Armistice from the cube!

Tuesday holidays? Strange things…Does anybody use the word armistice anymore? Do any of the Buzzards readers know what the word means? I’ll save you the time of going to Dictionary or Webster’s dot com edition…it’s the “temporary suspension of hostilities” which is a strange thing to call the end of the “war to end all wars”. Temporary? It turns out to be rather prophetic as a generation later the world headed off to the sequel.

In all seriousness, I’d like to give a big Buzzard’s nod to all Veterans all over the world who have served their countries in hopes that their children and grandchildren would have a safer place to live. Personally speaking, I’m Bill, III and Bill Sr., was a Major in the 29th Infantry Division at D-Day and Bill, Jr., was a swabbie aboard ship around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

On a lighter note, I’d like to give a nod to some Buzzard “Veterans” no longer playing with us regularly…Lonnie, Lindsay, Craig, JasonN, MattC, Kashyap, Lon, Justin, Derek, Conrad, Frank, Tag, Travis, KellyG, Bryan, CAPTK and I’m sure I’m forgetting others. Thanks for your dedication and participation.

“Guys that should be Veterans” should have been the name of the gold team on Monday. As I wandered out on the field Tom asked “Bill, why did you put all the slow guys on one team?”

I thought he said “…all the old guys” –

“yea, it could be either” he corrected, “or both, old and slow…anyway, we’re all on this side”. I looked up and down the line….Tom, Bob, Scott, Mark and I. Actually, I think Mark just looks old and slow, he was really the “baby” on the team but the rest of us were mostly guilty as charged.

“Don’t worry” I assured Tom, “I gave us all the wily guys too.” He looked over and saw Todd, Hollan, Tim, Bridgette, & MikeC on the green team and didn’t seem convinced. Then when Lee wandered out…by the way, was that his first time? Welcome…just one point of rules…you can’t knock the disc out of anybody’s hands. We know you didn’t know that so we let you just celebrate it. As I was saying…Lee came out and I told him to throw green on too and Tom thought I had lost all of my limited faculties.

Turns out, wily was working on Monday. Even a player short we managed to control the game hitting on a couple timely long passes and basically working the field. It didn’t hurt that Hollan was recuperating from a bout of food poisoning (re: hangover?). Of course he gets points for coming out. Phil, reportedly having similar symptoms stayed safely inside.

MikeC ~ we’ve got to get you to learn to run with your hands down. Does anybody else get scared when they see Mike running by them with his arms waving frantically and him yelling something while having no chance of catching up to the disc? It reminds me of when I used to coach my daughter’s softball team. You have to persuade the outfielders they can run faster for a ball with their glove down and then stick it up when they get there. Just teasing you Mike...keep running...keep screaming...keep having fun.

Initially when we went out on Monday, people thought they had underdressed and Todd & Hollan considered going back in for long pants. Forecasts of varying wind strengths had circulated. One said 3 mph and another 15 mph. It was closer to the latter on the way out but by about mid game it had settled down to the other and the temperatures were quite pleasant. These days in the 50’s are really ideal Ultimate weather.

Other new players to welcome out of late have been Jeana & Rachel. Hope you all have had fun and will be back out with us. A few of you haven’t been out in a while but have played a lot in the past. I know some of you are injured but I just wanted to let you know the Buzzards were thinking about you from time to time…MattP, MattD, Brady, Eric, and ErikN. And then some of you are just hanging around on a distribution list and really have no good excuse for not coming out.

Come on! Think of it as a “work armistice” ….temporary cessation of hostilities of your cube.
Pull!

New Math and Avian head shops...

- posted by Bill

“8 + 7 does not equal 17 Bill”. Okay, to be fair I can add, but somehow I’d gotten into my head that a regulation game was 16 players and when I start adding or subtracting from that point I actually got the math right but my baseline data was flawed. Which is a ridiculous excuse but actually what was going on in my head yesterday afternoon as we were coming back into the locker room after a great game of 8 on 7.

As we wandered out yesterday, I noticed the grass had not been cut and that there were a gaggle of Canadian Geese just sitting on our field. They quickly took flight noticing the approaching Buzzards but they left us “presents” all over the field. Is it just me or does goose feces have a disturbingly similar aroma to cannabis? Had they detoured over Northern California? You know, as professional Law Enforcement officers, we weren’t too sure what our jurisdiction over the geese were or if we had extradition agreements with Canada so we decided not to pursue that action and instead just pulled the disc to start our game.

Since I’ve been playing with this group it’s been my observation that the extra person makes huge differences in games with 7-11 players. Not usually so much with anything more that that because often it gets so crowded that you can just kind of zone the other team when you’re down a player. But what is not supposed to happen is that the team short a player gets a lot of long scores because in theory the extra-player team can always have a “safety”.

Yesterday was the exception to that Ultimate axiom. The gold team, stacked with the legs of JQ, Bob, Hollan, & Will exploded for a run of early scores on deep passes. Despite the attempted force lessons of yesterday, our green team could still just not effect the defensive theory of “forcing middle” and gave up pass after pass down the sidelines.

