ACC

Shit's getting hectic and, as Brooks said today, The Man is looming. Still, I had hoped to get this up last week. Oh well. Vegas is this weekend, so read it while you're wishing you were there with me.

The idea to put on an ACC tournament came about over a year ago, and after no one stepped up and put it together in 2008, UNC and their broken-footed president made it happen. We were pretty hyped on this from its inception, as news came over break that the effort to make this tournament a cutting edge and user-friendly event would include a couple of unique features, the most compelling being experimental rules. Sure, some of it seemed like fanfair for the sake of fanfair (we never did get programs, and the stats were kept in a pretty inconsistent manner), but overall this the changes gave the whole thing a cool feel. Also, after watching this type of thing at Solstice, I was really excited to get a chance to play in that environment myself.

New stuff aside, it turned out we were still there to play the same old game of Ultimate. The biggest impact that I noticed the modified rules having was the speeding up of the game, as quicker pulls and very little time to argue calls had things moving smoothly. A lot of people wondered about travels in particular, but there really weren't many calls at all (sorry, Frank), and when there were any, play resumed almost instantaneously. Overall, I give the whole active calls/refzervers thing pretty high marks.

Alright, onto the games. This was only a ten team tournament (Boston College didn't come because Greg creeped out the entire school, and Miami... well I got nothing) with three fields, so there were just three games to play on Saturday.

Saturday

Wake Forest (13-7)
Wake is kind of in a weird spot of having two or three really talented guys and then a lot of other people who seem to be young and losing. That, and young Dagley quit. Offensively, I don't remember all that much from this game other than the fact that things were flowing effortlessly and I didn't turn the disc over. Our defense wasn't firing at its best, but we brought enough pressure to induce drops-a-plenty, and were cruising by half time. I think we got broken once after half and wound up trading a couple times, but this game was never really a concern.

Clemson (13-4)
Clemson took NC State to 11-13 and they looked really tall and athletic, so I figured we might be in for more of a game than most people were thinking. I turned out to be wrong. They have Ben Slade, who posts a lot on rsd and is good at skying people, getting Ds, and throwing break throws. Other than that, though, we didn't have many problems. They were cool guys though, and one of them said to me during the game (jokingly, of course) that he didn't like us because we were too fast. I thought that was pretty cool because I guess I've just never really stopped to compare our speed as a whole with that of another team; speed is usually something that I only think about relative to individual match-ups and, more specifically, how other teams' fast players can be neutralized with positioning and the like. Not that I don't think about speed in a game that centers around running and running fast, but you get the point: hearing it from an opposing player was cool.

NC State (5-13)
Nothing to see here.

Move it along.

We won't be talking about it.

Ok, ok. So this game... it was a nightmare. I played really shitty, somehow deciding that it would be a good idea to force the issue against their zone rather than work it patiently. They ran a standard four-man, but were pretty physical on our crashers, making us hesitant to stick to the cycling that we know works. Aside from my own throws, us getting static lead to coughing up the disc a lot near our own goal line, meaning quick scores were pretty easy for their D line. Before we knew it, we were down 0-3. Then 4, then 5. It was like a flashback to the old days (I'm thinking second year) when the breaks just kept coming and coming with everyone feeling pretty helpless about it. Finally, I put a huck to Conger and he hit Justin for the score to stop the bleeding. For the time being. Things stayed crappy, and yeah. We lost. I don't want to dwell on it, but all things concerned, I think that NCStateonSaturdayofACCs will go down as a very, very important teaching moment that sparked some important thinking about our offense for the rest of the season. I'm just glad it happened on Saturday.


Sunday

Virginia Tech (8-13)
Shit was COLD. Real cold. Our first game was against Virginia Tech, who none of us really like since they put us out of Sectionals two years ago. We came in thinking that the game wouldn't be so bad and that we had put the shitshow that was yesterday's loss to NC State behind us. Unfortunately, we were wrong. We traded for a few points and broke first, but our zone woes soon caught up to us and they took half 7-5. They held coming out, and I think we got broken thereafter to put them at 9. I personally felt a lot better than I did against Wolfpack (understatement much?), but I still threw a few turnovers that were far from necessary. I don't know. We lost, something like 9-13. It sucked, plain and simple. Nevertheless, because Clemson's only victory was against Wake, we knew we'd take third in the pool and play the two from the other, which was...

