Animal IQ Test

Posted by Bill

It’s been said that "Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow." I’m not sure where that puts Buzzards in the animal IQ chain as we got 12 to come out and play Ultimate yesterday (six who were repeat offenders from Tuesday) on a field that, in many places, still hadn’t been trod on and where the snow was probably still in the 12-18” depth range.

Wanted to give a “welcome back” to Nate who was one of the repeat offenders. He’s had fun diving (in most cases needlessly) for discs the past two days and has upped the number of Buzzards we consider “speedy” by about 25%.

There’s a strange thing about this snow. Even normally adept handlers have been heard the last two days swearing at themselves and asking why they cannot complete a pass. There haven’t been a whole lot of opportunities to lead anybody since not too many people have run under a disc. Todd may have been one of the exceptions yesterday as I was able to keep one up in the air long enough for him to run under it for a score.

Brad, after getting the full court press of peer pressure to play on Tuesday, decided not to reply yesterday but show up anyway and play. Anybody else noticed recently that he’s seemed to healed from whatever had been keeping him from running. I’m starting not to like it when I have to mark him. Still, you need to be careful when he’s marking you. Ask Brook who took a full body shot from Brad hurling himself at him. “Oh hey Brook, welcome back yourself!”

I was glad to see Frank out yesterday with long pants and socks after playing in neither back on our first snow game in December. Of course he’s headed out to Monterey soon on a Buzzard Sabbatical. Yesterday the temps there were in the 70’s and it was sunny. We hate you Frank!

The rest of the Buzzards besides Todd, Brad and Nate who have doubled up on the snow games this week have been Sean, Kevin, Eric and yours truly. And three of us are RSVPd for today’s game as well.

The rest of the snow Buzzards who have been out this week are Steave, Brian, Frank, Brook, Bob, Tom and Conrad. And today we’re expecting even some others who haven’t played in the snow yet…Erick and Dan G. Rumor has it there will be a camera out today also so stay tuned for some photographic evidence that Buzzards are perhaps no smarter than cats or dogs but certainly more hearty...Iditarod schmitarod.

Where there's a will...

“Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.” – William James

For all of you who have not exactly “felt” like coming out this week to play Ultimate but have done so anyway I sincerely thank you. Here we are on the 24th of September and we’ve just had our 4th consecutive week of the month with at least 3 days in a row of games. This week seemed particularly challenging after a couple weeks of unseasonably cool weather and low humidity got most of us deacclimated from the oppressive summer weather that frankly never materialized much this past July and August.

But summer staged a last hurrah as we celebrated the Autumnal Equinox this week and as our days begin to get progressively shorter. Three days of mid 80’s and high humidity certainly made it seem like it was still August. To exacerbate the conditions of the weather we also were having difficulty getting any big games called this week and so for two days were at the bare minimum of 8 and another day we managed 10.

So for those of you who willed yourself out there this week…bravo. Erick, Todd & Bob, you guys hit the trifecta and came out each day this week. Thanks for trying to keep me running and putting up with me when I wasn’t. Kevin, John & Frank all got multiple games in this week as well and then our string of solo acts included Dennis, Paul, Matt, Joe, Dan & Tom. Ladies, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but that list does not include any of you. A disappointing week for the girl power.

Oh, also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the alumni visit a couple weeks ago of Rodney who made it down for a couple games. Great to have you back out there. Now if you could arrange to have you Swinny, Phill, Hollan, Thunder & Matty P all show up on the same week...that would be fabulous.

I would like to just make a couple housekeeping notes. We’ve been playing on the south field for the majoring of softball season and the consensus has been…..”Yuck!” The terrain is neither soft nor smooth. I’m not sure softball has ended but I’m inclined to try back to the North starting next week. Also I’d like to throw out my semi-annual plea for starting our game at 1130 rather than wandering out at 1130 (or later). Of course we want you whenever you can make but if we can get the majority of us out on the field ready to start at 1130 we can salvage a little more play time…and get this, it’s a novel idea, have a little stretch time after we’re finished.

So we’re finishing off September next week and the extended forecast is showing highs only in the 60’s on Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m thinking big finish to the month! Stop telling yourself you don’t feel like it or you’ll play when you feel better, or in better shape, or healthier…take the step out on the field, the “feelings” will follow and we’ll all be better for it.

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!

"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.

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.

WAFC (Wimps Awaiting Fairer Conditions?)

Start of league play last night for the Buzzards…or maybe not. There was a very late call yesterday afternoon by WAFC to cancel games but as Kevin noted about an hour before game time, “This is the strangest Ultimate experience I’ve ever had…everybody is out here early”.

Early or no…that of course is all in one’s perspective, I hope this isn’t an indication of WAFC’s organizational skills. And as it turns out the field was completely playable and so that’s exactly what we did. The Buzzards had a huge turnout…the whole team (who said they were coming) except Leroy did show up. Reagan & Rachel, two of our female contingent were there for their inaugural (I think?) Ultimate experiences and they both used their athleticism to their advantage and looked like seasoned veterans. Bridgette, our true seasoned veteran, was there anchoring our women. And she brought Jack who I got to sneak a cookie to like I was some goofy uncle enjoying the luxury of feeding his nephew sugar and sending him home with mom.

