.

On the defensive front, Meaghan was a nuisance all night long for the Navy handlers while she was playing cup and getting great marks and forces on almost every drive making them work extremely hard for their points. With such good pressure at the point we were able to defend the deep really easily and I think they may have only gotten 1-2 points that way all night and both of those may have actually been mistakes as one was tipped and the other sailed over the intended receiver and fell into the hands of somebody else as Todd and I crossed in front of each other in the end zone.

Meanwhile, we were able to connect on a few long passes from time to time to compliment our short passing. Paul also, like Brad, continually gave Todd and I another outlet on the short passing game and opened up the back so that we could find Jeana, Howard, & Leroy at times on the wings or headed into the end zone.

We also saw Annette sneaking open in the end zone several times on one possession. Well, when I say we, I mean those of us on the sideline as apparently her teammates on the field couldn’t see her through all the less vertically challenged players in front of her.

Reagan & Kelly were also giving the handlers great passing lanes to work with even though we didn’t always see them. Todd’s mom, Connie, remarked on the sideline at one point “Is there a reason you aren’t throwing to them?”

Todd and I explained somewhat sheepishly “It’s not really intentional”.

“We just aren’t very good sometimes on our field vision.”

Last night also turned out to be a good learning opportunity for several rules. “Pick” was called a couple times on the Buzzards last night. We had to give the Navy friendly reminders that they were well in excess of the 70 seconds allotted before the receiving team must signal they are ready for the pull. If you are the pulling team you have 90 seconds to release after a score and that was also being liberally extended.

Another rule that we don't often enforce is that the person who retrieves the disc on an out of bonds turnover must also be the person who puts it in play. The Navy called us on that last night and most of our players weren't sure what was going on but they were correct in the call.

We had several sideline and end zone line calls that were disputed to some degree or another with a friendly reconciliation on all but the one end zone call which seemed to get a little testy before we were all able to settle down and agree to replay from the point of the throw. Nobody got verbally abusive and there didn’t seem to be any lasting hard feelings so kudos to both teams for ultimately ceding to the Spirit of the Game.

We finally got off the field last night on a long throw to Bob in the middle of the field that he had to make a great adjustment on and then he threw the follow on pass to Karl in the end zone who had to make another great adjustment and grab to end the game.

The Buzzards again found themselves on the short end of the unofficial tally for best end of game cheers but went home with a win nonetheless.

BOTTOMLESS GREEN FALLS TO BUZZARDS

2009-07-14T08:25:00.005-04:00

In a game a lot more competetive than the score would indicate, the Buzzard Point Ultimate Club (Meaghan, Ian, Karl, Paul, Brad, Todd, Reagan, Annette, Kelly, Kevin, Mariam, and Jeff) defeated Bottomless Green 15-7. The starting seven chose to receive, scored the first point and the Buzzards kept the lead all the way home.

Bottomless ran an extraordinarily patient dump & swing zone offense and even worked it into the end zone, two yards at a time, often. But the "Wall of Women"(tm) (Annette, Kelly, Meaghan, Mariam & Reagan) plus cup appearances from Paul, Ian, Kevin & Brad, kept the pressure on and forced turnovers. And the transition offense was downright scary, with plenty of speed already downfield (Brad, Meaghan, Kelly, Paul, Kevin) and plenty of range coming up from playing deep defense (Karl, Todd, & Jeff), and some nice, smart handling in the middle from Paul, Annette, Reagan and Ian.

Having nine different people cycle through the cup meant that the pressure was always on, and when turnovers came, we had four fresh offensive players coming upfield to exploit the opportunity and give the cup a break. Brad pulled down so many discs in the front corner of the end zone that even I was embarrassed. And I'm hard to embarrass: look at how I dress. The funny part is, he made the same cut to the front left corner about nine times, and he scored on at least three of them. At some point you just put a defender in that corner and tell him "When Brad gets here, punch him in the face."

A fond Buzzard farewell to Ian, who flaps off to Seattle this Wednesday.
Ian made his last appearance for this summer a good one, playing both cup and middle/ wing. He's off to finish grad school, but will be back in a year. So it is not goodbye, but "until we meet again." By the way, what the heck kind of fisheries ninja is Meaghan that there is not ONE JOB for her in Seattle until Ian is done in a year. What, did they cancel fisheries enforcement in D13? No more salmon? The Buzzards gain, but chalk up another "family friendly" move by the assignments office.

Kudos to Paul stepping into the handler role on a gimpy knee. If you want someone to appreciate beauty, ask a man who used to be blind. And if you want a guy to throw nice, flat, waist-height passes for completions, ask Paul, who normally has so much garbage thrown at him that he's not certain which side of the disc is considered the top.

There was some discussion about the brick rule. The 11th edition rules provide:

If the disc initially hits an out-of-bounds area, the receiving team may put the disc into play:
(1) at the spot determined by IX.H [the sideline where it went out –kmd]; or
(2) after signaling for a brick or middle by fully extending one hand overhead and calling “brick” or “middle” before gaining possession of the disc, either at
(a) the brick mark closest to the end zone that the receiving team is defending if “brick” was called, or
(b) the spot on the long axis of the playing field proper nearest to the spot determined by IX.H if “middle” was called.

This allows the receiving team the choice of the middle of the field where it went out, or the brick mark (middle of the field, twenty (20) yards up), but NOT middle-plus-ten-yards.

Things that worked: Zone. Closed. The. Door.

Things that didn't work: Forgot. The. Grill. Although, to be honest, I would support starting the grill at halftime and eating after. I mean, how many hamburgers do you want to carry up and down the field? Snacks before & burgers after is my new rallying cry.

Things to work on:
Middle cuts: a good middle cut goes straight to the sideline inside of your defender. Leave when the first pass (to the handler cut) is still in the air, and look to hang a pass up downfield for a deep cut, or dump back to a handler to reset.
Throwing against the mark.

Overall, though, a top-notch effort by all hands. Congratulations on a job well done.

Our next game is Wednesday, July 15th vs. Navy at Anacostia #1 (the manhole cover field, again). We have seen some of the Navy players before, go out and have a good time.

Buzzards (3-2) defeat Peace Corps (3-3) 15-13.

2009-07-13T09:28:00.004-04:00

Seriously? No one (Putnam) has posted a game summary from Friday? Seriously?

I got there so late the only thing I can say is “nice catch Paul, hope your knee replacement surgery goes well” as the Buzzards (Annette, Bill, Bob, Brad, Howard, Jeff, Karl, Kelly, Kevin, Leroy, Mariam, Paul & Tim) earned a win against the hard-chargers from Peace Corps/ Agency for International Development.

Peace Corps/ AID is a good & good-spirited team, and the game (final score 15-13 Buzzards) easily could have gone the other way. And, to be honest, except for several big defensive plays by Karl (“Like Shaq, but sexier”) Lander, it pretty much would have.

A big Buzzard welcome to Howard Wright for his first corporate league game! Hello, Howard! Glad to have you! Also present were the real Bill Putnam (this time, with throws!) and Mariam “What’s RosterManager.com?” d’Eustachio, who got on the scorecard with her first catch as a Buzzard! In fact, the Buzzard women had an exceptional game, with Kelly Garot coming up big on defense and Annette “the Hook” Ambrosio hauling in some throws that polite company prohibits me from accurately describing. Of course, St. Paul of the Second Chance reeled in the game winner: a worm burner that could easily have been incomplete except that Paul wanted to go home and put some ice on the knee he destroyed making the catch. I don’t know if that’s precognition or what, but it worked.

Some other Things That Worked:

Splitting the boys into two squads. Kept good skills distribution and allowed a little chemistry to develop, while still giving everyone the opportunity to play their hearts out. The women are organized enough to sub out smoothly. The men benefit from specific direction.

The give & go. After the swing, run straight down the field (toward the end zone). You’ll get the jump on your defender every time, its an easy pass to make, and your team picks up five yards and resets the stall count. But DO NOT cut across the field (left/ right), you will bring your defender with you and block every passing lane for several seconds.

Things that Did Not Work so much:

Stalling out. “If the thrower has not released the disc at the first utterance of the word ‘ten,’ it is a turnover. The marker loudly announces ‘stall’ and play stops." (Rule XIV.3.).

Officially, there must be one second between each number in a stall count. In practice, what happens is “stalling eight, stalling nine-ten!” and the “T” means a turnover.

Dump after four, Throw by eight, punt on nine, by ten you should be playing defense.

What to do if you throw the disc before “Ten” and the marker (still) calls a stall on you: if the pass was incomplete, its a turnover where the disc lies. If the pass was complete, it comes back to the thrower and stalling resumes at eight.

Picking up a point block. Rule 2 of all things Ultimate is: A spectacular play will inevitably be followed by something awful. So when you get the big point block: RUN! Don’t pick up the disc: (1) You are the farthest downfield of your whole team, your whole team will have to run past you to make cuts. (2) You just did something spectacular, your karma needs time to recharge. (3) You just had a disc spang! off your throwing hand. Maybe now isn’t the time for trying out the inside-out, double-helix no-look hammer.

Next game Monday, July 13th against Bottomless Green at Anacostia #1. See you there!

Back from the beach

2009-07-07T10:49:00.001-04:00

Running on the Ultimate pitch and running through the sand and surf are two different things I abruptly discovered yesterday upon my return to D.C. after two weeks at the beach. Called a game yesterday even though the Buzzards Corporate team had a game later in the evening (more on that shortly). I was anxious to get back out and play after only having tossed a disc around on the beach for the last couple weeks.

Fortunately, others were suffering the long weekend, Monday recovery style of play that has become somewhat ordinary for us at the beginning of the week, dropped passes, a little less than full speed running (which is saying something for those of us who don’t normally find full speed very often anyway), and just a bit of rust.

Want to welcome back two old Buzzards to the nest though. Frank & MattC both got back yesterday. We hadn’t seen either in over a year I don’t think. Great to have you both back out there and it was “just like riding a bike” right? Matt said he’d let me know later about that…or have his wife call me if he went into cardiac arrest later on.

Somebody else that wanted to check back with me later was John after I came crashing down on his ankle on a nice end zone play where he made a great grab for a score as we both had gone up for the disc. “It’s okay” he reassured me…. “for now”.

“Later” turned out to be our Corporate League game at the Anacostia fields last night. We thought it might be a slim turnout with just enough to get by but it turned out that was true for the ERG team who only had 9 players show while we wound up having a big turnout with plenty of substitutes for both men and women. That did not translate however to the final outcome.

Kevin has his own account already posted so I’ll cede my time to him.

HARD FIELDS, HARD GAME, HARD LOSS: BLAME BROOK SHERMAN

2009-07-06T23:34:00.006-04:00

Buzzards,

I have some rather disturbing news from Monday’s game, a hard fought 15-10 loss to a great-spirited team from the Environmental Research Group. It was our first game at Anacostia park (official park motto: "Like a concrete slab, but with holes!"), and our second loss, dropping the Buzzards official record to 2-2. In reviewing the tapes, I have analyzed the offense, defense and chain-link fence and there is only one logical conclusion. It is Brook Sherman’s fault.

I know a lot of the players who came out today (another huge turnout with Regan, Rachel, Mariam, Megan (her first appearance!), Annette, Todd, Leroy, Ian (his first appearance), Jeff, Bill, Brad, Brian, Paul, Jason, Matt and Kevin) will find it hard to blame Brook for a defeat he didn't even participate in, but the evidence is incontrovertible. Brook, or “Brook” as many of us call him, is usually a reliable handler, but in Monday's game he did not complete a single pass. Even when he’s not handling, Brook can be counted on for sharp, smart cuts in the end-zone. Today, it seemed like he was in an entirely different zip code from the goal. I’m sorry to say it, but there’s no other explanation except to blame Brook Sherman.

Now many of you may point to exceptional defense and extraordinary athleticism by the team from the Environmental Research Group (“ERG”), or some, uh, less than complete passes thrown pretty much across the board. I’m sticking with blaming Brook. Hey, if it works, we can Blame Brook for a whole host of things: poor internet connectivity, global climate change and lack of sesame chicken in the buffet. So until our next game (Friday at the Polo Fields against the Peace Corps/ Agency for International Development, 6:30, practice @ 5:45), remember: rest up, be ready to play hard, and blame Brook Sherman.

BUZZARDS DON'T FLY IN THUNDERSTORMS

2009-07-02T04:32:00.006-04:00

As Vince Lombardi said, "We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time." Of course, as the 11th edition rules say “The team with the most goals at the end of the game is the winner.” So there you have it as the Buzzard Point Ultimate Club (2-1) receives its first Corporate League defeat at the hands of Multiple Scoregasm (a group of alums from Takoma Park Middle, Whitman and Mongomery Blair High Schools in Maryland) 10 to 9 in a game called at about 8 pm due to lightning.

To be honest, I’m having a hard time putting this one in the “L” column, as every circumstance seemed to line up against the Buzzards to create the loss. A tiny field created by a local club team’s need to practice in the middle of WAFC Corporate League games (I’m not a good sharer), a half-hour late start (I’m not patient, especially for late starts where we then run out of time), and a game called due to weather (I’m allergic to lightning) all combined to cut short a game that already had two lead changes and the Buzzards on a three-point run.

Kudos to opponents M.S. for running a patient zone offense. On the plus side, the Buzzards stuck with it and forced the opponents to crawl up the field in a dump, swing, [repeat] fashion. Nice job sticking with the defense Buzzards: no breakdowns on the Buzzards side, but certainly no mistakes by M.S., either. And at least a whole lot of us got to see it as we brought fifteen (!) Buzzards to the game (Todd, Reagan, Paul, Matt, Mariam, Leroy, Kevin, Kelly, Karl, Jeana, Jason, Brook, Brad, Bob, Annette).

A big Buzzards welcome to Mariam d’Eustachio, playing her first game of Ultimate in the 21st century. She says “Everyone on the team is really nice & helpful.” I say “It really is a great group, [they’re all so nice that if you had to pick someone (ha-ha), I would say that] I’m pretty much the biggest jerk on the team.” She says “Yeah, you are."

Things to do different for next time:
(1) Recognize we brought a LOT more players, and start running for the sake of running earlier in the game. We didn’t really realize this until halftime, and we started to see the benefits shortly thereafter.
(2) We spend a lot of lunch-time putting up big bombs to hyper-athletic end-zone cuts. We’ve tried to get away from this because we need to develop other skills, but lets not forget what we’re good at.
(3) Fix the grill. Cripes, what a piece of junk. You’d think that something I paid nearly twenty dollars for back in 2002 would stand up a little better. Thanks to Mariam, Annette and Kevin’s Mom for improvising hot dog skewers and feeding the Buzzards.

In my Great Big Book of Frisbee Strategy, things (1) + (2) = HORIZONTAL STACK! Give it a look here (http://www.ultimatehandbook.com/blog/strategy/horizontal/) . A good horizontal stack opens up the field for our athleticism and also our ability to run the length of the field on deep cuts, then bring in fresh legs.

Our next games are MONDAY, JULY 6th in Anacostia vs. ERG and FRIDAY, JULY 10th at the Polo Fields vs. Peace Corps/ Agency for International Development. Directions at www.wafc.org/page/fields. Sign up at www.rostermanager.com.

BUZZARDS OVERCOME E.D. to go 2-0!

2009-06-30T08:47:00.008-04:00

An upstanding Buzzards team (Annette, Jeana, Rachel, Brad, Brian, Brooke, Jason, Karl, Kevin, Leroy, Paul) had no problems with E.D. yesterday, defeating the team from the Environmental Defense Fund 15-5. The glory of making deep throws to streaking cuts was only slightly marred by the occasional “it bounced off the meaty part of my hand” moment. You know who you are.

Bluepoint is (in my opinion) the nicest field we’ve seen, and reliable sources claim that there is a disc golf course in that same park. Next Bluepoint game is, um, never. We don’t go back to Bluepoint this season. But maybe in the fall…

The Grillman Medal with cheesewedge-shaped distinguishing device goes to Karl “Strahan” Lander, who worked magic on the grill, making cheeseburgers and cheddar bratwurst for all. This King Midas of Fromage also played handler the whole game, which meant he only had one beautiful corner cut for a score (poor baby). And thanks to the dessert fairy (Annette), for making triple chocolate brownies, because double chocolate brownies are just not chocolate enough.

A special Buzzards welcome to every single person in the world that Brian Moore is related to, who all showed up at the game. Mr. Moore (Brian’s dad) had never seen Ultimate before, but was throwing the long stuff before the day was out. The presence of Brian’s brother inspired Brian to throw the disc away less, which we all appreciate. No, my brother will not be attending any games this season.

Drills included a little double-disc challenge (two players, two discs, ten yards apart, keep ‘em moving) and a little bit of the zone offense demo. Our next game is our third, which means zone defense is in the playbook. Anyone who wants zone defense explained, see Brad, Brook, Bill or Kevin. If you want two contradictory zone defense explanations, see any two of them.

There was some discussion yesterday with EDFrisbee about when you can bring the disc up to the end zone line, and when you must play from where it lies in the end zone. The 11th edition rules provide that if you gain possession in “your” (defending) end zone, either by interception or incomplete pass, you must CHOOSE either to establish a pivot foot and play it from the spot where you got the disc, or you may move the disc to the closest point on the “playing field proper” (the nearest part of the end zone line) and play it from there. (Rule X.A.) Note that on the initial pull, if the disc lands in or rolls into the end zone, it is put into play from the spot where it stopped (Rule VIII.B.6.a).

Our next game is THIS WEDNESDAY July 1st at the POLO FIELDS at 6:30 p.m., dinner and practice at 5:45. Don’t forget to roger up with what you’re bringing on Roster Manager. See you there!

BPUC 1-0 in Corporate league play!

2009-06-23T13:36:00.004-04:00

Bringing a team that can best be described as “tall,” (Todd, Jeff, Karl, Kevin, Bridgette, Tim, and Leroy, plus Reagan and Paul) the Buzzards made a strong showing against Greenspin, a more normally-heighted team from the Federal Reserve. Greenspin brought iced tea to the cookoout and a good cheer at the end (a long-standing Ultimate tradition), but fell 15-4.

Special thanks to Bridgette, the star of meat and grill. Her Italian sausage & teriyaki chicken were both well received. We’ll have to sabotage someone else’s freezer next week to ensure a good meal for all.

Missing in action: Brian and Rachel, last minute cancellations, and HRH Princess Jeana, reported overdue and missing until a first light search of her cubicle.

Several lessons learned at Monday’s game:
(1) If you try and throw deep against Todd, it will not go well for you.
(2) Kevin’s stride is 15% shorter than one yard, he will pace out a short field not (just) because he’s lazy, but because he has short little stumpy legs. Fortunately, he's enough of a geek to think that he can bring 400' of masonry twine and somehow use that to make a square field.
(3) Do not let any of the following people behind you on offense: Leroy, Karl, Leroy, Paul and Leroy; they will all score on you.
(4) Zone Offense: Dump, swing, repeat. We forced some weak passes through the cup when we didn’t have to. You can throw through the cup AFTER you’ve made them respect your dump & swing, and after you’ve spread out the defense a bit.

Next week: Games Monday 6/29 AND Wednesday 7/1:
Monday 6/29: 5:45 pm (game at 6:30) at Bluemont vs. EDFrisbee.

