Hammer Time

posted by Bill

I’ve been a little remiss in keeping up with the blog lately. School has started again and I find myself working on papers and reading on my “free time”.

Great game yesterday though as the weather broke a little bit and we had some nice temperatures. One reason I know I haven’t been as current on this is that my welcome (back) to Buzzard JasonK is coming about 2 weeks into his return to playing. Many of you didn’t know Jason but he played out here when I first started playing 3-4 years ago. Mallard and Annette are probably the only other ones who may remember. Want to also welcome out another new player yesterday…Will. He was trying to catch his wind early in the game but had a few good catches and we hope to see you back out soon.

Apparently M.C. Rodney has found a new secret weapon as he was responsible for the bulk of excellent hammer throws I saw yesterday. On one in particular I heard Brian chastising himself on the way back up the field about not playing good enough D but we quickly noted that Rodney had dropped that throw right in the lap of Tom cutting across the end zone and the defense was actually pretty good.

Todd and Phil were both back out on the field yesterday after short leaves of absence; Todd nursing an injury and Phil nursing a short-handed office while Thunder is trolling a fishing line somewhere in Florida.

We scheduled the game early yesterday so Frank could make it out and then he left us early anyway… ? What’s up with that amigo? Word has it, this is the Shadow’s last week of play with us as he heads off to grad school….another degree on the Coast Guard’s dime? Sweet deal!

Will try and get up some new pictures on the Flickr account soon so keep checking there. Have a bunch that Hollan took a couple week’s ago. And I will try and stay a little more current here. Oh, I’m up here for a guest Friday appearance so hopefully we’ll get a run today. Temps are going back up and it will be hot but let’s go. Pull!

Readying the ark...

Submitted by Bill

Long as I remember
The rain been comin' down.
Clouds of myst'ry pourin'
Confusion on the ground.
Good men through the ages,
Tryin' to find the sun;
And I wonder, Still I wonder,
Who'll stop the rain.

You missed a great day yesterday if you didn’t come out. Sunny, mild and 6 on 5. We switched it up and played east to west on the north field yesterday. And it was fairly evenly matched 5 on 5 early in the game until Eric showed up and threw the balance of power over to the gold team. They worked a short passing game with surprising precision with Eric, Phil & Frank handling and finding Bob & Hollan with early-week speed in the end zones. Jorge back out for his 2nd game took a page from the MattC style guide for Ultimate, wore the bright yellow shirt and didn’t need a pinnie and then roamed the middle of the field making some nice grabs.

I liked my chances with green yesterday as any time I can have Todd & Eli throwing to me I know the chance are usually pretty good for getting some scores. Unfortunately, Thunder, Rodney & I couldn’t run under enough of them (re: we don’t run much to begin with). I think we each had our chances in the end zones and Todd and I managed to hook up on one nice floater early in the game but we just didn’t seem to get it quite in sync all game long.

Of course most of our offensive problems stemmed from lazy defense. Repeat after me everybody…”When you’re a man short, you have to come off the thrower and mark the cutter”… we all know this in our heads but transmitting that message to our feet was the problem yesterday and we got caught in a lot of short field circumstances where we were marking the thrower near the end zone and they just had to find the open cutter.

Well, it would be a really soggy game today. I’ve got my gear and I’m pondering sending out the email but the forecast has it coming down all day and it’s not exactly a warm rain….anybody else out there feeling ducky? Mallard? Where the heck are you?

Quacking from Mallard

Submitted by Lindsay

Yes, I do remain on the list for nostaligia, but also in hopes that the day will come again when I have the opportunity to show the fng's (specifically Phil) how the game is played. (Bill's editorial comments...This shows how long Lindsay has been gone that he would still consider Phil an "fng". I really can't explain these unique feelings between these two.)