Florida State (13-3)
They had a good Saturday, upsetting Duke and playing UNC close, but by Sunday they were down to 12 guys, two of which got hurt during our game (more on this in a sec). They were really reliant on just two guys, Rook and David, both of whom were impressive but unable to pull the rest of the team up to their level. Most of their cutters just had a hard time knowing what to do with the disc once they got it, and since they were so low on numbers, they tried coming zone but to no avail. While this usually wouldn't even be a victory really worth commenting on, it wound up playing a big part in getting us fired back up. We restored some confidence and were ready to bring some swagger into the semis. Good thing, because it was a rematch of the previous day's debacle.

NC State (13-9)
Pretty sure I covered this, but I really can't overemphasize how demoralizing Saturday's loss was. Sure, the Tech game meant more with regard to pool play finish, but for some reason I was able to make excuses for that one. NC State, on the other hand, had dismantled us so handily that it was embarrassing. So on Sunday, we weren't even talking about revenge. We were talking about redemption.
Each O held for the first two points, but we broke to go to 3-2. Intensity was high for us as it was, but I really don't think we were losing from that point on. I think they held once more but after that we broke two or three times in a row, eventually going to half at 7-4. They certainly weren't happy with themselves, and we knew that they would look to come back in early in the second half. Their O line ran a few zones off of a turn, but to no avail. Their D started coming man, and when teams go man, we have no problem. They broke us to get as close as 9-7 (I think), but from there we kept things rolling. The game got chippy once we were at 11, but that's really to be expected, and is something we need to get used to. The game ended on an IO huck from me to Conger, a connection we've been improving on ever since the 3 turns, one point incident at Philly this summer.

UNC (13-9)
A finals match-up with UNC was what we had both hoped for and expected before the tournament. After a long couple of games, I felt great during the warm-up, and more focused than I had since Clemson. We started the game on O, and while I expected them to come with the poach-heavy handler defense we've seen from them in the past, they stuck our guys pretty close. Robert put a backhand huck to Justin, and we were on the board. Our O remained crisper than it had been all weekend, and our D was playing with more intensity than ever. Layouts were coming from all over the place, and once their cutters got the disc, they had few options outside of a dump. Ryan, typically an O-line guy, was given the assignment of guarding Lucas because of his speed, and he did a great job of simply sticking with him and not letting him be responsible for any big gains. As a team, UNC doesn't have too many holes, but they really don't have all that much firepower outside of Lucas, Noah, and Weeks and some really strong role-playing seniors. One thing I'll say about this game is that it progressed incredibly quickly. There were very few calls, little down time between pulls, and not even that many turns from either team. Probably a result of Mike G observing.
I was really impressed that as the game got closer to finishing, the O line cleaned up and the D line ran even harder. All we had to do was sit on our lead to close things out, and we did just that. Their final O point took a couple of possessions for them to convert, as I recall us forcing at least two turns. Receiving 12-9, we marched it up pretty easily, with Robert hitting Greg up the line for the game and tournament win.


ACC was UVA's first spring tournament win since Queen City 2005 (spring break my first year aside). Given how low the weekend got, getting that trophy and celebrating was a tremendous high. We all came away with a since of just how badly we could beat ourselves, but more importantly of just how well we can play when team-wide focus is all there. Sure, it was only January, but it felt good.

That's all for now. I wanted to get this up before Vegas, and at 7:30am PST Friday morning, Feb. 6, here it is. I'm gonna try something different for this tournament: daily updates so I avoid letting them pile up. We'll see.

Vegas, baby. Vegas.

CCChristmas

Alright, alright. CCC. Classic City Classic. Civilian Conservation Corps. Rhymes with pickles. Six weeks late.

Of note, pre-tournament:

-Conger's car, my car, Dan's car caravan

-Danville Goodwill

-boony ass restaurant in Danville (chuckwagon, Jesse?)

-disintegrated caravan

-Hawks v. Raptors (Randolph Morris- Kentucky; we need to go to Georgia more because their game against the Celtics last week was the ONLY FUCKING NATIONAL TV GAME THE HAWKS GET ALL SEASON)

-I am very iffy on the Rocky series. Sorry Matt.


Here we go.