Wednesday 7/1: 5:45 pm (game at 6:30) at the Polo Fields vs. Multiple Scorgasms.

Don’t forget to sign up to bring stuff via RosterManager.com!

-Kevin d'
Buzzard Corps.

WAFC (Wimps Awaiting Fairer Conditions?)

2009-06-18T07:12:00.002-04:00

Start of league play last night for the Buzzards…or maybe not. There was a very late call yesterday afternoon by WAFC to cancel games but as Kevin noted about an hour before game time, “This is the strangest Ultimate experience I’ve ever had…everybody is out here early”.

Early or no…that of course is all in one’s perspective, I hope this isn’t an indication of WAFC’s organizational skills. And as it turns out the field was completely playable and so that’s exactly what we did. The Buzzards had a huge turnout…the whole team (who said they were coming) except Leroy did show up. Reagan & Rachel, two of our female contingent were there for their inaugural (I think?) Ultimate experiences and they both used their athleticism to their advantage and looked like seasoned veterans. Bridgette, our true seasoned veteran, was there anchoring our women. And she brought Jack who I got to sneak a cookie to like I was some goofy uncle enjoying the luxury of feeding his nephew sugar and sending him home with mom.

Our Capitan’ Kevin, with shirt clearly marked “C”, showed up with a truck full of picnic and disc supplies. After a few minutes of conversation that ended with Todd clearly inpatient and wanting to get things going, I decided to roll the grill over, fire it up and throw on some hot dogs while Bob, Kevin & Todd tried, with varying degrees of success to walk off 40X70 and 25.

The rest of our crew arrived in stages, Brian & Rachel with a cooler full of beer, a watermelon and the aforementioned cookies, Brad with a couple tubs of salads and the news of the late cancellation, and Karl, Paul, Devan, Conrad (and family), Jeff (who it was great to see again), and even a last minute appearance by Thunder, fresh off house-hunting/moving bedlam.

There were a few other Ultimate players out at the fields. A Navy contingent of a half dozen were there and so we gave them a few players and scrimmaged. And we all clearly aren’t aligned well with the DC Ultimate modus operandi for calling games for weather…nobody from our actual opponent, Sloths! Sloths! Sloths! showed up indicating that they actually knew not to come out until the very last minute before a game.

Of course the WAFC was shown up by some local volleyball pickup league who wasn’t afraid of a little rain that didn’t actually come down or standing water, of which there wasn’t any. They had all their matches going on down on one end of the field. Why we didn’t play last night is inexplicable to me. I’ve played in an Ultimate league where we played in 30 mph winds and 7 degree temperatures so an overcast sky, with barely a breeze, and 75 degrees sounded idyllic to me. Is Jeana secretly on the WAFC board?

Rain or no rain, the Buzzards will be playing at lunch today. I’m looking forward to my last game before two weeks at the beach.

Pull!

Unveiling the orange and blue

2009-06-16T06:54:00.002-04:00

Finally the new pinnies were unveiled yesterday! And a good thing I decided to order a dozen of each color because we had a huge crowd of 19 out yesterday! We played substitutes for the first time in a while. Want to welcome out 3 new players – Pinsuda, Lilly, & Lizzy. It was great to have you all out and hope you’ll join us as often as you can.

It was a nice return to our June numbers too after struggling to get a game 3 days last week. Hope to see this continue. If those of you who only play 1-2 days a week could partner up with other similar scheduled players and arrange to have your off days alternate with somebody else that would be fantastic! : )

So what’s the verdict on the new pinnies? I heard several comments yesterday (some of which are repeatable). Great new CG colors, sexy, long, durable, more to hold the stink. It’s the shirt with a little something for everyone. In fact I heard Lilly & Lizzy deliberating before the game as to whether or not they had to wear their shirts underneath them. I’m not going to make any definitive rule about this one way or another. I’ll tell you it’s been done before (I seem to recall Leroy shedding his shirt one day last summer) and some of us look better than others in mesh. For you women who play in some sort of half shirt/sports bra looking top I don’t think it would cause too big a ruckus. I’m going to leave this up to common sense. The problem I see in that is that I heard something about that on the radio last week – the commentator mentioned that he thought “common sense wasn’t very common”.

I’ll tell you what’s nice about having 19. It’s almost impossible to make the teams too uneven when pairing them off to begin play. We seemed pretty well matched up yesterday. The other challenge though is when you have subs running on and off the field is figuring out which defense you’re playing. Particularly when you have teammates who respectively love and hate zone or man defense.

Here was one conversation yesterday on the orange side – Todd running in from his rest on the sideline… “Okay, what are we playing?” as we readied to pull.

“Well” I offered “Paul just went out so we can go back to man if you want but he hates it so we were playing zone”.

And then whoever was pulling didn’t wait for the consensus before launching the disc and so we ran down in some bastardized combination of matchup zone which I, by the way, almost always prefer playing.

Blue wasn’t fairing much better figuring out what they were playing. As I was running off the field one play I heard Bob shout “Okay, let’s shift to zone!”

“I thought that’s what you were playing” I said half jokingly to which Erick replied,

“Well, that’s what we wanted you to think.”

Well, what I think was that there seemed to be somewhat of a lack of scoring going on yesterday on both sides so whatever the defense was must have been working or we just weren’t doing great getting the offensive schemes going.

Orange did have a stretch of a few plays where we got some short passing drives that seemed to work and on back to back plays Tim made really nice throws for scores after we worked the disc up field. On the blue side, I saw Brad, Kevin, Karl, & Erick seemed to put together a couple of weaves that worked well.

As is often the case we tried some deep throws that stayed up too long and Devan and or Bob would track down and break up.

Conrad, who would be the first to tell you that he sometimes drops throws he has not business dropping, caught a couple passes yesterday I thought he had no business catching. One was a juggling catch that he started batting around mid field and caught just before going out of bounds on the sideline. Lizzy in her first day out laid out a couple times on some great hustle plays.

Kelly! Isn’t it great that you aren’t the only female playing anymore? Yesterday’s turnout of 4 women was the best that I can remember in a long time. And when you add yesterday’s additions to yourself, Bridgette, Annette, & Jeana, and if Carolyn can ever stop hurting herself and get back on the pitch, we’d have quite a women’s team.

So Joe, your worries yesterday morning when you RSVPd to the game invite about it possibly being a 3rd game in a row that you could play and then didn’t get enough players for turned out to be for naught. Plenty of Buzzards in the nest yesterday.

Just a reminder for those of you playing Wednesday night in our corporate league to go onto Roster Manager and confirm if you haven’t already. I think at last check I saw that we only had 9 confirmed players 6 men and 3 women. If you aren’t playing but just to come out and watch, bring family and friends and come cheer us on! Game time is 1830 at the polo fields. See Washington Area’s Frisbee club’s page for directions. Folks that are playing, be there at 1745 for rehearsal.

"Wings" is leaving the Runway.

2009-06-10T06:31:00.002-04:00

Farewell Matt – We’ll miss your Hello Kitty, Hannah Montana, and Lizzy McGuire towels, your calling yourself in by one cone but not the other (that’s a straight line between two points right?), your cries of “Ball up!” even though we continue to play this game with discs, and your politically incorrect sense of humor always welcome on this pitch. It’s been great having you with the Buzzards and we wish you Fair Winds as you travel to Texas.

Yesterday, and the last couple days really were fitting weather to send off somebody to Texas. Consider yourself acclimated as the humidity has been oppressively heavy. Or as another Texan Buzzard put it “You know what they call this weather in Houston? Spring!” Well, in fact Brian, it’s still technically just spring here also.

The first day of summer does not come until the 21st which coincidentally or not will also be my first full day of waking up for two weeks at the beach in Kitty Hawk, NC. Not that I’m counting the days or anything.

Prior to beach trip though we have time for some great Ultimate (and I’m sure there will be some great games when I’m gone as well). We’ve been playing in front of bleachers the last couple of days out on the parade field. Well, I guess more accurately, we’ve been behind the bleachers. Now we probably all have some interesting “behind the bleachers” stories to tell but this blogger doesn’t really want to head down those clouded and time embellished lanes right now.

What has actually happened behind the bleachers, which we assume are set up on the parade field for some pass and review ceremonies coming up on Ft. McNair, is that we’ve had two big games. The Buzzards are on a roll lately and it’s been a rare occurrence when we haven’t had at least a dozen players out recently.

So yesterday, when there was a wicked thunderstorm going on about the time I was sending out the morning invite, I suspected the potential weather might scare away some players. And, in fact, the email RSVPs to the game were sparse. Only 9 confirmed players on the way out to the pitch for Matt’s final game. But, as has been the pattern lately, plan for at least an extra 25-30% to show up.

You know there is a saying in some other team sports that “speed kills”. Well I’m finding that “heat kills speed” and our sprinters like Leroy, and Devan were showing signs of that as I noticed them walking up the field several times yesterday. Kevin and I continue to do our best tortoise impersonations and Tom keeps wondering why I’m sticking all the “old and slow” guys on the same team.

May have dubbed Steve with a new nickname yesterday – “Gunn” not to be confused with his handling aptitude but his desire to walk off the “Runway” with his pinnie on. Many of you won’t get this reference and so I’ll refer you to Erick who did know the Project Runway host’s name which may have only been slightly less disturbing than the fact that I used it. He “at least had an excuse” he claimed by living in a house full of girls. I’m blaming mine on 123 Washington Ave. and Alexa, Kelsey, Margaret & Mary.

Speaking of pinnies! Today will mark the unveiling of the new pinnies for the Buzzards so come out and see the new colors as we retire the green and gold for something a little more organizationally inspiring (or if you prefer, they can be considered the colors of Virginia, Illinois, Florida, or some Scandinavian’s national soccer team which escapes me). At any rate, gone will be the plunging neckline and thong models of the gently worn pinnies we’ve used.

Looking forward to seeing you all in them. I’m not sure they make the Tim Gunn’s 10 Essential Elements list but I think we’ll look “mahhhhhhhrvelous”!

Dinner party planning

2009-06-03T07:14:00.002-04:00

After Monday’s monster 2-game day I was surprised to get somewhat tepid response to yesterday’s invite and in fact had to send out a 2nd email asking for players to which Tom kindly replied “I hate to see you beg, I’m in” and allowed me to go ahead and call the game around 0930.

Like Monday though, the replies were not quite indicative of the number of players that came out. All I can say about this group is I’m glad I don’t plan dinner for them. “Hmmmm, let’s see I’ve got 8 coming out, this should be enough steaks…crap, there are 14 of us? Somebody go get another cow or get that guy that does the loaves and fishes party trick!”

Fortunately we didn’t need more food, just more pinnies as Brook came out on the field with two new players and then another wandered out about 20 minutes later. Together with Brad & Scott who were surprise attendees for the day’s disc event, Matt who passed up lunch at Cantina Maria, and MikeC, we quickly fleshed out to 8 on 8.

So, by the way, an official Buzzard welcome to Karl, Mark, & Matt who all joined us for the first time yesterday. Great to have all of you out there. And no matter what Brook tells you, it’s much easier for me to plan when I know who’s coming out but don’t ever let that stop you from coming if you haven’t told me.

The humidity is here. Temperatures aren’t in the 90’s yet but with all the thunderstorm warning this week, the humidity is high meaning heavy air, heavy shirts, and heavier gym bags on the way home in the afternoons. Please remember to hydrate early and often as we move into summer.

Some decent play at times yesterday. Leroy made a few nice defensive plays, MikeC had some really good cuts and grabs, Brad also made a really nice catch yesterday and since I give him good natured grief so often on the pitch I thought I’d note a good play for a change (especially since he caught it with me playing pretty tight D on him), and the trio of “newbies” all showed flashes of Ultimate prowess.

We had a short discussion on a rule clarification for those of you who were not there, or have already forgotten what we talked about. On any pull into the end zone, the thrower must play the disc from where it lands. We should not be walking pulls out to the front line of the end zone. You may still bring a turnover into the end zone to the front goal line but not a pull.

By the way, for those of you who haven’t been following one of our Buzzard alumni, Hollan, on Facebook, the poor guy has had to resort to playing “Cornhole” now that Ultimate isn’t in his daily regimen any more. And who knows what Swinny and Phil are up to. Swinny told me he’d just been on a run or a bike or something the last time I talked to him but from the sounds of Phil & Erica’s blog, it sounds like they’re just eating and drinking their way across country. Dude you’re going to need some Ultimate. You should stop back by through D.C. before you head to NY for good and get in a week of disc.

For the rest of you Buzzards…June has been a bonanza so far. Keep it up. And don’t forget, Thursday, we’re taking a little disc sabbatical to send Matt off with a game of Flag Football instead.

Punt!

Record-Setting day part II

2009-06-02T06:01:00.002-04:00

I changed my mind...you should mention everybody on record-setting days. Now, I have a problem though. I can only come up with 23 names...I'm pretty sure there were 24 people out there yesterday. Please don't take it personally that I can't remember who the other name was (it was probably somebody I actually played with) but let me know so I can add you...

In the order that I got the responses yesterday morning and then remembered the others this morning: Steve, Devan, Leroy, Brian, Erick, Kelly, Bob, Brad, Todd, Scott, Tom, MikeC, Tim, JasonD, Dennis Kevin, Bridgette, George, Brook, Paul, Matt, Karen, & yours truly.

Record-setting day on the pitch

2009-06-02T05:46:00.000-04:00

June was ushered in yesterday for the buzzards in record-setting fashion. For the first time in the “modern” Buzzards era and I suspect ever, there were enough people on the pitch yesterday for us to have two games going on simultaneously, next to each other. 24 players came out yesterday in fantastic weather!

That becomes a challenge to get everybody named and I don’t think I’ll even try. Want to mention just a couple though. First timers always get a warm Buzzard welcome and we want to extend one to a new Jason who joined us for the first time, courtesy of an invitation from Tom. Also, welcome back to the building and the Buzzards to Kelly. She had made some guest appearances while she was gone but we’re looking forward to having you out there on a regular basis with us again.

I called the game yesterday at 0805 when I already had 10 responses. That, in itself may have been another record for earliest time for a confirmed game. But a funny thing happens when you call the game that early, you don’t really hear from all the others that may be coming out (they figure they’ll just surprise you I guess). Well surprise it was when we finally ran out of pinnies to wear and realized we had way too many for just one game. Paul looked at the ground when I told him to grab gold and saw that the only pinnie left was the ripped up string bikini model.

Okay, change of plans – “Kevin, Todd, Bob, and somebody else…choose up 4 teams, I’m going to set cones up for another field” I said more people wandered out. So two games it was. Then at the half way point, we switched up teams and played another game.

Just a great day for the Buzzard Point Ultimate Club! Well done folks. Thanks for enthusiastic participation. Looking forward to a great summer of playing!

"Return of the Buzzards"...not just a bad sequel

2009-05-27T10:37:00.001-04:00

It’s been “Return of the Buzzards” for the past week as some past season players have returned for visits or extended stays. Devan & Leroy have both showed up and increased the average team speed a great deal but also perhaps the risk of injury as I’ve been ducking bodies flying through the air that aren’t usually there.

On the less fleet but still highly revered Buzzard list we were paid the rare visit of the headbanded one – Rodney for a game last week. He showed up in my cube before I’d even sent out the game invite. He said “I’m in if we’re playing”

“Not if” I replied confidently “we’ve had 7’s or better for about a week” I told him. And to not disappoint him, a rousing 16 showed up to play that day.

Then yesterday after the long Memorial Day Weekend and a forecast that was calling for showers for the next couple days I thought the attendance might be a little less enthusiastic. But Matt showed up in my cube early and asked if we were playing so I sent out the invite to see if anybody else was interested and got a relatively quick quorum to call “Game On”.

We wound up with 11 yesterday in what looked like it was going to be a drenching rain game but actually wound up a pretty pleasant day in a slight drizzle which was actually comfortable. The field was a bit wet and it was a little breezy but our shorthanded green team held its own against the speed of the gold team.

Birthday game

2009-05-19T08:36:00.001-04:00

It wasn’t our typical Monday game yesterday which usually means a lot of sloppy passing and some trouble getting all the muscles to act in concert with each other to get up and down the field. But despite the pretty steady breeze we played in yesterday which alternatively knocked passes down a bit or carried them about 10 yards farther, play yesterday was pretty good.

It was a birthday game for Thunder. I forgot that until I got home and had Facebook remind me but Happy Birthday. I apologize for missing the opportunity for us to sing to you.

It was also a Welcome Back game for JQ. I had to clear him through customs and check his ID before letting back on the field. Something about school and Africa having kept him away for so long. You looked no worse the wear for the missed time, patrolling centerfield and picking off all the throws that hung up in the air too long.

We had another nice turnout yesterday. I think it made the 6th game in a row we’ve had attendance in the teens.

For those of you interested in getting some more Ultimate in this summer. Kevin is soliciting interested players for a Summer Corporate league run in conjunction with Washington Area Frisbee Club. Please let him know if you’re interested as we need to get registered fairly quickly with play starting in June.

Hope to get another great turnout today. Weather is going to be awesome again all week.

See you on the pitch!

Kudos Erick

2009-05-16T15:00:00.001-04:00

Want to thank Erick a lot for the great new Buzzard graphic. Look for t-shirts and discs soon.

Wrapping up a great week

2009-05-15T06:15:00.008-04:00

Thunder - The Grill Master and Picnic mastermind.

Dennis trying to get the Geese to honk their horns.

It's been a great week of disc Buzzards. The numbers this past week have been record-shattering (if I actually kept records). With yesterday's 6 on 6 game I think gave us over 70 players for the last 5 games (including last Friday's game). Coupled with "First Annual Buzzard Picnic" the week has been one to remember. Welcome back yesterday to Todd and Karen who had missed some time this past week for travel. Yesterday's game proved to be a bit challenging with the wind gusting in the high teens and low 20's...sorry Conrad, not quite strong enough for the Wind Ribbon. Matt was able to get his Hammer to work with the wind a couple times but not many other throws worked with a lot of consistency yesterday. I think we only had 2 scores against the wind the whole game.

Scenes from a not so Italian Restaurant.

Table #2

The "Newbie", John heard there would be food and came out for a couple games this week.

Wanted to upload some pics from earlier in the week and from the cookout....Hey Brad, look! Some of them did come out! No really, nice job on these game photos.

3 big guys doing a little Rumba...or something.

Shane marking Jeana who is trying to get off 3-foot pass to Dennis.

They must have scored as they led the team in a cheer..."Give me an 'O'!"

You've heard of the Screamin' Eagles....witness a Screamin' Buzzard - "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" as Mike can't catch up to the disc and Paul watches.

I don't think Steve sees this one.

Jeana involved with more horseplay...this time The Hokey Pokey with Bill...."No, no I said put your left foot in."

"Excuse me while I pull this disc out of your skirt"

It takes two to....uh, I have no idea what this dance is actually.

Powerful pull form.

Steve looks to get off a throw.

Jeff watching one in.

Devan showing the disc...

Some of these pictures are more complimentary than others but all of them give a good representation of what goes on out at the old Buzzard pitch.

It must be time to get back to work.

15 and no rain!

