The Phoenix rises...

Okay, despite what the blog entries would indicate, the Buzzards did survive the Summer Corporate League Season and actually represented very well as we finished in the Final 4. We also survived the scorching weather for a couple weeks after that and have made it to this week, which for disc players, has been close to idyllic. Temperatures in the 70s and 80’s, slight breeze, and low humidity.

We had a great game of 7 on 7 yesterday. One of the few big games we’ve had here at work over the last month. And we had a good game on Monday as well. We aren’t going to miss out on this weather. I want to first of all welcome out some of the new players this summer that I have been remiss in mentioning in the blog perhaps. Want to give a big Buzzard welcome to Dan, Eve, Joe, MattM, Ron, & Pat. Great to have you all as additions to our roster. Dan comes to us as a referral from MattC who also came back to us on his return to HQ as a civilian. Matt your usual “finders fee” is in the mail. Eve comes to us from academia, she’s a local professor of International Studies (I think that’s what you told me) and a “neighbor” of Brad. We won’t hold that against you. Joe is a former player here at HQ back for a 2nd tour. He remembers the days of playing with the soccer goals, and uh, let’s say when this club used to play the “contact version” of Ultimate. He recognized the name of Lindsay and for those of you who remember the Mallard, that is really all you need to know about Joe. To his credit, be blended into this evolved state of disc here seamlessly and I didn’t seem him foul anybody. MattM is a disc player transferring in this summer and a welcome addition to the growing stable of handlers here. And finally Ron joins us admitting his experience has been in some bastardized version of Ultimate/Frisbee football probably resembling more what Joe remembers being played here. Pat is our newest addition, just joining us yesterday for the first time, dragged out by Paul. Let me just say that this is two summers running when we have perhaps added more talent than we have lost which of course is the essential key to this club’s survival.

That is not to say that we haven’t missed the players that have left us. And so as our way of saying so and saying thank you we just want to give a shout out to Phill, Scott, Hollan, Will, Mark, MattP, Swinny, Travis, Rodney, JasonK, JasonN, George, JQ, Alec, Leroy, Kashyap, and hell, even Lindsay. I’m sure I’m missing some folks. Please forgive me and if you’re actually reading this, drop me a line and we’ll get you special mention and maybe even dig up an old pic to post.

Back to yesterday’s game of 7’s. Great to have Eli back out with us. It had been a while since we played with this many people and the early part of the game looked like it as both teams struggled to find spacing. So when you’re having trouble finding horizontal space you sometimes look vertical and it was good to have Dan on the blue team yesterday as he made a couple nice grabs up above the heads of some defenders. Todd, for the orange also had the idea of getting vertical a couple times but then I wondered what Erick was whispering at him as he’d run toward Todd just as he was jumping and Todd didn’t seem convinced his legs weren’t going to be taken out from under him and short-armed both throws. But then he finally found some space on the edges and made a couple of really nice leading throws on cuts across the end zones to Kevin and Dennis where both times a defender was pretty close on the heels.

The rest of the crew yesterday was Bob, Steve, Matt, Paul, Pat, Bridgette, Ron, and yours truly. It was great weather and a great game. A couple of promotions to celebrate – Bridgette & Todd, congrats! Bridgette says hers may hamper her Ultimate playing availability so I’m not sure that’s a great thing for us but it’s good for her. Todd’s thankful the upcoming wedding to another adopted Summer Buzzard, Reagan now has another income source. Reagan, if you’re reading, I’d certainly try and get an extension on the honeymoon with this as consideration.

For the new folks playing and reading this via the blog, please check us out on Facebook. I can’t actually add the hyperlink from here at work since our LAN police have that site blocked. Use your iPhone though if you can’t wait until you get home.

Great to be back up here. Will try to be better about keeping you amused, bemused, confused or just used. I only want you for your flick.

Pull!

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!

Welcome to Autumn

- posted by Bill

This run of 14+ games is starting to spoil me. When was the last time we got stood up by two players and didn’t miss them? Okay, well when I say “didn’t miss” I meant, we still had plenty to play, not that we didn’t want you guys there…

Listen Todd, I know it was your first day back after about a month of leave but in case you need a small reminder I found the perfect bumper sticker for you…

We had another great game on the first day of Autumn which ironically seemed much warmer and more humid then our last days of summer last week.

