Top 10 Continued

For all of you who were on the edge of your seat to find out the games I considered the top 5 ultimate games I've been a part of, here are 3 more.

5. The Chad Larson Experience vs. Drive Through Liquor @ 2004 Club Nationals Quarters
Kind of like how the Beatles had 5 or 6 albums in top 20 of the top 100 all-time, so 2004 Club Nationals has a number of games in my top 5 of the top 10. Our game against DTL was not epic by any means, but it was a great hard fought battle between two very similar teams. To this day, I think CLX has a 2-6 record against DTL and the win in quarters was the first victory over them. I remember Friday afternoon when Saturday's brackets were posted and some DTL guys looked at the schedule, saw they were playing CLX, rejoiced, then ran to tell their teammates the good news. Well, a whole group of CLXers were standing right there and noticed their enthusiasm at what they considered a free pass into semis. We started quick, like we had to going up 5-2 or 5-3, taking half 8-5 or 8-6. Our whole game plan was to tire out Brian Rupert, the best player on DTL. I don't know if it worked or not, but whoever was guarded by him simply ran all over the field when we had the disc, keeping him away from getting D's and trying to tire him out at the same time. I can't remember many extraordinary plays from this game, but CLX played the 2004 style layout defense and eventually won 15-11, rolling our way into the semis, man.

4. The Chad Larson Experience vs. Blah @ 2003 Cooler Classic Finals
This game was a lot of fun. There were about 100 people watching the entire finals and there was a fair amount of drama. CLX had beaten Blah in pool play the day before, but Blah had a roster of 45 or something and 10 of them were showing up on Sunday. Blah had a great group of guys that made huge plays like Mike D, Nick F, Dirk D, along with a great group of handlers and some Notre Dame college kids that could huck. Their women, while not as athletic as ours played fairly solid. We start the game by taking an 11-2 lead. Yes, 11-2. We score two Callahans with Darren grabbing one and Rachel S stealing one to take half. Then, the meltdown occurs. Blah fights back to 11-10. We make a couple of bad mistakes, but aren't too worried. We keep playing incredible defense and rally back to win 15-12. This game is up high on the list because it marked a turning point for CLX. It was our first big tournament and we beat all the central region had to offer. Our goal was to make nationals in our first year and by beating Blah twice at this tournament, we proved to ourselves that we had what it took to get there.

3. The Chad Larson Experience vs. Bad Larry @ 2004 Club Nationals Thursday Pool Play
CLX went into nationals feeling a little easy, a little nervous, and it showed in our first game against B+. We lost a close one 17-16. If we lost to Bad Larry, we'd have win out on Friday to make quarters and finish in the top 8. Basically, if we lose, we're probably going to finish in the 9-16 range. Bad Larry, like DTL, matched up very well against us. They had Mike D from Blah, a number of athletic dudes, and some great female handlers. We tried a number of defenses and marks and zones to stop them, but we just kept trading points with them. I think we were tied at almost every score from 1-1 to 16-16. Once or twice a team had a 2-point lead. This game was great for me because I felt like I could catch anything, and almost did. I caught 10 of the 17 goals in this game and felt that it was my best performance of nationals and one of the best of my ultimate career. We ended up winning 17-16 and gaining a lot of confidence about what we could do at nationals. Bad Larry was another team that CLX had never beat before and to beat them at nationals on double game point was amazing.