2009-05-12T06:38:00.002-04:00

Monday, 50% chance of rain was the disclaimer on the game invite yesterday morning to which I got varying responses…

“Monday Ultimate in the Rain? Of course I'm down for that. I think that's the only time you actually get a Yes response from me.” – Thunder

“Don't say "rain" or Jeana won't play (she's made of salt, apparently). There's a 50% chance of summer snow. I'm in.” – Kevin

“Yee haw a chance to get wet too!” – Brian

“What are you doing telling people it’s going to rain? Trying to keep them away?” – Matt

Well, as it turns out, the Pillar of Salt…aka Princess…aka Jeana did not show. My last IM on the way out the door was “It’s not raining”. To which I got a reply of not so cloaked cynicism.

“Not now”

Well, not then nor at all in fact through the whole game. It was cool, overcast, the grass was a little high but not really any standing water and the Buzzards came out en masse yesterday…15 of them!

We’d like to give a hearty Buzzards welcome to John joining us for the first time yesterday. He’ll be taking over for Scott in their office. That was the easy part of his check-in but as tasked, Thunder also told John his check-in included coming out for a game of disc. Okay John, so we may not technically be on your check-in sheet but thanks for giving us your time. We hope you had fun and will come back out.

Welcome back out to Steve and Tim who we hadn’t seen much of lately. Great to have you guys with us.

So with 15 I’m sure you’re thinking the pitch was a bit crowded, and it was but green seemed to get their short passing game working a little better than gold was able to for most of the game. I noticed they did a little better job of getting a handler on the disc for the first throw. Todd remarked that he rarely had to run much further down the field after he would make the first throw because the rest of his team was managing to get it up quickly.

Brad and Brian, in particular hooked up on a couple great looking pass and catch plays in the end zone despite what I thought was fairly decent defense.

It was a great day for Ultimate and a great week planned. For any of you who haven’t heard yet. Wednesday we have our first ever Buzzards Cookout planned. Thunder has taken the lead on this and will be acting Grill Master after our normal 1130 game. Many of the rest of you have volunteered to bring things and I want to thank everybody for their support. If you can get out and join us for the game or the cookout, come on out!

Thanks again for the great turnout yesterday! Besides those mentioned above, the usual cast of characters put on the green and gold…Tom, George, Conrad, Paul, & Jeff were all out there as well. Did I miss anybody? Because last time I did, I wound up writing the person their own column.

Going to be a great day today, see you on the pitch.

Pull!

Ode to Thunder

2009-05-05T11:46:00.006-04:00

In light of my unfathomable omission of Scott from the blog of yesterday’s game, I’d like to offer up a little penance from the Buzzards’ Scribe in honor of Thunder.

By the way, for the record, after an initial “no” response to the “Who is playing?” email yesterday, Scott was the first one down for the game and grabbed the back on the way out to the pitch. He made a few stellar grabs for scores, three of which I threw, including the game winner. Finally managed to time the chest bump right on the last one.

Back to my penance, a Top-7 list of All Things Thunder

Thunder Road – A Springsteen anthem from the 1975 album “Born To Run”, an almost consensus selection of anybody’s Top 10 Rock & Roll albums of all time and partly inspired by the 1958 Robert Mitchum movie of the same title. Ironically Scott looks a bit like Robert Mitchum. “We’re riding out tonight, to case the promised land, oh-oh Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road”.

Zeus – Greek god of sky and thunder. He preferred to throw a thunderbolt from his right hand, Scott prefers the flick.

“Days of Thunder” – Quintessential guy flick…early in the movie as Tom Cruise is playing a driver trying to make the NASCAR circuit and is test driving another driver’s car for the very first time calls over the radio “I’m dropping the hammer”….it’s an obscure Ultimate reference.

Ford Thunderbird – here’s a nice T-bird of Scott’s vintage…
Blackberry Thunder 9500 – In honor of Scott’s connectedness. We love that he mobile updates his Facebook page.

“Sons of Thunder” – Perhaps better known as James & John, a couple fishermen in Galilee. One blogger suggests these two would be pretty fierce body checkers.

Celtic Thunder – something like Yani on Guinness.

The nearer your destination, the more you slip sliding away

2009-05-05T08:50:00.004-04:00

One of my favorite song writers once penned the words “You know the nearer your destination, the more you slip sliding away”. And that was very much how I felt many times yesterday thinking I was making a cut for where I needed to be for the disc only to discover there wasn’t much footing and indeed the more I was slip sliding away.

With the forecast yesterday morning, and for that matter all this week calling for rain, rain, and then some more rain, I was a little surprised to get such quick response yesterday morning. The first replies coming from the usual suspects, Todd, Kevin, & Bob. Then Brian, eager to play after missing a couple games last week, rogered up. Then Joe and I started thinking to myself “Ah, he’s hooked, to be replying so early for a certain rain game”.

Not so hooked was “Princess Tiarable” who replied “I’ll play if it’s not raining” which sounded like a no to me since I knew it would be raining. So I did what I normally to when I receive cryptically worded replies…handed it over to the kangaroo court for a quick decision. The court’s decision was something akin to “Nana nana boo boo, we double dog dare you to play”, which of course she could not ignore and after a game time start without her (which sparked talk of how best to penalize her) Jeana did indeed show up giving green the extra person yesterday (arguably to no avail).

Welcome back out to Mike who had exhausted his list of excuses (many making the all-time Top 10 lame list) like “I’m too skinny”, “I don’t have enough core strength” and “I’ve got a toastmasters meeting” and joined back up with the Buzzards…the equal opportunity fitness alternative where we don’t much care about body shape or size, or give a rip about core strength and get plenty of public speaking opportunities in the showers after the game.

Conrad and Bridgette rounded out our drenched disc denizens yesterday and we had a fun game with some highlights like sliding catches through puddles and some nice defensive knock downs. And some low lights like getting hit right in the center of the core and dropping it and a few missed throws that somehow got away. Speaking of throws…Bob did anybody else mention to you that you completed more junk yesterday then I’ve seen in a while? Which brings to mind two axioms that I find a certain amount of resonance in….1) It’s better to be lucky than good and 2) You make your own luck.

On the day when two amazing hat tricks would be recorded later at Verizon Center by Alexander the Great and Sid the Kid, Bob may have had his own hat trick of missed throws that wound up in somebody’s hands for scores.

So when most fair weathered sports are hoping for some sunshine, the Buzzards were finding voice in another songwriter’s lyrics (one I’m headed to see tonight!)

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain, let it rain

Meet me at Mary's place, we're gonna have a party

Tell me how do we get this thing started

Meet me at Mary's place

Yo Boss, see you at the JPJ tonight…

Yo Buzzards see you on the pitch today?

Basking in it

2009-04-28T20:18:00.004-04:00

Just another beautiful day in the sun. Great turnout of 15. Thanks to Scott and Karen for helping to take some pictures today.

Todd skys over brian, Matt with perfect pancake prep, Jason' magazine cover, Todd & Tom battling with Jeff as safety observer, and Joe waits on one with Bob behind him.

Matt goes up for the jump ball, Bill runs one to the cone, Todd snatches one on the back line.

Summer turns to high...in the Spring

2009-04-28T06:18:00.005-04:00

Mercury
is rising still
Turn the fan on high

I won't step on my own shadow
No-one wants to cry

Someone put a pox on me
I spit in their eyes
Summer turns to high

It’s still April right? Wow! As temperatures soared into the 90’s yesterday on April 27th (Happy Birthday Mary!) the Buzzards soared to the Ultimate pitch in droves…or flocks I guess would be more appropriate…yea, that’s it, they flocked to the field. And the Mercury was still rising with no fan in sight which was too bad for Kevin who for some reason missed R.E.M.’s weather forecast and decided to come out with his long sleeve t-shirt while a few of us decided to go sans sleeves altogether.

I don’t know about any pox, or swine flu for that matter but somebody put a hit on me early in the game. Okay, maybe that’s not quite a fair representation of what really happened. A disc remaining in the air for an inordinate amount of time all of a sudden looked like it might be in play for me and so I decided to run, faster, close to top speed for the ol’ Chief in fact and then “Splat!”, I ran right into something that didn’t move (that something was Paul) and as I was crumbling to the ground I heard ringing and after a couple seconds of coming back to I took inventory quickly to realize, in a relief, that I did indeed still have all my teeth and that none of them seemed to be sticking through my lips, though they had tried to make there way through as evidenced by the colorful red expectorant I spit out…fortunately, in nobody’s eyes.

Summer has indeed turned to high!

Great, great turnout yesterday. Would like to welcome back Bridgette from her month long sentence of jury duty. She wanted to know who the heck this new girl was out there that wouldn’t stop running. Oh, Bridgette, meet Karen, Karen, Bridgette. And not just running yesterday apparently. Todd had a front row seat for a nice one-handed, left-handed running grab Karen made late in the game yesterday. It was one of many really nice plays I saw yesterday.

Want to also welcome back out Joe. He’s from the previous generation of Buzzards but has been on hiatus.

Jeff made a banned substance induced-like cut in end zone on one play that Bob zipped to him on a line and had to because JasonC was running step for step with him on D. And that must have been a switch off because for the most part I enjoyed watching the match up between Jason and Erick during the game as they traded nice grabs in traffic. I also saw Conrad make a nice rolling catch of a disc destined to hit the ground.

After 4 or 5 drives down the field Bob & I finally got ready to field one pull and I heard him remark “Hey, I’m finally going to touch the disc”. And so it goes with 15 people on the field. Some nice attempts, at times though gold to run formations from the stack. It was the multiple cuts we were having difficult with. And no wonder, it was hot. Yesterday marked the first day this year I can remember sun screen coming out on the field. And the first time in a while we had an all-hands mandatory water break called. Kind of like a safety pit stop mandated by NASCAR.

After a week of being away in Montreal and presumably not getting in a lot of Ultimate, I heard Brian calling for his mama out on the field and then suggesting in the locker room later that we find another sport on days like this….Blasphemy! Thunder did suggest though that we purchase some cool water Jacuzzis for post game relaxing. Not a bad idea, maybe I’ll run that by the next Fitness Council budget meeting.

I also tasked Thunder with getting together with Hollan once he gets down to the Tidewater area and getting together a team there that the Buzzards can travel to play against. Beach Ultimate anyone?

We are losing some other Buzzards soon. I believe Matt, Karen, Paul, & Scott are all departing. Am I missing anybody else? We tried last year for a picnic with very tepid response at the time. Anybody feeling more ambitious about that this transfer season?

Off Balance

2009-04-23T19:28:00.006-04:00

“Don’t worry, I’m not a girl” I heard as I opened my locker to change for today’s game. Having been given a heads up that Thunder was taking part in “Bring your child to work” day, I had a heads up his son was coming and I’d already seen pictures of him so his long locks didn’t even phase me. It was like seeing me when I was 12 or 13 anyway.

Poetry in motion

“I know” I replied to Gradey “I’m not worried”. Then Scott mentioned that there was a Barber Shop right in the building.

“No way” said Thunder-lite “then I’d look like you”. Man you can’t argue with sound reasoning like that, even from a 9-year old.

So off I walked with Thunder and the “Gradey White” out to the field. We found a relatively dry spot, set up the cones and then began to toss it around in the formidable breeze.

"Get up lazy!" Brad laying down on the job again, Bill & Jeff not so impressed.

But the sun was out and it was a great day for some Ultimate. The teams paired off by themselves as they left to warm up. Note to self, don’t let them do that again. Green, though having a distinct height advantage had some other issues and the gold jumped out to an early lead. It probably didn’t help that there was also an extra player on yellow.

By the way, welcome back out JasonC. Great game today with some really great defensive break ups and a catch on the leg.

Todd & Karen fielding the pull.

Matt getting airborne as the disc slips by over his shoulder.

We made some player adjustments and then green seemed to make a big run and we just had some balance issues the rest of the day.

Annette also, good to see you out. Thanks for taking some of the pictures you’ll enjoy up here. And it’s always great when we have 7s and 6s out there. Thanks everyone else who came out…Jeff, JasonK, Paul, Brad, Kevin, Matt, Bob, Todd, Karen, & Conrad. Hope I haven’t forgotten anybody. I’ll put up some of the photos here but for those of you still not up on Facebook, get with the program and come join the BPUC group.

JasonC & Jeff adjust to the disc.

By the way, we didn't to formally wish Sir Phil farewell, it was a pleasure being out on the pitch the last couple of years with you. Safe travels and fair winds, you'll be missed.

Meteorologically speaking...

2009-04-16T06:51:00.000-04:00

Door #1 Drizzle- Small, slowly falling water droplets, with diameters between .2 and .5 millimeters

Door # 2 Mist- Consists of microscopic water droplets suspended in the air which produce a thin grayish veil over the landscape. It reduces visibility to a lesser extent than fog.

Door #3 Light Rain - precipitation falling with an intensity of between a trace and 0.10 inches (0.25 cm) per hour

Those were the 3 possibilities we heard prior to heading out to the pitch yesterday for some disc. I even peeked at the radar right before I logged off to head to the locker room and saw that Buzzards Point was moving out of the “green” (re:Rain) zone at 1100.

As we walked out though, the drops certainly felt bigger than .2 to .5 millimeters and I know that while we were out there for our hour that more than .10 inch of rain must have come down… “Mist” was not even in the equation. I’m not sure what the meteorologists call it but I don’t think it was any of the answers behind doors number 1-3.

The just as credible explanation is the addition of a new player yesterday…Buzzards, everybody say hi to Karen…. “Hi Karen” who comes to us from the place where meteorologists discovered all the terms for wet precipitation…Seattle. That coupled with the Buzzards uncanny knack the last few months of welcoming new people out on the worst possible weather days (right John? Jeff?) and it was almost the “Perfect Storm”…the only thing we were missing were the Swinny and Hollan sliding and mudding show. We missed you guys yesterday, just wanted you to know we were thinking of you.

Speaking of missing…Phil, how can we miss you if you won’t go away? Phil’s Buzzard career is winding down as he gets ready to leave us. Not sure if he’s playing today I know he and Todd are talking about some “Beer Movie” premier later on. I don’t know if the “pre-gaming” for that affects our Ultimate today. Thunder and Paul, can you maybe see if we can keep him in the office long enough to play today?

Jeana was back out yesterday after her time on the disabled list… “I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride it where I ride” A little welcome back gift of a set of training wheels awaited her courtesy of Kevin.

We didn’t actually get to see any of Jeana’s bicycle wounds but I’m betting they couldn’t have looked as bad as Shane’s face did yesterday after taking the disc to his eye. A nice bruise right below the eye socket and blood trickling down his face made you think this sport is more dangerous than it looks at first glance.

Brad got hit with the disc yesterday too but not from a hard throw but because he was invading personal space on the mark a bit too much. Remember everybody…if you hold out your hands, draw an imaginary line between your hands, the thrower should not intersect that line, if they do…you’re too close!

Thanks everybody for coming out yesterday in less than ideal conditions. You should reward yourself today with a game in the sun.

Stealing my paycheck today...

2009-03-31T14:19:00.000-04:00

Wow, that was a lot of people. And Brian didn’t even show up. But 16 others did and we had a grand game of 8’s today.

Welcome back from the long lost to Joe. He’s a holdover from the old “Lonnie Days” of goals, lots of banging with the likes of Tom and Lindsay.

Also want to give a big Buzzard welcome to Amy, from Seattle. Great to have you join us today too. Tell Brad not to forget to shave tonight, he was looking way too scruffy to come back to work tomorrow.

Speaking of “back to work”, that is where nobody wanted to be headed after today’s game. Fantastic weather out on the pitch today. So good, that Todd tried to bait a few of us to leave work and head to the links. His lure? “I’ve got an extra set of clubs in the car, they’re women’s and in a pink bag.”

“Yea, but that’s better than work right?” I asked. Kevin said something unrepeatable about women’s clubs but I knew he wanted to leave also.

Paul was back out today sans ring. But still with those big furry gloves? We know they don’t work to keep jewelry on but after watching one of the grabs he made in the end zone today, I can’t really question him wearing them. Kevin also made a nice grab or two that Dennis classified as “larcenous” I believe.

I wish we could steal a bunch more days like this during this spring. It doesn’t get much better.

Tinker Bell and one ring to bring them to their knees.

2009-03-31T06:28:00.000-04:00

I’m writing about Ultimate when I should be writing my Comparative Education paper. But yesterday’s game warrants at least a few paragraphs.

I had sent out a precursor invitation to play on Facebook on Sunday, noting that the temperatures were supposed to be approaching 60 and it should be a great week to play. Sending out an invitation for activities at work on a Sunday got me labeled a “fanatic” by Marianne.

At any rate, the invitation at work went out late because I was down in Medical getting my annual physical and dental exam done. The doctor wanted to know why I didn’t get more sleep which led to a whole discussion about the value of traveling between Richmond, D.C., & Charlottesville every week, sometimes all 3 in the same day. Listen, I know it’s not the “healthy optimum” but it’s not going to change in the foreseeable future so can we just let it go.

When I finally got back up to my cube nobody else had sent out an game invite either and only 1 email in my inbox from a Buzzard wondering where I might be. I was suddenly worried we might not have any interest for a game but I sent out the email anyway and immediately had 8 responses. Scott replied twice, once in proxy for Phil who apparently was coming into work only to play but was running just a little late.

In fact, by the time Phil got here, Scott and I had already hooked up on two scoring passes which he made really nice catches on both. The first stretched out sprinting to the side of the end zone line after a very nice “Chiefly finger point” call for the throw. The second was a really nice grab of a Hammer that didn’t quite flatten out and was falling more like a guillotine in the windy conditions.

Phil finally showed up and as we pointed him toward green to join Todd, George, Paul, Kevin, & Matt. Meanwhile, Scott & I were joined by Jeff, Bob, Jason, & Brian. Both teams were finding challenges with the wind that was gusting upwards of 30 mph but not all the time so occasionally one would think they could throw it the length of the field and watch their teammates tripping through pot holes to get it and the next we were throwing our first pass backwards.

Phil barely even got a sweat up today though because not long after he got there I was falling back into defense watching Matt try and sneak behind me. When I turned back up field, I saw the other 10 players on the ground. “What the heck just happened?” I wondered. “Must be an injury, who went down?” I thought trying to see who was holding anything and writhing in pain. Then I noticed they were all moving and rubbing their hands on the ground. “Ah, I deduced, lost contact lens I guess.” As I walked back toward the scrum on the ground I heard Paul explaining where we was when it came off, the trajectory of his hand and what force it was thrown with….”Hmmmm, this wasn’t a contact lens” --- lost wedding band ---

“This reminds me of a Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street story” I chimed in as I got down on my knees to help in the search.

“Did that story lead to a pawn shop?” Kevin asked and the whole conversation quickly degraded to replacement rings, replacement wives, replacement body parts…and other things but unfortunately no found ring. Paul, under threat of being battle axed (apparently the weapon of choice of his in-laws) decided to head back to building security to get some of those cool metal detector wands. The rest of us (well except for Phil who nobody really knew or cared was at work anyway) headed to the showers.

Normally I don’t relate what it’s like standing with a bunch of naked men partially wrapped in towels or wash cloths, or drying off with paper towels because they’ve forgotten one. In fact, Jason joined me (as a proud owner) today in finishing the purchase of his 2nd set of “Exchange towels” because he’d forgotten one…Anyway, I don’t normally bring this up but yesterday was special because Matt was showing off his “Tinker Bell” towel. The product of living in a house with all women/girls… apparently it was either that, “Hello Kitty” or “Hanna Montana”….good call on Tink there Matty.

