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.

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

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!

Unveiling the orange and blue

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.

Hammer Time

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!

Chiefly addition, playing for 2, & losing traction

Submitted by Bill

Great numbers toward the end of last week. On Wednesday we had a ridiculous 16 come on out. Much of the regular cast but a new face also. Welcome out Jorge. Another Chief is always welcome. Devin also came out for the first time since last summer and we took turns chasing him around. 8 on 8 is a lot of players. You’ve really got to have your short passing game on and some semblance of order and being able to run from a stack. We’ll have to have a skills practice or two sometime soon maybe.

Thursday I missed but I hear there were another 12 out there including Bryan’s wife and their child to be.

Friday was a rain game. Well, actually it had stopped by the time we got out there and we got a nice turn out (for a rainy Friday) of 8. They dynamics are crazy different from playing with 8 players on a team to only 8 on the field. I was apologizing ahead of time to my team for stacking the opposing gold team with more speed but as it turned out…erroneously so. Todd, Tom, Frank & I actually looked like the running team on many occasions as we found a nice formula…Todd and I would make the first couple passes then hit Tom or Frank on a medium length pass and let those two give and go it into the end zone. In fact, we ran Tom silly in the end zone from side to side on Friday. Tom was showing off the other aspects of his game this week (throwing & running) to become that renaissance player. Despite Rodney’s claims of goon play the week before.

Phil, Bob, Hollan & Conrad couldn’t quite get gold all on the same page Friday. I told Bob, who had been showing off some speed earlier in the week “that he must have run his tank low” by Friday’s game. Conrad was planning a trip to the sports store for the weekend to cleat shop after his third or fourth fall in the wet grass.

Today looks like it may be the best day of the week to play as rain and thunderstorms move in on Tuesday & Wednesday. So let’s get out and have a great game today.

Got an email from Travis late Friday afternoon…made it safely to Massachusetts and sends along his greetings to the Buzzards. Oh, and another reply to the historian that chalks up his initial attendance to Annette. Travis says he remembers her first email invite after she took over the list. Stand up and take a bow Annette (oh, you are standing).