Day 1:

Our first game was against Mississippi. Aside from their straight filthy jerseys, what I remember most about this game is actually the warm-up. All of the continental breakfast was gone by the time Matt, Jesse, and I got up, and since there was nothing to eat on the way there, we had to spend extra time eventually finding a Chick-fil-a (whose breakfast, I found out, is surprisingly good). Needless to say, things got going rather slowly; it was cold as shit, and I don’t think I really hit full speed or started taking things seriously until… sometime after this game. And it showed. I forced some dumb hucks that resulted in breaks when we really could have walked the disc in with ease every time, and I really just didn’t feel on top of things. In the grand scheme of things, though, this wasn’t a huge deal, as we won something like 11-5. Still, it reminded me that personally, I gotta hit the warm up sooner than most or I just won’t get into the groove I need.

I had plenty of time to do this for our next game against Illinois since we had a bye in round two. On the way over to our new field, we caught the last point between Florida and Wilmington. Man, this point was sick. It lasted like 20 minutes and each team was so cool to the other, making sure to share the disc a lot. Brodie did sick stuff like throw turnovers with his left hand and Cole did sick stuff like dump the disc to Brodie. Seriously, I’d pay like, a trillion dollars just to watch Florida post on rsd.

Fareal though, Rusty on UNC-W is a really good thrower.

We caught the tail end of Illinois-Texas once we got over, with Illinois closing out a pretty big win. I remember Robert turning to me and saying “we can beat both of these teams.” I agreed. I actually don’t remember all that much of the Illinois game. Yeah, partly because it was a month and a half ago, but also because I didn’t play that much, along with the rest of the O line. We just rolled, 11-4. People were making plays everywhere, just outrunning their guy on both sides of the disc. Their offense relied pretty heavily on handler movement (they had a couple of really quick, solid handlers who also happened to be real friendly and seemed cool), and we did a good job of slowing it down. This win was pretty big for us (as was Texas later in the day). Yeah, there’s the whole C1 thing, but also a lot of us had never played against nationals-level competition outside of our region. Winning so handily, regardless of how those teams look this year or that it was the fall, was a big deal.

Duke was next. We had seen them two weeks earlier at Wolfpack, letting them back into our semifinal game, if only for a few points. This time, we made sure not to let that happen, winning 10-4. I was somewhat concerned about their huge Ring guy because he’s huge and plays for Ring (and didn’t play at Wolfpack), but he wasn’t too much of a problem. At one point in the game, there was a pick call that Brooks didn’t hear but his receiver did. The throw went errant and it looked like an unfortunate turn, but Roy came out of nowhere and laid out in the endzone to save the possession. Unfortunately, his defender called the pick, so it wasn’t a score, but still… sick.

The low point of the day came in our next game against UNC. We lost 7-11, and our offense never really got going. They do a good job of poaching throwing lanes, and I think that we lacked the patience to work the available dump/swings as for as long as we should have. The wind didn’t help either, and since they play some key guys on both O and D, they do a better job of breaking upwind than most defenses. Our D line struggled once we got the disc, getting trapped in the downwind endzone pretty often and not being able to generate many (any?) breaks. The other big thing with this game was our general demeanor. The prior games on the day had gone real well, and spirits were very high as a result. Soon after going down to UNC, we lost some spark and went flat, something that I definitely think affected the game’s outcome. Gotta keep this in mind for the spring.

We closed out Saturday against Texas, a team who had me unsure of what to expect. They had lost to Duke pretty badly along with their Illinois loss, but with all of their Doublewide guys I expected them to be pretty good. They really didn’t pose a problem, though, and we won 11-7. Justin and Conger got on me to open up the hucking game more, and it worked out well as a number of our scores came off of long throws. I even got put in for a D point after Robert cramped… and proceeded to get run pretty hard by Franchise. He’s good… real quick and with a nice outside in backhand that he gets off for a lot of break throws, which were helpful since they ran mostly vert stack. Both Peter and Conger’s parents showed up for this game, and it was cool to see them both make some big grabs and throws (respectively, pretty much) to do a little showcasing. Also, Charlie had a really, really dirty sky in this game in a pile of five or six guys. He’s been doing that that on the regular.

So Saturday ended on a positive note—4-1 and second in the pool. We checked out the other scores at frisbee central. No surprise from pool A, with Wisconsin and Pitt taking the top spots. Pool B had gotten a little more interesting, with Minnesota winning and Florida needing a UNC-W loss to Davidson in the last round to take the second spot. Pool C was definitely the biggest shock, with Notre Dame going 5-0 and Georgia missing out on the championship bracket completely after a final round loss to Michigan. This set us up for a quarterfinals game with Notre Dame in the morning. Greg, Robert, and I came back about an hour later to hear the UPA/C1 talk, and nothing of note was really said. This is partly because Cyle didn’t show up after saying he would… there was rumor that he called a separate meeting for C1 teams only. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it’s funny nonetheless. Anyway, back to the hotel (after buying five six packs of Sweetwater Blue to bring back to Virginia) for a laid back night that included me hating on the Rocky series, a brief meeting, and chilling with some of the girls team.