In answer though to your historical question, I started playing in the spring of 2002, and played almost everyday until the winter of 2003, which is when I blew out my knee on the field. This was during the BPUFC period, which would have been more accurately referred to as the Buzzards Point Ultimate Fighing Club. We prided ourselves on having three rules: 1) try not to run with the disc, 2) try to score; and 3) there are no rules. Seriously. During the time that I played I witnessed one blown knee, three broken finger, a broken nose, two broken ribs, innumberable black eyes, and bruises that covered entire body parts. Jamming and shoving was an integral part of the game. Girls like Phil probably would not have done well in that game. Instead of end zones we played with street hockey nets and a goalie. The goalie typically wore safety glasses and padded gloves. Water breaks were not permitted.

It's a better game now, except when Phil plays.

Penniless, no Kash, just broke…

submitted by Bill (recently ressurected from school work)...

No, I’m not describing the current economic woes in the Chief Buzzard’s life…even as gas skyrocketed above $3.30 a gallon which you can really feel when you drive 250 miles to and from work a day. Have I mentioned that Bush (Arbusto Energy, Spectrum, Harken Energy, big Oil) + Cheney (Haliburton) = Exxon/Mobil Corporation record profits? Not, that I’m bitter or anything.

Actually, it’s the Buzzards Point Ultimate Club that was “penniless” on Friday. Shadow copped to having separated the pinnies from the rest of the gear the game before. Actually, well intentioned, as BPUC and Ultimate, in general, instills the kind of camaraderie and esprit de corps that makes everybody want to share in the responsibility and function of this well-oiled machine…but in the future gang, let's keep the pinnies with the gear (they are washed and cleaned for today).

Okay, maybe that was a bit melodramatic….In fact, the well oiled machine could use a some new parts. I mentioned no Kash. Friday we said goodbye to one of our regulars over the last year, Kash. Well, actually Friday was his last day but we haven’t seen him in about 3 weeks as he’s been job hunting presumably. A couple more of our regulars or quasi-regulars, Travis, MattC, & Sniper will all be on their way out soon as well. Couple that with Mallard’s move into the Witness Relocation Program and a solid part of the BPUC core, over the last year is or will be soon, gone.

What that means for the rest of you is that you need to get your best recruitment lines out now. I’m up for any and all ideas…cookouts, disc raffles, cube to cube visits, flyers, dunk tanks, skills fair…but we need some more players. We currently have about 50 names on the email distribution list but less than 20 of those have been out over the last few months

Okay, starting now, any current Buzzard who brings somebody new out that plays at least 3 times with us will get their own brand new 175 gram disc for themselves and the newbie.

The play the last few weeks should not scare anybody off. We look like we’ve been stumbling out of hibernation for the most part. There have been flashes of brilliance here and there buried under a lot of mediocrity. I saw Scott go head first last week in his first ever layout. Swinny and Todd continue to run most of us into the ground…by the way did we mention that Swinny won our Buzzard NCAA tournament bracket? Phil had his "best" and "3rd best" days ever...at least that's what he told his 2nd and 4th best friends...

There have also been a bunch of nagging little injuries lately. Please remember to stretch before and after as you need and act your age….no, I mean your real age with stress levels, cholesterol, blood pressure, and diet all taken into account.

Have some cool weather today but should be nice and then warming up through the week. No game on Thursday…there is a Papal visit planned for Nationals Stadium and much as I’d like to wander over and get a little holy water thrown on some of our Ultimate gear, I’ve been encouraged to stay away from HQ that day, as I’m sure some of you have as well.

Play nice and practice that next new throw…you know, hammer, off the head, bouncing through 5 arms, score!

Pull!

The Mud Bowl

~ first guest blog account...from Rodney.

Friday, January 11th, 2008

Once the solicitation email went out on a rainy Friday immediate responses were received to my surprise. We had Visor (which came in handy with the rain), Mallard, Phil, Kash, Rodney, Scott, Matt, and Travis.

The walk to the field was what I consider to be the longest walk yet. I figured by the time we got to the field the rain would stop and all would be well, but I think it only got harder.

