O Boy

My offensive woes are over.

Northwest Plains Sectionals was this past weekend. On Saturday, I was perfect. I think I played a little over half of the D points, which amounted to probably about 26. Every pass I threw was caught and I caught every throw to me, including one I probably shouldn't have caught -- a laser shot behind me that I caught between my middle and ring fingers, no thumb. I threw 7 goals, including 3 in our game against my Hopkins kids and 2 hucks. I caught 2 goals. At most, my line was scored on 5 times, which meant I was involved in the scoring 9 of 21 chances.

On D, there were really too few opportunities to do anything. I don't recall a single BIG D by anyone all weekend, but that's because we were putting enough pressure on marks and cutters that we were forcing errors rather than making big Ds. I had just 3 Ds. As usual, solid on the dump all day. My one defensive highlight was a huck deflection about 10 yards from the thrower, close enough to make me worry for a second that my hand might be broken. My guy only cut deep once all day and I ended up hacking the kid they call Hopkins on Hot Dish pretty badly. And altogether, my downfield D was pretty solid. My guy barely ever got the disc and when he did it was usually on a break throw, after which I never allowed an easy continuation throw. I was scored on once by a Norgaard hammer to Matty Spillum.

Sunday on O was a bit different. We had just one game, the Championship. I threw 3 passes that fell incomplete. One was a horrible horrible huck that should not have been thrown in the first place. I had no mark and Baker was open by 20 yards, but there was still a woman and her defender 20 yards behind him and the wind had picked up since I had warmed up. Another was something I talked briefly with Mike about. I saw him start his cut and I threw to him, but he had already started cutting away and he never even thought the throw was to him. I'll take 75% or more credit on that one. The other was a swing to a male handler who was jogging directly at a female defender. The female poach came off for an easy D. At the time, it looked like one step closer to the disc or just a reach out to catch it and it would have been completed, but from watching the video last night, it looked much worse, although the video was shot with a poor perspective of the play. While I thought this was about 25% my fault, I'll take 75% based on the footage.

The closest I got to a D in the finals came on a tough mark that forced a bad huck. It might have been the comical highlight of the weekend, too, since there were people on the field telling the thrower to call the foul when there was literally no contact. The thrower even said something to the effect of "I wanted to call a foul, but I didn't expect he wasn't going to foul me."

So, 2.5 turns on the weekend and plenty of scoring. On Saturday, I'd even say I was probably the most productive and efficient offensive player, with maybe Jeanine as an exception. Every time I turned around she was catching a goal. I'll bet she caught 10+.

Our team? Well, we just plain dominated. Our O line was perfect on 23 of 23 chances. Our D, while we weren't laying out left and right, was forcing errors all over the place. The score reporter says Salsa Police scored 7 on us, but my guess is that no one in that game would know the difference or probably even argue if it read 13-3.

Team D, I noticed, was exceptional with Schwa, Mike, Baker, and Lou for the men. Our women almost always outmatch our opponent's women. With Schwa and Mike down field and me and Baker guarding handlers, everyone on the field has to work to get open AND to throw (if they do manage to get the disc). A good combination. I really feel like it's a nearly guaranteed turn when Baker and I are covering the handlers and a weak thrower gets the disc or even if a decent thrower lets the count get above 6.

Altogether, our only weakness heading in to the UPA series was O line conversion and this weekend was a huge testament to its improvement -- and we've still not gotten back our 2 arguably most valuable O line players.

Up next: Regionals talk.