Rodney Reunion Tour

“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.

Farewell KellyG!

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!

Incoming!

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.