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!

2 new, a weave and SOTG refresher

Posted by Bill

We had a good game on Monday with 6 on 5. I’d like to give a warm welcome to a couple new players, Bob & Carolyn, it was great to have you both out there. I love this game because players of all experience levels can step right in and have fun. Bob came out and I joked that he should have come with a warning label…usually when I see somebody with his…uh…”career maturity”, humble height and being follicle-challenged…I assume they are going to be in a physical condition more like…well…me. But Bob had obviously played before and forgot to tell me that he could actually run. By the way, we have another "older running Bob" so one of you guys is abosolutely going to need a nickname.

He, Tood, & Frank ran a flawless 3-man weave play at one point in the game that Todd remarked about later “We should have just quit right then after we scored, it wasn’t going to get any better”.

And Carolyn, admittedly a new player to Ultimate made an outstanding one hand grab off a pass from Todd for a score. I checked with her before the game “Has anybody explained any of the rules to you?”

“Well, I remember some from high school P.E. class” she replied.

“Perfect!” I told her, “You’re already at our level”

Kelly G was back after her early summer hiatus and looked like it was a little challenge to get her wind back completely. Hollan was also back…trying to talk himself into being back in playing shape after his injury…and then took another ugly fall that was trying to argue the opposite.

Speaking of ugly falls…er…layouts…Todd was particularly impressed by my instinctual turn and dive for a pass from Eli that wound up being 10-15 yards short and just made me look silly.

Tim and I hooked up on a couple nice scores on Monday but I wish I could have also hit him on about 6 more that I just totally missed the throws on. Saved my best throw for last though after getting a nice entry pass from Hollan that Frank just barely missed, I looked up field and started yelling “Go, go, go” to Rodney, who was already on his way to the end zone as I cut one loose sailing over his head. He ran it down and made a great layout catch as Todd pulled up claiming he had heard “Foul, foul, foul” and assume it had been so after Frank and I had made a little contact.

*** Official vanity paragraph *** uh for those of you who have been caught gawking at pictures of yourself and reading heroic captions to your co-workers about your exploits from the blog, this paragraph is officially dedicated to you today… "and there were others, not previously mentioned, on the field today” :)

A reminder from the Ultimate Players Association website page on the Spirit of the Game –
Spirit of the Game sets Ultimate apart from other competitive team sports.

For over 30 years, Ultimate has flourished, reaching a highly competitive level, without the use of referees. In Ultimate, the honor system works. Sure, human nature rears its ugly head from time to time - just as in any sport, just as in life. Yet, one of the many beauties of Ultimate is how, even amid the most difficult of situations, utmost graciousness is allowed to meet that challenge head on. Through this balance, Ultimate players are free to demonstrate the most honorable and the most joyous sides of human nature in sport.

Looking forward to having some of the regulars back on the field soon….Phil, Bob…today? Thunder is due out next week according to the NASA systems countdown.

Again, the chance of precipitation is less than half today for game so let’s head out…pull!