Our Capitan’ Kevin, with shirt clearly marked “C”, showed up with a truck full of picnic and disc supplies. After a few minutes of conversation that ended with Todd clearly inpatient and wanting to get things going, I decided to roll the grill over, fire it up and throw on some hot dogs while Bob, Kevin & Todd tried, with varying degrees of success to walk off 40X70 and 25.

The rest of our crew arrived in stages, Brian & Rachel with a cooler full of beer, a watermelon and the aforementioned cookies, Brad with a couple tubs of salads and the news of the late cancellation, and Karl, Paul, Devan, Conrad (and family), Jeff (who it was great to see again), and even a last minute appearance by Thunder, fresh off house-hunting/moving bedlam.

There were a few other Ultimate players out at the fields. A Navy contingent of a half dozen were there and so we gave them a few players and scrimmaged. And we all clearly aren’t aligned well with the DC Ultimate modus operandi for calling games for weather…nobody from our actual opponent, Sloths! Sloths! Sloths! showed up indicating that they actually knew not to come out until the very last minute before a game.

Of course the WAFC was shown up by some local volleyball pickup league who wasn’t afraid of a little rain that didn’t actually come down or standing water, of which there wasn’t any. They had all their matches going on down on one end of the field. Why we didn’t play last night is inexplicable to me. I’ve played in an Ultimate league where we played in 30 mph winds and 7 degree temperatures so an overcast sky, with barely a breeze, and 75 degrees sounded idyllic to me. Is Jeana secretly on the WAFC board?

Rain or no rain, the Buzzards will be playing at lunch today. I’m looking forward to my last game before two weeks at the beach.

Pull!

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.

Record-setting day on the pitch

June was ushered in yesterday for the buzzards in record-setting fashion. For the first time in the “modern” Buzzards era and I suspect ever, there were enough people on the pitch yesterday for us to have two games going on simultaneously, next to each other. 24 players came out yesterday in fantastic weather!

That becomes a challenge to get everybody named and I don’t think I’ll even try. Want to mention just a couple though. First timers always get a warm Buzzard welcome and we want to extend one to a new Jason who joined us for the first time, courtesy of an invitation from Tom. Also, welcome back to the building and the Buzzards to Kelly. She had made some guest appearances while she was gone but we’re looking forward to having you out there on a regular basis with us again.

I called the game yesterday at 0805 when I already had 10 responses. That, in itself may have been another record for earliest time for a confirmed game. But a funny thing happens when you call the game that early, you don’t really hear from all the others that may be coming out (they figure they’ll just surprise you I guess). Well surprise it was when we finally ran out of pinnies to wear and realized we had way too many for just one game. Paul looked at the ground when I told him to grab gold and saw that the only pinnie left was the ripped up string bikini model.

Okay, change of plans – “Kevin, Todd, Bob, and somebody else…choose up 4 teams, I’m going to set cones up for another field” I said more people wandered out. So two games it was. Then at the half way point, we switched up teams and played another game.

Just a great day for the Buzzard Point Ultimate Club! Well done folks. Thanks for enthusiastic participation. Looking forward to a great summer of playing!

The nearer your destination, the more you slip sliding away

One of my favorite song writers once penned the words “You know the nearer your destination, the more you slip sliding away”. And that was very much how I felt many times yesterday thinking I was making a cut for where I needed to be for the disc only to discover there wasn’t much footing and indeed the more I was slip sliding away.

With the forecast yesterday morning, and for that matter all this week calling for rain, rain, and then some more rain, I was a little surprised to get such quick response yesterday morning. The first replies coming from the usual suspects, Todd, Kevin, & Bob. Then Brian, eager to play after missing a couple games last week, rogered up. Then Joe and I started thinking to myself “Ah, he’s hooked, to be replying so early for a certain rain game”.

Not so hooked was “Princess Tiarable” who replied “I’ll play if it’s not raining” which sounded like a no to me since I knew it would be raining. So I did what I normally to when I receive cryptically worded replies…handed it over to the kangaroo court for a quick decision. The court’s decision was something akin to “Nana nana boo boo, we double dog dare you to play”, which of course she could not ignore and after a game time start without her (which sparked talk of how best to penalize her) Jeana did indeed show up giving green the extra person yesterday (arguably to no avail).

Welcome back out to Mike who had exhausted his list of excuses (many making the all-time Top 10 lame list) like “I’m too skinny”, “I don’t have enough core strength” and “I’ve got a toastmasters meeting” and joined back up with the Buzzards…the equal opportunity fitness alternative where we don’t much care about body shape or size, or give a rip about core strength and get plenty of public speaking opportunities in the showers after the game.

Conrad and Bridgette rounded out our drenched disc denizens yesterday and we had a fun game with some highlights like sliding catches through puddles and some nice defensive knock downs. And some low lights like getting hit right in the center of the core and dropping it and a few missed throws that somehow got away. Speaking of throws…Bob did anybody else mention to you that you completed more junk yesterday then I’ve seen in a while? Which brings to mind two axioms that I find a certain amount of resonance in….1) It’s better to be lucky than good and 2) You make your own luck.