About an hour later, we all got an email from Paul. On the last sweep across the field, Phil found the ring which saves Paul a severing from Nordic weaponry but indebts him to help Phil remember his anniversary next year. It was, in fact, the most productive thing Phil accomplished yesterday. On the precipice of dissolving its first marriage, the Buzzards Point Ultimate club backed away slowly from the edge.

Lap dances and new guys...

2009-03-24T08:23:00.000-04:00

Do I have your attention yet?

On days like yesterday there are always two questions you hear asked after or during the game. “Why am I running more with more people out here?” and “What happened to all my passing lanes?”

Ah, the benefits of having a regulation 14 players!

To think, when I called the game yesterday I had to send out an email to ask the bare minimum crowd of 7 asking if they minded banking on the return of a “maybe” from an official function. “Call the game!” was the resounding reply and so I did. And…as it turns out…had very little to worry about. Both Todd & Phil did, indeed, get back in time and said they were in.

Then I wander down to the locker room to change and in saunters Scott (or when “No” means “Yes”). Still, I hadn’t counted on him for sure. Then as he, Paul & I were out warming up on the pitch, a stranger came wandering across the horizon of the field, holding his cleats in hands like an old western hero moseying down the middle of town hands at the ready for anything suspicious. I could almost hear the “Eastwood-esque” musical announcement of his arrival and there he was, returned from the proverbial dead…Tom.

“Hey, I get ‘new guy’ status today” Tom argued.

“What status is that exactly?” I asked.

“I can pretty much screw up anyway possible out on the field today and you have to keep giving me that positive encouragement of insincere plaudits like ‘good hustle’ and ‘nice effort’ every time” he explained.

“Oh” I deadpanned, thinking to myself that insincerity and sarcasm are two of my stronger communicative characteristics. “No problem, you got it”.

So we lined up our 5 on 5, still expecting Kevin & Conrad to make it out of the locker room. And then George wandered over, and walking with Kevin & Conrad was Jeff and all of a sudden we had 7’s!

On gold’s first drive down the field, Tom made a great cut toward the side of end zone and made a nice reach on a low pass I threw him. “New guy status, my …” I thought.

“Great catch Tom, welcome back”.

That cut to the outside would be something we’d struggle with making the rest of the day as we continued to try and throw to the middle of the field where most of those 28 arms were flailing around. Stack and cut, stack and cut, stack and….well it’s progress, not perfection.

Because there are some other factors like Jason observed. “Well, if I cut and you don’t throw it to me, then where do I go?” And it’s a great question with multiple answers depending on who you ask and what style of offense they’ve played in the past or what makes sense to them logically. Of course, as Brad has found out, his logic isn’t necessarily everybody else’s logic.

And back to Brian’s question of “Why am I running more with more people out here?” Well, perhaps because you’re trying to get away from each other to get open. See “stack and cut” - A good rule of thumb for you, as a receiver, might be to not let one defender cover multiple receivers because they are standing next to each other.

This actually may take some practice. We’re starting to develop a nice little core group for a potential tournament appearance soon and we may want to run some drills. We may also want to find some women for our team.

Kelly? Have you found employment yet? If not, come play with us. You know why Jeana couldn’t play with us yesterday? She fell off a bicycle this past weekend. We’re going to have to write clauses into our Buzzards’ contracts about dangerous activities during non-playing hours. Oh wait, I thought the playing hours were generally the dangerous activity period but I guess when you add tequila, anything can be hazardous. Bridgette? Are you still around? We need more women! Otherwise, I’m going to have to resort to asking Scott and Paul to come out in drag. Now word has it that Scott can do a mean lap dance but really…please don’t let it come to that.

Great turnout yesterday folks!

Perfect Weather gone bad...

2009-03-20T22:47:00.000-04:00

Thursday was supposed to be high 50's and cloudy...I sent out the invite in the morning saying "perfect weather". Then as we rounded the corner of the building I felt the rain and the wind and the temperatures about 10 degrees cooler at least...

"Todd, hold on, I'm taking the camera back in."

That wound up being my best call of the day. The weather was miserable but kudos to the Buzzards who braved it and came out anyway. Todd & I were joined by Conrad, Dennis & newcomer Jeff (welcome out Jeff, sorry we couldn't have a better day for you).

The gold team was comprised of Phil, Bob, John, Kevin & Jason...I think...am I forgetting somebody or misplacing a name somewhere? I want to get this right because you guys rock for playing in that mess. Anytime the disc got the least bit sideways it just blew one direction or another and usually into the ground.

Earlier in the week was better for pictures and I'll share those with you now:

Kiss my Assets

2009-03-18T13:40:00.000-04:00

People were eager to play today. The invite went out at 0700 and an hour later I had already gotten 9 positive replies and even 1 cancellation. The Buzzards were apparently trumped by the Coast Guard’s Chief Counsel for Kevin’s billable hours. But no worries, Phil rogered up shortly after and we were back to 9. I thought for sure, with the weather forecast that we’d see some stragglers but it stayed at the uneven 5-4 which gave me the chance to snap off some pictures (soon to be posted) before joining the game in time to throw my 5 best passes to Phil who unfortunately was not on my team at the time.

To add insult to injury on one play I was actually heading into the end zone, I drew the attention of defensive Mr. Everywhere. He didn’t intercept the pass to me though…no instead he cleated me on the heel and I went down in a crumple. “In the crumple” seemed to be a popular position today by the way. Bob had already been down once and would go down again and Brad also rolled an ankle and went down in a heap when I put on a lightening fast cut fake on him (okay, I leaned my head one direction and stopped).

Todd claiming some numb armness (I just made that one up) from apparently hitting too many volleyballs this past weekend, said he was having trouble making the long throw and 2 or 3 times I saw him look off the deep route. Too bad on those occasions, we didn’t actually give him too many short cut options.

Brian, fresh off his elbow surgery seemed to have few ill effects. And in fact may have even been running faster than normal (not that you need a flipping elbow for that). But he made at least 2 great running grabs deep.

Speaking of volleyball, we lured Shane back out again today. We love it when he’s got those 1300 meetings and can’t make the v-ball schedule. He and Scott had some interesting matchups today. Neither of those two look like leapers on the outside…ah but looks are deceiving.

And finally, we have a picture of Jason to post soon where he is skying above the defender for a disc. Your kids are going to love this one.

Here’s the philosophical question of the day…Would you rather be a legacy or leave a legacy? And is “legacy asset” an oxymoron? I’m pretty sure Thunder was playing with my asset out on the field but I don’t have it on camera for the proof I need. I do, however, have cleat marks on my heel….oh, that’s going to leave a legacy.

St. Hatrick's Day Hat Tournament

2009-03-16T08:47:00.001-04:00

Buzzards,

The first-ever St. Hatrick’s Day Hat Tournament was cold, wet & full of extremely high-caliber ultimate. Suffering from an early injury to a key player, my team (radioactive “Safety” Green) went 1-2 on the day. Jeana Lee’s “Dirty Martini” (Olive Green) went 2-1, losing only to finalist “Bamboo Green” (are you detecting a theme in the names?).

Had you gone, you’d have seen cut-from-the-back vertical stacks, methodical zone defense, and beautifully flat, soft fields with slightly less goose poop than we enjoy at Ft. McNair. You would have enjoyed a piping hot dinner of spaghetti & meat sauce (+salad & bread), you’d have participated in the accuracy contest, and you’d have double-pneumonia now, just like your mother said you would.

Check the WAFC website http://www.wafc.org/ for upcoming leagues & tournaments (Midnight Madness March 21-22 overnight; “Ultimate Peace” March 22nd; Savage 7s July 19th).

Spring in the weather...if not in our steps

2009-03-09T18:27:00.000-04:00

My return from spring break was greeted by an IM this morning from Bob…
“Welcome back, how was your trip?”

“Great! Looking forward to playing today though. How many snow games did you guys get in last week?”

“Not a one”

What? Buzzards, I’m disappointed. I was hoping to come back to many photos of frolicking in the snow to post on the blog.

Well, the snow is gone and in a big way with temperatures that hit the 80’s down in the 804 this weekend. Today was beautiful too and at game time it was 70 degrees and the only impediment was that the wind had kicked up some and was supposed to be gusting upwards toward 30 mph. No worries, we were headed out to play today.

Want to give a big Welcome Back to Conrad, one of our faithful regulars last year before he went down with an injury. It’s been a long rehab but it was good to see you buddy. He helped Gold team to a couple quick scores to start the game out today as they were hitting 3-4 passes in a row (always a good thing). Kevin, Phil & I filled in around him and things clicked well for a while. Then George showed up and I’m certainly not saying one thing had anything to do with the other but as happens more times than not out here the team with the extra man often forgets the intricacies of defense, like staying with your mark and we gave some scores back to the green team of Todd, Bob, Brook & Paul.

About midway through the game green picked up a 5th, Carlos. Welcome to the Buzzards Carlos. He said he was headed out for a run and saw we were “short” a player and decided to come over. Dude, we never have too many that you can’t stop and play, so come on out whenever you want.

Good way to start the week. Todd said he felt a little winded on the way back in and looked around hoping somebody else would agree with him. I explained that I had gotten in a 2-hour game yesterday in the mud so I had a kickstart to my Ultimate week. And maybe Todd was just feeling the effects of being hit on by Phil the entire game, elbow, jaw, whatever else.

When I got back to the desk, I had one of those moments akin to a teenager coming to ask for the keys to the car for the first time. Kevin was on the phone and asking if I could change the admin privileges on the blog so he could post. Stop me if this is sounding as dangerous to you as it did to me…currently still the only guy I know to be censored on the Office Communicator at work.

Alas, I gave in (that’s what we have insurance for right?) and Kevin, thank you for minding our family-friendly protocol in the nest. Great post too on the some rule clarification on the stall count. Which, by the way, I got called on for the first time ever yesterday in my pick up game so that was somewhat timely. Stall 7, stall 8, stall 9, “T…

When is a stall a turnover? At the"T" in "Ten"...

2009-03-09T13:33:00.000-04:00

Buzzards,

I know you are staying awake at night asking yourself "When is a stall a turnover?"

Well, your friendly rules lawyer is here to answer your every question.

Under the 11th edition rules, a stall becomes a turnover at the first utterance of the word ten. There must be at least one second between the beginning of the word "nine" and the beginning of the word "ten".

From the 11th edition rules: http://www.upa.org/ultimate/rules/11th

A. Stalling: The period of time within which a thrower must release a throw may
be timed by the stall count.
1. The stall count consists of announcing “stalling” and counting from one to ten loudly enough for the thrower to hear.
a) The interval between the first utterance of each number in the stall count must be at least one second.
b) All stall counts initiated, reinitiated or resumed after a stoppage of play must start with the word “stalling.”
c) If the count resets to one during a stoppage of play, it is considered a new
count.

2. Only the marker (II.K) may initiate or continue a stall count, and may do so anytime a thrower has possession of a disc that is live or in play. However, directly after a turnover or when putting the pull into play the stall may not be initiated before a pivot is established, unless delay of game or pre-stall rules (XIII.A.3, XIII.A.4, XIII.A.5 or VI.B.5.d) apply.

3. If the thrower has not released the disc at the first utterance of the word “ten,”
it is a turnover. The marker loudly announces “stall” and play stops. A stall is not a violation and rule XVI.C does not apply.
a) The marker calling the stall takes possession of the disc where the stall
occurred and then may either:
(1) place the disc on the ground and after acknowledgment by the defense, touch the disc and loudly announce “in play” or
(2) retain possession and have the former thrower restart play with a
check.
b) The thrower may contest a stall call in the belief that the disc was released
before the first utterance of the word “ten.” If a stall is contested:
(1) If the pass was complete, play stops and possession reverts to the thrower. After a check, the marker resumes the stall count at 8.
(2) If the pass was incomplete, it is a turnover; play stops and resumes with a check.

4. If the defense switches markers, the new marker must reinitiate the stall count. A marker leaving the three-meter radius and returning is considered a new marker.

And knowing is half the battle...

-deus

End of the 20/20 days?

2009-02-26T06:33:00.000-05:00

Finally the wind subsided a bit and we got enough for a game yesterday. Those 20/20 days (temps in the 20’s/wind in the 20’s) are winter’s equivalent to the summer’s 90/90 (temps in the 90’s/humidity in the 90’s) and just as difficult to play in and lure people out in. But yesterday the temperature crept above 40 by lunch time and the wind had pretty much died down.

I want to give a big Buzzard’s welcome to Shane who was joining us for the first time yesterday. Usually you can find him on the volleyball courts but yesterday they weren’t playing and as he told me “anything is better than the treadmill”. I did caution him though that it might not be any less running but certainly more fun and interesting. Shane made some great grabs yesterday particularly on some lousy throws by Kevin. Hey, that was their own description of the plays, not mine.

Paul also came up with some unlikely catches yesterday off tips either from his hands or somebody else’s. I think JQ was enjoying having somebody just run down to the end zone and see if he would throw it to him.

Our gold team of myself, Bob (after a bit of a layoff), Matt, Brian, & Jason couldn’t seem to get everything clicking in sync, especially on defense where we found ourselves getting to a lot of passes but not being able to either make the interception or knock down (re: Shane’s and Paul’s catches). Bridgette offered to let us go take cold showers in the women’s locker room…wait, I’m not sure if those two things are actually related or not.

Today’s game time temperatures should be approaching the 50’s with more sun so it promises to be another great day on the pitch. Looking forward to a great turnout before I take off all next week.

Trifecta - Weather prediction, Vegas omen, or the truck I ran into?

2009-02-19T07:03:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a day off for the Buzzards – We hit the weather trifecta of cold temps (feels like 28 according to weather.com), precipitation (mixture of rain/snow), and high winds (18 mph). Usually hoping that only one of those surfaces though we often play in two of the conditions, three just felt like too much to me yesterday morning as I was recovering from my near concussive state of the day before. So I didn’t even send an email out to see who might be interested.

Often times when I do this, in fact, most times I don’t, somebody else will pipe up and ask what’s going on and clamor for a game. There was no such clamoring yesterday. At about 9, Todd sent me a message “How are you feeling today?” I gave him the update, explained that I was trying to get some school work done, turned down his invitation for racquetball and just generally went back into hiding in my cube.

"Where's Swinny when I need him" was Todd's diappointed reply.

1030 – Kevin sends me a message wondering if he would be the 8th…that he might talk himself into playing. Kevin, by the way was who I dove into the day before sending my head into the hinterlands. He suggested I must have hit him in some more…uh…tissuey area…

“No” I assured him “Whatever I hit definitely was bone.”

And that’s almost all I remember from the game on Tuesday. It was one of Scott’s bi-monthly games which made for some good story telling. I don’t remember the whole thing but his wife’s friends, vodka, lap dances, and flatulence were involved. Oh yea, and Scott slapped Todd with the disc at one point on the field. Did we mention we miss you not being out there more often Thunder?

You know if you’re looking for a club that’s right for your needs you should really consider the Buzzards Point Ultimate Club. In a gesture of flexibility afforded to one of its most “seasoned” members, we moved the game to noon on Tuesday because Matt was driving into work (off leave?) for a medical appointment or some other such business and asked if we could delay the start time.

“Send me a text if we’re playing” said the voice mail.

“Game On ~ 1200” I sent to him after conferring with the other 7 confirmed players for the day. Oh, so we mentioned Matt was actually the 8th and I wouldn’t have been able to call the game without him? Still, we’re pretty darn lenient in this group. Don’t let it be a habit though because I really don’t like having to shuffle around all the soccer players and vie for shower space with them when we get back the same time they do in the locker room.

Anyway, hoping to get in a game today. Paul, who can’t seem to find our Facebook page is hoping to find a Vegas jackpot and won’t be with us. But let’s shake a bunch of feathers from the nest today. Hey Brian, I see you’re already in as I’m writing this morning, you’ve been ducking us the last couple weeks. Grab John and Doug and come on out today. Tom – I’m no doctor but I think your snowboarding injury is healed enough to come back out. Bridgette? Jeana? How about some of you who are in danger of having to take the driving test again if you don’t get back out soon….Tim? Mike? Bo? Fred?

Todd, Kevin, Matt, Phil, Jason – I’ll be counting on you guys if you’re here today. Should be a nice soft field for soft landings assuming I can avoid contact with other players today.

Pull!

The wind in the willows and the piper at the gates of dawn

2009-02-12T06:52:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning to what sounded like somebody outside my Ft. McNair lodging window with a power washer. I had seen a crane in the parking lot the night before and wasn’t ruling out this possibility except that 0430 seems a strange time to doing that type of thing. Of course, a couple weeks ago I heard the distinctive sound of shovels scraping ice from the sidewalks and that was at 0300 so I wasn’t ruling anything out and as I woke up and oriented myself.

It turns out it wasn’t a pressure washer but instead it was just plain wind. Gusting 30-45 mph winds, the kryptonite of Ultimate players. I was a bit disappointed as I knew this may put our game today in jeopardy and I had missed yesterday’s game in the idyllic high 60’s. I have not yet gotten a report of how that game went but if it followed the pattern of Monday and Tuesday, it was just great weather, especially for February, to be throwing some disc.

In fact, the only complaint I really had about the early part of the week was the capacious coating of fresh goose feces. You know, normally during the winter it’s cold enough that it just winds up being similar to running on a freshly aerated golf course with chunks of soil spotted everywhere. It just smells a bit different and sticks in your cleats. However this week, our particular flock must have swung by Five Guys Burgers and had one too many order of fries, if you know what I mean. Instead of the freshly aerated look, it more closely resembled an I-95 tarring project gone bad. So we spent a great deal of time, trying to figure out how to stay off the ground. I failed miserably on one particular play getting sandwiched between Phil and Brad going up for one disc and coming down I threw my hand down to break my fall and stuck in right in a pile of…well I don’t want to think about it anymore.

We had our usual cast of characters out there early this week, well except for Bob who’s on some crazy road trip home from San Diego and updating his Facebook status with snippets like “I think the ‘author’ in me is about to come out. So I guess he’s having some Jack Kerouac type of experience which I’m suddenly very jealous of. I feel like Kerouac would have enjoyed a bit of Ultimate in his time particularly as the sport is often believed to evolved from the hippie culture. Jack’s beatniks would have actually been a precursor to that.

Oh, speaking of evolving, we want to acknowledge the bicentennial birthday of ol’ Chuck Darwin today.
The Buzzards are all about a little natural selection. We have certainly come a long way from the early disc players of this club who banged and traveled, double-teamed, picked, and recklessly disregarded safety of other players on the pitch…okay, well so we’re not completely evolved from these “maladapted individuals” but we’re getting there…some might even call the last couple years a period of “punctuated equilibrium” for the BPUC.

We still periodically struggle with some seemingly simple concepts like offsides, center….er…uh… “middle” (which to be fair is a house rule adapted for the regular occurrence of the odd player), and “Disc Space” … in fact, let me just stop to provide a quick on-line tutorial for this particular rule. The following is taken directly from The Official Rules of Ultimate, 11th Edition:

1. Disc-space: If a line between any two points on the marker touches the thrower or is less than one disc diameter away from the torso or pivot of the thrower, it is a disc space violation. However, if this situation is caused solely by movement of the thrower, it is not a violation.