The field was set and the teams were good to go. Play commenced and so did the mud! I must say that the field was worse than I thought it would be. 5 out of the 8 of us had cleats and the poor 3 that didn’t were all over the place. Travis and Mallard were slipping and sliding like they were trying out for the Olympic Figure Skating team.

Phil threw a short pass to Mallard about 6 inches behind his impressive reach and there went Mallard sliding on his shoes like a barefoot water skier would on a sunny day in FL. Then as impressive was his skiing so was the crash on to the muddy field.

Needless to say when the game was finished so was the field. The players had more mud than clean spots and not a dry piece of clothing existed.

All in all it was a great game. A rainy, muddy day on the Ultimate field is better than a dry good day in the cube!!!!

Today’s Forecast: Around 40 degrees, light breeze at 8 mph, steady rain and mud…. perfect. Game on!

"...all sorts of Frank's parts..."

…that was the explanation from one of the Buzzards as to why he wasn’t able to catch a particular pass in the end zone today. Apparently there was just a “little” contact. And that was what much of the rest of the game was like as well. Just a lot of incidental (or not so) contact here and there. I’m not sure whether that’s attributed to the soggy field or the return to play after a couple weeks off.

Never the less, the weather was fantastic, we had 5 on 5, and weren’t in the cube so life was good.

Mandolin & Boom Boom took one for the team and took 3 hour lunches so that we could have the big game and they could also meet their subsequent dodgeball commitment. Matt D, did you recruit any new Ultimate players while you were over there or was it just a poor excuse not to be throwing discs today?

By the way, I got positive hits on APBs put out on Mallard & Bob. Between rants about Baton Rouge and wishing he was a non-rate again I culled from my conversation with Lindsay that he’d been traveling some and his current employer wasn’t exactly being sympathetic to his Ultimate schedule. Bob is awaiting signature on a contract so he can get paid to be back in the building. Hopefully we’ll see those two members of the “Ensure” team soon.

Elliot appeared out of nowhere yesterday and it was good to have him back on the field. My addiction to the long throw was fed by a dubious team matchup yesterday that had Frank aka “Endzone” always deep whenever I turned with the disc as well as Brook and Todd who kept tempting me enough with long runs that I just kept giving in…

The gold team had the runners yesterday with Travis & Mandolin but it didn’t translate into a lot of deep hucks for points. Two points of observation here; even if you have two guys that out run everybody else on the field, somebody has to be able to make that throw and if Kash is throwing long, he can’t always be running long. Worked out for good math for the green team if we could have only stopped turning it over on our first and second passes.

Some other observations…if we want to start playing like an actual organized team at some point (clearly hypothetical at this juncture)…Boom Boom, you only have one pivot foot and as soon as you lift that 2nd foot you have traveled, never mind lifting the first one again and then the second one again.

Phil, you could probably have called a couple fouls on me yesterday when I was marking you. Given time for reflection I don’t think I gave you proper “disc space” one diameter of the disc away. However if this is solely caused by movement of the thrower, then it is not considered a marking foul.

Wings – In answer to your question a while back, I think it is generally accepted that the marker should be within 3 meters (that’s 9 feet for you non-Canadians or roughly two Mandolin lengths if he was laid out in front of you) before a Stall count can begin. Of course, if you’re playing with a 1-player advantage I think anybody should be able to initiate the count from anywhere.

As far as offensive formations go…the spread offense may work well in college football but until we get to start playing a Big Ten defense in Ultimate we might consider packing in our formations a bit from the start of play in a vertical line rather than horizontally across the field or just cluster scattered all over the field with Endzone 60 yards away taking away one receiver all together.

Today’s Forecast: Around 50 degrees, light breeze at 5 mph…perfect. Game on!

'ol man Winter

Okay, winter is here! Well, not officially maybe. That will be this coming Saturday, the 22nd. But the weather conditions over the last week have been winter. I had a winter league game on Sunday in Charlottesville. Read the game recaps of the Dark Grey vs Green where we finally won our first game.

