BUZZARDS OVERCOME WESLEYAN 15-6, to Advance to the Round of Four!

If you want to know what a patient dump/swing/repeat/repeat/... Zone Offense looks like, contact Wesleyan Corporate C league (the real Wesleyan, from Waterbury, CT), because they showed it to us all night long. The Buzzards (Bill, Bridgette, Devon, Jeana, Jeff VoB, Karl, Kevin, Leroy, Meaghan, Paul, Reagan and Todd) pulled ahead early, but Wesleyan, a team of great heart and fantastic Spirit, did not give up and played a much tougher game than the final score suggests. It was a lot of fun playing you guys, and we definitely look forward to seeing you again.

One of the things that made the game so much fun was that we were able to resolve rules questions in the Spirit of fun and fair play. Here’s a rule thing that I had wrong(!). If you get fouled in the end zone, there are two possibilities: either you caught the disc and had it stripped out of your hands (AKA Bridgette, last Monday) or you went up for the disc and were interfered with and didn’t make the catch (AKA Todd). If either of these fouls is contested, the disc goes back to the thrower. If uncontested, Bridgette gets the disc at the spot of the foul and scores a point. Todd gets possession of the disc at the spot of the foul, and it becomes “live”, but he must carry it out to the nearest spot on the goal line and play from there. “Live” means the game is on, no need to check the disc in again, play it like you just picked up an out of-bounds throw. Kudos to Wesleyan for knowing the rule and to Captain Natalie for not rolling her eyes at my ignorance. See the 11th Edition Rules FAQ page for where that all came from. FYI, if you make the catch while airborne, but are pushed out-of-bounds, you are Bridgette, not Todd.

A fond Buzzard farewell for the next two weeks to Paul St. Pierre, departing for Norway for a well deserved rest. He’s leaving behind a legacy of second- and third-chance catches and a textbook on how to make popper cuts. You couldn't ask for a better send-off than to score the game winning point to advance to the semi-finals. You will be missed, we'll keep you updated on how it goes.

The thing that made our Zone offense work and that Wesleyan struggled with was moving the disc up the field after a swing. If you played wing during this game (Leroy, Jeff, Karl, Devon, Kevin, Bill) I’m talking about you, shuttin’ em down. And speaking of closing the door on the offense...

Reagan, you are tougher, per linear foot, than anyone else on the team. Yes, we turned it over too often in the second half. Many of those were the Buzzards trying something a little different for the purpose of player development. This is a good thing, but it still meant 15 minutes of cup for you.

In fact, all of the Buzzard women have made us proud all season long (under "budding handlers," see Jeana, Kelly; under “Defense wins games” see Mariam, Meaghan, Rachel; under “Just tougher than you,” see Annette, Bridgette). You are the stubbornest disc chasers in the league, and every time the Buzzards get the disc on the opponent’s own twenty-yard line, it’s the cup that put us there.

Cup, if you start flagging because the offense isn’t getting it done, you have two tools: when next on offense, call for a timeout. Only the person with the disc can call for a timeout (Rule VI.B.4), so communicate with that person that you need a break. This is something we as a team should have done better to support the cup in this game. In 11 games we’ve had 44 timeouts and called maybe three.

The other thing you can do in the cup is play the passing lanes, not the distance. At ten feet from the disc (the minimum legal distance) you cut off a lot of passing lanes automatically. But if you are unable to keep up with the movement, put yourself in the lane where they want to throw: cut off either the up-field popper or the swing. If you cut off that lane, you buy yourself time to get into position.

The Michael and Janet Jackson Award for Wednesday, August 5th goes to Devon and Leroy for sweet moves and possibly being the same person. Speed in the backfield means we could play the 3-3-1 zone (as opposed to 3-2-2) and really pressure the disc. Here’s some math: Which takes longer? A disc thrown from midfield traveling up the sideline or our deep man coming from the center of the goal line to get the block? I’m not saying what answer I put down, but my grade was 15/6.

The reason you shouldn’t both be in at the same time is because its considered poor Spirit to get the block, then have another defender make a play on the disc, and then, after a commercial break, have the intended receiver appear. Also, somebody’s gotta throw the thing.