Want to welcome out Tim2 (look you already get a nickname since we have an established Tim), and welcome back to George and to Kelly who made a surprise visit and who obviously is in the spirit of the above bumper sticker, giving up the job search for Ultimate today.

We had some nice collisions today. Brook and I had a rude intersection after I had tapped a high pass into the air and that tried to recalibrate the landing. Rodney took out Scott on a slide tackle in the end zone and Brian clobbered Bob on one pass along the sideline (though apparently not hard enough as Bob caught it anyway).

In fact, with that grab and another one in which Bob outran Phil half way up the field and all the way across the end zone for a score took some credibility away from the “old stiff and sore” routine that Bob would like for you to believe. Jason found the words the more common belief among his fellow Buzzards, “Bob’s full of it! I’m not buying that bum ankle story anymore. He’s outrunning everybody.”

Will and Mark also joined us but somebody forgot to explain another Ultimate rule to them…if you’re going to be late, you don’t get to stretch. Again, it’s nice to have so many people playing right now that you can start without everybody that RSVPs.

By the way, anybody think that if the BPUC can increase our debt to income ratio a little higher that we’d qualify for the current Federal buyout of all things private. You suppose this is what Alexander Hamilton had in mind when he established the Department of Treasury? You suppose anybody will challenge Ben Bernanke to a duel?

New Math and Avian head shops...

- posted by Bill

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So you move inside at some point?”

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

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

“Oh? Where did you come here from?”

“Maine”

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

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

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

Farewell KellyG!

Tuesday was Kelly’s last game with us as she is leaving HQ. It was a good game to leave on. We had 15 people out there, overcast, not too hot, and NO SOFTBALL!

It’s nearing the end of transfer season and the Buzzards have done well. We certainly miss Swinny, Travis, MattC, Frank, JasonN and others but we have reloaded well. A bunch of new people have joined us this summer…I don’t know whether or not they’ve been here and just not playing or have transferred in but welcome to Bo, Mike, Dan, BobH, JasonK (back for a 2nd stint), George, Brian, Erik, Fred, Will, Eric, Paul, & Mark. Adding at least a dozen new players and only losing a handful works out to a really nice surplus as evidenced by the 8 on 7 game we had Tuesday.

Anybody else notice when you play with that many that you don’t get a lot of cross the field passes completed through traffic. I ripped one loose the other day to realize MattP was standing between me and where I wanted the disc to go. I saw Thunder and Kevin also finding several passes unintentionally coming there way.

Ultimate gets a good cross over from other sports as we have drawn from Flag Football, Soccer, Volleyball & Softball and whenever you get players from those other sports you make some prejudgments as to their strengths based on that. The football guys tend to have good field vision, the volleyball folks know how to position and jump, the softball players adjust well to discs in the air, and the soccer folks run and run some more. Then in Ultimate those skills start melding together and you find guys like Fred on Tuesday…a soccer guy if I’m not mistaken, finding his grip all of a sudden and pulling down everything thrown to him on Tuesday.

With that many people we, on the green team at least, attempted to run a few things from the stack and that worked with varying degrees of success. One of the things we did seem to do pretty well was to utilize the dump pass. In fact one of the new guys, Mike, used it quite well on at least 4 occasions that I noted. Never mind Rodney’s whining Mike. Anytime he doesn’t get the disc on a play he thought he should have he gets a bit agitated. We’ve learned to just ignore him. If some of you want to see some fairly simple diagrams of stack plays as well as some other useful basic info, check out the U of Oregon’s Ultimate Basics page.

Looks like another great weather day for us today. Hope to have a good game.

Pull!

Diagonal pitch, crazy 8's

~ posted by Bill

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Incoming!

posted by Bill

It’s been a while since I’ve updated here. Took some much needed leave and it appears that not too many games were played while I was gone.