The wind carried over into Monday and since I had forgotten the clean pinnies and was still trying to recover from a wicked case of face chap wind burn, we bagged the game here at McNair. Then yesterday, the winds abated and the lure of having fresh photography up on the blog, we managed to get 10 players to come out. Even though it was in the low 30’s, there was little wind and sunshine and wound up being a great game. Anybody else notice that field is starting to get chewed up though? Even with cleats, traction was tough yesterday as it was pretty wet, especially in the middle near the north end zone.

Many thanks to Bob for coming out and photographing us. As I was going back through the pics on the digital camera I was laughing to myself. Bob found out what my girlfriend, Mary experienced a couple weeks ago trying to photography Ultimate…it’s difficult to follow the action closely and get heads, feet, and the disc in the shot at the same time. Bob finally went with the strategy to zoom all the way out and hope I could edit them on the computer. I’ll let you be the judge of the results. I will be posting those soon...as soon as I can edit them, I'll put them up.

Frank was back on the field yesterday…well on parts of the field…usually the end zones. Bryan kept turning around after a turnover to use one of his patented sprints up the field, only to see Frank already drifting around the end zone waiting for the long huck. While green had a couple long scores here and there with that strategy, the gold team of Mallard, Rodney, Travis, Conrad, & Phil were a bit more consistent early on and worked the disc up nicely with short passes back and forth.

Green finally began to find some rhythm late in the game with some short cuts and a loose attempt at running some from a stack (hey, if you’re learning the terms, we might as well use them). And Wings made a stellar vertical leap (unfortunately not caught on film) for the game’s final point.

My personal favorite yesterday was the stretch of two deflected scores off of Rodney yesterday where I managed to bounce the disc off of one of his hands and into the waiting arms of Frank and Bryan. Todd was moving around a bit slowly yesterday complaining of something having to do with a tackle football game he had played over the weekend…note to Buzzards…stay away from tackle football, or as Bob can testify to, any football at all really. We can get hurt easily enough out here, we don’t need you increasing the risk factor playing other sports (as if there really are any other sports).

See you all out there today. Special game time of 1100 to accommodate one of our regulars who claims to have a meeting with mandatory attendance at 1300.

Winter Fashions

The wind subsided a bit today which was nice. But it was pretty chilly out and Buzzards were ready for it. By the way, winter Ultimate makes for lousy fashion. You could see the all the necessary winter articles in the locker room, jeans, sweats, tights, watch caps, thermals, a down jacket , and a thong….a what? Yea, a pretty little silver thing that we wanted to all sign with a Sharpie and send back to its rightful owner…assuming of course the person who found it in their clothes wasn’t the rightful owner which brings to mind a bad visual and I’m feeling my lunch make an encore appearance…Also, there was some discussion as to whether or not all our signatures would fit, and well….we decided this was a conversation better had in the Impala.

So we trekked out to play in our winter garb. Football was also on today and at least 3 of our players had defected to play that. Hey Bob, how you liking that decision now? Twang!

We let Kash set up the field today and it may have been as wide as it was long which made for some interesting “field awareness” moments… “Hey Visor! You’re out of the end zone!”…Phil, just throw your arms out in front of you and jump…it’s called “laying out” and it won’t hurt on this nice tall grass before the field freezes over for the winter so do it….Now!!!!!

Finally somebody besides me got hit in the head. MattC aka Coach Brackett (very obscure movie reference) took the disc upside the bridge of his nose…minor blood…actually no more than was on the pennie that I had on which apparently served as the bandage to Kevin’s fingernail removal last week.

Seeing our even numbers, a new player appeared out of the trees…okay, he says it was a trailer over on McNair and Eliot (?) joined us for his first game with the Buzzards and made sure we again were playing with odd numbers. Embarrassingly enough, it didn’t really matter for a while and the 4 player team held its own with the 5 player team while Mallard cursed himself every other time down the field

We finished up in time to walk by the football game still in progress…and got to see Bob aka Defector….bounce one to his receiver…hmmmm, that doesn’t work in this sport either does it Bob? Enjoy your 3-day weekend and we’ll expect you to heal up and be back on the Ultimate field next week.