A special wave of the feathery wing to our cheering section: season-ticket-holder Jack, mom Marianne (not Jack's mom. C'mon, keep up!), wife Mariam, sig-o’s Mary and Angela and future roommate Danielle (“She’s filling in for Ian. No, wait, I mean…”). We should have brought those bleachers from Bluemont with us. First ten fans get to take a Buzzard home with them. No home for you, Jeff. Get back to the NAC.

Our next game is Monday, August 10th at the Polo Fields (2B). Game at 6:30, cookout at 5:45. I’m not certain who our opponent will be (apparently, google docs is that hard to use), but best bet is our Sligo nemesis, Disc of Enlightenment. Bring your “A” game.

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.

15 and no rain!

Monday, 50% chance of rain was the disclaimer on the game invite yesterday morning to which I got varying responses…

“Monday Ultimate in the Rain? Of course I'm down for that. I think that's the only time you actually get a Yes response from me.” – Thunder

“Don't say "rain" or Jeana won't play (she's made of salt, apparently). There's a 50% chance of summer snow. I'm in.” – Kevin

“Yee haw a chance to get wet too!” – Brian

“What are you doing telling people it’s going to rain? Trying to keep them away?” – Matt

Well, as it turns out, the Pillar of Salt…aka Princess…aka Jeana did not show. My last IM on the way out the door was “It’s not raining”. To which I got a reply of not so cloaked cynicism.

“Not now”

Well, not then nor at all in fact through the whole game. It was cool, overcast, the grass was a little high but not really any standing water and the Buzzards came out en masse yesterday…15 of them!

We’d like to give a hearty Buzzards welcome to John joining us for the first time yesterday. He’ll be taking over for Scott in their office. That was the easy part of his check-in but as tasked, Thunder also told John his check-in included coming out for a game of disc. Okay John, so we may not technically be on your check-in sheet but thanks for giving us your time. We hope you had fun and will come back out.

Welcome back out to Steve and Tim who we hadn’t seen much of lately. Great to have you guys with us.

So with 15 I’m sure you’re thinking the pitch was a bit crowded, and it was but green seemed to get their short passing game working a little better than gold was able to for most of the game. I noticed they did a little better job of getting a handler on the disc for the first throw. Todd remarked that he rarely had to run much further down the field after he would make the first throw because the rest of his team was managing to get it up quickly.

Brad and Brian, in particular hooked up on a couple great looking pass and catch plays in the end zone despite what I thought was fairly decent defense.

It was a great day for Ultimate and a great week planned. For any of you who haven’t heard yet. Wednesday we have our first ever Buzzards Cookout planned. Thunder has taken the lead on this and will be acting Grill Master after our normal 1130 game. Many of the rest of you have volunteered to bring things and I want to thank everybody for their support. If you can get out and join us for the game or the cookout, come on out!

Thanks again for the great turnout yesterday! Besides those mentioned above, the usual cast of characters put on the green and gold…Tom, George, Conrad, Paul, & Jeff were all out there as well. Did I miss anybody? Because last time I did, I wound up writing the person their own column.

Going to be a great day today, see you on the pitch.

Pull!

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?

Meteorologically speaking...

Door #1 Drizzle- Small, slowly falling water droplets, with diameters between .2 and .5 millimeters

Door # 2 Mist- Consists of microscopic water droplets suspended in the air which produce a thin grayish veil over the landscape. It reduces visibility to a lesser extent than fog.

Door #3 Light Rain - precipitation falling with an intensity of between a trace and 0.10 inches (0.25 cm) per hour

Those were the 3 possibilities we heard prior to heading out to the pitch yesterday for some disc. I even peeked at the radar right before I logged off to head to the locker room and saw that Buzzards Point was moving out of the “green” (re:Rain) zone at 1100.

As we walked out though, the drops certainly felt bigger than .2 to .5 millimeters and I know that while we were out there for our hour that more than .10 inch of rain must have come down… “Mist” was not even in the equation. I’m not sure what the meteorologists call it but I don’t think it was any of the answers behind doors number 1-3.