We’ve had two games this week though. Monday’s was my first in a couple weeks and it was hot and humid. Hollan and I were both returning from about a week and a half off and having similar vacation hangover effects. I think mine were a bit worse though as I wandered off the field with about 15 minutes to go, feeling dizzy and like somebody had popped me in the microwave. After pouring half a bottle of water over my head I started to cool down some and find my orientation but I didn’t go back in the game and Hollan took the opportunity to even up the teams and sat out with me as we watched the rest of the Buzzards struggle to score “last 3”. By the way, welcome out to new Buzzard, Fred. You picked a hot day for your first game and held your own, congratulations.

Yesterday’s game seemed much better weather-wise. We did have to fit ourselves geometrically between 3 softball games going on around us and in their true army fashion, made us feel a couple times like we were taking artillery fire.

Another new Buzzard, Bo, joined us yesterday. Two new players able to run in one week. This doesn’t bode well for some of us…uh…more acceleration-challenged Buzzards. Mark had his G.I. Joe Kung Fu grip working yesterday as he made several great grabs. We started out with 9 and after green scored the first 3 I flopped myself over to gold. Brook wandered out a bit tardy though and we were able to run 5 on 5 the rest of the game.

There was some nice defense being played yesterday. Todd and I each traded jump discs in the end zone, Kevin made a couple nice plays showing off some surprising vertical, and Bo reached around me on a couple of occasions to break up passes I though I had position on. Good to have Will and Dan back out with us as well.

By the way everybody, apparently Hollan has a new camera he’s planning on bringing out soon. We haven’t gotten a summer team picture yet (sorry Bryan, should have before you left) so we need one of those. And Bob, you may want to consider whether you want to be with or without goatee…we’ll give you time to grow it back if you want.

Be good Buzzards and keep inviting people out. We’ve gotten a lot of great new participation this transfer season.

Dog Days

posted by Bill

Having been out of the office Monday and Tuesday and missing those two scorcher games and then not getting enough on Wednesday, yesterday was my first game of the week..

Got an email from Phil asking who was playing and I realized we had kind of an eclectic group yesterday. Welcome by the way to Mark, another new Buzzard this week. He made the aforementioned Monday/Tuesday games and still came out yesterday so that bodes well for continuing to see him out there. He and Will were our “new guy” representatives but both have pretty good running ability (which is to say, they can) and Will has these Go-Go Gadget arms that I found tough to D on the couple of times that I got stuck with that bad switch.

In fact, we had trouble, in general on defense yesterday on the green team and Leroy remarked that we might need to do something with our match ups. I think it may have had more to do with our offense actually as we gave up several deep turnovers not being able to complete 2 passes in a row. But Dennis did throw several great deep passes early and that led gold to their early lead. Will, Frank & Phil all hauled in throws from Dennis.

Meanwhile, Mark, Leroy, Tom & I kind of fuddled around trying to find some offensive rhythm that seemed more limited than internet access in Beijing. And with humidity hovering around 105% and even a light rain during part of the game we also seemed to have some problems hanging onto the disc.

We have several Buzzards out nursing injuries and other things I think. I thought we might see Thunder back this week but his doctor put the kibosh on that idea and he remains on the DL though he was well enough to vacation down in Florida last week. Todd is still out, MattP decided to rest from the Ultimate field but did so with his newfound love…sand volleyball. Should we feel cheated on? Carolyn has apparently left us and our thoughts are with her, Annette is still in and out with her treatment, Hollan has been on limited play duty and so we’ve been missing many of the regulars.

Speaking of missing regulars, heard from Bryan yesterday up in Milwaukee and he said to pass along a hello to everybody. Apparently he was headed out to play some floor hockey. Hope he remembers that floors are generally harder than fields and that layouts may not be a good maneuver for that sport. Rodney has abandoned us for a few weeks TDY and will be gone for good before too long. Frank is also on his farewell tour.

It’s great to be getting all the new faces out. We’ve more than replenished the transferring out folks from this summer…at least in number. Look forward to seeing more of you all out and bring friends and co-workers. This weather will have to break before too long and the fall is a great time to play out here, you’ll love it. Get in condition now and you’ll be running all over the place by then.

New discs were ordered yesterday and we should have those by sometime next week. Hope everybody has a great weekend and gets a chance to get out and enjoy themselves some outside.