Hollan's last stand

~ 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.