Day 2:

Notre Dame, 10am. I’d say our outlook going into this game was pretty similar to that of the rest of the teams that played them over the weekend. No one knew anything about these guys, and that, coupled with their really stupid (yes, I’m bitter, fucking deal with it) camo cut offs and roaring at each other from across the field led us to not take them so seriously. Still, gotta give credit where it’s due. They were athletic, pretty disciplined, and definitely intense. We pulled to start the game, and after a nice sky from Peter to get the D, it looked like we might open with a break. They had other plans though, as his throw to Brooks was blocked by a monster layout from one of their big handlers. We traded points for a bit, but once they got a break, they kept coming, and we didn’t really get it back together. Sort of like the UNC game. Conger wasn’t playing, so our O was lacking a bit of its firepower, and try as it could, the D line just couldn’t get many breaks back. Also, they were down to throw some more unorthodox stuff (lots and lots of scoobers), which definitely made them harder to deal with on the goal line. They won something like 15-9. We should have been more with it and could have played better, but I give them credit—Notre Dame’s a really solid team. I also like that they avoided a straight up cry fest on RSD after that whole Pitt video bit… it wouldn’t exactly have been unjustified.

So, on to the chumpionship. We beat Minnesota 14-9, opening up the rotation and having a good time. Jesse balled on D as he had all weekend, catching a callahan as a result of pure hustle down on the pull—the thrower just threw an errant backhand and he was there to snatch it up. I remember Max (on O) and Brooks (on D) throwing a couple real nice hucks, Conger throwing a whole lot of high release flicks, and me throwing a few blades for scores. It was a fun game.

The next, and final game, was against Michigan, who we agreed to play to 9 because they were trying to get out of there. Will Neff didn’t play, giving me opportunity to show off my tireless trolling and tell him that I thought his SAT story was funny. I don’t remember all that much in this game, other than our team being kind of lazy and one point taking like an hour. Good plays were made (Healy had a real beast layout D), but on the whole I think we were pretty satisfied with things up to that point and didn’t mind coming away with a close win, 9-7.

WELL. There you have it, tardiness and all. CCC was a great tournament for us. With a 5th place finish overall, we beat some teams that I think most would agree are on a level we had previously not really seen, and we did it handily. Still, though, it let us know that going into the winter and early spring, there was/is plenty to be worked on, included but not limited to staying up on the sidelines and on the field after going down a few points, working against straight up marks with poaches in the lane, and running a better vert stack with the D line are all among these. Lots has been done since, but there is plenty of work on the agenda for the coming months. Keep running, duders.

pending

CCC write-up is coming, I swear. The past week has been hellish, and when it hasn't been hellish, it's been awesomely time-consuming. A bunch of food and some more good times for Seattle sports on national tv should do the trick.

For now, check out:

• Jim Jones (my vote for the dirtiest worst rapper ever) in an off-Broadway play
  
• Slim with the tilted brim on Martha Stewart
• Kobe's thoughts on off-season workouts
  

Stop distracting me.

Efficiency

Quick study break...
The tables in this article, found in True Hoop, have me thinking about efficiency in sports. In professional sports, it's very common that big name players receive more accolades than they deserve while the guys who get the little things done don't get much shine. These errors and omissions, however, are often exposed when people look at the details surrounding how efficient a player is.

I generally think of efficiency as synonymous with reliability; how many times do you screw up per chance that you have? That's a pessimistic way to view it, but really, an efficient player isn't the one who makes big plays, but rather is the one who is dependable.

Here's a quick list of what I think would be really interesting individual stats to see in ultimate. Bear in mind, they're offensively-focused.

• turnovers per team possession (this could also be stated as completed pas per posession)
• turnovers per individual possession
  
• scores thrown per team possession
• scores thrown per individual posession
• Ds achieved per other players' turnovers
• Ds achieved per individual's turnovers

Obviously, I'm now wondering what my numbers would be and whether or not they would deem me efficient. I definitely think that the more you are relied upon, the more you are likely to have drops and throw-aways, but that principle goes for all sports. I suppose that remaining efficient in light of its reality is what makes great players great.

