Captain's Log: 61206

Captain's Log: 61206

Played at Poultry Days in Versailles, Ohio on Saturday and Sunday. The past two years The Chad Larson Experience has gone 4-0 on Saturday to make the A-division bracket on Sunday. We've also always lost our first game on Sunday. I'll spare you the drama and just say that we did the exact same thing again.

Our Saturday games seemed harder than usual. Twice we were losing 4-1 or so, but both times we went on 8-1 or 9-0 scoring runs to take a commanding lead and win the game. Our closest game on Saturday was 13-8, I believe, against an Indiana alumni team. Saturday's weather included rain showers, cold temperatures, on and off breezes, and by the end of the day just before the sun set, the clouds cleared and it was beautiful if only for about fifteen minutes. Our play ranged from nationals level coed team, mostly during our 9-0 runs in those two games, down to sectional level play. Sometimes it is hard to play hard when you know you are going to beat your opponent. On the same note, though, you shouldn't sometimes turn it over 9 or 10 times a point against that same opponent. My favorite point to watch on Saturday was a short one: Joe runs the length of the field, lays out and D's the first throw by the offense, then Amy picks it up and throws it to him for the score. Total time to get the D and score the point, including the hangtime on the pull: maybe 15 seconds.

On Sunday we played Team USDA in the pre-quarters. I'm not sure how similar they were to last year's Slim Chickens who we lost to in the pre-quarters. I think they had some of the same players, but the only one I can say for sure is Pat Hard, who some consider the best male coed player in the country. We start off on defense and Xtina gets an incredible layout D. Then we have a first throw turn. They score. We tie the game at 1's, 2's, 3's, 4's, and 5's. No defensive breaks in the first 11 points and they lead 6-5. I don't think we have any other huge D's in the first half and there are very few turnovers. We got broken on the last point of the half on a dump miscommunication and they take half 7-5. Well, there are no more defensive breaks in the second half and we lose 13-11. Both offenses played fairly stingy. I'd say they had a much easier time breaking our marks and getting open hucks, while we were a little more frantic and had to work a little harder for our scores. We had some golden break opportunites that just didn't come through. Had the disc twice to tie it at 12's and force double-game point, but they played great long defense.

Overall, it felt like neither team was doing enough to win the game outright, but both teams were playing well enough to win. It came down to which team would make that extra turnover, which happened to be us. There is always that "we should have/could have won that game feeling", but they were the better team and it's hard to say that we should have/could have won when we didn't get any defensive scores.

On the up side, Team USDA made finals and one of their players wrote this on RSD: "Tremendous competition all weekend from lots of great teams who were all having a lot of fun. As a tip of the hat to coed club teams, our prequarter matchup against CLX was our toughest win, which came on double-game point."

Hmmm...some thoughts

-Julian is a vital guy in our offense and it would hurt not to have him this year. While Jon and Mike are good handlers, Julian has a very calm demeanor while playing and is not easily distracted.

-The offense was kind of like it always is, which is not very good when it has to start from a standstill, but very good when it's off to the races after a turnover or off the pull. I really like the little Stanford O play to get the disc off the line from a standstill, maybe someday we'll have to (gasp!) talk strategy. For the most part, I think a lot of our offensive woes could be cleared up by more well-timed dumps and swings. We still have a tendency to jam it up the strong-side line and only look for dumps and swings when we get into trouble.

-Joe was out of shape after being in Europe for a month and his hand was messed up and his knee was swollen, yet he was still bating Pat Hard on defense and got one incredible layout D on him and a couple others on him and other players. Joe, and Christina too, play the defense that CLX used to and I hope they can provide a spark to the team to remember our defensive roots. Besides some great runs on Saturday, I would say our defense was just average. Sunday, USDA made us look a little silly by breaking us at will and always seeming to be open deep, but it is early season. A lot of our players didn't have the college season in the spring and are just warming back up to ultimate.

-Needed: handlers? We have some recruits in the works, but to make another run at nationals CLX needs to fill the handler spots with some clutch throwers and decision makers. I feel like we've got 3-5 total male and females that fill that spot, but for a title shot I think we need more like 6-8. We'll have to see if Julian can play, if Ross decides to play again, if we can recruit another Kansas dude. I'm eager to see how Sarah Solarz plays with us at Aquatennial. I'm also eager to see how Stu fits in with the team as the season rolls on.

The next CLX tournament isn't until the MUDI (Minneapolis Ultimate Disc Invitation or something) in the middle of July. The competition should be good. There is a rumor of two SubZero/Bait coed teams playing in the tournament. Flaming Moe will be there. Madhaus may be there if they are still together. I don't know if Mr. Briefcase or Ice (Method) will be there, hopefully they will. Also, Winnipeg's Chaos might be there. I can't imagine how good the tournament could be if all those teams showed up. Imagine 4 of the eight of those teams mentioned NOT making semis.

Practice in an hour. I needs to run me some sprints. Oh, and somehow strengthen my back muscles, they hurt too much almost all the time.