On the day when two amazing hat tricks would be recorded later at Verizon Center by Alexander the Great and Sid the Kid, Bob may have had his own hat trick of missed throws that wound up in somebody’s hands for scores.

So when most fair weathered sports are hoping for some sunshine, the Buzzards were finding voice in another songwriter’s lyrics (one I’m headed to see tonight!)

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain, let it rain

Meet me at Mary's place, we're gonna have a party

Meet me at Mary's place, we're gonna have a party

Tell me how do we get this thing started

Meet me at Mary's place

Yo Boss, see you at the JPJ tonight…

Yo Buzzards see you on the pitch today?

Summer turns to high...in the Spring

Mercury
is rising still
Turn the fan on high

I won't step on my own shadow
No-one wants to cry

Someone put a pox on me
I spit in their eyes
Summer turns to high

It’s still April right? Wow! As temperatures soared into the 90’s yesterday on April 27th (Happy Birthday Mary!) the Buzzards soared to the Ultimate pitch in droves…or flocks I guess would be more appropriate…yea, that’s it, they flocked to the field. And the Mercury was still rising with no fan in sight which was too bad for Kevin who for some reason missed R.E.M.’s weather forecast and decided to come out with his long sleeve t-shirt while a few of us decided to go sans sleeves altogether.

I don’t know about any pox, or swine flu for that matter but somebody put a hit on me early in the game. Okay, maybe that’s not quite a fair representation of what really happened. A disc remaining in the air for an inordinate amount of time all of a sudden looked like it might be in play for me and so I decided to run, faster, close to top speed for the ol’ Chief in fact and then “Splat!”, I ran right into something that didn’t move (that something was Paul) and as I was crumbling to the ground I heard ringing and after a couple seconds of coming back to I took inventory quickly to realize, in a relief, that I did indeed still have all my teeth and that none of them seemed to be sticking through my lips, though they had tried to make there way through as evidenced by the colorful red expectorant I spit out…fortunately, in nobody’s eyes.

Summer has indeed turned to high!

Great, great turnout yesterday. Would like to welcome back Bridgette from her month long sentence of jury duty. She wanted to know who the heck this new girl was out there that wouldn’t stop running. Oh, Bridgette, meet Karen, Karen, Bridgette. And not just running yesterday apparently. Todd had a front row seat for a nice one-handed, left-handed running grab Karen made late in the game yesterday. It was one of many really nice plays I saw yesterday.

Want to also welcome back out Joe. He’s from the previous generation of Buzzards but has been on hiatus.

Jeff made a banned substance induced-like cut in end zone on one play that Bob zipped to him on a line and had to because JasonC was running step for step with him on D. And that must have been a switch off because for the most part I enjoyed watching the match up between Jason and Erick during the game as they traded nice grabs in traffic. I also saw Conrad make a nice rolling catch of a disc destined to hit the ground.

After 4 or 5 drives down the field Bob & I finally got ready to field one pull and I heard him remark “Hey, I’m finally going to touch the disc”. And so it goes with 15 people on the field. Some nice attempts, at times though gold to run formations from the stack. It was the multiple cuts we were having difficult with. And no wonder, it was hot. Yesterday marked the first day this year I can remember sun screen coming out on the field. And the first time in a while we had an all-hands mandatory water break called. Kind of like a safety pit stop mandated by NASCAR.

After a week of being away in Montreal and presumably not getting in a lot of Ultimate, I heard Brian calling for his mama out on the field and then suggesting in the locker room later that we find another sport on days like this….Blasphemy! Thunder did suggest though that we purchase some cool water Jacuzzis for post game relaxing. Not a bad idea, maybe I’ll run that by the next Fitness Council budget meeting.

I also tasked Thunder with getting together with Hollan once he gets down to the Tidewater area and getting together a team there that the Buzzards can travel to play against. Beach Ultimate anyone?

We are losing some other Buzzards soon. I believe Matt, Karen, Paul, & Scott are all departing. Am I missing anybody else? We tried last year for a picnic with very tepid response at the time. Anybody feeling more ambitious about that this transfer season?

Tinker Bell and one ring to bring them to their knees.

I’m writing about Ultimate when I should be writing my Comparative Education paper. But yesterday’s game warrants at least a few paragraphs.

I had sent out a precursor invitation to play on Facebook on Sunday, noting that the temperatures were supposed to be approaching 60 and it should be a great week to play. Sending out an invitation for activities at work on a Sunday got me labeled a “fanatic” by Marianne.

At any rate, the invitation at work went out late because I was down in Medical getting my annual physical and dental exam done. The doctor wanted to know why I didn’t get more sleep which led to a whole discussion about the value of traveling between Richmond, D.C., & Charlottesville every week, sometimes all 3 in the same day. Listen, I know it’s not the “healthy optimum” but it’s not going to change in the foreseeable future so can we just let it go.

When I finally got back up to my cube nobody else had sent out an game invite either and only 1 email in my inbox from a Buzzard wondering where I might be. I was suddenly worried we might not have any interest for a game but I sent out the email anyway and immediately had 8 responses. Scott replied twice, once in proxy for Phil who apparently was coming into work only to play but was running just a little late.