At any rate, we’re coming along. I mean heck, some of us Buzzards even go to the “theatre” or at least I think that’s what it’s called. That’s my excuse at least for missing yesterday as I had a late night at “Broadway in Charlottesville” watching Hairspray and trying to imagine John Travolta as Edna Turnblad from the movie adaptation…talk about a strange evolution.

Cast of characters? Oh yea, that’s where I was going before all this. So Bob, we’ve missed you but coming out early in this week to make for some great game were Brad, Erick (welcome back by the way), Todd, Phil, Paul, Jordan, Dennis, George and Jeana. Perhaps yesterday we had some others as well.

We’ll see if anybody wants to play today but I’m not sure we’ve yet figured out how to throw a 175 gram disc into a 30 mph wind.

Handlers, runners, and a taste of spring...

2009-02-04T10:02:00.000-05:00

Monday was a teaser for Spring. Beautiful weather and it brought a good turnout for the game. We had 11 Buzzards wander out to the field. It was so nice that people were taking off layers before we even started and periodically through the game after scores, somebody would run to the sideline to peel something else off.

Speaking of clothes coming off, everybody can breathe easy….Kevin got a new pair of sweats and so we don’t have to worry about seeing him running down the field with his pant around his ankles…well at least not due to his broken string now.

John, this must have easily been the nicest day you’d been out so far, right? As the current “Newbie” (new to the Buzzards but not to Ultimate) you had come out on some of the most frigid days we’d played this winter for your first games with us. To your credit, you’re still coming out and if I haven’t done so already let me give you the official Buzzards Welcome!

More new players are on the horizon. This morning we’re having some trouble getting enough to answer email for today’s game but one new player has and for Arthur’s sake, I hope we run today. I also got an email from a guy named Jeff who apparently “lives right next to Fort McNair” but has no military affiliation and wants to play with us. I think he may have found out about us through our new Facebook group but I’m not sure yet. The other possibility is that he’s been scoping us out from an apartment window telescope but that seems less likely as somehow he got my email address. If anybody’s got any ideas about how I can get Jeff onto the base continue his reconnaissance…uh…I mean begin playing disc with us, please let me know.

So back to the game…when Brian came out he said he and John needed to be on opposing teams so when they both left for their 1300 meeting it would leave the teams balanced. He said it was up to me which team to saddle with the chicken wing throw (which by the way is becoming surprisingly accurate) or the guy with the pulled “buttocks” (John’s diagnosis, not mine). You know how when you’re making Mojitos there is that delicate balance of rum to club soda? Well, there is a similar delicacy in deciding on handlers vs runners in splitting up the teams. It’s especially difficult when your handlers are also your runners as that sometimes has a negating effect on both. I can usually be accused of putting myself on teams that are “handler-strong” or at least as I perceive them. I do this even though I know I can’t run enough to take advantage of this.

That’s a long story to say that I decided to opt for John and his buttocks over Brian (the underrated handler) but usually more of a threat to run by you. We teamed up with Todd (one of those handler/runner types who you handicap by making him do both), Bridgette (who I like to get in height mismatches with guys like Jason), Paul (who inexplicably volunteers to always run down and play cup), Jordan (joining us for his monthly game) and Dennis (also a runner who fancies himself more of a handler).

And we matched up against Kevin, Phil, Brad, Scott, Jason & “Chicken Wing”. This is a sneaky physical 5-some. They find ways to run into you and hit you without it seeming like it’s illegal.

You know, for those of you who read this and wonder why I don’t mention outcomes very often it’s because there is a strange little tidbit about the Buzzards…we very rarely keep any kind of score. I mean generally you know which team is playing better and might be ahead and when we call “Last 3” at 1125 we are able to count to 3 (usually). You know, now that Derek has left us (it was the football/softball player in him) nobody else really keeps track.

So I can’t tell you really who came out on top yesterday though my suspicion is it was probably the gold team. We were having some defensive break-downs on green that seemed to get a little better when we switched to man but not enough to overtake the gold by that point.

Looking forward to redeeming myself some today…”Bill, take a runner because you’re not one” is the voice I’ll be listening for.

I pass on greeting from Buzzards Alums (and part-time players) Kash, Travis, & Kelly who have all joined our Facebook group.

Pull!

Buzzards go Cuckoo

2009-01-15T08:56:00.000-05:00

There are new birds in the nest! Just when you thought it was safe for the Buzzards to stay in, the Cuckoos fly in.

By the way…as a small aside here. I have this blog as an RSS feed to my Facebook (just don't try to access this from work) page but it shows up as a note (which some of you only read it as) but it does not give any indication where it’s coming from (i.e. the blog is the source). So, I’m thinking about putting the hyperlink as the first line of each blog entry. Well, at least until somebody can figure out how to have Facebook credit the source and steer people to the BPUC page. I’m sure one of my friends (Kari, I'm thinking this might be you since you had Twitter updating your Facebook status from a train the other day) can help me with that but that supposes any of them actually read this.

I didn’t want to confuse any of the Buzzards who are reading this and wondering why I’m directing them to someplace they already are.

Anyway, back to the nest interlopers…

There are a couple of great quotes from R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that I’m reminded of this morning as Brian fills in for the deranged Jack Nicholson. I got out of my car this morning at about 5:15 (that’s a.m for you Facebook readers) to walk into the building. I’m not exactly sure what the temperature was then but right now, as I write this (8:40 a.m.), it’s climbed to a “balmy” 25. Problem is, the winds are blowing from the NW at 23 miles an hour with wind gusts up to 36! That makes it feel like 10 degrees which ain’t Chicago but it’s still darn cold.

So, I figure “Okay, I’ve got my Ultimate gear today but there really won’t be anybody who wants to play.” I had already heard from a couple leaving the pitch yesterday that stated “for the record, I’m not playing tomorrow.” Thanks Todd for the heads up. You’re to be commended on your relative sanity. Unfortunately, that cannot be said of all your teammates. This is where McMurphy, a.k.a. Brian comes in.

Email at 8:03 – He wants to know if I’m calling a game for today. Or as McMurphy would have said “Which one of you nuts has got any guts?” Here’s the thing, it’s sometimes easier to ignore or assuage one loose cannon with misplaced bravado. But see Brian’s smarter than he looks, he’s got 3 other nuts with him already committed to play when he emails me (Jeana, Doug & John…you better show). Did I mention John's first two games with us will have been yesterday and today? That’s half the game right there and my obligation is to only come up with 3 more players assuming I’ve been guilted into going out myself (this is not one of the club leader perks they tell you about when you take this job).

And see I already know there is at least another one out there because Paul came out in shorts yesterday! He told me something the other day about family ancestry being tied into some Nordic fishermen or some such crazy story. Meanwhile I’m left thinking “I must be crazy to be in a loony bin like this.”

Brian chirps in a few minutes ago with another co-conspirator in Dennis and all of a sudden we’re at 7 and I have this awful feeling we’re actually going out to play today. I’m envisioning discs cracking in pieces when and if they actually land after getting caught up in the wind.

I think I’d rather face Nurse Ratched “You know Billy, what worries me is how your mother is going to take this.”

“P-p-p-please d-d-d-don’t tell my m-m-m-mother.”

Crap! There’s a positive response from Brad, now I’m going to have to send out the “Game On” email. Have the clinic standby for frost bite patients after lunch. There’s 8 flying over this Buzzards’s nest!

A slapdash kind of game...

2009-01-14T08:54:00.000-05:00

There was indeed slapping and dashing going on yesterday…and kicking apparently. Some of the kicking was legal; I was actually able to kick block a pass which I will try from time to time when I don’t really feel like bending that far. The other kicking was compared to mule-like activity so I’ll assume there may have been some physical contact involved which, by the way, is not legal.

Apparently there was also some mocking going on when I explained that double-teaming was also not legal (even when you are down a player). The mocker in question shall remain nameless but he’s the one with the accent. George (so much for nameless) despite your incredulity there are, in fact, a set of rules for Ultimate and a (some would argue more than one) ruling Association. I’ll remind folks or tell them for the first time about the Ultimate Players Association where you can find all things Ultimate. For a small fee, you can join up which will allow you to play in most organized leagues and tournaments should you find yourself wanting something to supplement your daily fix with the Buzzards. In fact, I just got my renewal notice in the mail a couple weeks ago…it’s next to the Comcast bill. If this economic crunch starts to hit me too hard and I have to decide between the two, I’m sending in the UPA renewal and turning off cable and internet.

Now back to yesterday’s game. Did I mention it was a bit sloppy? We had another great turnout though with 6’s when Jeana finally got away from her office and came out to even up the teams. By that time though, we, on the gold team, had already gotten ourselves into a bit of a hole. When I say hole, I actually mean multiple holes that seemed to be in our zone defense. Green managed a couple of nice short pass drives up the field for scores.

The slapping going on yesterday actually looked to be the result of some nice hustle. I thought we had people hitting each others arms and wrists (and ears?) as they were both going up for passes. And that kind of “incidental contact” seems to be generally okay with most of the Buzzards. In contrast to the just running through somebody because you're too slow (re:lazy) to get around them and front them on defense.

I was having some pinnie color recognition problems yesterday. On one early drive I threw a pass to the corner of the end zone that I thought I had gotten close enough to Jason that he should have caught it. Just when I was about to yell something about the lack of hustle, I realized we didn’t have the same color on. Ooops. “Hey Bill, you’re gold” Bob reminded me as we turned around after the turnover.

We got an unexpected visit from Kelly yesterday. Taking a break from the job search to concentrate on things much more important. Great to see you yesterday KG! And even though you gave a disclaimer when you got out there about not having played in “months” I saw you make several nice plays, including one really good defensive block.

But most of us noticed our own lack of execution yesterday…When I tried to pep talk gold one trip back down the field with “Okay, here we go, now we’re going to start showing them something!”

Matt replied “Does that mean you want me to leave the field? I just want to know now before I run back down there.”

Todd remarked after the game “I know I saw at least 2 discs coming straight for my hands that somehow did not wind up there.”

And Paul told me on the way back down the field after another score “You remember how yesterday we were saying what a great game it was? Today…not so much.”

“Yea” I conceded “but it still beat being in the cube.”

And you know, you all are just crazy enough that when I think we might take a day off…you know for the temperatures in the teens with the wind chill kind of days….like TODAY! I get an IM from Brian saying “Hey, we’ve got 3 (Doug, John & I) in my office ready to go today.” And I give in and send out the invite, finding two more immediate replies to take us up to 6 already.

Sloppy or not, we’re headed to the pitch.

Pull!

Muddy Monday

2009-01-12T13:49:00.000-05:00

We’re only 2 weeks into January and really have hadn’t a long stretch of challenging winter weather but I’m encouraged by our 3 games and 39 people we’ve had come out so far. It was a great game of 7’s today. Welcome back Scott, good to see you. Soccer and basketball took the day off and we also got Doug and JQ. And while Leroy finished up his winter “break” at work with the Coast Guard last week, Carolyn is still with us as George Mason apparently doesn’t believe in school in January. Now that’s a J-term I can appreciate.

The pitch was a bit muddy today…I guess. I came into the locker room though having to carry my shoes in a Ziploc because I had played yesterday in Richmond on a completely grassless bog where my cleats were essentially useless but I wore them anyway and there was a coat of dried mud on them to start today’s game. But many of us were also in it today. I saw Carolyn diving for a catch across the end zone…or maybe that was the defensive play where she and Bridgette looked like a snowball picking up size as it goes downhill when they both hit the ground in pursuit of one throw. Jason fell straight back on another throw that was surely headed into his hands even though he was the defender. And so much so that Todd had stopped covering the deep guy and gold team got the first score of the game on a broken play.

Not all of us saw that play though. Remember the bit in the email this morning when I called the game about trying to start a few minutes earlier than we have been? Well, Brad apparently thought that was a personal affront to his civil freedoms and decided to not come out until 15 minutes later. So we, on the green team had taken our extra player advantage in George, the other late-comer, and didn’t do much with it.

It actually looked like we were gaining some reasonably approximation of a zone defense on a few plays as Paul was hustling up to get some good cup defense set. And it worked well for a while…or on some plays I guess. By the way…I noticed Mike that you were trying to exercise the “Phil” rule and swing the disc around hitting people on the arm to show that they might be in your “pivot zone”. A little clarification here may be in order. When you have a 6-foot plus wingspan or you’re able to pivot the length of a small child, you cede some of your privilege to that foul call. The defender gets to come close to you and you’re probably better off trying garlic, really strong onion or flatulence if you want to ward them off. We’re not letting you hit people with the disc anymore so just throw it already.

Brian seems to have ironed out most of the kinks of that reverse discus throw of his. It’s amazing what you can adapt to when you’re injured I guess. Now that Scott is back I can shift my missing Buzzards attention to other people. Eli, where in the world are you? I keep getting “No” responses from Tim. So much so that I wonder if he hasn’t set up an “Out of Office” rule on his email to anything Outlook sees from me. And Tom we haven’t seen you in a while though I did notice that you had RSVPd for Friday’s game which didn’t happen.

Okay everybody, don’t pass by too many opportunities to play. The weather could turn anytime (check out the 10-forecast…Thursday may be the turn day this week) so let’s take advantage while we can. Great, great turnout today!

http://bpuc.blogspot.com/

Buzzardgate 2009

2009-01-09T08:09:00.000-05:00

So I’m thinking I might try and get sponsorship for the 2009 Buzzards Point Ultimate Club from Backpacker.com, REI, or even Garmin. A good 20 minutes of our lunchtime game yesterday was spent getting to and returning from the pitch. Rumors had been rumbling for a while about the pedestrian gate closure on McNair, presumably to warrant the months of new construction that produced one big new shiny gate 5-6 blocks up the street.

Early yesterday there were conflicting reports of the gate status as the game email was sent out and responded to and our 8 requisite players had all responded by about 0830. At 0908 I sent out the “Game On” email with a disclaimer about how we would actually have to access Ft. McNair. But quickly Brad responded that he had actually walked through the gate and Paul sent another email saying that he could “see” that it was in fact open at that time.

Well, first of all, what in the world is Paul doing with a window office! Secondly, Brad’s claims notwithstanding there were actually some emails and Special Notices that the gate was in fact closed. It’s possible, we thought that Brad could actually have been asleep when he thought he came through the gate this morning. I mean he even admitted that sometimes he could walk to work almost as fast as he could peddle to work when he took his bike. Huh?

So, with an email from Jeana (more on her and her credibility to discern gate status later) saying that she had heard the gate was now closed we were all pretty much up in the air as to how we’d get to the pitch. But the important thing is that we were going to play, after 2 days off during windy, rainy, sleety and otherwise perfect Ultimate weather. So with positive replies…and note these are in chronological order… from Jeana, Bob, Paul, Phil, Kevin, Jason, Brad, and finally Todd we readied for the game. Oh, by the way, Jeana, who we may be calling “Gatekeeper” from here on out sent an email saying “I may be a little late” with the obligatory sad face emoticon. Operative words here… “little late”.

About 1120 I got down into the locker room to find Phil, Paul, and Brad already there and almost changed. “Wow, you guys are early” I remarked, noting I’m usually the first one down there.

“We thought we’d get an early start, the gate is closed” explained Phil.

“But Brad, I thought you walked through it this morning?” I replied, somewhat surprised.

“Yea, I thought I did too” Brad deadpanned as he sincerely seemed to be questioning his own recollection of his arrival at work that morning.

“Fair enough” I said and began to put on my several layers for the game as it still seemed to be a bit windy and cool. “See you guys out there.”

“I’ll grab the bag” Brad said as he headed out to hopefully pass through a gate…again.

Bob and Todd came in shortly and I explained to them the gate situation. And we changed and made our way up 2nd St. about half a mile and then backtracking through the gate and over to the field for another quarter of a mile. Listen, it’s not a long walk but it was easily and extra 10 minutes both ways.

George wound up wandering out to join us and we had 9 to start the game and were waiting for Jeana to come out and balance the teams so Kevin headed over to Gold when we was the last one out and created the extra player situation. He joined Phil, Bob, George, & the phantom gate passer Brad.

I stuck Todd with the vertically challenged team of myself, Paul and Jason and after staking out what seemed to be the least swampiest area of the parade field and walking off a close to official length field for the first time in weeks we pulled to start.

Our green team had some initial problems defending some longer passes and Todd decided to drop back, play safety and see if he could bat down a few of those. We continued to give up more than we got and decided to accept the extra player flopping teams option. Brad came over to Green after Gold’s third or fourth consecutive score. Then Green began to gain a little traction as Jason came up with some improbable catches by continuing to hustle on plays and caught at least 3 deflected passes and then a 4th that just seemed to drop into his hands on the goal line on one play.

But George was also having a MOB-type game (oh wait, sorry, that title doesn’t exist anymore) and came up with several impressive one-handed grabs over the green team of “giants”. Todd had to leave a little early as his office had decided to invite him to a 1300 meeting on his way out to the field and considering the newer, longer trek to the pitch, needed to run back.

The green team took a major hit to their average height. Now, with just Brad, Paul, Jason and I coming in at about an average of 5’ 7” we finished off a game in less than impressive fashion. There were complaints that we didn’t get a “last 3” call and instead it was at 1233 a “last point” call.

“What’s wrong Bill, do you actually have to get back to work? I thought you were a Chief?” I was taunted as we picked up the cones.

“I don’t like the New Year Bill” Phil groused.

We packed up the gear and made our way back down the long journey back to the office accompanied by an appropriately complaint filled banter on our way through the new gate and back down the street. We are all sailors after all…or recovering ones perhaps.

“Hey, I thought Jeana was playing” Kevin noticed as she had not joined us.

“Well, she sent me an email saying she would be a little late” I said.

“We’re done, I’d say that’s more than ‘a little late’” …you can’t get anything by Kevin.

Well the rest of us had a good time and when I got back I found out what happened with “Gatekeeper”. Here is the transcript from our chat.

Jeana [1:28 PM]:
so much for me being a "regular"
I went out to the back and side gates. Both were closed. Denied!
Bill [1:28 PM]:
How did you not get through the new side gate?
Jeana [1:29 PM]:
It was closed
I didn't exactly feel like clamoring over it
Bill [1:29 PM]:
Strange , that's how we went and came back.
are we talking about the same gate....you know the new one about 5 blocks back up 2nd street Jeana [1:30 PM]:
I believe so. There's only one side before you get to the front gates
Yes?
Across the street from that big parking lot?
Bill [1:31 PM]:
yea, as far as I know...It just seems weird that they would have closed it while were over there. Actually, there is one gate (it looks like an exit gate) that was closed, you have to walk past that one still even further
Jeana [1:32 PM]:
there's 2 side gates?
I stopped at the exit gate
Bill [1:33 PM]:
apparently, i wasn't really paying attention too much as I walked up. I saw a "Do Not Enter" or some such sign on that first gate, kept walking up and there was the new one where all the turnstiles, building, guards, and medians are...you couldn't have missed it had you gone that far.
Jeana [1:35 PM]:
Ah. I saw the first gate and the corner of the entire block. It's so close to the front entrances that I don't see the point in its existance. Anyway, I'm sorry I didn't show up. I'll try again next week.
Bill [1:36 PM]:
Okay...meanwhile I'm sending your excuses to Bob & Kevin...expect to be teased
Jeana [1:37 PM]:
& Paul. No worries. I can take them all with 1 arm tied behind my back
Just kidding

Okay, well we got word when we got back to the office that the old gate should be opened for business again next week. Hopefully this will put an end to Buzzardgate 2009.