Pull!

Blown Assignment

Unbelievable game on Tuesday. We went out to secure the field with a nice response of 10 players and were met by an Army NCO informing us the field would be off limits today due to helo ops. All this despite Lindsay’s charming overtures to dissuade him. He suggested we go play down on an alleged field next to the water.

After changing fields 37 times we landed down on the far SW lot of McNair. We actually played with one of the older discs in our collection because we were concerned we might throw one in the water. By the time we started we actually had 11 (seems like we can’t play without an odd number of late).

Now for those of you who have played Ultimate through a full calendar year you know that there are many weather elements that can make this game challenging. It started to get cold a couple weeks ago and we realized that frozen hands and discs aren’t always a good combination, wet fields and rain can sometimes be an adjustment though after playing on the cement field all summer that has generally been a welcome condition. And for those of you who haven’t played in the snow yet….well, just wait.

But the most challenging condition of all for Ultimate players is the wind. Tuesday we had 30 mile and hour winds gusting over on the point where we were playing and it made for at times comical attempts at pass completions (even for the Buzzards normally comical). “Low, flat, short” was the mantra some of the more knowledgeable of our players were repeating right before Brook or Matt C would flip the nose up or I would try to throw another long one.

“Sixth time is a charm, right?”

Heck, one time Wings thought he had the wind pattern down and threw a long to me. Our initial worry was that we’d finally struck a car parked along the field but that was quickly dismissed and we were more concerned that it might hit an unsuspecting football player on the field next to us.

We actually managed to score several times and other than not being able to work up a sweat because the wind was drying us off as fast as we could perspire…

Anyway, kudos to all of you who braved the windiest of days that we’ve played in this season. Please see the award list on the sidebar as you have survived and thrived in the 25 mph + day that scares off the amateurs. I think we had 3 decent dings today also, 2 ankles and a hand.

By the way, I miss one day of work and my inbox explodes with emails Subject “Ultimate” but having to do with extra rooms in garages disguised as Impalas, fat arses, whining that 8 really is not enough, and suggesting that Mallard may be the next marketing strategy for birth control pills. How ‘bout we just play a little disc?

Game on!

Green & Gold Addendum

U. of Vermont…home of the Chill & Ruckus the men’s & women’s Ultimate teams.

There’s a little school called Coastal Carolina University in Conway, SC. Their colors are “Coastal Green & Bronze” which is close to ours but we could all play on the same field and easily be able to tell the difference. They do have an Ultimate Club though. And the school mascot is a “Chanticleer” (that’s rooster to you and me) which may have more in common with a Buzzard then a Sea Wolf.

There are also the Baylor Bears which have the same nickname as our Coast Guard Academy but share colors with the Buzzards.

Great game this afternoon! We had 13 players and would have had an official 14 if we hadn’t been stood up by “Altar” (that’s as in ‘left at’), aka Kelly. She tried to throw me a bone by sending me an email (from her TREO 3 minutes after start time) saying her “plans had changed” and by giving me another name to add to the distribution list. And all Ican say there is Jason you’re working from a “guilty by association” already.

We had to start late today because of a baby shower. Yes, you read that right. Mallard where is your friend who thinks we’re a bunch of mid-life testosterone overdosed wannabes? We actually delayed our start time so that the lovely couple of MacKash could attend the shower, which they had to sneak out of early anyway.

Nutrition hint of the day: Don’t eat two chili dogs before game time. The normally gazelle-like Travis was trying to shake off the effects of Hormel & Oscar Meyer all game.

