Captain's Log: 91206

Captain's Log: 91206

The Chad Larson Experience travelled over to the Windy City for The Chicago Heavyweight Championships, which possibly has the worst name of all the tournaments we play in. Or maybe I'm just too used to it being named Tune-Ups. It is the "heavyweight" tournament that has the best competition we see before regionals and nationals, though, so it is great to get four or five good games in a tournament instead of the usual one or two.

The format was different than last year and had us playing a shorter, or more regular tournament schedule. Four games on Saturday and three on Sunday. The competition was possibly the best the tournament has ever had and there was a mini-nationals feel to the whole weekend. There were many double-game point finishes, upsets, playbacks, and no team left the tournament undefeated.

Saturday play had us matching up against Hot Dish, Third Coast, Six Trained Monkeys, and the winner of the C-pool, if we managed to win our pool.

CLX v. Hot Dish--This game was 8-0 at half I believe, and finished 15-4 or 5 or 6. Not much to say here except that we started the tournament off right. A couple of ugly marathon points in the second half, but nothing to worry about.

CLX v. Third Coast--We went down 0-2 to start the game, then I think we took it to 6-2 and cruised to another relatively easy victory, certainly a much better opponent than Hot Dish, though. Jake told me this team has some old Machine players on it and stressed in their tryouts that players needed the "competitive fire" or something. Their sideline demeanor was very laid back and joking, but on field they made multiple erroneous or bad calls. The game was not very fun to play in because they couldn't really challenge us and the stopped the game so often. I'm not sure what it is about Chicago coed teams this year, but they all have a style of play that leaves me feeling either disgusted, bored, disappointed, or just plain weary. I don't dislike Third Coast as a team or hold a grudge against them, but they could definitely benefit from more practice on things like throwing and catching the disc than making an abundance of calls.

CLX v. Six Trained Monkeys--We go up 7-2 to start and are cruising to victory when they go on a short run to make it 8-6 before half. I think the game is tied at 8s and 9s before we break the cup to make it 10-9. We make them turn on the next possession and are able to score, plus the cap had already gone off. It was 11-9 in a game to 12. We score the next one to win. I was a little annoyed after the Third Coast game and maybe I brought some of that feeling into this game, but I felt these guys made some bogus calls, too. Not a lot, but some that just really annoyed me. Well, we win the pool and now face Ice in the crossover game.

CLX v. Ice--A big rival from the year before and were playing for the number one seed in bracket play. Ice is missing some guys and only has three women, though. Their women play tough, as do their men, but it is evident that they don't have enough energy left to put up a fight against us. The game stays close until 2s or 3s, but then we pull away and the more our lead grows, it seemed the less inclined they were to try to battle back. I thought we won 15-5, but the score reporter said 13-5. Either way, a victory and the top seed heading in Sunday.

Sunday play:

CLX v. Mr. Briefcase--We were not very good about getting to the fields on time and I knew this would be a problem when everybody wanted to stop for breakfast. I HATE stopping for breakfast on tournament mornings. The result was that five minutes before the game started we had 10 people on our sideline, only about six of which who had thrown, and fewer that had done any sort of cardio warmup. In contrast, Briefcase had many players throwing and getting a feel for the wind that was blowing straight across the fields. I could tell by who was present that this was not the Briefcase team we had played in the past and it was a team that would give us a very hard challenge. We run a drill with most players jumping in cold and the drill looks bad with many throwaways, air bounced discs, drops, etc. I'm worried.

We start the game on defense and zone and they clearly seem ready for it. Probably because we always have to talk about it for so long that the opponent should know its coming. They do turn and we eventually score. They score the next point to tie it at 1-1. I think the next point is one of the ugliest, as we try multiple downfield hucks that just get caught up in the air and defended. At this point, we are already playing very frantic like the game is almost over and we have to score. I think we fall behind 3-1. A disturbing trend makes itself known. The Briefcase men, not all of them, but a fair majority, are deciding to foul on the marks right away to prevent quick swings or hucks. Tony, a leader on their team, says "just call the foul if you think you're fouled". Well, it's not as easy as that. First, I strongly feel some Briefcase players are fouling on purpose, clearly against the rules of ultimate. Were not playing basketball here, we don't have referees or foul limits. You are on your own to make sure your own play is within the rules of the game. Unfortunately, with no third-party authorities on the field, there is absolutely nothing you can do in the game of ultimate to stop something like this from happening. This kind of stuff has eroded the men's game to an unwatchable mess of intentional fouls and calls. Second, calling fouls on that kind of stuff actually hurts our team. Each foul call gives a fresh stall count (if uncontested, and I don't believe these guys would even have done that), but it also stops each players cut on the field and it takes away the advantages that the offensive players have created through cutting.