2009 State of the Buzzards Address

2009-01-08T10:29:00.000-05:00

I came in this week to jeers about not having given some sort of New Year’s greeting and so, after a surprising week at work in which I’ve actually been efficiently employed I find myself able to sit down and reflect some on the Buzzards 2008.

There are 65 people on our email distribution list and by my count 44 of them have come out at least once over the last year. Listen a couple years back we scurried around for 3 on 3 sometimes so my expectations are not high. Of those 44 though I would consider about half to be regulars, or to have been regulars at some point during the year. And of that 22 or so, I know of 8-10 that I can’t count on almost daily to come out and throw the disc around. That’s a great state to be in for the Buzzards Point Ultimate Club and I sincerely appreciate it.

You know the superstition about the thing you find yourself doing on New Years to be indicative of how your year will go? Well, from a personal standpoint, that was a bit disturbing. Some travel plans and conflicting schedules left me alone on New Year’s day. I had two five minute phone conversations and said hello to a cashier at Target and other than that had no human interaction. I’m not sure how to interpret that actually in New Year’s Lore but it was crazy quiet that day.

For the Buzzards, our first game of the New Year was this past Monday and we had 16 people come out to play! I’m hopeful that is indeed prophetic of the level of participation we’ll have in 2009.

In 2008 we have been able to survive a large turnover in personnel and a rash of injuries. Let me see if I can recall most of these without leaving too many names off. We lost Lindsay who may have returned for 1 or 2 games after the New Year last January but mostly he’s been gone all year, Travis, Kashyap, MattC, KellyG, Justin all not only left the Buzzards but the Coast Guard as well. I’m not sure what that says about the type of officers this sport attracts. Some players we both gained and lost this year; Conrad, Alec, Paul, Will & MarkR. We also said goodbye to several of our hard core regulars; Hollan, Frank, Rodney, Bryan, JasonN, and EricB as well as other players of varying lengths of stay and levels of commitment; CaptKev, Lon, MattM. Finally, we also lost the Buzzards Jukebox to ridiculously intrusive internet filters and the MOB & SOTG awards to extreme apathy.

We were able to offset those losses by a great influx of players; JasonK (actually an old new player…this is his 2nd tour here), Brian, Kevin, Carolyn, Leroy, PaulS, Jordan, Mike (a couple of them), Dennis, Bridgette, Jeana, JQ, George, Brook, ErikN, Scott, Brad, & MarkW, Fred, Tim, KevinR, Roz, & Rachel. I am sure I’ve missed somebody.

Who I’ve really left out so far are the folks that were here at the close of ’07 and still here at the start of ’09 and come out regularly and keep this team afloat. Thanks to Todd, Bob, Phil, Scott, Tom, & MattP.

All of you have made this arguably the best entity at Coast Guard Headquarters and around. I have thoroughly enjoyed hosting this blog and this club. 81 entries online this past year have not adequately encapsulated the amount of satisfaction I derive from the Buzzards.

Looking ahead I believe we are set to lose quite a few folks this year so make sure you put us on your internal check in/check out sheets so we can reach out and touch the new people coming in. Keep dragging your office mates out and reminding them they won’t die those first few games and to keep giving us a try.

Thanks for a great ’08 Buzzards
~ Bill

Looking for some blogosphere "Drain-O"

2008-12-03T09:57:00.000-05:00

Is “Bloggers’ Block” a clog, an impasse, a jam? Maybe, since it’s the Buzzards blog, it’s a force? Yea, I kind of like that. I’ve been forced from my usual scrivener self in search for interesting things to write about the Buzzards daily escapades. And it’s not that we aren’t interesting.

We had a very interesting conversation on the way back in Monday about the moral position of forgiving or at least turning the other cheek (or nostril) to those who had become addicted to nicotine prior to the federally mandated warning labels. It started with Phil’s not so convincing Ben Stiller imitation out on the field “uhhh huhhh huhhh, I think I got the Black Lung” and moved to the holiday visits to parents becoming older and still holding on to habits that make them “cough up a lung” which by the way has a real medical description “upper GI hemorrhage”. I know because this is what my dad died of after 50 years of smoking Pall Mall non filters. In one of those strange coincidences of conversation and life…today would have been my dad’s 68th birthday. By the way Pop’s was known to throw a few Frisbees in his lifetime and could do it with cigarette in hand or mouth.

The post-Turkey day on the pitch was a windy one. Depending on your source, gusts were somewhere between 16 and 30 mph. My own internal anemometer did some quick calculations (│v│=√u2 + v2 w2) and I gauged it to be around the 23-24 mph range…or just short of wind ribbon conditions. Nonetheless, with temperatures hovering in the mid 40’s making the wind chill somewhere in the 33-34 range, and sudden gusts that turned Mark’s 5 yard dump pass to me go 20 yards behind him made for some challenging play. So thanks to everybody else who came out.

I can’t remember much of the game due to my recent unexplained knack for making contact with everybody. I think I’m still shaking off some mild concussion symptoms from yesterday when while I was marking Jason, I followed his throwing hand a bit too closely and wound up catching the follow through forearm across my left eye socket. “Is it supposed to be ringing out here?”

The 8 turned into 11 or 12 on Monday. I can’t quite remember. Phil & Thunder both showed up after not replying and JQ was out on the field doing calisthenics when we got out there. “Who’s that I asked Todd as we were crossing the street?”

“Well, it’s not Scott or he’d be sitting under the tree asking us what took us so long.”

“Yea” I agreed “I kind of thought it was Brook but he wouldn’t be running…must be JQ”.

Others of you with a chance to hit an early week trifecta of games besides those already mentioned above…Dennis, Mark, & Bob. Jeana stood us up again yesterday with some crazy excuse about a job, boss & meeting. Bridgette came out yesterday and provide much of my entertainment. On one trip down the field, I realized I was the last yellow pinnie back and that she, in her green, was getting ready to run by me. “Better try to catch her off guard” I thought and reached out and grabbed her sweatshirt. I spun her around, she fell down, and caught the disc in the end zone. Nice D Bill….walk back up the field loser.

Others who have wandered out already this week…Paul, Kevin, George, Fred, Matt, and Brad. And a big Buzzards Welcome to MarkW who joined us for the first time yesterday. You can tell him from the other Mark…well let’s just say there are some verticality differences.

Looking forward to a good game today…no contact…maybe even some running.

Hollan's last stand

2008-11-25T07:18:00.000-05:00

~ posted by Bill

We lured out enough people yesterday to celebrate Hollan’s last game. Well, I thought it was “just enough people” one of those days that I had just 8 and then a 9th rogered up right before we headed out and then we wind up with 12 on the field.

You know a while back when we used to give out nicknames more often we had dubbed Tom “Boom Boom”. You see, Tom is left over from the Buzzard’s days of Ultimate when this game was a little more….uh….let’s say…physical. And when we started the club back up and Tom first came back out, he had a habit of using some of that well learned physicality. These newer, younger Buzzards began to try and reinforce some of the actual standards of Ultimate that state this game should be a non-contact sport and Tom had to reinvent his style. Which, by the way, I should say he has done very well over the last year or so. Of course, some nicknames just stick and from time to time he hears “Boom boom” being called his way.

Yesterday Tom made a case for the rescinding or, perhaps more appropriately, the reassignment of this nickname. Another new player you might guess? Perhaps a football player learning a new sport? An overaggressive soccer player looking for an outlet on his non-game days? A pickup basketball player throwing his weight around? Yea, not so much. None of the above. In fact, it was to the bestower of the “Boom boom” nickname in the first place. The rule enlightener himself. The guy that played one season of a “real league” and decided to become an Ultimate snob. Okay, I admit it! It was me!

I really don’t know what happened. It was late in the game and maybe I’d lost a step. I saw Todd standing about midfield looking around for somebody to pass to and I saw him make eye contact with Tom who about 10 yards in front of me and to my right about 1 o’clock. I could see that Todd was going to lead him a little bit crossing in front of me and I figured I could cover that 10 yards in front of me before Tom moved over to Noon or 11:30 on the dial. I made a mad dash and put my head down for a second to help with the aerodynamics. When I lifted my head and expected to be getting to where I could stick my hand out and knock down a pass I found that there was a body already there. I ran right into it and found bone and elbow and crumpled to the ground.

A brief shaking of the head to make sure everything was still there and I opened my eyes looking straight up in the sky. Tom was standing over me looking down at me like I’d lost my mind.

“Dude, you okay?”

Apologizing and getting up groggily, I said “C’mon lets go. Disc in play”.

“I think we have a new Boom Boom” I heard Tom shout back down the field. Or, I thought later…

What do you call a nut case who runs full bore into “Boom Boom?”… "Sonic Boom?”

And see, it hadn’t been the first contact I’d had that day either. Earlier, thinking I had found a seem deep I made a dash for a disc headed to the end zone. But green was playing zone and Todd and Bob were sitting deep as the safeties. So as the disc headed for the left corner of the endzone and six eyes looking up at it trying to get a track on it the six corresponding legs started getting closer and closer to each other. Todd got the first glimpse of situational awareness and pulled up just enough to see Bob and I going by him and becoming entangled and rolling to the ground together in a heap…the disc still in the air above the 3 of us and then falling to the ground.

On Hollan’s last day, I continually heard him swearing about his inability to get a pass anywhere he wanted. One sailing over Kevin’s head…$&@*….another cutting to the ground before JQ…*$%@...and another not quite making it to Mark…$*&!.

But it was nice to have 6 on 6. Thunder, thanks for coming out at the last minute to even up the teams. After giving Jeana a hard time about not making it out to the rain game a couple week’s ago, we thought she was going to stand us up again but she and Tom showed up right after the start also and our 9 turned into a dozen and hopefully we gave Hollan a nice game to head out on. It’s been our pleasure having you play with us brother. I think I may have even saw a small tear in Phil’s eye as he came up to sign your going away disc yesterday afternoon. Or maybe Paul just poked him…or maybe he was crying about the dead fish…I’m not sure.

Wheat and Chaff

2008-11-14T11:34:00.000-05:00

Some of the things I separate during my normal weeks….whites from the darks during laundry day, eggs, oil & vinegar when shaking up the Newman’s Own, Buzzards between green and gold, and yesterday…the hard core “we’ll play in anything” Buzzards from the “fair weather” fowl.

To be fair, I suspect there were others that would have played had they been there or were not in meetings but credit shall be given where it is due and I need to give a big shout out to Phil, Brad, Bob, JQ, George, Alec, Hollan, & Kevin who came out to play yesterday in by far the worst weather conditions of the year. It was about 47 or 48 degrees and raining…not just sprinkling but a full rain. We looked on the radar before we went out and we were on the edge of that dark green and yellow bands. Then about mid way through the game the wind started to blow as well.

None of that kept those Buzzards off the field yesterday. Bob & JQ were both nursing nagging injuries, Alec (our Maine native) didn’t have long pants or long sleeves on, Phil had no Phil had no hat and none of us had many dry spots even after the run out to the field but we played and had a great time!

We didn’t waste much time yesterday getting out either. Brad & I jogged out to the field in hopes that it might keep us warmer. Bob wondered if it wasn’t warmer standing still? Hmmmm, I’m not really sure about the scientific quality of that surmising but I guess it could be argued that if you’re wet and not causing the wind the blow harder against yourself, by running, that you might feel warmer. But my thinking was that keeping the blood moving and the core temperature up would be a good thing. So we through on the pinnies right away with not much thought about who was who’s team and just started playing.

Initially, we only had 7. “But Bill, you only call games when you have 8” you might contest. Yes, that’s normally true. And I did have 8 when I called the game…with a couple of other “maybes”. And usually I’m not one to throw anybody under the bus as things do come up (like Tom’s marathon meeting that started before 9 and still wasn’t over when we went out) but when we just get stood up because it was raining I feel the need for some manner of “public cyber flogging”. Hey Jeana, I tried to keep the Buzzards from hurling the “new player” and “girl” epithets around in disdain….okay, actually I joined in…but really. And you’re an Ultimate player from before too? We only cancel games for lightning…and then usually begrudgingly and amongst jeers that I should at least wait until somebody gets struck before I pack up the bag. Luckily JQ & George wandered out after we had gotten to the field and we had 9!

Speaking of packing up the bag….somebody please take those pinnies home today and wash them. I can’t imagine they are even dry yet from yesterday and secretly I’m glad I didn’t have to put one on today. But if they don’t get home, can you imagine what they will feel and smell like on Monday? Ewwwww!

Okay so everybody that came out yesterday…you get the AWB (All-Weather Buzzard) award and the satisfaction of knowing your zeal and gusto borders on insanity and that you are indeed Ultimate players!

Have a great weekend everybody.

Top 10 Reasons to play Ultimate today...

2008-11-13T09:37:00.001-05:00

10. Frisbees can't get water logged.
9. You don't have enough hair to mess up.
8. Turtles like water.
7. It's cheaper than the cafeteria.
6. It's not as cold as Wisconsin.
5. Nobody gets fired from Ultimate.
4. You'll remember how fun it was to play in puddles.
3. Despite how erudite we sound in our blog…we’re an easy-going bunch.
2. You won't be the only women, old guy, Chief, Contractor, or soccer player playing.
1. It's not your desk for heaven's sake.

Rodney Reunion Tour

2008-11-13T07:06:00.000-05:00

“So with Rodney playing today, do we have to let him win?” was the question I got asked yesterday morning in preparation for the BPUC reunion game we had planned for him as he was going to be back in the building and hoped to play.

“No way” I said “Let’s just treat him like we always do…like our little sister”. I mean we didn’t want to make him feel unwelcome. I did notice though that JQ was making Rodney look deceptively fast early in the game zipping two passes into end zone corners where the defense wasn’t actually that badly beaten. Ah, handlers…sometimes they make you look good.

There seemed to be a variety of defenses being played yesterday. My team, overwhelmingly outvoted me and wanted to play zone to begin with. So Brad and Brian headed forward to play the cup with mid-play tutoring going on (which, oddly enough, seems to impact the effectiveness of the defense actually being played…not in a good way). Phil, Dennis & I roamed the middle and Bob played deep safety (he likes that position too much and jumps at the chance he gets to play it).

The green team seemed to be playing some bastardized version of pentagon and 1 or what I like to call 5 guys playing man and the 6th letting Brian run loose. After we found Brian for the 3rd or 4th open pass early in the game, I heard Todd shouting “Who in the world has Brian?” I’m not completely sure but when I saw JQ racing back and forth across the field as safety a la Bob, I figured he was the one who’d been cheating on the man defense.

I had a particularly tough time throwing yesterday due to the new defense being played on me. Scott was marking me with the “bump pivot” D. That’s when I’m trying to get him out of my shirt and I pivot around and he keeps bumping me. It’s legality clearly in question…I could picture Phil if he’d had to endure it, constantly rotating the disc around in front of his stomach to try and cry for more room…but the effectiveness of it could not be disputed. My handling sucked yesterday. Aside from a couple that I decided to just throw out of bounds and let come back in (and one of those got caught up in the tree), I was pretty much useless.

Several players deferred playing yesterday and said they’d be playing today. If that was your idea of fair weather Ultimate playing I might point out that you didn’t check your weather forecasts very well. Yesterday was almost perfect playing conditions with temperatures in the 50’s and almost no wind. Today will barely reach into the 50’s and there is 100% chance of rain. Oh, we’ll still play but for Alec & Jeana…I’ll be looking for you two.

And while I’m throwing people under the bus…er…uh…I mean…missing players who haven’t been out this week…that we usually see out there is…Jason, Paul, Brook? Are you guys here this week? We got George back out yesterday so I’ve taken him off the MIA list. Rachel, are you coming back out? How ‘bout some other former players who have really gone into the Witness Protection Program…MattD, Jorge, Bo, Eric B, Denise, Roz? Hey, don’t think I don’t know who’s on this list. Come on back out folks!

You know I sometimes mention the conversation on the way out or back from the pitch or in the locker room…they’re generally my most interesting of the day. Last week there was talk of loofahs, waxing, and quality whites (wine, not linens) that would have made you think you were at the spa and not the guy’s locker room. Yesterday, Kevin and I were comparing our driving lives that shared commonalities like 3-generation pickups, routes (29 & 95 respectively), some Va. State Trooper observations, and High School Musical 3 (okay we don’t share that but we talked about it). You don’t get this kind of renaissance intellectual and emotional stimulus in many other circles.

So, I’m thinking…what this White House transition team really needs is a lunchtime Ultimate game coordinator to keep everybody motivated and physically fit and…you know…informed.

Armistice from the cube!

2008-11-12T09:52:00.000-05:00

Tuesday holidays? Strange things…Does anybody use the word armistice anymore? Do any of the Buzzards readers know what the word means? I’ll save you the time of going to Dictionary or Webster’s dot com edition…it’s the “temporary suspension of hostilities” which is a strange thing to call the end of the “war to end all wars”. Temporary? It turns out to be rather prophetic as a generation later the world headed off to the sequel.

In all seriousness, I’d like to give a big Buzzard’s nod to all Veterans all over the world who have served their countries in hopes that their children and grandchildren would have a safer place to live. Personally speaking, I’m Bill, III and Bill Sr., was a Major in the 29th Infantry Division at D-Day and Bill, Jr., was a swabbie aboard ship around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

On a lighter note, I’d like to give a nod to some Buzzard “Veterans” no longer playing with us regularly…Lonnie, Lindsay, Craig, JasonN, MattC, Kashyap, Lon, Justin, Derek, Conrad, Frank, Tag, Travis, KellyG, Bryan, CAPTK and I’m sure I’m forgetting others. Thanks for your dedication and participation.

“Guys that should be Veterans” should have been the name of the gold team on Monday. As I wandered out on the field Tom asked “Bill, why did you put all the slow guys on one team?”

I thought he said “…all the old guys” –

“yea, it could be either” he corrected, “or both, old and slow…anyway, we’re all on this side”. I looked up and down the line….Tom, Bob, Scott, Mark and I. Actually, I think Mark just looks old and slow, he was really the “baby” on the team but the rest of us were mostly guilty as charged.

“Don’t worry” I assured Tom, “I gave us all the wily guys too.” He looked over and saw Todd, Hollan, Tim, Bridgette, & MikeC on the green team and didn’t seem convinced. Then when Lee wandered out…by the way, was that his first time? Welcome…just one point of rules…you can’t knock the disc out of anybody’s hands. We know you didn’t know that so we let you just celebrate it. As I was saying…Lee came out and I told him to throw green on too and Tom thought I had lost all of my limited faculties.

Turns out, wily was working on Monday. Even a player short we managed to control the game hitting on a couple timely long passes and basically working the field. It didn’t hurt that Hollan was recuperating from a bout of food poisoning (re: hangover?). Of course he gets points for coming out. Phil, reportedly having similar symptoms stayed safely inside.

MikeC ~ we’ve got to get you to learn to run with your hands down. Does anybody else get scared when they see Mike running by them with his arms waving frantically and him yelling something while having no chance of catching up to the disc? It reminds me of when I used to coach my daughter’s softball team. You have to persuade the outfielders they can run faster for a ball with their glove down and then stick it up when they get there. Just teasing you Mike...keep running...keep screaming...keep having fun.