We also gave up two toe dragging end zone sideline scores to ballerinas Rodney & Will. Kevin almost came down with one of his own for green but called himself out on the back line. Mercifully, Ultimate Karma provided for an immediate gold turnover after that and we got a nice short score but it was one of very too few for green yesterday.

Erik did manage to pull in a few scores yesterday for green but I would submit that at least two of those were on “missed” throws to other players that he just found himself in the right position for. I know this because the first one came out of my hands and was headed for JasonK whom I could just not find the range to yesterday missing him by about ½ arm’s length on at least 3 passes in the end zone.

Good to see some guys back out yesterday that have been missing some lately…Brian & Mark. Thunder keeps trying to quit us for a day or two of rest, then checks the temperature at game time and realizes the addiction is just too strong and winds up wandering out to the field.

Alec, a newer addition to the Buzzards, and I were talking on the way out to the pitch yesterday and he asked how late in the season we play. I told him we played all through the winter last year and he asked for clarification.

“So you move inside at some point?”

“No we stay out” I said. “It’s only really bad on those high 20’s, low 30’s days with icy drizzle.”

“You’d have to trudge through 3 feet of snow in the winter where I’m from.” Alec observed.

“Oh? Where did you come here from?”

“Maine”

Well welcome to D.C. Alex. I grew up in the Northern Virginia suburbs and have lived in this area parts of about 25 years of my life and I can only remember 2-3 snowstorms that ever dropped that much of the white stuff. I think you’ll find our winter games practically mild by Maine standards.

Of course after a great defensive block on a mark yesterday, Alec was glad it wasn’t winter yet. He took a mean shot of disc off his hand.

Today is picture day boys & girls. Remember to brush your hair and tuck your shirts in before you come out today and Hollan has hopefully brought his camera. Phil, I hope you brought a clean shirt. The one you’ve been wearing that reeks of weekend beer and goose droppings is wearing thin.

"What's a crop?"

Posted by Bill

Great game of 7 on 7 yesterday. The wind was blowing 15-20 mph and we really had to work on our short game but the teams were pretty well balanced and play was good.

Strong winds don’t deter some people from trying long passes. Your's truly got one to sail nicely early in the game and it wound up going off Brook’s fingertips in the end zone but encouraged by that near miss I kept hucking away, at one stretch about 4 times in a row down the field trying to hit Tim with one as he seemingly kept sneaking behind the defense. But either the wind would pick it up or I’d turn over the flick, or zip one into the defender’s arms and never found much success with that. Of course I was relieved to see I wasn’t the only one having trouble. JQ let loose with one of his golf slice shots that he likes to start out of bounds and come slicing back in to a man running deep…well it sliced back in, all the way across the field, and then all the way out on the other side…mad wind!

So he and Bob tried to stick to their short game for the most part and handled well, feeding Hollan, Tom, Erik, Jason & Fred as they found lanes to cut in.

There was some really good defense being played yesterday and even when you thought you had a throw in, sometimes the wind would hold it up long enough for the defender to get there. Phil made a great play on one nice zip throw from Bob to a cutting JQ in the corner and got his hand up to knock it down.

For the gold team, Rodney did manage to find Thunder early in the game for a nice mid length score that looked like it was headed over Scott’s head until he jumped a little, got a hand up, deflected the disc and it came down in his arms as he tumbled to the ground. And Mike at one point, after some frustrating discs off fingertips and throws in the wind, triumphantly spiked the disc after a score late in the game.

We tried to use the windy day to work on some formations and mechanics but when two of the more “experienced” players shouted back to directions of “force middle” and “shift force” ….” What’s the middle?” and “Shift what?” I realized that maybe we hadn’t practiced either of those things much or Rodney and Phil’s collective ability to pay attention was waning.

I was reminded of the scene in “Field of Dreams” with Costner’s character, Ray Kinsella and his ruthless, foreclosing brother-in-law Mark:

Mark: "Admit it, Ray. You've never liked farming."

Ray Kinsella: "That's not true."

Mark:"It is true. You don't know the first thing about farming."

Ray Kinsella: "Yes I do. I know a lot about farming. I know more than you think I know."

Mark: "Then how could you plow under your major crop?"

Ray Kinsella:"What's a crop?"

Uh….”What’s a force?”

For the sake of the discussion…in general terms the word “force” refers to the direction you are either trying to get the handler to look to throw, or the direction you are trying to make the person you are covering run to. And usually, the marker is trying to force the handler to throw to the middle as the rest of the defense forces the cutters to a respective sideline.

Then you have commands like “switch force” which you can use if the marker is forcing to sideline to get them to move their force direction for a few seconds so that the defender can catch up to a cutter that may be headed for that sideline, especially near the end zone. The basic idea is to force a team to throw a long ways across the field.

Maybe we’ll take 5-10 minutes prior to game time today and just work on a couple formations.

Thanks everybody for a great game yesterday. Weather is going to be perfect today. PULL!

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!