Well, I end up saying some things to their sideline that I regret, some that made me look really stupid, and others that were just plain true. I won't sort them out for you here. We end up tying the game at 5s, I think, then 6s I know for sure. Cap goes on and it's a game to 8. They score and go up 7-6. We respond on offense to make it 7-7. Two passes later, they are hucking it to my guy and he scores to win. It was a great catch, unfortunately, I didn't see it. I was busy missing the defense, I guess. I feel very disappointed that I didn't get it. I thought I had it read correctly, had my line of attack planned, I jumped at the right time, and then just must have missed it or not jumped high enough. I just remember slightly touching the disc, landing knowing I didn't knock it away like I thought, having Tony land on top of me and somehow knowing he had the disc without seeing it, and then seeing their sideline storming over towards us. I was able to congratule Tony before he was mobbed. I have a lot of respect for him as a player, but there were some things at this tournament that I did not like, and there will be no respect for his team if they choose to play the way they did here.

I've come to the realization that maybe it was just me making a big deal about this game, but I'm not sure. I know I take offense to this kind of stuff a lot more than others and that I certainly respond to it much quicker and in a much different way than others do. Not always the right way either. To Briefcase's credit, the last five or six points of the game featured far fewer calls, but I was still bumped around as a thrower, I guess I just accepted the fact that it was going to happen and there was nothing to do about it.

All right, enough. Time to move on.

CLX v. Puppet Regime--Puppet had the three seed coming into the tournament and had only lost two games, both at double game point. They seemed less than thrilled to be playing for fifth place, though, and we handled them fairly easy. Our zone offense played well and the defense got us the disc back plenty of times. I think we win 12-8 in a game that was never really contested.

CLX v. Ice--They didn't want to play. We did. We agreed to go 5/2, but then at the request of the ladies, moved to 4/3 on offense for the rest of the game. Their ladies didn't appreciate it and I felt bad about doing it after saying we'd play 5/2, but it was what the ladies wanted. Well, we go down 1-4 and never recover. Maybe tied it up once, but I think we lose by three points, finishing in sixth place for the tournament.

Notes:

-CLX was on it's way to its most dominating season ever, with a roster that looked nothing like previous years. In a way, we've never looked better. If we don't lose to Briefcase, I'm fairly confident that we win the tournament, or at least make it to finals to play Slow White. If we win regionals, I'd still say this is the best year put together by CLX, but we'd have to do that, otherwise 2004 may still be our best year.

-Three pickups this tournament: Karl, Joy, and John McNaughton. All played well. It was fun to have Karl on the sidelines again. John is a 19-year old phenom who played on the Junior Worlds Australia team and will play with a coed team at 2006 Club Worlds in Perth. He has slick lefty throws, a good sense of field positioning and cutting, and better defense than most players his age. I can't imagine how good he could be at say 22 or 23 if he is able to keep improving and learning.

-Our offense had troubles in the wind on Sunday. We didn't realize that cuts had to be modified when the conditions change and that our stack couldn't start so far downfield. We also continued to line up without dumps even in windy conditions and that caused some first throw turnovers. We frequently allowed the disc to get trapped on a sideline and that forced some turnovers, too. Mostly, our offense should have modified into a side-to-side, dump-swing, conservative style in the wind, which it did when we had enough handlers out there. When we only had a handler or two, though, the rest of the players seemed to be trying to make vertical cuts that were easily handled by the defense and the handlers just played catch for awhile before the disc was turned over. Losing Solarz to an injury early in the game was a big loss, too. We obviously had enough throws and plays to win the game, but it could have gone a lot better and we could have made it a lot easier on ourselves.

-As for individual players, JohnnyMac played great for us, Mike and Jon played their parts as well as always, Sheldahl had some good defenses in the cup, Xtina, Gibbs, and Lana all made some incredible grabs on offense, Stu jumped into handling positions well, Tai played her heart out on defense, Joe and BJ were laying out like mad, and the whole team played well. I know we finished in sixth place, but our performance was not disappointing, in fact, over the span of the entire tournament, I believe it was the best of the year, we just happened to lose one shortened game (which didn't each reach halftime) by one point.

-Sectionals are already this weekend down in Columbia. CLX should win, but Ice will be there. They will be shorthanded, but now they know they can win shorthanded. Still, CLX should be victrious and can then begin arguing for the #1 seed at regionals.