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.

"...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!