In fact, by the time Phil got here, Scott and I had already hooked up on two scoring passes which he made really nice catches on both. The first stretched out sprinting to the side of the end zone line after a very nice “Chiefly finger point” call for the throw. The second was a really nice grab of a Hammer that didn’t quite flatten out and was falling more like a guillotine in the windy conditions.

Phil finally showed up and as we pointed him toward green to join Todd, George, Paul, Kevin, & Matt. Meanwhile, Scott & I were joined by Jeff, Bob, Jason, & Brian. Both teams were finding challenges with the wind that was gusting upwards of 30 mph but not all the time so occasionally one would think they could throw it the length of the field and watch their teammates tripping through pot holes to get it and the next we were throwing our first pass backwards.

Phil barely even got a sweat up today though because not long after he got there I was falling back into defense watching Matt try and sneak behind me. When I turned back up field, I saw the other 10 players on the ground. “What the heck just happened?” I wondered. “Must be an injury, who went down?” I thought trying to see who was holding anything and writhing in pain. Then I noticed they were all moving and rubbing their hands on the ground. “Ah, I deduced, lost contact lens I guess.” As I walked back toward the scrum on the ground I heard Paul explaining where we was when it came off, the trajectory of his hand and what force it was thrown with….”Hmmmm, this wasn’t a contact lens” --- lost wedding band ---

“This reminds me of a Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street story” I chimed in as I got down on my knees to help in the search.

“Did that story lead to a pawn shop?” Kevin asked and the whole conversation quickly degraded to replacement rings, replacement wives, replacement body parts…and other things but unfortunately no found ring. Paul, under threat of being battle axed (apparently the weapon of choice of his in-laws) decided to head back to building security to get some of those cool metal detector wands. The rest of us (well except for Phil who nobody really knew or cared was at work anyway) headed to the showers.

Normally I don’t relate what it’s like standing with a bunch of naked men partially wrapped in towels or wash cloths, or drying off with paper towels because they’ve forgotten one. In fact, Jason joined me (as a proud owner) today in finishing the purchase of his 2nd set of “Exchange towels” because he’d forgotten one…Anyway, I don’t normally bring this up but yesterday was special because Matt was showing off his “Tinker Bell” towel. The product of living in a house with all women/girls… apparently it was either that, “Hello Kitty” or “Hanna Montana”….good call on Tink there Matty.

About an hour later, we all got an email from Paul. On the last sweep across the field, Phil found the ring which saves Paul a severing from Nordic weaponry but indebts him to help Phil remember his anniversary next year. It was, in fact, the most productive thing Phil accomplished yesterday. On the precipice of dissolving its first marriage, the Buzzards Point Ultimate club backed away slowly from the edge.

Kiss my Assets

People were eager to play today. The invite went out at 0700 and an hour later I had already gotten 9 positive replies and even 1 cancellation. The Buzzards were apparently trumped by the Coast Guard’s Chief Counsel for Kevin’s billable hours. But no worries, Phil rogered up shortly after and we were back to 9. I thought for sure, with the weather forecast that we’d see some stragglers but it stayed at the uneven 5-4 which gave me the chance to snap off some pictures (soon to be posted) before joining the game in time to throw my 5 best passes to Phil who unfortunately was not on my team at the time.

To add insult to injury on one play I was actually heading into the end zone, I drew the attention of defensive Mr. Everywhere. He didn’t intercept the pass to me though…no instead he cleated me on the heel and I went down in a crumple. “In the crumple” seemed to be a popular position today by the way. Bob had already been down once and would go down again and Brad also rolled an ankle and went down in a heap when I put on a lightening fast cut fake on him (okay, I leaned my head one direction and stopped).

Todd claiming some numb armness (I just made that one up) from apparently hitting too many volleyballs this past weekend, said he was having trouble making the long throw and 2 or 3 times I saw him look off the deep route. Too bad on those occasions, we didn’t actually give him too many short cut options.

Brian, fresh off his elbow surgery seemed to have few ill effects. And in fact may have even been running faster than normal (not that you need a flipping elbow for that). But he made at least 2 great running grabs deep.

Speaking of volleyball, we lured Shane back out again today. We love it when he’s got those 1300 meetings and can’t make the v-ball schedule. He and Scott had some interesting matchups today. Neither of those two look like leapers on the outside…ah but looks are deceiving.

And finally, we have a picture of Jason to post soon where he is skying above the defender for a disc. Your kids are going to love this one.

Here’s the philosophical question of the day…Would you rather be a legacy or leave a legacy? And is “legacy asset” an oxymoron? I’m pretty sure Thunder was playing with my asset out on the field but I don’t have it on camera for the proof I need. I do, however, have cleat marks on my heel….oh, that’s going to leave a legacy.

End of the 20/20 days?

Finally the wind subsided a bit and we got enough for a game yesterday. Those 20/20 days (temps in the 20’s/wind in the 20’s) are winter’s equivalent to the summer’s 90/90 (temps in the 90’s/humidity in the 90’s) and just as difficult to play in and lure people out in. But yesterday the temperature crept above 40 by lunch time and the wind had pretty much died down.