Initially when we went out on Monday, people thought they had underdressed and Todd & Hollan considered going back in for long pants. Forecasts of varying wind strengths had circulated. One said 3 mph and another 15 mph. It was closer to the latter on the way out but by about mid game it had settled down to the other and the temperatures were quite pleasant. These days in the 50’s are really ideal Ultimate weather.

Other new players to welcome out of late have been Jeana & Rachel. Hope you all have had fun and will be back out with us. A few of you haven’t been out in a while but have played a lot in the past. I know some of you are injured but I just wanted to let you know the Buzzards were thinking about you from time to time…MattP, MattD, Brady, Eric, and ErikN. And then some of you are just hanging around on a distribution list and really have no good excuse for not coming out.

Come on! Think of it as a “work armistice” ….temporary cessation of hostilities of your cube.
Pull!

Our cup over runneth...

2008-11-06T10:58:00.001-05:00

“Okay, shake your head up and down if what I just said made any sense, and side to side if you thought I was speaking gibberish” Kevin clarified after the words cup, left mid, hammer block, force wind, and other quasi-official Ultimate speak left this somewhat dazed look on his teammates faces?

“Can’t we just cover somebody?” Tim asked. And to his point…if you spend all morning in a meeting with a bunch of other O4s, being asked to think at lunch time on the pitch may be akin to any Republicans that were up late Tuesday night somehow hoping California wouldn’t go blue. Yea, that’s not happening.

Well, to even be in the position to practice the zone yesterday was a surprise because when I called the game I had just barely gotten the 8th response and I thought for sure we were headed for a 4 on 4 or 4 on 5 game yesterday. But then I was able to solicit a few latecomers, Alec & Brook, on our new “Office Communicator” (really the most functional aspect I’ve found for the application yet), Thunder changed his mind, somebody finally found Phil hiding under his desk and Mike wandered out and then Brian even showed up on his bicycle. So our 8 turned into 15 and the 3 mile and hour winds cranked up to about 15 probably and made for some interesting passing…uh…er…dropping perhaps.

Early in the game was ugly as everybody, it seems, dropped pass after pass. Or the handlers just threw them into the ground or 15 feet over somebody’s head depending on how the wind was blowing at that particular instant.

But, teams were running from stacks (well, when Brian didn’t think I was talking about IHOP), and we were playing some zone and actually forcing to one side or another and at times we looked like Ultimate teams. Not a lot of long pass connections yesterday though.

Another overcast rain threatening game today. Life’s good, let’s play.

Make a Change!

2008-11-05T09:04:00.000-05:00

~ posted by Bill

On the heels of a truly historic election I just want to encourage all the Buzzards to take part in another campaign, the Combined Federal Campaign, and truly bring change to people and organizations that partner to imporove and enhance our communities. I'm not advocating any individual organizations but I will point out that the Ultimate Players Association can be sponsored (#CFC code, used for making designations: 11294).

Hats, tights, and gloves...oh my!

2008-10-28T14:26:00.000-04:00

~ posted by Bill

Just wanted to give a quick shout out to all the Buzzards who came out today. The rain stopped and it was just the wind and cool temperatures to contend with and once you started running it really wasn’t that cool anymore. I saw clothes being shed in fact.

But it was also a day for tights, sweats, hats, and gloves. The game started with some monster pulls, courtesy of a nice back wind. And through the course of the game we had some other types of pulls too. Like Brian’s pull that landed behind his line. Wind is a tricky think sometimes.

And some were surprised that there would even be a game today. A little after 0900 my instant messenger window popped up? “How many do you have today? Want to play racquetball instead?”

“Well, actually, if you’ll change your mind and play, we’ll have ‘Game On”” I replied.

“If I don’t, I’m going to feel like a ninny. I’m in.”

“Outstanding! Game On then!”

Todd may have been reconsidering his decision after about the first 10 minutes when the green team couldn’t seem to catch a disc. But they came around and worked some nice short passing runs with Hollan, Brad, Brian & Jason all getting in on the game with Todd.

The gold team started out well with Bob, Kevin & myself handling to Dennis, Bridgette & Paul…did I mention what a great turnout this was today for an inclimate weather day? But I’m not sure what happen with our 1-person advantage and some defensive breakdowns. The green team started scoring and hanging on to discs.

All in all though a great game. I’m headed out of here to the Swing State Voter Awareness concert tonight. Who knew Virginia would ever be a swing state again? Life is good. I’ll be groovin’ to some Jack Johnson, Sheryl Crow & Beastie Boys tonight. You all be good to each other. See you tomorrow.

pre Halloween & Election Day wear.

2008-10-28T07:54:00.000-04:00

~ posted by Bill

It’s getting to be that time of year. What time of year you ask? The time of year when we walk around the wall of the loading dock on the way out to the pitch and that wind hits you and you say “Crap, it’s colder than I thought!” and wonder if you shouldn’t turn around and go back in.

Okay, it wasn’t quite that cold…but it’s getting there, quickly I suspect. And for the record, Brad and Jeana were the first to wear either tights and/or sweats out on the pitch. I thought wearing long leg wear before Halloween was like wearing white after Labor Day.

Some of you heard me ponder aloud a couple weeks ago, when we had 19 come out to play, “I wonder how many we’ll get when it’s in the 40’s and raining?” Well, I guess we’ll find out today. Not to lower anybody’s expectations but today has the potential for all the worst elements. Cold, it’s only supposed to feel like 40 around game time. Rain, chance of showers all day. Wind, and not just some little breeze like we had yesterday. It’s supposed to be 25 mph by the time we’d head out.

I bet we don’t see anybody on the volleyball court today. I overheard Larry yesterday complaining about frostbite on his feet from the cold sand. You ever try to serve a volleyball in high winds? You think throwing our disc is challenging? Alas, the netters can move indoors. We Buzzards? We’re resigned to the fact that if we want to continue to play our fine sport, that we’re going to have to play on days like this. Well, maybe not just like this. I prefer to only have to contend with one or two of the above mentioned elements rather than all 3 on the same day. Especially since I don’t have my tights with me today. However, I do have my gloves and if we get enough people to play, I suspect I’ll be wearing those.

But I actually think the chances of getting enough for a game today are slimmer than those of Governor Palin passing the CLEP for American Government and finding out that even if she were to somehow find herself on the winning ticket next week (also a long shot at this point), she would not be in charge of the Senate as Vice President.

So, it’s a good thing we had a game yesterday. Despite the cooler temperatures and breeze, it was a good day on the pitch. Where’s Rodney when you need him? You would not believe the example of Spirit of the Game attitude we had yesterday. But perhaps it’s gone too far when you stop to help up a defender who likely just fouled you and you miss your own player cutting into the end zone for a score…okay it didn’t happen like that Brian but next time you can just leave him on the ground until after you throw it and not risk it.

I checked with Kevin and he said most of the leagues he’s played in don’t actually require you to stop play unless it’s a puncture wound and you see blood spurting in the air. Speaking of league play. I heard Jeanna asking to play “the cup” yesterday after Paul kept getting past her or reaching above her for completions. So there’s your homework Buzzards. Find out what “the cup” is. I learned this strategy last winter when I played in CUDO. I’m not convinced it doesn’t actually take a higher degree of athleticism but maybe that’s just because I was nursing that pulled groin last year.

Thanks to everyone else that got out yesterday. Pull out the cold weather gear.

Ultimate & Electoral Math

2008-10-23T08:27:00.000-04:00

posted by Bill

What do I need to do to get your vote? John McC and I seem to be in similar dilemmas except that I’m hoping I have a bigger “undecided” pool from which to still persuade than he does. By my count, I only see 5 states still in that big “U” column and even if he won all of them I think he still is behind in the Electoral count.

Here’s how the Ultimate Electoral count goes…I have 65 names on the Ultimate Distribution List and I only need 12.3% to be able to call a game but for the last two days I’ve been unable to get to that. Big Mac’s challenge is far greater…of 538 possible electoral votes, he needs 50.1% or 270. Thank goodness I don’t need half our list to be able to call a game. Though last week, we pulled 19 out on Thursday which was almost 1/3 of the list.

But see the problem that I have, not unlike the McCain/Palin ticket is that I have roughly 30 names on my list that I put into the “New York/California/Massachusetts” category of players. They are firmly on the side of “not playing” and haven’t been out or have any intention of coming out much like the chances of any of those 3 states voting Republican.

So, I’m left with roughly 35 other names with which to pull from. This means now, instead of only needing to get the 12 and half percent, I need almost 25 percent to win. Fortunately for me today, I’ve already gotten Alaska, Alabama, Idaho, Mississippi, & Kansas (all states that haven’t voted Democrat in the last 30 years and won’t this year either). These are my sure players for today so far…Hollan, Tim, Todd, Kevin, and Moi’ (we can argue over who is which state later…Hollan you’re definitely ‘Bama or ‘Ol Miss). So basically, I’m looking for a few more. Maybe a big one I was counting on “Texas Phil” and another usually sure one, “South Carolina Thunder”. See because today, I’ve lost one sure one…we’ll call him “Virginia Bob” a usual sure bet, headed to the other side this time around.

Who knows how cold it will actually start to get. Don’t miss this opportunity for some sun shine and a great game today!

This is October???

2008-10-15T14:06:00.000-04:00

-posted by Bill

Water bottles strewn under the tree, shirts soaking through with sweat, sun beating down on the field and enough players to play substitutes with almost everybody glad for the chance to catch their breath in the high humidity.

Sounds like August eh? Well here we are in the third week of October and the temperatures soaring back into the 80’s and in our first post-Columbus day game, we drew 17 players out today. I thought we only had 11 on the way out and then a whole new team of 6 showed up. We decided to play 8’s with a sub on one side but it was still pretty crowded.

Welcome out to Jeana. Not sure if it’s your first time out with the Buzzards or not (it’s obviously not your first time out throwing a disc) but it’s certainly the first blog entry since you’ve been coming out. Thunder (or Scooter if you like)….or Thunder Scooter (you could be a new Mario Kart bike)…anyway he was wondering if the Blog had somehow been on the negative side of the DOW collapse last week and been shut down.

Fear not, even without a government bailout, the blog is back! You know what I’d like to hear addressed in tonight’s debate? If you are starting play from your end zone line do you like 4 cutters at the front of your stack or do you prefer to have 3 runners going deep from the back? Do you like your dump throw to your strong hand or weak hand side? And do you prefer a domestic, import, or microbrew draft after a tough match on the pitch? I mean do we have to hear about the economy every day? Do we still have soldiers and sailors in Iraq? You’d barely know it by perusing the partisan media of CNN and Fox New respectively.

You want the Buzzard’s new energy plan? We put activity-charged battery cells on our cleats during the match and you store up energy by how much you run and then you plug that onto your car battery on the way home and that’s how far you get to drive that afternoon. That’s bad news of course for me since I’m used to driving to Richmond or Charlottesville and probably barely run enough to get me across the 14th street bridge but you know maybe I could buy somebody else’s energy credits? Say Will, Phil, or Bob’s today.

Welcome back out also to Bridgette & Mike today. And Bridgette gets extra points for agreeing to take the pinnies home to wash them. She admitted to finding the breaking point to her femininity… "I can stand the stench anymore”. Hmmmm, I didn’t tell her that when Todd takes them home he uses his special gardenia-scented fabric softner.

Great game today everybody. Thanks for the awesome turnout!

Bailout, Blue Eyes, Wine & Baseball

2008-09-29T08:08:00.000-04:00

- posted by Bill

Musings from the weekend. Wanted to put something in the blog and thought I’d offer some thoughts from the weekend even though it may not have much, if anything to do with Ultimate.

For those of you who have worked in the Coast Guard, with the Coast Guard or some other service sector organization you may have heard the expression “Your poor planning does not constitute an emergency on my part.”

Well, in reality, if often does, usually from the top down. And so it seems, it has happened on a grander scale as I’m perusing through the 110 page “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA) 2008”. Now, even though it doesn’t state it in any of the “purposes” of the bill, we all know it is to bailout Wall Street which has gotten itself into some unfathomable amount of debt which can not reasonably be explained or paid off in any other fashion. I heard this weekend that credit is basically frozen right now for items such as houses, cars, college tuition, etc…you know, only the non-important luxury items of our society. Is anybody else having “3 Stooges” movie flashbacks every time they see the trio of Bush, Paulson, Bernanke parade across the TV?

Okay, speaking of movies and television, let’s talk about something more pleasant while I try to figure out how to have all my assets transferred to the Bank of Venus or traded in for bales of tobacco and soy beans in preparation for our return to an agrarian economy. Want to bid a Buzzard farewell to Paul Newman who died this weekend. My Top-5 Newman roles were Henry Gondorf in The Sting, Butch Cassidy in Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, Dodge Blake in Message in a Bottle, Fast Eddie Felson in The Color of Money, and Doug Robers in The Towering Inferno.

And I have a movie recommendation for the rest of you Buzzards. For any of you who enjoy British humor, not the Benny Hill genre slapstick but the more dry “Colin Firth-ish” type, you need to go rent or have Netflix deliver Death at a Funeral. If you have ever had to endure a dysfunctional family gathering of any kind, wedding, reunion, holiday, or funeral, this will make you laugh out loud that somebody had it worse than you.

I watched it Saturday night after having sloshed around at the Smith Mountain Lake 20th Anniversary Wine Festival. When I say slosh, I’m referring more to the rain, than the drinking, though not excluding the latter. My personal favorite from the 28 winery tents of Virginia wines was the 2007 Viognier from Veritas Winery. I confess that I’d never even heard of Viognier before going but it’s my new favorite white. Also, my shopping spree (and all the other soggy festival attendees) on wine was arguably a more effective way to “maximize overall returns to the taxpayers of the United States” than this ridiculous EESA 2008…Don’t you like how the wording of this bill’s purposes makes it sound like it’s some humanitarian effort for the middle class citizenry rather than the “golden parachute for the wealthiest 1%” that it really is.

Speaking of wealthiest 1%, in the world of professional athletics, there were some interesting notes this weekend beginning on Thursday with USC’s (please don’t try and tell me they aren’t paid) loss to the Beavers of Oregon State. And there were some good pro games too. I caught the 2nd half of the Redskins-Cowboys game on tv (a rarity for me to sit down and watch sports on tv for that long anymore), and as a former Redskin-aholic, I enjoyed that outcome. I also notice from the highlights that a guy named Brett Favre completed 70% of his passes yesterday and had 6 TD passes! Not bad for a “washed up” QB.

Apparently some good baseball action this weekend as well. The Brewers are going to the playoffs for the first time since 1982! I watched them beat out my beloved Orioles that summer by a game in the AL East with a lineup that included four future Hall of Famers on that team, Don Sutton, Rollie Fingers, Robin Yount, & Paul Molitor. Good to see them beating out the larger market choke artists of Shea Stadium.

Okay enough rambling. Let’s have a great game today.
Pull!

Welcome to Autumn

2008-09-22T13:28:00.001-04:00

- posted by Bill

This run of 14+ games is starting to spoil me. When was the last time we got stood up by two players and didn’t miss them? Okay, well when I say “didn’t miss” I meant, we still had plenty to play, not that we didn’t want you guys there…

Listen Todd, I know it was your first day back after about a month of leave but in case you need a small reminder I found the perfect bumper sticker for you…

We had another great game on the first day of Autumn which ironically seemed much warmer and more humid then our last days of summer last week.

Want to welcome out Tim2 (look you already get a nickname since we have an established Tim), and welcome back to George and to Kelly who made a surprise visit and who obviously is in the spirit of the above bumper sticker, giving up the job search for Ultimate today.

We had some nice collisions today. Brook and I had a rude intersection after I had tapped a high pass into the air and that tried to recalibrate the landing. Rodney took out Scott on a slide tackle in the end zone and Brian clobbered Bob on one pass along the sideline (though apparently not hard enough as Bob caught it anyway).

In fact, with that grab and another one in which Bob outran Phil half way up the field and all the way across the end zone for a score took some credibility away from the “old stiff and sore” routine that Bob would like for you to believe. Jason found the words the more common belief among his fellow Buzzards, “Bob’s full of it! I’m not buying that bum ankle story anymore. He’s outrunning everybody.”

Will and Mark also joined us but somebody forgot to explain another Ultimate rule to them…if you’re going to be late, you don’t get to stretch. Again, it’s nice to have so many people playing right now that you can start without everybody that RSVPs.

By the way, anybody think that if the BPUC can increase our debt to income ratio a little higher that we’d qualify for the current Federal buyout of all things private. You suppose this is what Alexander Hamilton had in mind when he established the Department of Treasury? You suppose anybody will challenge Ben Bernanke to a duel?

Brook's Photostream...

2008-09-18T11:21:00.001-04:00

- posted by Bill (all photos courtesy of Brook...well except this one to the right, he's not that good)

Yesterday was another great game and we had 18 players! So we had some photographers out there and got to sub players in and out, the weather was great, what more could you ask for? I'll let the photos speak for themselves...well mostly. I'm attaching some of the better ones here but you can look at all of Brook's photos...well, all the ones I kept posted on my Flickr site.

MikeC gets a eyewitness view of Brian and Rodney going up for the disc...this doesn't turn out quite like you might think. Check out the Flickr for the rest of the story.

Annette looks a little perplexed.

Bob getting off a throw as Phil tries to lay out to stop it.

Will beats Phil to the corner of the end zone.

Erik and Brad both go vertical for the disc.

Thunder leading Annette & MikeC in a Conga line.

Jason running down the field.

Eli getting airborne.

Brad chasing down the disc.

Hollan and Bill stretching for disc.

New Math and Avian head shops...

2008-09-17T06:12:00.000-04:00

- posted by Bill

“8 + 7 does not equal 17 Bill”. Okay, to be fair I can add, but somehow I’d gotten into my head that a regulation game was 16 players and when I start adding or subtracting from that point I actually got the math right but my baseline data was flawed. Which is a ridiculous excuse but actually what was going on in my head yesterday afternoon as we were coming back into the locker room after a great game of 8 on 7.

As we wandered out yesterday, I noticed the grass had not been cut and that there were a gaggle of Canadian Geese just sitting on our field. They quickly took flight noticing the approaching Buzzards but they left us “presents” all over the field. Is it just me or does goose feces have a disturbingly similar aroma to cannabis? Had they detoured over Northern California? You know, as professional Law Enforcement officers, we weren’t too sure what our jurisdiction over the geese were or if we had extradition agreements with Canada so we decided not to pursue that action and instead just pulled the disc to start our game.

Since I’ve been playing with this group it’s been my observation that the extra person makes huge differences in games with 7-11 players. Not usually so much with anything more that that because often it gets so crowded that you can just kind of zone the other team when you’re down a player. But what is not supposed to happen is that the team short a player gets a lot of long scores because in theory the extra-player team can always have a “safety”.

Yesterday was the exception to that Ultimate axiom. The gold team, stacked with the legs of JQ, Bob, Hollan, & Will exploded for a run of early scores on deep passes. Despite the attempted force lessons of yesterday, our green team could still just not effect the defensive theory of “forcing middle” and gave up pass after pass down the sidelines.

We also gave up two toe dragging end zone sideline scores to ballerinas Rodney & Will. Kevin almost came down with one of his own for green but called himself out on the back line. Mercifully, Ultimate Karma provided for an immediate gold turnover after that and we got a nice short score but it was one of very too few for green yesterday.

