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.

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!

Diagonal pitch, crazy 8's

~ posted by Bill

Okay, I’m updating, I’m updating! I’m always surprised to find people actually miss reading this when I leave it fallow for too long.

Last week I was forecasted to write a blog…singularly about me, as I’d had an atypical all around good day of disc. Now, narcissistic as I am, and really, as easy as this blog realm is to really make it “all about me”, I would be very remiss not to mention we had a great game last week before the holiday of some all around good play by several people.

I can’t even really remember what day it was. We were softball and soccer free on the south field, which by the way has begun to take on its August concrete-like properties, and a couple folks from NDU or ICAF joined us. This game almost wasn’t called at all as we only had 7 for sure and I really wasn’t feeling like running on a 3-man team. But replies back from Will, Hollan, Mark, et al. said “Let’s play, who cares” so I reluctantly called the game at the last minute and we wound up having 11 out there as two others besides our McNair brethren joined us.

Splitting up the teams was a bit of a challenge. I had no idea what to expect from those two. Both played well but J.Q. was a complete ringer and I just really got lucky picking him for my team. Todd also was pleasantly surprised to find he had somebody running to the end zone when he had the disc in hand to throw. He had some serious wheels and made the rest of us look pretty good on several plays including a behind the back toss I managed to get close enough to him to run down. It was noted my paltry 20% completion percentage on such tosses were actually worth the disbelief factor when it actually works.

Hollan may have had the play of the day making me look like a better thrower than I actually am, once again. I had cut loose on a high arcing flick that was coming over Will’s shoulder into the end zone. At the last second Will actually got a hand up and deflected the disc…back up. Well when the disc stays up, guys that hustle make plays and Hollan had stayed with it and sliding across the back of the end zone came down with a great catch.

Anyway, that was pre-Labor Day weekend…after the holiday, we came out on the field yesterday, many of us needing to purge some 3 or 4 day weekend toxins, or, in the case of Phil and Rodney (returning from long absences) even more.

I called the game yesterday after 11 responses, one actually cancelled but 5 on 5 sounded good. We got out to the south field to find two softball games strolling on right after us and crunching us for space so we went with the diagonal pitch layout and 16 people actually showed up!!! After about two trips up and down the already condensed field, we decided to play 6 on 6 and have 2 subs each, introducing some to the “last back” tool of Ultimate. I’m not sure this actually functioned as designed and often times just a couple needing air or water went off the field after a score. It was hot, and the substitutions worked well.

Welcome out to some new faces even though a couple of you have played already I may not have officially greeted you…Mike, Paul, Eric, & Bill. Great to have all 4 of you out there yesterday. Welcome back Rodney & Phil. I had forgotten how much I missed the great attitude and Spirit of the Game until standing next to Rodney on the sideline yesterday listening to him comment on the softball game next to us “Next time down the field we ought to chuck the disc right upside his head, get out of our #&*@ing enzone you *@&!”....nice.