Is that a wet towel on me?

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

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...

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..."

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.