Merry Christmas

Just want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas! Remember what I encouraged you to do with your relatives at that holiday family gathering? Well, I was able to get my son outside when we went to my mom's this past weekend for a little disc tossing. It was pretty breezy up in the Shenandoah valley but we were able to get some running in and some good throws and catches.

Andy lets one fly.







Tracking one down.

Bill & Andy trying to figure out the wind.

Bill working on his flick.

Bill practicing with a great backdrop.

Bill grabs one over his head.

Showing a little vertical, despite the big meal but it's not looking good for this catch.

Andy watching his follow through.

'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.

A Scribe's Diatribe or 'The Straw (re: Mitchell report) that broke the camel's back'

When was the last time you heard an Ultimate player’s name in the news for steroid use, perjury, dog fighting, spousal abuse, DUI, drug abuse, sexual harassment, etc? Oh, you haven’t? Do you wonder why? Well, it would be nice to think that it’s because those of us in the sport of Ultimate sit on a morally higher ground and conduct ourselves in a more ethical manner. And there could be some argument, with our “Spirit of the Game” self-governance, offered as evidence, that this is true on some level. But the real reason is that we don’t make bazillions of dollars a year playing a child’s game. All those things occur throughout society but they don’t make the front page headlines because our collective earning power doesn’t make a ripple in the pond of multi-billionaire, ego-maniacal, far-removed from “the common man” professional sports figures.

For those of us decrying the state of professional, and in many instances even collegiate level, sports as having eroded to the level of social cesspool, I offer this New Year’s resolution challenge…STOP WATCHING! Heck, get a head start at your holiday celebrations over the next few weeks. Instead of falling into the cosmic forces that seem to separate family gatherings into the 3 spheres of kid’s table, kitchen help, or TV sports watchers dare to pull your cousins, nieces, nephews and even Grandmom Mildred into the back yard and throw the disc around. Or pull out somebody’s game of Cranium, Would You Rather, UNO, or even Twister, a nice bottle (or eight depending on your family size) of a local Virginia wine…the 2003 Keswick Vineyards Chardonnay or 2001 Barbousville Winery Octagon, that’s white & red respectively for you “Frisbee” players, and stop watching! Do something more constructive with your time, reclaim your search for fun, sportsmanship, fair competition & general well-being. Stop making the rich richer while complaining that the "out of work veteran" panhandler should find a job and stop holding a sign in the same parking lot each day...the one of the Starbucks we're pulling into to plunk down $3.50 on a gingerbread latte...okay, I'm rambling. ESPN has sent me over the edge today.

I’m in the planning stages of my “year-in-review” entry for this forum. Please forgive me if it doesn’t completely have something to do with the sport of Ultimate but the company of players I keep is so “Renaissance” in its collective spectrum of interests and stories that it’s likely I’ll ramble off on many tangents and you’ll wonder what in the world you’ve clicked to.

If any of you have any submissions, feel free to send those along for my consideration.

In the meantime, looks like we’ll have a decent day for a game today for those of you who have come to work. Thanks for keeping the games going this week in my departure. Just want to give a hearty (or squawky) Buzzard shout out to Rob. This was his last week of internship at CGHQ and he has been a faithful participant since his introduction to the BPUC. You’ll notice he was both, a wind & snow ribbon recipient. Good luck Rob.

So, what’s happened this week Buzzards? No interesting stories? I find that hard to believe. Chime in and find yourself published.

See you on the field today.

Greetings from Richmond

I’m taking a little time off of work to spread a some holiday cheer. Really too bad since the weather this week has seemed more like spring than December. Great opportunity for some disc flying.

I did have my first winter league game though in the Charlottesville Ultimate Disc Organization. I realized there is a much greater corporate knowledge in this league then I am used to playing with. A little…okay, a lot more emphasis on actually calling fouls. I was called for a foul in the end zone on one play and then was asked if I was “contesting” it. Apparently that would have made a difference of where the disc was put back in play. And I saw traveling called 3 times in our game. Hmmmm, good thing for some of our guys we don’t police that call very closely.

There were a lot of plays run from stacks, and there were not a lot of opportunities to slack off on defense without just getting beat silly and having the disdainful looks of all your teammates who have shelled out their hard earned money to play.

I did get a cool long sleeved t-shirt and made a couple decent throws and catches but alas, my Dark Grey team fell to the Navy Blue team after a close halftime score of 8-6. We wound up losing 17-9. Thought you might enjoy some shots of the “Chief Buzzard” in action…

Bill sporting the new Winter League T and tights?

Running hard to make a play on D in the end zone.

Bill & Brian close down a play on D - check out the concentration.

Wow! Look at that vertical leap...Look out Todd & Phil!

And he's playing some D?

A little too much in this case, as I was called for a foul.

White Out!

High winds, snow…what’s next? Well, according to those who get paid to prognosticate weather, it’s supposed to be back in the 50’s by this weekend. So my league game this Sunday will be back in shorts. But the last two days have been tights weather. Unless of course you're from upstate NY or Minnesota and like to play in shorts in this weather.

Our first snow game of the year came earlier than most people probably expected and it didn’t look like we were going to get enough to play until Bryan made his whole office come by providing clothes for everyone. Nice work B. Jason & Jas, great to have you all out there, please come back.

So, I’ve broken out my Barenaked Holidays CD this morning and I’m feeling very festive. Bob, I even brought the camera so you can take pictures today if you can come back out. By the way KUDOS to Bob. Sidelined with the pulled hamstring, he has been out in street clothes twice this week watching the game and lending moral support. With his long dress coat, he looks like Vince Lombardi or Tom Landry manning the sidelines and watching his team. How we doing coach?

Yesterday actually was not as hard to play in as the high winds of the past couple weeks. At least the disc flew the direction you generally threw it. There were some visibility issues (we switched to the bright yellow disc which helped) and some stopping challenges. For those of you who missed the fun, come out today. You won’t get to play in the snow falling but there should still be plenty on the ground.

I’m seeing there is “Unscheduled Leave” for Federal employees today…don’t get me started on my thoughts about this. There is maybe 2 inches of snow out there and the streets are very driveable but I’m sure people will be calling in en masse. The policy actually states “for those who cannot report for work”. “Cannot” and “don’t want to” are defined a little bit differently in this Scribe’s book.

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!