The just as credible explanation is the addition of a new player yesterday…Buzzards, everybody say hi to Karen…. “Hi Karen” who comes to us from the place where meteorologists discovered all the terms for wet precipitation…Seattle. That coupled with the Buzzards uncanny knack the last few months of welcoming new people out on the worst possible weather days (right John? Jeff?) and it was almost the “Perfect Storm”…the only thing we were missing were the Swinny and Hollan sliding and mudding show. We missed you guys yesterday, just wanted you to know we were thinking of you.

Speaking of missing…Phil, how can we miss you if you won’t go away? Phil’s Buzzard career is winding down as he gets ready to leave us. Not sure if he’s playing today I know he and Todd are talking about some “Beer Movie” premier later on. I don’t know if the “pre-gaming” for that affects our Ultimate today. Thunder and Paul, can you maybe see if we can keep him in the office long enough to play today?

Jeana was back out yesterday after her time on the disabled list… “I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride it where I ride” A little welcome back gift of a set of training wheels awaited her courtesy of Kevin.

We didn’t actually get to see any of Jeana’s bicycle wounds but I’m betting they couldn’t have looked as bad as Shane’s face did yesterday after taking the disc to his eye. A nice bruise right below the eye socket and blood trickling down his face made you think this sport is more dangerous than it looks at first glance.

Brad got hit with the disc yesterday too but not from a hard throw but because he was invading personal space on the mark a bit too much. Remember everybody…if you hold out your hands, draw an imaginary line between your hands, the thrower should not intersect that line, if they do…you’re too close!

Thanks everybody for coming out yesterday in less than ideal conditions. You should reward yourself today with a game in the sun.

Lap dances and new guys...

Do I have your attention yet?

On days like yesterday there are always two questions you hear asked after or during the game. “Why am I running more with more people out here?” and “What happened to all my passing lanes?”

Ah, the benefits of having a regulation 14 players!

To think, when I called the game yesterday I had to send out an email to ask the bare minimum crowd of 7 asking if they minded banking on the return of a “maybe” from an official function. “Call the game!” was the resounding reply and so I did. And…as it turns out…had very little to worry about. Both Todd & Phil did, indeed, get back in time and said they were in.

Then I wander down to the locker room to change and in saunters Scott (or when “No” means “Yes”). Still, I hadn’t counted on him for sure. Then as he, Paul & I were out warming up on the pitch, a stranger came wandering across the horizon of the field, holding his cleats in hands like an old western hero moseying down the middle of town hands at the ready for anything suspicious. I could almost hear the “Eastwood-esque” musical announcement of his arrival and there he was, returned from the proverbial dead…Tom.

“Hey, I get ‘new guy’ status today” Tom argued.

“What status is that exactly?” I asked.

“I can pretty much screw up anyway possible out on the field today and you have to keep giving me that positive encouragement of insincere plaudits like ‘good hustle’ and ‘nice effort’ every time” he explained.

“Oh” I deadpanned, thinking to myself that insincerity and sarcasm are two of my stronger communicative characteristics. “No problem, you got it”.

So we lined up our 5 on 5, still expecting Kevin & Conrad to make it out of the locker room. And then George wandered over, and walking with Kevin & Conrad was Jeff and all of a sudden we had 7’s!

On gold’s first drive down the field, Tom made a great cut toward the side of end zone and made a nice reach on a low pass I threw him. “New guy status, my …” I thought.

“Great catch Tom, welcome back”.

That cut to the outside would be something we’d struggle with making the rest of the day as we continued to try and throw to the middle of the field where most of those 28 arms were flailing around. Stack and cut, stack and cut, stack and….well it’s progress, not perfection.

Because there are some other factors like Jason observed. “Well, if I cut and you don’t throw it to me, then where do I go?” And it’s a great question with multiple answers depending on who you ask and what style of offense they’ve played in the past or what makes sense to them logically. Of course, as Brad has found out, his logic isn’t necessarily everybody else’s logic.