I want to give a big Buzzard’s welcome to Shane who was joining us for the first time yesterday. Usually you can find him on the volleyball courts but yesterday they weren’t playing and as he told me “anything is better than the treadmill”. I did caution him though that it might not be any less running but certainly more fun and interesting. Shane made some great grabs yesterday particularly on some lousy throws by Kevin. Hey, that was their own description of the plays, not mine.

Paul also came up with some unlikely catches yesterday off tips either from his hands or somebody else’s. I think JQ was enjoying having somebody just run down to the end zone and see if he would throw it to him.

Our gold team of myself, Bob (after a bit of a layoff), Matt, Brian, & Jason couldn’t seem to get everything clicking in sync, especially on defense where we found ourselves getting to a lot of passes but not being able to either make the interception or knock down (re: Shane’s and Paul’s catches). Bridgette offered to let us go take cold showers in the women’s locker room…wait, I’m not sure if those two things are actually related or not.

Today’s game time temperatures should be approaching the 50’s with more sun so it promises to be another great day on the pitch. Looking forward to a great turnout before I take off all next week.

The wind in the willows and the piper at the gates of dawn

I woke up this morning to what sounded like somebody outside my Ft. McNair lodging window with a power washer. I had seen a crane in the parking lot the night before and wasn’t ruling out this possibility except that 0430 seems a strange time to doing that type of thing. Of course, a couple weeks ago I heard the distinctive sound of shovels scraping ice from the sidewalks and that was at 0300 so I wasn’t ruling anything out and as I woke up and oriented myself.

It turns out it wasn’t a pressure washer but instead it was just plain wind. Gusting 30-45 mph winds, the kryptonite of Ultimate players. I was a bit disappointed as I knew this may put our game today in jeopardy and I had missed yesterday’s game in the idyllic high 60’s. I have not yet gotten a report of how that game went but if it followed the pattern of Monday and Tuesday, it was just great weather, especially for February, to be throwing some disc.

In fact, the only complaint I really had about the early part of the week was the capacious coating of fresh goose feces. You know, normally during the winter it’s cold enough that it just winds up being similar to running on a freshly aerated golf course with chunks of soil spotted everywhere. It just smells a bit different and sticks in your cleats. However this week, our particular flock must have swung by Five Guys Burgers and had one too many order of fries, if you know what I mean. Instead of the freshly aerated look, it more closely resembled an I-95 tarring project gone bad. So we spent a great deal of time, trying to figure out how to stay off the ground. I failed miserably on one particular play getting sandwiched between Phil and Brad going up for one disc and coming down I threw my hand down to break my fall and stuck in right in a pile of…well I don’t want to think about it anymore.

We had our usual cast of characters out there early this week, well except for Bob who’s on some crazy road trip home from San Diego and updating his Facebook status with snippets like “I think the ‘author’ in me is about to come out. So I guess he’s having some Jack Kerouac type of experience which I’m suddenly very jealous of. I feel like Kerouac would have enjoyed a bit of Ultimate in his time particularly as the sport is often believed to evolved from the hippie culture. Jack’s beatniks would have actually been a precursor to that.

Oh, speaking of evolving, we want to acknowledge the bicentennial birthday of ol’ Chuck Darwin today.
The Buzzards are all about a little natural selection. We have certainly come a long way from the early disc players of this club who banged and traveled, double-teamed, picked, and recklessly disregarded safety of other players on the pitch…okay, well so we’re not completely evolved from these “maladapted individuals” but we’re getting there…some might even call the last couple years a period of “punctuated equilibrium” for the BPUC.

We still periodically struggle with some seemingly simple concepts like offsides, center….er…uh… “middle” (which to be fair is a house rule adapted for the regular occurrence of the odd player), and “Disc Space” … in fact, let me just stop to provide a quick on-line tutorial for this particular rule. The following is taken directly from The Official Rules of Ultimate, 11th Edition:

1. Disc-space: If a line between any two points on the marker touches the thrower or is less than one disc diameter away from the torso or pivot of the thrower, it is a disc space violation. However, if this situation is caused solely by movement of the thrower, it is not a violation.

At any rate, we’re coming along. I mean heck, some of us Buzzards even go to the “theatre” or at least I think that’s what it’s called. That’s my excuse at least for missing yesterday as I had a late night at “Broadway in Charlottesville” watching Hairspray and trying to imagine John Travolta as Edna Turnblad from the movie adaptation…talk about a strange evolution.

Cast of characters? Oh yea, that’s where I was going before all this. So Bob, we’ve missed you but coming out early in this week to make for some great game were Brad, Erick (welcome back by the way), Todd, Phil, Paul, Jordan, Dennis, George and Jeana. Perhaps yesterday we had some others as well.

We’ll see if anybody wants to play today but I’m not sure we’ve yet figured out how to throw a 175 gram disc into a 30 mph wind.

A slapdash kind of game...

