Finally...a dozen!

~ submitted by Bill

After about a week and a half of pretty nice weather but pretty sparse numbers (Travis & I got stuck on the short end of 2 on 3 game last week) we finally broke some people out of their offices yesterday…6 on 6!!!! It was upper 50’s, overcast, very light breeze…perfect day for Ultimate.

And the game was good. Seemed like a lot of running to me which you would normally think would be kind of the opposite when you have so many players. We may have been on a slightly smaller field yesterday also as we set up east to west instead of the normal north to south direction. Welcome to “the new guy”, Jay. Did anybody get contact info for him so I can add him to the distribution list? We were a man short yesterday on green when he came up to the field and asked to play.

I know the other team hated to tell him to put on a green pinnie because he was easily the tallest guy on the field when he walked on. And I know MattP would normally have been able to keep up with him but with his bad hammy, his vertical leaping is considerably hampered.

Speaking of leaping…did anybody catch Todd’s first few attempts at that yesterday? It was like he was hearing a different rhythm music than the rest of us and constantly going off the wrong foot. I think he mumbled some excuse about a volleyball tournament last weekend and a tender quad muscle but for those of us that are used to seeing Todd above our head, it was somewhat comical. He finally found his footing later on and was able to go up and grab a hammer throw from me in the end zone for an impressive score.

I mentioned Wings’ bad hammy…by the way if you saw that leg…it was ugly…but he managed to slip free for a couple scores that I noticed yesterday. Really not sure how that happened. He’s been studying Shadow’s elusive end zone camping apparently. The rest of gold managed some nice short passing drives yesterday. Swinny, Jason, MattC, Shadow & Hollan (who by the way I’m nicknaming “Ink” as soon as I get his ok…dude has some nice artwork) worked with Wings and gave them the edge for most of the game.

The green team of Todd, Bill, Bob, Travis, Conrad & Jay just couldn’t seem to get any consistency most of the game though they did figure out that offense was much easier when they were playing decent defense and made a few pretty good hustle plays for scores. But there were not a lot of long scoring drives for green yesterday.

March Madness begins today. The Buzzards have a friendly little pool going which, as of this writing has 7 participants, Scott, Todd, Ink, Bob, Swinny, Wings, & myself. I must say that for the most part the picks are fairly conservative. I’m in 3 different pools this year and there just aren’t a lot of upsets being picked. Now, I will mention that Swinny inexplicably has Wazzu (Washington St.) coming out of an East bracket where most of the smart money is either on Carolina or Tennessee, in fact the Buzzards were split on that one. And Bob has the bigger and crazier pick of Gonzaga coming out of the Midwest. But really, that may be the most open bracket and it wouldn’t surprise me to see one of a few teams emerge (not Gonzaga though). Our consensus pick was Kansas with Georgetown and Wisconsin also getting mention. The South also seems to be up for grabs even with a team (Memphis) with only 1 loss in that bracket. The Tigers were the consensus pick but not convincingly so with only 3 of us going that way. Two Buzzards picked Pittsburg to come out of that bracket and 2 others chose Texas. In the west though we unanimously chose UCLA as the Final 4 participant.

So right now, at 0634, there is still over 5 hours until tip off. You still have time to submit brackets.

Today’s forecast: This quote from the weather folks “A WIND ADVISORY MEANS THAT WIND GUSTS OF 45 MPH OR HIGHER ARE EXPECTED. WINDS THIS STRONG CAN MAKE DRIVING DIFFICULT... ESPECIALLY FOR HIGH PROFILE VEHICLES. USE EXTRA CAUTION.”

I don’t know if we have any “high profile vehicles” in our Ultimate club but I don’t know of any of us who can throw in 45 mph winds. We may take today off.

Old guys holding their own...

Sunny day, new players, 5 on 4…good day for Buzzards Ultimate.

We continue to enjoy the spring-like weather even though we’re still technically in winter. Thanks to MattP for selling Ultimate to his Flag Football corps on days they don’t play. We got some cross-over yesterday as Hollan came out and joined us. Welcome! And not to blow too much smoke up…well anyway, one of the better Ultimate debuts we’ve seen in a while (once he realized 10 seconds is a long time)…dude can run!