And back to Brian’s question of “Why am I running more with more people out here?” Well, perhaps because you’re trying to get away from each other to get open. See “stack and cut” - A good rule of thumb for you, as a receiver, might be to not let one defender cover multiple receivers because they are standing next to each other.

This actually may take some practice. We’re starting to develop a nice little core group for a potential tournament appearance soon and we may want to run some drills. We may also want to find some women for our team.

Kelly? Have you found employment yet? If not, come play with us. You know why Jeana couldn’t play with us yesterday? She fell off a bicycle this past weekend. We’re going to have to write clauses into our Buzzards’ contracts about dangerous activities during non-playing hours. Oh wait, I thought the playing hours were generally the dangerous activity period but I guess when you add tequila, anything can be hazardous. Bridgette? Are you still around? We need more women! Otherwise, I’m going to have to resort to asking Scott and Paul to come out in drag. Now word has it that Scott can do a mean lap dance but really…please don’t let it come to that.

Great turnout yesterday folks!

Trifecta - Weather prediction, Vegas omen, or the truck I ran into?

Yesterday was a day off for the Buzzards – We hit the weather trifecta of cold temps (feels like 28 according to weather.com), precipitation (mixture of rain/snow), and high winds (18 mph). Usually hoping that only one of those surfaces though we often play in two of the conditions, three just felt like too much to me yesterday morning as I was recovering from my near concussive state of the day before. So I didn’t even send an email out to see who might be interested.

Often times when I do this, in fact, most times I don’t, somebody else will pipe up and ask what’s going on and clamor for a game. There was no such clamoring yesterday. At about 9, Todd sent me a message “How are you feeling today?” I gave him the update, explained that I was trying to get some school work done, turned down his invitation for racquetball and just generally went back into hiding in my cube.

"Where's Swinny when I need him" was Todd's diappointed reply.

1030 – Kevin sends me a message wondering if he would be the 8th…that he might talk himself into playing. Kevin, by the way was who I dove into the day before sending my head into the hinterlands. He suggested I must have hit him in some more…uh…tissuey area…

“No” I assured him “Whatever I hit definitely was bone.”

And that’s almost all I remember from the game on Tuesday. It was one of Scott’s bi-monthly games which made for some good story telling. I don’t remember the whole thing but his wife’s friends, vodka, lap dances, and flatulence were involved. Oh yea, and Scott slapped Todd with the disc at one point on the field. Did we mention we miss you not being out there more often Thunder?

You know if you’re looking for a club that’s right for your needs you should really consider the Buzzards Point Ultimate Club. In a gesture of flexibility afforded to one of its most “seasoned” members, we moved the game to noon on Tuesday because Matt was driving into work (off leave?) for a medical appointment or some other such business and asked if we could delay the start time.

“Send me a text if we’re playing” said the voice mail.

“Game On ~ 1200” I sent to him after conferring with the other 7 confirmed players for the day. Oh, so we mentioned Matt was actually the 8th and I wouldn’t have been able to call the game without him? Still, we’re pretty darn lenient in this group. Don’t let it be a habit though because I really don’t like having to shuffle around all the soccer players and vie for shower space with them when we get back the same time they do in the locker room.

Anyway, hoping to get in a game today. Paul, who can’t seem to find our Facebook page is hoping to find a Vegas jackpot and won’t be with us. But let’s shake a bunch of feathers from the nest today. Hey Brian, I see you’re already in as I’m writing this morning, you’ve been ducking us the last couple weeks. Grab John and Doug and come on out today. Tom – I’m no doctor but I think your snowboarding injury is healed enough to come back out. Bridgette? Jeana? How about some of you who are in danger of having to take the driving test again if you don’t get back out soon….Tim? Mike? Bo? Fred?

Todd, Kevin, Matt, Phil, Jason – I’ll be counting on you guys if you’re here today. Should be a nice soft field for soft landings assuming I can avoid contact with other players today.

Pull!

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.

Buzzards go Cuckoo

There are new birds in the nest! Just when you thought it was safe for the Buzzards to stay in, the Cuckoos fly in.