Erik did manage to pull in a few scores yesterday for green but I would submit that at least two of those were on “missed” throws to other players that he just found himself in the right position for. I know this because the first one came out of my hands and was headed for JasonK whom I could just not find the range to yesterday missing him by about ½ arm’s length on at least 3 passes in the end zone.

Good to see some guys back out yesterday that have been missing some lately…Brian & Mark. Thunder keeps trying to quit us for a day or two of rest, then checks the temperature at game time and realizes the addiction is just too strong and winds up wandering out to the field.

Alec, a newer addition to the Buzzards, and I were talking on the way out to the pitch yesterday and he asked how late in the season we play. I told him we played all through the winter last year and he asked for clarification.

“So you move inside at some point?”

“No we stay out” I said. “It’s only really bad on those high 20’s, low 30’s days with icy drizzle.”

“You’d have to trudge through 3 feet of snow in the winter where I’m from.” Alec observed.

“Oh? Where did you come here from?”

“Maine”

Well welcome to D.C. Alex. I grew up in the Northern Virginia suburbs and have lived in this area parts of about 25 years of my life and I can only remember 2-3 snowstorms that ever dropped that much of the white stuff. I think you’ll find our winter games practically mild by Maine standards.

Of course after a great defensive block on a mark yesterday, Alec was glad it wasn’t winter yet. He took a mean shot of disc off his hand.

Today is picture day boys & girls. Remember to brush your hair and tuck your shirts in before you come out today and Hollan has hopefully brought his camera. Phil, I hope you brought a clean shirt. The one you’ve been wearing that reeks of weekend beer and goose droppings is wearing thin.

"What's a crop?"

2008-09-16T07:13:00.000-04:00

Posted by Bill

Great game of 7 on 7 yesterday. The wind was blowing 15-20 mph and we really had to work on our short game but the teams were pretty well balanced and play was good.

Strong winds don’t deter some people from trying long passes. Your's truly got one to sail nicely early in the game and it wound up going off Brook’s fingertips in the end zone but encouraged by that near miss I kept hucking away, at one stretch about 4 times in a row down the field trying to hit Tim with one as he seemingly kept sneaking behind the defense. But either the wind would pick it up or I’d turn over the flick, or zip one into the defender’s arms and never found much success with that. Of course I was relieved to see I wasn’t the only one having trouble. JQ let loose with one of his golf slice shots that he likes to start out of bounds and come slicing back in to a man running deep…well it sliced back in, all the way across the field, and then all the way out on the other side…mad wind!

So he and Bob tried to stick to their short game for the most part and handled well, feeding Hollan, Tom, Erik, Jason & Fred as they found lanes to cut in.

There was some really good defense being played yesterday and even when you thought you had a throw in, sometimes the wind would hold it up long enough for the defender to get there. Phil made a great play on one nice zip throw from Bob to a cutting JQ in the corner and got his hand up to knock it down.

For the gold team, Rodney did manage to find Thunder early in the game for a nice mid length score that looked like it was headed over Scott’s head until he jumped a little, got a hand up, deflected the disc and it came down in his arms as he tumbled to the ground. And Mike at one point, after some frustrating discs off fingertips and throws in the wind, triumphantly spiked the disc after a score late in the game.

We tried to use the windy day to work on some formations and mechanics but when two of the more “experienced” players shouted back to directions of “force middle” and “shift force” ….” What’s the middle?” and “Shift what?” I realized that maybe we hadn’t practiced either of those things much or Rodney and Phil’s collective ability to pay attention was waning.

I was reminded of the scene in “Field of Dreams” with Costner’s character, Ray Kinsella and his ruthless, foreclosing brother-in-law Mark:

Mark: "Admit it, Ray. You've never liked farming."

Ray Kinsella: "That's not true."

Mark:"It is true. You don't know the first thing about farming."

Ray Kinsella: "Yes I do. I know a lot about farming. I know more than you think I know."

Mark: "Then how could you plow under your major crop?"

Ray Kinsella:"What's a crop?"

Uh….”What’s a force?”

For the sake of the discussion…in general terms the word “force” refers to the direction you are either trying to get the handler to look to throw, or the direction you are trying to make the person you are covering run to. And usually, the marker is trying to force the handler to throw to the middle as the rest of the defense forces the cutters to a respective sideline.

Then you have commands like “switch force” which you can use if the marker is forcing to sideline to get them to move their force direction for a few seconds so that the defender can catch up to a cutter that may be headed for that sideline, especially near the end zone. The basic idea is to force a team to throw a long ways across the field.

Maybe we’ll take 5-10 minutes prior to game time today and just work on a couple formations.

Thanks everybody for a great game yesterday. Weather is going to be perfect today. PULL!

Farewell KellyG!

2008-09-11T06:41:00.000-04:00

Tuesday was Kelly’s last game with us as she is leaving HQ. It was a good game to leave on. We had 15 people out there, overcast, not too hot, and NO SOFTBALL!

It’s nearing the end of transfer season and the Buzzards have done well. We certainly miss Swinny, Travis, MattC, Frank, JasonN and others but we have reloaded well. A bunch of new people have joined us this summer…I don’t know whether or not they’ve been here and just not playing or have transferred in but welcome to Bo, Mike, Dan, BobH, JasonK (back for a 2nd stint), George, Brian, Erik, Fred, Will, Eric, Paul, & Mark. Adding at least a dozen new players and only losing a handful works out to a really nice surplus as evidenced by the 8 on 7 game we had Tuesday.

Anybody else notice when you play with that many that you don’t get a lot of cross the field passes completed through traffic. I ripped one loose the other day to realize MattP was standing between me and where I wanted the disc to go. I saw Thunder and Kevin also finding several passes unintentionally coming there way.

Ultimate gets a good cross over from other sports as we have drawn from Flag Football, Soccer, Volleyball & Softball and whenever you get players from those other sports you make some prejudgments as to their strengths based on that. The football guys tend to have good field vision, the volleyball folks know how to position and jump, the softball players adjust well to discs in the air, and the soccer folks run and run some more. Then in Ultimate those skills start melding together and you find guys like Fred on Tuesday…a soccer guy if I’m not mistaken, finding his grip all of a sudden and pulling down everything thrown to him on Tuesday.

With that many people we, on the green team at least, attempted to run a few things from the stack and that worked with varying degrees of success. One of the things we did seem to do pretty well was to utilize the dump pass. In fact one of the new guys, Mike, used it quite well on at least 4 occasions that I noted. Never mind Rodney’s whining Mike. Anytime he doesn’t get the disc on a play he thought he should have he gets a bit agitated. We’ve learned to just ignore him. If some of you want to see some fairly simple diagrams of stack plays as well as some other useful basic info, check out the U of Oregon’s Ultimate Basics page.

Looks like another great weather day for us today. Hope to have a good game.

Pull!

Diagonal pitch, crazy 8's

2008-09-03T08:14:00.000-04:00

~ posted by Bill

Okay, I’m updating, I’m updating! I’m always surprised to find people actually miss reading this when I leave it fallow for too long.

Last week I was forecasted to write a blog…singularly about me, as I’d had an atypical all around good day of disc. Now, narcissistic as I am, and really, as easy as this blog realm is to really make it “all about me”, I would be very remiss not to mention we had a great game last week before the holiday of some all around good play by several people.

I can’t even really remember what day it was. We were softball and soccer free on the south field, which by the way has begun to take on its August concrete-like properties, and a couple folks from NDU or ICAF joined us. This game almost wasn’t called at all as we only had 7 for sure and I really wasn’t feeling like running on a 3-man team. But replies back from Will, Hollan, Mark, et al. said “Let’s play, who cares” so I reluctantly called the game at the last minute and we wound up having 11 out there as two others besides our McNair brethren joined us.

Splitting up the teams was a bit of a challenge. I had no idea what to expect from those two. Both played well but J.Q. was a complete ringer and I just really got lucky picking him for my team. Todd also was pleasantly surprised to find he had somebody running to the end zone when he had the disc in hand to throw. He had some serious wheels and made the rest of us look pretty good on several plays including a behind the back toss I managed to get close enough to him to run down. It was noted my paltry 20% completion percentage on such tosses were actually worth the disbelief factor when it actually works.

Hollan may have had the play of the day making me look like a better thrower than I actually am, once again. I had cut loose on a high arcing flick that was coming over Will’s shoulder into the end zone. At the last second Will actually got a hand up and deflected the disc…back up. Well when the disc stays up, guys that hustle make plays and Hollan had stayed with it and sliding across the back of the end zone came down with a great catch.

Anyway, that was pre-Labor Day weekend…after the holiday, we came out on the field yesterday, many of us needing to purge some 3 or 4 day weekend toxins, or, in the case of Phil and Rodney (returning from long absences) even more.

I called the game yesterday after 11 responses, one actually cancelled but 5 on 5 sounded good. We got out to the south field to find two softball games strolling on right after us and crunching us for space so we went with the diagonal pitch layout and 16 people actually showed up!!! After about two trips up and down the already condensed field, we decided to play 6 on 6 and have 2 subs each, introducing some to the “last back” tool of Ultimate. I’m not sure this actually functioned as designed and often times just a couple needing air or water went off the field after a score. It was hot, and the substitutions worked well.

Welcome out to some new faces even though a couple of you have played already I may not have officially greeted you…Mike, Paul, Eric, & Bill. Great to have all 4 of you out there yesterday. Welcome back Rodney & Phil. I had forgotten how much I missed the great attitude and Spirit of the Game until standing next to Rodney on the sideline yesterday listening to him comment on the softball game next to us “Next time down the field we ought to chuck the disc right upside his head, get out of our #&*@ing enzone you *@&!”....nice.

Washington Area Frisbee Club

2008-08-25T07:19:00.000-04:00

There are several new players this summer and if any of you are looking for other Ultimate outlets besides playing with the Buzzards during lunch here's a good link to check out...courtesy of Brook:

http://www.wafcstore.org/fall_rec_08.html

Incoming!

2008-08-21T07:26:00.000-04:00

posted by Bill

It’s been a while since I’ve updated here. Took some much needed leave and it appears that not too many games were played while I was gone.

We’ve had two games this week though. Monday’s was my first in a couple weeks and it was hot and humid. Hollan and I were both returning from about a week and a half off and having similar vacation hangover effects. I think mine were a bit worse though as I wandered off the field with about 15 minutes to go, feeling dizzy and like somebody had popped me in the microwave. After pouring half a bottle of water over my head I started to cool down some and find my orientation but I didn’t go back in the game and Hollan took the opportunity to even up the teams and sat out with me as we watched the rest of the Buzzards struggle to score “last 3”. By the way, welcome out to new Buzzard, Fred. You picked a hot day for your first game and held your own, congratulations.

Yesterday’s game seemed much better weather-wise. We did have to fit ourselves geometrically between 3 softball games going on around us and in their true army fashion, made us feel a couple times like we were taking artillery fire.

Another new Buzzard, Bo, joined us yesterday. Two new players able to run in one week. This doesn’t bode well for some of us…uh…more acceleration-challenged Buzzards. Mark had his G.I. Joe Kung Fu grip working yesterday as he made several great grabs. We started out with 9 and after green scored the first 3 I flopped myself over to gold. Brook wandered out a bit tardy though and we were able to run 5 on 5 the rest of the game.

There was some nice defense being played yesterday. Todd and I each traded jump discs in the end zone, Kevin made a couple nice plays showing off some surprising vertical, and Bo reached around me on a couple of occasions to break up passes I though I had position on. Good to have Will and Dan back out with us as well.

By the way everybody, apparently Hollan has a new camera he’s planning on bringing out soon. We haven’t gotten a summer team picture yet (sorry Bryan, should have before you left) so we need one of those. And Bob, you may want to consider whether you want to be with or without goatee…we’ll give you time to grow it back if you want.

Be good Buzzards and keep inviting people out. We’ve gotten a lot of great new participation this transfer season.

Dog Days

2008-08-01T09:18:00.000-04:00

posted by Bill

Having been out of the office Monday and Tuesday and missing those two scorcher games and then not getting enough on Wednesday, yesterday was my first game of the week..

Got an email from Phil asking who was playing and I realized we had kind of an eclectic group yesterday. Welcome by the way to Mark, another new Buzzard this week. He made the aforementioned Monday/Tuesday games and still came out yesterday so that bodes well for continuing to see him out there. He and Will were our “new guy” representatives but both have pretty good running ability (which is to say, they can) and Will has these Go-Go Gadget arms that I found tough to D on the couple of times that I got stuck with that bad switch.

In fact, we had trouble, in general on defense yesterday on the green team and Leroy remarked that we might need to do something with our match ups. I think it may have had more to do with our offense actually as we gave up several deep turnovers not being able to complete 2 passes in a row. But Dennis did throw several great deep passes early and that led gold to their early lead. Will, Frank & Phil all hauled in throws from Dennis.

Meanwhile, Mark, Leroy, Tom & I kind of fuddled around trying to find some offensive rhythm that seemed more limited than internet access in Beijing. And with humidity hovering around 105% and even a light rain during part of the game we also seemed to have some problems hanging onto the disc.

We have several Buzzards out nursing injuries and other things I think. I thought we might see Thunder back this week but his doctor put the kibosh on that idea and he remains on the DL though he was well enough to vacation down in Florida last week. Todd is still out, MattP decided to rest from the Ultimate field but did so with his newfound love…sand volleyball. Should we feel cheated on? Carolyn has apparently left us and our thoughts are with her, Annette is still in and out with her treatment, Hollan has been on limited play duty and so we’ve been missing many of the regulars.

Speaking of missing regulars, heard from Bryan yesterday up in Milwaukee and he said to pass along a hello to everybody. Apparently he was headed out to play some floor hockey. Hope he remembers that floors are generally harder than fields and that layouts may not be a good maneuver for that sport. Rodney has abandoned us for a few weeks TDY and will be gone for good before too long. Frank is also on his farewell tour.

It’s great to be getting all the new faces out. We’ve more than replenished the transferring out folks from this summer…at least in number. Look forward to seeing more of you all out and bring friends and co-workers. This weather will have to break before too long and the fall is a great time to play out here, you’ll love it. Get in condition now and you’ll be running all over the place by then.

New discs were ordered yesterday and we should have those by sometime next week. Hope everybody has a great weekend and gets a chance to get out and enjoy themselves some outside.

Hammer Time

2008-07-25T06:03:00.000-04:00

posted by Bill

I’ve been a little remiss in keeping up with the blog lately. School has started again and I find myself working on papers and reading on my “free time”.

Great game yesterday though as the weather broke a little bit and we had some nice temperatures. One reason I know I haven’t been as current on this is that my welcome (back) to Buzzard JasonK is coming about 2 weeks into his return to playing. Many of you didn’t know Jason but he played out here when I first started playing 3-4 years ago. Mallard and Annette are probably the only other ones who may remember. Want to also welcome out another new player yesterday…Will. He was trying to catch his wind early in the game but had a few good catches and we hope to see you back out soon.

Apparently M.C. Rodney has found a new secret weapon as he was responsible for the bulk of excellent hammer throws I saw yesterday. On one in particular I heard Brian chastising himself on the way back up the field about not playing good enough D but we quickly noted that Rodney had dropped that throw right in the lap of Tom cutting across the end zone and the defense was actually pretty good.

Todd and Phil were both back out on the field yesterday after short leaves of absence; Todd nursing an injury and Phil nursing a short-handed office while Thunder is trolling a fishing line somewhere in Florida.

We scheduled the game early yesterday so Frank could make it out and then he left us early anyway… ? What’s up with that amigo? Word has it, this is the Shadow’s last week of play with us as he heads off to grad school….another degree on the Coast Guard’s dime? Sweet deal!

Will try and get up some new pictures on the Flickr account soon so keep checking there. Have a bunch that Hollan took a couple week’s ago. And I will try and stay a little more current here. Oh, I’m up here for a guest Friday appearance so hopefully we’ll get a run today. Temps are going back up and it will be hot but let’s go. Pull!

Toxic Pinnies...

2008-07-17T08:10:00.000-04:00

The following entry was provided by Rodney as I have missed the last couple of days due to some excruciatingly slow-paced training. Kudos to the rest of you who have gone out and played. It's great to see the ol' BPUC thriving even when many of the regulars do not show up. Nice job Rodney, keeping everyody motivated.

Now, I will pass on some editorial comments which of course, border on gossip, as I did not actually see evidence of, or hear them first hand. As great a job as Rodney has done calling the games and getting people out there, apparently he should not be the one splitting the teams up. Some problem with the equitable dispersement of handlers yesterday I believe. However, after reading his blog entry, I'm willing to chalk it up to incoherency blamed on the toxic pinnies.

Also, by the way, if you all get the chance, wish a Happy Birthday to "Inky"...aka Hollan who celebrates that festive event today...the event is such a big deal to him that Sara had to remind him it was his birthday. At any rate, after a great afternoon (which bled into evening and finally just late night) of golf on the East Potomac with a few other Buzzards, I'm looking forward to getting back out onto the Ultimate field. Alas, it won't be today as I have a lunch engagement already so I'll see you all next week. Enjoy Rodney's post. Thanks "Wheels" for the submission.

- posted by Rodney

Too Little, Too Late

Too little too late (7/15/08)

So there we were the Buzzards had a good gathering on Monday and the weather was only going to get better the next day. Bill proclaims that was his only day to play this week due to classes, meetings, and of course RDO. So the email goes out at a respectable time and yeses start to trickle in. I got numerous NOs from the regulars, Todd with a bad hip and Phil not feeling well. Now this was to be the best weather day of the week with temps in the low 80’s, low humidity and lots of sun.

Well the weather forecasters got the weather correct and as 1100 approached the Buzzards were slim to none, but with an additional email solicitation we looked good.

So the game is called with what was supposed to be 8 which, but was really 7 (if only I knew how to count) and we only got 6. If I recall correctly the day prior we were all talking about how bad 3 on 3 sucks and we wouldn’t call a game for those numbers.

Well since it was such a nice day and we had 6 on the field we played a condensed field East – West instead of the normal North-South. Props go out to Matt P, Bob, Brook, Jason, Frank and Rodney. With the smaller sized field it was a quick paced good run!!!

Boy those pinnies stink!!!!

With the limited numbers the day prior I was almost afraid to send out the email. The weather for this day was forecasted to be a bit hotter and more humid, which they got correct two days in a row. The email goes out and within the first hour we had received seven replies. So I’m thinking well this might turn out to be an okay day. By 1000 we had nine and a strong possible and the game was called. Like the day prior there was lots of sun to be shared by all and the field was set and people showed up in what appeared to be hordes. We had Bridget, Kelly R (welcome back out after an extended absence), Carolyn, Kevin, Bob, Brian, Rodney, Leroy, Jason, Frank, Dennis, and Eli.

Since Bill wasn’t there I decided to try and fill his shoes and set up the teams and started handing out the pinnies which I could smell before I even got them out of the bag. I gave Leroy his green pinny and the look of disgust was apparent by the wrinkles on his forehead after smelling the nasty thing. So I became the smeller as well as the coordinator. After I was done I felt sick to my stomach and thought it might be time to heave prior to the first pull. With the teams set and after listening to everyone complain about the shirts the first pull was launched. It was a great game of 6 on 6 with a strong East – West breeze that had a few of us challenged with our throws. Thanks to everyone who came out and the pinnies came home with me for a cleaning!