Boozetown Invinationals

Van Buren Boys have recorded their first victory of the season. You can stop holding your breath now.

First game, point trading to 10-10 against GOAT, cap goes on. We pull, GOAT scores the next two. We had so many drops in this game. And our non-existent offensive scheme was running like we practiced it: not at all. At 11-10, GOAT threw at least 7 passes that were high and floaty that we failed to knock down and were caught by someone other than the intended receiver. Nonetheless, they scored the upwinder. We lost. Maybe it's funny to say, but I think the game was just a few mistakes away from us winning by 5 or 6.

The second game belonged to Truck Stop. Our offense was still firing on no cylinders and we had even more drops and plenty of throw-aways. It felt like we were in reach most of this game, but it just wasn't happening. 15-11 loss.

Third, we had Zebra Muscles. Right away, we determined that they weren't capable of a good forehand huck so we slapped on a forehand force and protected the deep. Forcing a lot of throws, they'd eventually turn it. Perhaps not the greatest individual defensive effort, but good defensive scheming resulted in a historic win (the first) for the VBB. 15-2.

Play-in game to the quarters, we had HOV. These guys had a bit of a chip on their shoulder. They were losing and spiking on us. They also once picked up the bricked pull, walked about 2/3 of the way to the brick, then sprinted the last 1/3 away from the mark. We later comically did a similar thing and our team laughed while they asked us, "it's not illegal, why are you whining about it?" I guess I'm kind of glad they thought we were whining instead of what we were actually doing: namely, mocking them. We didn't take this game seriously at all (and we probably should have, because I'm sure it could have gotten out of hand), but we wound up winning 15-10 anyway.

Quarters, we got Boston. Their O line turned it 0 times. Their D line probably turned it around 5 times. 15-4. We barely put up a fight. I hope that teaches us to warm up better.

Fifth place semis, we had Mephisto. Again, we weren't really taking them all that seriously, but we managed to come up with a couple breaks early on and took half 8-6 when we started to realize how good these guys were. In fact, in the second half, their O line had 0 turns. Our O line had a few, but still managed to convert on 7 of 7 chances to win the game for us, 15-12.

Then all but 9 of our players left for the airport. Good thing we didn't make the finals! Pike wanted a game. Badly. We agreed to a game to 13. With about the junkiest zone I think we'll play all season, we forced turns early on and jumped out to a 3-1 lead. We gave back a few breaks, though, and had just a 1 point lead at half. Kev assigned me to the deep in the zone because, as he put it, if I remember correctly, I am so good in the air and so quick on fast breaks. He'll probably talk a lot about it in his blog. Anyway, we ran out of steam after being ahead 9-8, allowing a 4 point run, then rattling off a couple before losing 13-11.

My personal play roller coastered. At the first practice I attended, given the competition, I thought I was drafted way too high for our scrimmage, but my captain revealed that between a certain other blogging VBB and me, "Lou just makes sick catches, so I had to pick Lou." The thing you've got to get comfortable with on the VBB, is that everyone exaggerates a million times an hour. Well, everyone but me, I haven't exaggerated in a thousand years. But the point is, I guess I've made an early impression that I make some cool looking catches. It was really just one catch past Dave "when is Tai's next birthday" Karsten on a floaty pass to another handler. Regardless, I guess I've never felt that to be big part of my arsenal. Nevertheless, I did make a neat catch really early in the first game as a result of my poor upline cut. And yet another tournament has gone by without a drop. Last season I had 0 drops and I think the same is true of 2005, but my 2005 blog records were lost when I moved out from my old internet and into the new google, so I can't say that with 100% certainty.

My two other big streaks came to an end, though. I got handblocked in our game against GOAT and threw a callahan in our game against Boston. I can't recall the last time I got handblocked and I can't recall ever throwing a callahan. For the callahan, I made a weak attempt to stop the roll on a high pull, the disc made like an olympic vaulting gymnast and stuck the landing: Zero bounce. And zero bounce equalled zero stopping, but not before I touched the disc ever so insiginifantly. It rolled out the back and I had to take it on the back endzone line. I tapped it in and immediately threw to Mike, who was immediately cutting upline. His cut was so good in fact, that he froze his defender, who's surely blogging about the easiest callahan of his ultimate career at this very moment. I really don't understand why I'm so bad at stopping the roll sometimes. My last season in baseball, as shortstop, I had 0 errors. Good luck finding someone to help you work on that skill, Louis.

Stat wise, I didn't keep track as well as I should have. I'm pretty sure I had about 5 turns on Saturday and 2 on Sunday. Except for the hucks (2 for 4, I think), I think they were all D'd up, rather than uncatchable passes to an open man.