There was indeed slapping and dashing going on yesterday…and kicking apparently. Some of the kicking was legal; I was actually able to kick block a pass which I will try from time to time when I don’t really feel like bending that far. The other kicking was compared to mule-like activity so I’ll assume there may have been some physical contact involved which, by the way, is not legal.

Apparently there was also some mocking going on when I explained that double-teaming was also not legal (even when you are down a player). The mocker in question shall remain nameless but he’s the one with the accent. George (so much for nameless) despite your incredulity there are, in fact, a set of rules for Ultimate and a (some would argue more than one) ruling Association. I’ll remind folks or tell them for the first time about the Ultimate Players Association where you can find all things Ultimate. For a small fee, you can join up which will allow you to play in most organized leagues and tournaments should you find yourself wanting something to supplement your daily fix with the Buzzards. In fact, I just got my renewal notice in the mail a couple weeks ago…it’s next to the Comcast bill. If this economic crunch starts to hit me too hard and I have to decide between the two, I’m sending in the UPA renewal and turning off cable and internet.

Now back to yesterday’s game. Did I mention it was a bit sloppy? We had another great turnout though with 6’s when Jeana finally got away from her office and came out to even up the teams. By that time though, we, on the gold team, had already gotten ourselves into a bit of a hole. When I say hole, I actually mean multiple holes that seemed to be in our zone defense. Green managed a couple of nice short pass drives up the field for scores.

The slapping going on yesterday actually looked to be the result of some nice hustle. I thought we had people hitting each others arms and wrists (and ears?) as they were both going up for passes. And that kind of “incidental contact” seems to be generally okay with most of the Buzzards. In contrast to the just running through somebody because you're too slow (re:lazy) to get around them and front them on defense.

I was having some pinnie color recognition problems yesterday. On one early drive I threw a pass to the corner of the end zone that I thought I had gotten close enough to Jason that he should have caught it. Just when I was about to yell something about the lack of hustle, I realized we didn’t have the same color on. Ooops. “Hey Bill, you’re gold” Bob reminded me as we turned around after the turnover.

We got an unexpected visit from Kelly yesterday. Taking a break from the job search to concentrate on things much more important. Great to see you yesterday KG! And even though you gave a disclaimer when you got out there about not having played in “months” I saw you make several nice plays, including one really good defensive block.

But most of us noticed our own lack of execution yesterday…When I tried to pep talk gold one trip back down the field with “Okay, here we go, now we’re going to start showing them something!”

Matt replied “Does that mean you want me to leave the field? I just want to know now before I run back down there.”

Todd remarked after the game “I know I saw at least 2 discs coming straight for my hands that somehow did not wind up there.”

And Paul told me on the way back down the field after another score “You remember how yesterday we were saying what a great game it was? Today…not so much.”

“Yea” I conceded “but it still beat being in the cube.”

And you know, you all are just crazy enough that when I think we might take a day off…you know for the temperatures in the teens with the wind chill kind of days….like TODAY! I get an IM from Brian saying “Hey, we’ve got 3 (Doug, John & I) in my office ready to go today.” And I give in and send out the invite, finding two more immediate replies to take us up to 6 already.

Sloppy or not, we’re headed to the pitch.

Pull!

Buzzardgate 2009

So I’m thinking I might try and get sponsorship for the 2009 Buzzards Point Ultimate Club from Backpacker.com, REI, or even Garmin. A good 20 minutes of our lunchtime game yesterday was spent getting to and returning from the pitch. Rumors had been rumbling for a while about the pedestrian gate closure on McNair, presumably to warrant the months of new construction that produced one big new shiny gate 5-6 blocks up the street.

Early yesterday there were conflicting reports of the gate status as the game email was sent out and responded to and our 8 requisite players had all responded by about 0830. At 0908 I sent out the “Game On” email with a disclaimer about how we would actually have to access Ft. McNair. But quickly Brad responded that he had actually walked through the gate and Paul sent another email saying that he could “see” that it was in fact open at that time.

Well, first of all, what in the world is Paul doing with a window office! Secondly, Brad’s claims notwithstanding there were actually some emails and Special Notices that the gate was in fact closed. It’s possible, we thought that Brad could actually have been asleep when he thought he came through the gate this morning. I mean he even admitted that sometimes he could walk to work almost as fast as he could peddle to work when he took his bike. Huh?

So, with an email from Jeana (more on her and her credibility to discern gate status later) saying that she had heard the gate was now closed we were all pretty much up in the air as to how we’d get to the pitch. But the important thing is that we were going to play, after 2 days off during windy, rainy, sleety and otherwise perfect Ultimate weather. So with positive replies…and note these are in chronological order… from Jeana, Bob, Paul, Phil, Kevin, Jason, Brad, and finally Todd we readied for the game. Oh, by the way, Jeana, who we may be calling “Gatekeeper” from here on out sent an email saying “I may be a little late” with the obligatory sad face emoticon. Operative words here… “little late”.

About 1120 I got down into the locker room to find Phil, Paul, and Brad already there and almost changed. “Wow, you guys are early” I remarked, noting I’m usually the first one down there.

“We thought we’d get an early start, the gate is closed” explained Phil.

“But Brad, I thought you walked through it this morning?” I replied, somewhat surprised.