Back to work.

Disclaimer: I am not a Red Sox fan.

Wolfpack

i should have seen this coming. i'm getting behind on blog posts before even really getting started. ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, this is terrrrrrrrible.
this blog is a very serious thing.
with very serious deadlines.
i will do better. i must.

so the fall rolled in a while ago, and with none of us making nationals (kind of), practices during the past couple of months have been devoted to the typical fall hustle of teaching rookies the game and getting our legs back. the most exciting part, however, has been anticipation brought on by everyone's summer improvements. it's been clear since the first days of september that everyone put time and effort into getting better since regionals, a reality that has had me itching to get onto the field against some non-uva opposition.

that competition came in the form of nc state's wolfpack last weekend. long story short: it went pretty well; we went 5-1; we won the tournament.

saturday

unc-wilmington [L 10-12]
after having some changes to the pools, fields, and schedule, we finally took the field saturday morning against unc-wilmington. we started on d, and even though we hadn't really warmed up as though we were playing our pool's top seed, we came out running hard and fast. their offense held, but we forced two turnovers along the way, the start of a trend that would last throughout the weekend. and it's a good thing, too, because things were a bit of a different story on offense. we got broken twice pretty early in the half, forcing throws that were crowded on the on side and trying to throw breaks against marks that were stronger than what we've been putting on each other in practice. as i said, though, our defense looked on from the start, and they broke back twice to even things out at 4-4-. there may have been another break or two for each team in the following points, but they were a wash and wilmington went into half on serve, 8-7. in the second half, the wind and rain started to pick up, and even though they didn't show all that much ability with a deep game, we weren't really able to open ours up because of the conditions. this was exacerbated when they started to throw zone, and the summer rust started to show as we turned the disc over multiple times trying to throw through the cup rather than around it. this was definitely a problem for us on offense, and our turnover woes kept coming. (side note: when i say "our" turnover woes, i mostly mean myself. i came out this game looking to do a lot more than i needed to, and it showed. i did settle down somewhere in this game, but i wouldn't exactly say it lasted. read on...) once again, though, our d flexed its overall improvements, getting breaks back and then some. highlights that i remember include charlie and jesse coming up with their typical layout blocks on in cuts, brooks playing real well against one of their stronger cutters (the carl crawford wannabe), and dagley jumping very, very high to catch some swill and then throw a push pass score (this would not be the only time that dags showed signs of realizing his leaping abilities). i'm also going to mention justin's shoulder-high layout that got a turn back for us on offense and stopped another break for wilmington. anyway, after a few more points, things were looking food for us. we went up 10-9 just after the cap horn blew, meaning the game would be played to 12. they held, making it 10s. then we got broken on a real unlucky callahan. at 11-10 wilmington, robert came on and we were set to get down the field and play a double game point. good plan, except i through a high release to justin that slipped in the rain and sailed over his head. two throws, game wilmington. fuck. put simply, this wasn't a good game for me, but for the team as a whole, it was. the loss sucked, but all things considered, it just let us know that we can play at whatever level we want to play at.

georgetown [15-5ish?], virginia tech [the same??]
aside from the whole learning experience thing, the wilmington loss was noteworthy because it was our only one of the weekend. our next two saturday games went pretty smoothly, which i think was a product of both us working out the jitters and the opposition not really being on the same level as what we saw in the first game. against georgetown, it was cool to play against alex laws, who played on floodwall with us and is a good player and a perpetually friendly guy. our d kept itself on the field a lot, but they were able to put up a few because on top of alex as a thrower, they had two or three pretty athletic receivers. the game ended on a stupid hammer from me to matt king, who made a very nice grab.
virginia tech had played wilmington closer than we expected them to, and coming into the game against them, we knew to look for one thing: the huck. they have some really tall guys, some decent throwers, and not much else. we actually traded for the first few points, but once our d found its groove (aka how to recognize being last back and how to put robert at deep in a zone when all they want to do is huck anyway), their offense was on the field until something like 9-4. at some point, charlie had a wild sky, and we wound up finishing the game on offense, but not before i turfed and then floated flicks, both of which resulted in breaks. i blame being on the sideline for so long.
there were some real common themes in both of these games. first, robert on the d line is looking like it's going to be a good thing. the man knows how to generate a turn, and i think his defense has gone underrated for a while. more importantly, though, he's really hard to cover and can throw pretty much whatever he wants when he wants it unless he's facing a real lockdown defender, both of which are traits you don't mind having in someone that you're asking to run the show once you have the disc. with him as a solid and calming force, our other d handlers were able to relax a bit and know that as long as they kept looking dump/swing early, someone would be open. as cutting awareness and chemistry gets better, our defensive offense is only going to get more efficient. sweet.