By the way…as a small aside here. I have this blog as an RSS feed to my Facebook (just don't try to access this from work) page but it shows up as a note (which some of you only read it as) but it does not give any indication where it’s coming from (i.e. the blog is the source). So, I’m thinking about putting the hyperlink as the first line of each blog entry. Well, at least until somebody can figure out how to have Facebook credit the source and steer people to the BPUC page. I’m sure one of my friends (Kari, I'm thinking this might be you since you had Twitter updating your Facebook status from a train the other day) can help me with that but that supposes any of them actually read this.

I didn’t want to confuse any of the Buzzards who are reading this and wondering why I’m directing them to someplace they already are.

Anyway, back to the nest interlopers…

There are a couple of great quotes from R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that I’m reminded of this morning as Brian fills in for the deranged Jack Nicholson. I got out of my car this morning at about 5:15 (that’s a.m for you Facebook readers) to walk into the building. I’m not exactly sure what the temperature was then but right now, as I write this (8:40 a.m.), it’s climbed to a “balmy” 25. Problem is, the winds are blowing from the NW at 23 miles an hour with wind gusts up to 36! That makes it feel like 10 degrees which ain’t Chicago but it’s still darn cold.

So, I figure “Okay, I’ve got my Ultimate gear today but there really won’t be anybody who wants to play.” I had already heard from a couple leaving the pitch yesterday that stated “for the record, I’m not playing tomorrow.” Thanks Todd for the heads up. You’re to be commended on your relative sanity. Unfortunately, that cannot be said of all your teammates. This is where McMurphy, a.k.a. Brian comes in.

Email at 8:03 – He wants to know if I’m calling a game for today. Or as McMurphy would have said “Which one of you nuts has got any guts?” Here’s the thing, it’s sometimes easier to ignore or assuage one loose cannon with misplaced bravado. But see Brian’s smarter than he looks, he’s got 3 other nuts with him already committed to play when he emails me (Jeana, Doug & John…you better show). Did I mention John's first two games with us will have been yesterday and today? That’s half the game right there and my obligation is to only come up with 3 more players assuming I’ve been guilted into going out myself (this is not one of the club leader perks they tell you about when you take this job).

And see I already know there is at least another one out there because Paul came out in shorts yesterday! He told me something the other day about family ancestry being tied into some Nordic fishermen or some such crazy story. Meanwhile I’m left thinking “I must be crazy to be in a loony bin like this.”

Brian chirps in a few minutes ago with another co-conspirator in Dennis and all of a sudden we’re at 7 and I have this awful feeling we’re actually going out to play today. I’m envisioning discs cracking in pieces when and if they actually land after getting caught up in the wind.

I think I’d rather face Nurse Ratched “You know Billy, what worries me is how your mother is going to take this.”

“P-p-p-please d-d-d-don’t tell my m-m-m-mother.”

Crap! There’s a positive response from Brad, now I’m going to have to send out the “Game On” email. Have the clinic standby for frost bite patients after lunch. There’s 8 flying over this Buzzards’s nest!

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.

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!

pre Halloween & Election Day wear.

~ posted by Bill

It’s getting to be that time of year. What time of year you ask? The time of year when we walk around the wall of the loading dock on the way out to the pitch and that wind hits you and you say “Crap, it’s colder than I thought!” and wonder if you shouldn’t turn around and go back in.

Okay, it wasn’t quite that cold…but it’s getting there, quickly I suspect. And for the record, Brad and Jeana were the first to wear either tights and/or sweats out on the pitch. I thought wearing long leg wear before Halloween was like wearing white after Labor Day.

Some of you heard me ponder aloud a couple weeks ago, when we had 19 come out to play, “I wonder how many we’ll get when it’s in the 40’s and raining?” Well, I guess we’ll find out today. Not to lower anybody’s expectations but today has the potential for all the worst elements. Cold, it’s only supposed to feel like 40 around game time. Rain, chance of showers all day. Wind, and not just some little breeze like we had yesterday. It’s supposed to be 25 mph by the time we’d head out.