Welcome back off the DL to Annette. Okay, so she wasn’t completely in game shape. I last heard/saw her saying “I got him” as Rodney jogged up the side of the field, and then I turned to see him 20 yards behind her in the end zone. This is the same Rodney who is also coming off a leg injury and is not, how shall we say this, the swiftest of Buzzards. Kash even had to shake off a week and half’s absence as the first two discs thrown his way bounced off his hands.

Still, for the 2nd day in a row, the team with a 1-player disadvantage probably got the best of the game. Upper 60’s, partly sunny, soft field…it was paradisiacal from an Ultimate standpoint today no matter what side of the score you wound up on. And like the “Great Train Missing Duck” is fond of saying “A bad day of Ultimate is still better than a good day in the cube”.

By the way, when did “Taters” stop becoming an anatomical description and start being the “Winged One’s” new nickname?

"De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da"

166. That’s how many years the green team had on their 4-man team today that seemed to still manage to out run the 5-man gold team. That’s almost as old as The Police whom I saw a couple weeks ago. Granted, they’re only a 3-man team but judging from the shape Sting looked to be in, I think he could have outrun us on the field today too.

The game was not nearly as mismatched as Mallard made it out to be in the locker room during the post-game smack-fest. The wet field made for some nice sliding and probably helped us avoid some collisions today.

Apparently the rosters on the sidebar need to be updated some. The grapevine shared that Kevin “No D” is not MIA but actually also on the disabled list from another Ultimate leg injury. Sniper was back from the honeymoon and can now be taken off the disabled list. Rumor also has it that Kashyap actually had to work today during the game and couldn’t play. That’s extremely hard to imagine and the Buzzard’s Scribe is currently trying to find a secondary source to confirm that unlikely story.

We’ve had some ID issues lately. Friday, Eric who actually comes over here from Arlington, got here to discover he had forgotten his and couldn’t get on base. The remaining players were forced to go 3-3. Well done lads.

Today, Matt, claimed to have no ID at all. So let me get this straight, a Department of Homeland Security employee can get into his workplace and log onto his computer with no ID but can’t get to the Ultimate Field? Something is wrong with that picture to be sure. Anybody else go over to Jemal regularly though. I do have an ID and sometimes can’t get on and off the elevators.

It’s great weather these days folks. Get on out there and play. Bob said he saw a tournament going on in Williamsburg this weekend and I’m getting ready to start play in the Charlottesville Winter League. This is the year round sport…Check with “Billie Jean” aka Rodney and he can hook you up with a good glove recommendation.

Just Beat It!

Photo Day

After two days of having Lidsay hijack the email distribution list, I returned to call the game yesterday. "Mallard" was conspicuously absent. We quickly got response from 8 players (half of whom were named Matt) and the game was on. I also tried to lure more out with the promise of a "surprise".

With apologies to anybody who thought it was going to be wings, beer, Hooter's girls, or me making some lifestyle announcement, it was merely the return of Annette to the playing field. Nursing her bum calf, I asked her to come out and take some pictures with my new digital camera so that we'd actually have something to put up on the blog.

Well, she did more than that, 95 pics and 1 dead battery later, I had more than I wanted. Last night I waded through the mass in my photo publishing software and put some up on the web in a couple social networking sites (lest I miss the opportunity to impress my kids or the campus denizens I hang out with) and then on to our new blog.

Back row LtoR: Jason, Conrad, Matt D, Matt C, Justin, Frank, Tag, & "Wings"
Front row LtoR: Bill, Annette, Kashyap

We had a spirited game of 6 on 5 for a while yesterday with the short-handed team actually getting the best of the game for a while. About half way through the extra body proved to be an advantage after all and the "darks" began to find some scores. What was the final score? Who knows, we never seem to keep track. Here some of the action though:




Kashyap getting ready to pull while Matt "Wings" & Justin look on. Kash must be looking for some belly button lint to give the disc that added wobble in flight.









Where in the world is the disc coming from? Kash, Tag, Matt P, Jason, & Matt C all await its descent from orbit.






Bill flicks one past Jason to Matt D.