Captain's Log: 82106

Captain's Log: 82106

The Chad Larson Experience played in the 18th Cooler Classic, hosted at the Delafield Polo Fields near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. CLX has been very successful at the Classic, winning the tournament as an unknown against Blah in 2003, and becoming champions again against Meth in 2005. Though CLX has been able to win a fair amount of tournaments each year since 2003, a successful title defense has never been performed. We went riding dirty into Cooler with the same team we had at Madison, plus Papa Troyer, Darren, Abby, Natalie, and half a Derscheid.

Our pool showed games against Meddling Kids, Optimus Lime, and GLUE. The game against Meddling Kids was not very exciting, a 13-5 win, or something near that. Then, a 2 hour layover until the next game. The next game was more of the same as we easily handled Optimus Lime. This team was especially lame to play because they called a lot of stuff. They are not very good, but want to be competitive and have made the mistake of practicing abundant call-making instead of disc throwing skills and overall endurance and athleticism. It annoys me when teams think they are good because they have matching jersies, run some sweet drills, and overstrategize everything. In a romantic swashbuckling sort of way I hope CLX is the antithesis of all that I think is lame about the game of ultimate today. Oh yeah, we zoned GLUE a lot and won that game fairly fast. Then, had a wait around a little while to beat The New World Love Clan 13-2. Played a lot of zone in this game too, which was nice. We were able to spread playing time very generously, and it seemed that everyone had a good time.

Sunday games were going to be harder, as we knew our schedule before we left the fields. Our first game was against Munquoi, a pickup team from Colorado. These guys performed surprisingly well last year before losing to CLX in the semis and were playing well again this year. We went up 2-0, but then folded. There were many dropped discs and careless throws, with a liberal helping of uninspired defense. We quickly fell behind and never regained the lead. Munquoi led 6-5 and was very near making it 7-5 for half, when a woman on their team became injured on a swing pass. She suffered a severe concussion and was taken off the field by ambulance. Munquoi decided to forfeit the game to CLX and we advanced to play Mr. Briefcase.

I was a little worried that we wouldn't survive the Briefcase game based on the way we had been playing in the first game. Those worries were rapidly taken care of as we cruised out to a lead that we would never give up. I think we were ahead by two or three points the entire game and ended up winning 13-7. Again, we played a lot of zone, but weren't afraid to switch to man defense. We were aided by the fact that they did not help themselves early in the game by dropping a couple of scores and throwing some errant passes.

Finals: The Chad Larson Experience vs. Flaming Moe (Part III)
CLX and Flaming Moe met in the finals for the third consecutive tournament. In Madison, CLX claimed a 13-10 victory over Moe, though it was not decisive by any means. This time, I believe Moe was nearly fully rostered and CLX was about the same. I don't remember much of the first half except that I believe CLX got a break on the first point, maybe had a two-point lead at one time, and led at halftime 7-6. After halftime, CLX got the upwinder to lead 8-6. A score on the next point made it 9-6. Moe gets 3 of their own, I believe, and the game is tied at 9s. Then 10s. We make it 11-10 and send in the defense. They are able to get a stop and put up a big huck to Drew who hauls it in to make it 12-10. We leave to team in to finish the job, but Moe scores to make it 12-11. We call timeout to rest one of the guys. Up to that point, CLX had only played 7 guys, I believe, to Moe's 14? We needed to score upwind to win the game outright, otherwise overtime. Moe had been doing a great job of pulling downwind and trapping us in the endzone, but I figured if we could get the disc moving and out of the endzone, we'd score. It took three passes to get the disc safely out of the danger zone, and then it was three or four more passes and we advanced it sixty more yards for the win. With the victory, we should have sealed up the top seed for CHCs, something that maybe we don't want! It would be nice to get some better competition in pool play. A higher placement than Moe at CHCs should get us the top seed at regionals, too, so we'll see how it goes.

-I felt good all weekend. A little before Madison, I started to work a little harder on getting into playing form. I've started running sprints and 5Ks during the week. I don't really ever work on my throwing, but I felt that I was more confident than I have been all season with the disc at Cooler. I felt almost like my college handler self at times, and though it certainly wasn't perfect, I felt I had my best throwing tournament of the year. For the tournament, I felt I played some of my best defense, too. I really started to get a grip on the middle-middle position in the zone, and played decent man defense in the finals. The plan was to guard handlers when I was in on defense, but Becky wouldn't stop running around, so I switched to Wade for a point (that was stupid), and ended up guarding Bjorn a couple of times. Otherwise, I think I played all O points. The conditioning I've been doing certainly payed off and by CHCs I hope to be ready to play a lot of hard teams and keep a consistent level of play all weekend.

-CLX now says goodbye to Drew until November, when he'll be playing Worlds with us. I don't know why we're so lucky to get the pickups that we do, but we are. It's ridiculous to think about some of the CLX players that have just fallen into our laps over the years. Luke and Camille especially come to mind. Drew was a great cup defender, an excellent long (I think I saw him misread one disc in three tournaments), and good thrower (show us the hammer!). His style of ultimate and his personal traits are what make him CLX material, though. It was easy to tell within an hour of meeting him in Detroit that he'd be a natural fit for CLX.

-Taiwo played some inspired defense over the last two games on Sunday and made some incredible grabs on both days. She certainly strives for perfection and let's it bother her too much when she isn't (but who is!?), so sometimes she's so baller and won't even acknowledge it. Face it, Tai. Joe Brisbois played some of the best defense I've seen him play all summer, too. He made some huge plays early in the Briefcase game that set the tone for what was to come. I don't think he has scored on until the Moe game, either.

-Our zone offense was great. We've never talked strategy about it and we've got a lot of people from different teams playing for CLX, but we just fall into positions and get the job done. I was definitely pleased in that department.

-The zone defense was very good all weekend long, too. We were using it against teams that weren't equipped with enough throwers, but we were able to score very quickly by zoning and not letting up. I think Saturday we took half at 7-0 or 7-1 three of the four games. Against Briefcase some weaknesses were exposed, but it was still sufficient. We haven't zoned Moe much, but it hasn't really been necessary yet. We considered zoning near halftime, but instead clamped down hard on their dump handlers and started having even better success frustrating Moe's offense.

-Trent played well over the weekend, adding his specialty in the cup when we zone. He also is our resident strategist against Moe and pointed out some key issues to us during the game. Some people just watch the game, but Trent really studies the opponent and is able to give us feedback. His services on and off the field will be important in Perth.

-Our first cuts were better than usual, with Shawn, Lana, and RSheldahl especially lending their talents there. The attempt to maim Rachel was unsuccessful, though, as two or three times she was clobbered by poachers in the Briefcase game.

-The deep game was not especially "on" during Sunday play. We had a lot of discs sailing out of bounds and over heads on the 45+ yard hucks, and had to settle for 20-35 yards scores. We were able to show that we aren't just a hucking team, though, as we scored a lot of points short, especially in the finals.

-CHCs better be good. Cooler just ended up being a slightly pumped up version of the last couple of tournaments. I wouldn't mind playing Moe again, but give us some competition earlier! I checked on the tournament page and there are some decent teams in attendence, but what kind of teams they'll have is unknown. Also, as the #1 seed, we'd play the 8, 11, and 14, I think. The teams only go about 9 deep, so we'd still have two games we should win without too much exertion and another one that is tough, but certainly winnable. Have to wait until the crossover to play a team like Six Trained Monkeys or Slow White

Signing off.