Speaking of runners, who was the ringer that came in at halftime? Rumor has it that was the office mate (re:boss) of Scott, Phil & Kash. Well, first off, congrats for being the best represented office on the Ultimate field and maybe in fitness activities in general. Secondly, and maybe Lon, aka “39” said it best “Why does the extra player get to go to the side with the young guys?”.

Of course, the green team, pre-qualifying for AARP yesterday, of 39, Bob, Bill, & CaptK had one of their best points against the extra-manned team by shredding their defense with short passes up the middle for an early score in the 2nd half. But the extra (and fresh) legs took their toll and gold pulled away towards the end.

We saw one of the best layouts of the season yesterday by Phil catching up to a disc that looked like it was sailing away from him for a one-handed fully extended grab. Well done!

Oh, speaking of the 10 seconds…We had one turnover yesterday on a stall count and were an "open mouth words about to come out" away from a 2nd one as the gold team decided to exercise all their time yesterday…or maybe the old guys were actually playing good D. By the way, because it doesn’t happen very often and we want to recognize the participants in that play, Bill got the stall turnover on Scott.

So Buzzards, it’s March Madness time and I’m a bit of a college basketball fan so look for my invite to a little online bracket challenge. If you did not get one it might be due to a couple reasons. I wasn’t sure about your email address (if you didn’t have a .uscg.mil address I wasn’t sure about using it ~ CaptK), you don’t actually come out and play with us so I may not really know you very well and didn’t want to bother you. If you think I’ve made an error and just plain left you out, send me an email, plead your case and I’ll reconsider my invitation list.

Going to be a great day today. We have a volunteer photographer so you have the potential (if Scott knows how to work a zoom better than Shadow) of seeing your photo up on the blog soon.

Busy News Cycle...

~ submitted by Bill

A lot of things in the news yesterday! You know the Mayflower Hotel, Mary Ann caught with the Mary Jane, Mississippi voters heading to the polls, Madonna headed to the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame…Mmmmmmm good.

I can see where you might have missed the return of great Ultimate weather. Perhaps that was the reason we could only draw 7 out of their cubicles on the best weather day we’ve had in months.

The green team, playing a man short yesterday played a very spirited game. Phil kind of assumed a new role (for him) of handler and managed some nice give and go drives with Shadow while also discovering a new weapon…a sliding (and therefore previously running) Scott making two fabulous catches yesterday. On one play that Phil was actually the recipient in the end zone, we had the best collision of the day as I was closing from the other side of the field on him and sent him tumbling, with disc in hand, across the back of the end zone.

Another end zone play for gold saw Todd jumping way up in the air about 5 seconds before he needed to, hoping to avoid a collision with the sneaky yet impact-ful Frank. Bill & Todd both had loads of trouble throwing yesterday…well, really I just wanted some company in that sentence but it was basically just me…my excuse…it’s the first game we’ve played with winds under about 15 mph in several weeks.

Speaking of several weeks. That’s how long it had been since we’d seen Jason who made it back out on the field today. Wings volunteered “It’s only been a week since I played and you aren’t any more rusty than I am”. We generally found our most success when all four of us touched the disc.

Today is supposed to be even a tad warmer than yesterday but there are a lot of people unavailable this week for playing and I’m shaking my head in disbelief that we might not get enough to play.

Hey you new folks, or very sporadic players…today is your day. Come on out, the weather will be great, you can get back into the game, maybe even get your picture taken for the blog. Really, it beats sitting in the cubicle, you gotta believe me on that.

Pull!

Buzzards Marching On

Well March came in on the wind…and unusual warmth. I was up on the ski slopes last Saturday night doing some unintentional laying out as I tried to tame a snowboard for the first time. Then on Monday and Tuesday those of us out on the fields were in shorts and shirt sleeves for the most part with temperatures in the 60’s both days at game time. But wow was the wind whipping. And on Monday the wind was coming in from the south which it does not do very often so instead of our normal cross wind there was a definite wind abetted and wind limiting sides of the field.

Enjoy some pics from Monday…


After Frank dinged his calf he took a few pictures from us. This was the only one where you could actually tell there were people in the picture....Zoom in Shadow!!! Thanks for trying though.

Todd looking very patriotic...flag in the background, flag on the disc...I'm proud to be an American just watching him.

"Come back here you stupid disc!" - Scott

Kelly needing longer arms to reach this one.

Bob flicks to Tom.

Eric getting reading curl that long arm into throwing motion.