I bet we don’t see anybody on the volleyball court today. I overheard Larry yesterday complaining about frostbite on his feet from the cold sand. You ever try to serve a volleyball in high winds? You think throwing our disc is challenging? Alas, the netters can move indoors. We Buzzards? We’re resigned to the fact that if we want to continue to play our fine sport, that we’re going to have to play on days like this. Well, maybe not just like this. I prefer to only have to contend with one or two of the above mentioned elements rather than all 3 on the same day. Especially since I don’t have my tights with me today. However, I do have my gloves and if we get enough people to play, I suspect I’ll be wearing those.

But I actually think the chances of getting enough for a game today are slimmer than those of Governor Palin passing the CLEP for American Government and finding out that even if she were to somehow find herself on the winning ticket next week (also a long shot at this point), she would not be in charge of the Senate as Vice President.

So, it’s a good thing we had a game yesterday. Despite the cooler temperatures and breeze, it was a good day on the pitch. Where’s Rodney when you need him? You would not believe the example of Spirit of the Game attitude we had yesterday. But perhaps it’s gone too far when you stop to help up a defender who likely just fouled you and you miss your own player cutting into the end zone for a score…okay it didn’t happen like that Brian but next time you can just leave him on the ground until after you throw it and not risk it.

I checked with Kevin and he said most of the leagues he’s played in don’t actually require you to stop play unless it’s a puncture wound and you see blood spurting in the air. Speaking of league play. I heard Jeanna asking to play “the cup” yesterday after Paul kept getting past her or reaching above her for completions. So there’s your homework Buzzards. Find out what “the cup” is. I learned this strategy last winter when I played in CUDO. I’m not convinced it doesn’t actually take a higher degree of athleticism but maybe that’s just because I was nursing that pulled groin last year.

Thanks to everyone else that got out yesterday. Pull out the cold weather gear.

This is October???

-posted by Bill

Water bottles strewn under the tree, shirts soaking through with sweat, sun beating down on the field and enough players to play substitutes with almost everybody glad for the chance to catch their breath in the high humidity.

Sounds like August eh? Well here we are in the third week of October and the temperatures soaring back into the 80’s and in our first post-Columbus day game, we drew 17 players out today. I thought we only had 11 on the way out and then a whole new team of 6 showed up. We decided to play 8’s with a sub on one side but it was still pretty crowded.

Welcome out to Jeana. Not sure if it’s your first time out with the Buzzards or not (it’s obviously not your first time out throwing a disc) but it’s certainly the first blog entry since you’ve been coming out. Thunder (or Scooter if you like)….or Thunder Scooter (you could be a new Mario Kart bike)…anyway he was wondering if the Blog had somehow been on the negative side of the DOW collapse last week and been shut down.

Fear not, even without a government bailout, the blog is back! You know what I’d like to hear addressed in tonight’s debate? If you are starting play from your end zone line do you like 4 cutters at the front of your stack or do you prefer to have 3 runners going deep from the back? Do you like your dump throw to your strong hand or weak hand side? And do you prefer a domestic, import, or microbrew draft after a tough match on the pitch? I mean do we have to hear about the economy every day? Do we still have soldiers and sailors in Iraq? You’d barely know it by perusing the partisan media of CNN and Fox New respectively.

You want the Buzzard’s new energy plan? We put activity-charged battery cells on our cleats during the match and you store up energy by how much you run and then you plug that onto your car battery on the way home and that’s how far you get to drive that afternoon. That’s bad news of course for me since I’m used to driving to Richmond or Charlottesville and probably barely run enough to get me across the 14th street bridge but you know maybe I could buy somebody else’s energy credits? Say Will, Phil, or Bob’s today.

Welcome back out also to Bridgette & Mike today. And Bridgette gets extra points for agreeing to take the pinnies home to wash them. She admitted to finding the breaking point to her femininity… "I can stand the stench anymore”. Hmmmm, I didn’t tell her that when Todd takes them home he uses his special gardenia-scented fabric softner.

Great game today everybody. Thanks for the awesome turnout!