“Yea, I thought I did too” Brad deadpanned as he sincerely seemed to be questioning his own recollection of his arrival at work that morning.

“Fair enough” I said and began to put on my several layers for the game as it still seemed to be a bit windy and cool. “See you guys out there.”

“I’ll grab the bag” Brad said as he headed out to hopefully pass through a gate…again.

Bob and Todd came in shortly and I explained to them the gate situation. And we changed and made our way up 2nd St. about half a mile and then backtracking through the gate and over to the field for another quarter of a mile. Listen, it’s not a long walk but it was easily and extra 10 minutes both ways.

George wound up wandering out to join us and we had 9 to start the game and were waiting for Jeana to come out and balance the teams so Kevin headed over to Gold when we was the last one out and created the extra player situation. He joined Phil, Bob, George, & the phantom gate passer Brad.

I stuck Todd with the vertically challenged team of myself, Paul and Jason and after staking out what seemed to be the least swampiest area of the parade field and walking off a close to official length field for the first time in weeks we pulled to start.

Our green team had some initial problems defending some longer passes and Todd decided to drop back, play safety and see if he could bat down a few of those. We continued to give up more than we got and decided to accept the extra player flopping teams option. Brad came over to Green after Gold’s third or fourth consecutive score. Then Green began to gain a little traction as Jason came up with some improbable catches by continuing to hustle on plays and caught at least 3 deflected passes and then a 4th that just seemed to drop into his hands on the goal line on one play.

But George was also having a MOB-type game (oh wait, sorry, that title doesn’t exist anymore) and came up with several impressive one-handed grabs over the green team of “giants”. Todd had to leave a little early as his office had decided to invite him to a 1300 meeting on his way out to the field and considering the newer, longer trek to the pitch, needed to run back.

The green team took a major hit to their average height. Now, with just Brad, Paul, Jason and I coming in at about an average of 5’ 7” we finished off a game in less than impressive fashion. There were complaints that we didn’t get a “last 3” call and instead it was at 1233 a “last point” call.

“What’s wrong Bill, do you actually have to get back to work? I thought you were a Chief?” I was taunted as we picked up the cones.

“I don’t like the New Year Bill” Phil groused.

We packed up the gear and made our way back down the long journey back to the office accompanied by an appropriately complaint filled banter on our way through the new gate and back down the street. We are all sailors after all…or recovering ones perhaps.

“Hey, I thought Jeana was playing” Kevin noticed as she had not joined us.

“Well, she sent me an email saying she would be a little late” I said.

“We’re done, I’d say that’s more than ‘a little late’” …you can’t get anything by Kevin.

Well the rest of us had a good time and when I got back I found out what happened with “Gatekeeper”. Here is the transcript from our chat.

Jeana [1:28 PM]:
so much for me being a "regular"
I went out to the back and side gates. Both were closed. Denied!
Bill [1:28 PM]:
How did you not get through the new side gate?
Jeana [1:29 PM]:
It was closed
I didn't exactly feel like clamoring over it
Bill [1:29 PM]:
Strange , that's how we went and came back.
are we talking about the same gate....you know the new one about 5 blocks back up 2nd street Jeana [1:30 PM]:
I believe so. There's only one side before you get to the front gates
Yes?
Across the street from that big parking lot?
Bill [1:31 PM]:
yea, as far as I know...It just seems weird that they would have closed it while were over there. Actually, there is one gate (it looks like an exit gate) that was closed, you have to walk past that one still even further
Jeana [1:32 PM]:
there's 2 side gates?
I stopped at the exit gate
Bill [1:33 PM]:
apparently, i wasn't really paying attention too much as I walked up. I saw a "Do Not Enter" or some such sign on that first gate, kept walking up and there was the new one where all the turnstiles, building, guards, and medians are...you couldn't have missed it had you gone that far.
Jeana [1:35 PM]:
Ah. I saw the first gate and the corner of the entire block. It's so close to the front entrances that I don't see the point in its existance. Anyway, I'm sorry I didn't show up. I'll try again next week.
Bill [1:36 PM]:
Okay...meanwhile I'm sending your excuses to Bob & Kevin...expect to be teased
Jeana [1:37 PM]:
& Paul. No worries. I can take them all with 1 arm tied behind my back
Just kidding

Okay, well we got word when we got back to the office that the old gate should be opened for business again next week. Hopefully this will put an end to Buzzardgate 2009.

Looking for some blogosphere "Drain-O"

Is “Bloggers’ Block” a clog, an impasse, a jam? Maybe, since it’s the Buzzards blog, it’s a force? Yea, I kind of like that. I’ve been forced from my usual scrivener self in search for interesting things to write about the Buzzards daily escapades. And it’s not that we aren’t interesting.

We had a very interesting conversation on the way back in Monday about the moral position of forgiving or at least turning the other cheek (or nostril) to those who had become addicted to nicotine prior to the federally mandated warning labels. It started with Phil’s not so convincing Ben Stiller imitation out on the field “uhhh huhhh huhhh, I think I got the Black Lung” and moved to the holiday visits to parents becoming older and still holding on to habits that make them “cough up a lung” which by the way has a real medical description “upper GI hemorrhage”. I know because this is what my dad died of after 50 years of smoking Pall Mall non filters. In one of those strange coincidences of conversation and life…today would have been my dad’s 68th birthday. By the way Pop’s was known to throw a few Frisbees in his lifetime and could do it with cigarette in hand or mouth.