For D, I was good and bad. I barely ever got to guard handlers and when I did get to, I did well. There were a lot of people on the team competing over who got to guard handlers, and it wasn't that important to me to fight for it. On receivers, I was doing well guarding the underneath, but I was handing out free trips to the endzone like a travel agent with an overstock of gift certificates. It got ugly. The big problem for me was that our opponents were just smarter than I'm used to. What would frequently happen is that my guy would be 30 yards from the disc and I'd be shutting him down underneath AND there was another receiver (and his defender) deeper than me. Then the deepest cutter would clear quickly underneath, someone would get open for a 15-20 yard gain underneath, have no mark for a couple seconds, and I was toast. So one second I was doing really well, but the cutters and throwers would move quickly and smoke me. I'm going to need to start anticipating that faster since it happens much much faster in Open than in Mixed. Of all the times I was scored on, though, only 2 were up wind. One was a break. The other, I had help over the top that was right there. Oh yeah, and one time in the Zebra Muscles game, my guy caught it deep off a huck, but not in the endzone and I should have peeled off to guard the receiver, but I stayed on the mark and BOOM ... footblocked the guy, my second one of the day. His team was really pissed at him for not calling a time out, but who can blame the guy when he's got 2 on 1 at the goal line. I guess I did lead the team in point blocks, so that's good. And during one point, a disc was floating up and the opponent's two tallest guys were there, as well as Joe Brisbois and I D'd it -- ahem, well, COLLEGE D'd it. It got caught after my deflection. Oh, and I guarded Kurt Gibson for a few points and he never touched the disc.

In all, the flashes of brilliance are a sign of things to come for VBB. And I personally had an amazing time about which I hope to say more in another post, since this one is about twice as long as it should be already.

Bottom line, the Van Buren Boys have now arrived, but have much work to do. You can commence holding your breath now.

Hopkins: A season in review

The Hopkins season has ended and we failed to become 3 time defending state champions. All in all, the season was a good one in which most began the season all thinking this was a "rebuilding" year. Our team was composed mainly of players who last year lost at State to Como Park in a Chumpionship bracket game. No disrespect to Como Park, but no one will argue that they are contending State Champions any time soon. Maybe I'm still mad that I didn't get a hot dog from them at the Granite City Letdown ... I mean ... Granite City Classic, which was officially the worst tournament I've ever attended.

Story time: games were to begin at 9:00. At 9:10, there was an impromptu captain's meeting in which about 75% of the important information was discussed. Then "is there a girl's schedule?" was asked. "Um ... ", a dramatic pause, "... yeah, I think so, there should be," was the response. Still, no full schedule or maps were out for the boys and the first round was to end at 10:00 because there were 9 rounds in this one day event. That's right, we had 8 games and 1 bye. We began our game at round 9:35. We did manage to complete the game before 10:00, however, with a winning score of 11-0. The rest of the game were not all that different, including the finals against Cathedral in which we won 13-3.

Cathedral went on to be given the 1 seed at the State tournament, forcing a semi final between the two best teams (by far) in the state, Hopkins and Cretin-Derham Hall. We lost. Despite an 8-6 lead at half and receiving with the wind at our back at half, CDH went on a 6-2 run to defeat us 12-10. In the other semi, Mounds View (a team that we easily defeated in pool play) defeated Cathedral. CDH went on to win a well deserved state title in a 15-3 domination of Mounds View.

On the girl's championship game sideline, John Sandahl was asking about whether we had played CDH before (somewhat in reference to the seeding) and I said we had and we lost by 2. I added that we had defeated Cathedral 13-3 two weeks earlier. "Yeah, but there were missing their best player," John said.

"John, we were missing our two best players," I countered.

The next thing he said really surprised me. [closed circuit to Greg: do not read this next sentence] Greg Arenson, our captain, and one of the finest high school ultimate players in the country was standing directly between John and me as John replied, "Eric Johnson is way better than anyone on your team."

Greg says, "Gosh, thanks a lot, John."

I then said, "John, Eric played today and they lost to Mounds View."

"That's true," he conceded. He didn't add anything further and slowly walked away.

This addresses (on the surface) a point I've been making a lot this season: one player in ultimate cannot elevate a team as he can in most other sports (especially the 4 majors). I'll dedicate an entire post to this later.

Back to the item at hand, back in September, knowing our squad, it would have been hard to believe we could come as far as we did, but with such massive improvement from some of our guys, we did fight our way back toward the top of the pack at State. A third place finish was not indicative of our strength and more a product of some really poor seedings as I think everyone would agree we were at least the second best team there. Even at Nationals, we were about the 6th or 7th best team there.

With that in mind, I'd have to call the season a success. At times, the talk nationally was that Hopkins was "a joke" because we "lost everyone that was good" and other similar notions. But we overcame that and picked it up to be in the pack of some National caliber teams. We survived losing a very strong senior class AND a changing of the guard in the coaches' positions. We nearly doubled the number of participants in our program, which necessitated replacement of 3 coaches who left and recruiting one more. I learned a ton as a coach, too much to mention here, but I will outline it in another post. Not to mention, we strengthened an already very strong group of sophomores and juniors, as well as solidified some younger talent (and their learning structure) to prevent future "rebuilding" years. In fact, if you ignored wins and losses, and took only into account everything else that this team is about, this season was probably the most successful Hopkins has had.

And next year, we're not going to have to ignore wins and losses.