The post-Turkey day on the pitch was a windy one. Depending on your source, gusts were somewhere between 16 and 30 mph. My own internal anemometer did some quick calculations (│v│=√u2 + v2 w2) and I gauged it to be around the 23-24 mph range…or just short of wind ribbon conditions. Nonetheless, with temperatures hovering in the mid 40’s making the wind chill somewhere in the 33-34 range, and sudden gusts that turned Mark’s 5 yard dump pass to me go 20 yards behind him made for some challenging play. So thanks to everybody else who came out.

I can’t remember much of the game due to my recent unexplained knack for making contact with everybody. I think I’m still shaking off some mild concussion symptoms from yesterday when while I was marking Jason, I followed his throwing hand a bit too closely and wound up catching the follow through forearm across my left eye socket. “Is it supposed to be ringing out here?”

The 8 turned into 11 or 12 on Monday. I can’t quite remember. Phil & Thunder both showed up after not replying and JQ was out on the field doing calisthenics when we got out there. “Who’s that I asked Todd as we were crossing the street?”

“Well, it’s not Scott or he’d be sitting under the tree asking us what took us so long.”

“Yea” I agreed “I kind of thought it was Brook but he wouldn’t be running…must be JQ”.

Others of you with a chance to hit an early week trifecta of games besides those already mentioned above…Dennis, Mark, & Bob. Jeana stood us up again yesterday with some crazy excuse about a job, boss & meeting. Bridgette came out yesterday and provide much of my entertainment. On one trip down the field, I realized I was the last yellow pinnie back and that she, in her green, was getting ready to run by me. “Better try to catch her off guard” I thought and reached out and grabbed her sweatshirt. I spun her around, she fell down, and caught the disc in the end zone. Nice D Bill….walk back up the field loser.

Others who have wandered out already this week…Paul, Kevin, George, Fred, Matt, and Brad. And a big Buzzards Welcome to MarkW who joined us for the first time yesterday. You can tell him from the other Mark…well let’s just say there are some verticality differences.

Looking forward to a good game today…no contact…maybe even some running.

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.

Wheat and Chaff

Some of the things I separate during my normal weeks….whites from the darks during laundry day, eggs, oil & vinegar when shaking up the Newman’s Own, Buzzards between green and gold, and yesterday…the hard core “we’ll play in anything” Buzzards from the “fair weather” fowl.

To be fair, I suspect there were others that would have played had they been there or were not in meetings but credit shall be given where it is due and I need to give a big shout out to Phil, Brad, Bob, JQ, George, Alec, Hollan, & Kevin who came out to play yesterday in by far the worst weather conditions of the year. It was about 47 or 48 degrees and raining…not just sprinkling but a full rain. We looked on the radar before we went out and we were on the edge of that dark green and yellow bands. Then about mid way through the game the wind started to blow as well.

None of that kept those Buzzards off the field yesterday. Bob & JQ were both nursing nagging injuries, Alec (our Maine native) didn’t have long pants or long sleeves on, Phil had no Phil had no hat and none of us had many dry spots even after the run out to the field but we played and had a great time!

We didn’t waste much time yesterday getting out either. Brad & I jogged out to the field in hopes that it might keep us warmer. Bob wondered if it wasn’t warmer standing still? Hmmmm, I’m not really sure about the scientific quality of that surmising but I guess it could be argued that if you’re wet and not causing the wind the blow harder against yourself, by running, that you might feel warmer. But my thinking was that keeping the blood moving and the core temperature up would be a good thing. So we through on the pinnies right away with not much thought about who was who’s team and just started playing.

Initially, we only had 7. “But Bill, you only call games when you have 8” you might contest. Yes, that’s normally true. And I did have 8 when I called the game…with a couple of other “maybes”. And usually I’m not one to throw anybody under the bus as things do come up (like Tom’s marathon meeting that started before 9 and still wasn’t over when we went out) but when we just get stood up because it was raining I feel the need for some manner of “public cyber flogging”. Hey Jeana, I tried to keep the Buzzards from hurling the “new player” and “girl” epithets around in disdain….okay, actually I joined in…but really. And you’re an Ultimate player from before too? We only cancel games for lightning…and then usually begrudgingly and amongst jeers that I should at least wait until somebody gets struck before I pack up the bag. Luckily JQ & George wandered out after we had gotten to the field and we had 9!

Speaking of packing up the bag….somebody please take those pinnies home today and wash them. I can’t imagine they are even dry yet from yesterday and secretly I’m glad I didn’t have to put one on today. But if they don’t get home, can you imagine what they will feel and smell like on Monday? Ewwwww!

Okay so everybody that came out yesterday…you get the AWB (All-Weather Buzzard) award and the satisfaction of knowing your zeal and gusto borders on insanity and that you are indeed Ultimate players!

Have a great weekend everybody.

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.