with saturday in the books, we went to the girls' fields and watched them beat ecu on double game point. on the way over, we saw what would become our entertainment for the night: neeley st. after dinner, we checked it out, and after it got dark, we went back and put it in the hands of its rightful owner, me. brooks proved himself to be both horrible and good at stealing things all in the same half hour.


sunday

our first game sunday was against wake forest. yeah, it was quarters and we played well (took half 8-2, cruised to something like 15-5), but the real reason this game was cool was because it featured a dagley v. dagley matchup. as a personal fan of brotherly matchups (mostly because they only go in my favor), i was happy to see this. the elder seemed to be in control when they were actually guarding each other, but mitchell looks like a smart player who's going to be really good once he gets his rhythm down. i did my best to forestall this process, though, nearly killing him on a layout d in the endzone. on that note, personal highlights in this game included a pull that went out of bounds on the unc-uncw field, along with getting live at the bbq not once, but twice.

semifinals against duke was our closest win of the weekend. we took half 8-4 and i think went to 9-4, but we got lazy here and there and let them back into the game to the tune of something like 10-8. we were forcing abnormal stuff like breaks that were something like 70% rather than on side throws that were 100%, and when they broke us twice, we started putting up some stupid hucks. we cooled it though, and eventually got the win 15-11. they definitely looked better than i remember from years past, with a couple of guys pulling real athletic plays in the air. i will say is one thing they don't like to do is dump, so when we took away their lanes and made them do it, they didn't handle it well. still, after missing out on regionals last year, i'll be curious to see what happens with duke in 2009.

on the opposite side of the bracket, unc beat wilmington and played ecu, who had taken down elon, and then ecu beat unc on universe to go to finals. going in, i expected a couple of guys to have good throws and the rest of them to be relatively disciplined, waiting on those guys to get the throws they wanted and then making the cut for them. this was more or less the case, and they scored their first point off of a centering throw and a huck. our o held, they held, and then they broke us. after that, though, we decided we didn't want any nonsense and put out a couple of breaks. they called a timeout after one of them, but came out sitting and kneeling on the line. really, they just looked real tired, and we stepped it up briefly before coasting to the 15-7 win.

we got a big beer class as a championship trophy, took a few pictures, watched the girls (tough loss to duke, but amtrak had a boss layout on a deep throw), and headed to cookout. overall, the weekend was really good. we played with real open rotations, and while there were some kinks on the parts of both rookies and vets, i'd say that our showing with what was a preliminary team was as good as we would have hoped. really, it's nice to win tournaments whenever you play in them.


next week is ccc (we played as X and Y in matt baccary memorial tournament this weekend, with Y losing to w&m in the finals), which is something we're all looking forward to. the competition's going to be real tough, higher than a lot of our players have really ever seen. but we're up to it. night train's coming.

the upa takes on wall street

as a grade a procrastinator, there's nothing like frisbee on the internet to keep me off task. a new blog (or old) blog entry, an ultivillage highlight, or an innane rambling to the club email list will usually do the trick. but as i started to do the reading for a midterm paper at 9 last night, conger called and alerted me to a real gem.



turns out i probably would have stumbled accross what he was calling about at some point sooner or later. as most everyone probably knows right now, cultimate abruptly enveiled Conference 1 to the public. you can read more about it on the website, but the basic plan is to take their conception of the top 25 teams in the country, sort them into five divisions based on geography, and have them play a five-tournament, 34-game regular season. the top 14, plus two teams not initially given the nod to compete in the Conference, would then play at Cultimate nationals. the sticking point in all of this is that these teams would not compete in the UPA series.

i had to really make an effort to only check up on things once in a while through the night, but since the initial news hit rec, there have been over ten seperate threads with hundreds of posts. the huddle dropped three different articles (including an interview with the homeboy brodie), and everyone from players here at uva to toad seems to have an opinion.

well, here's mine:

• first, i think a lot of people saw this or something like it coming sooner or later. Cultimate really has been doing big things, and with the growing success of their tournaments, they at least have the audience to entertain the notion. i think the fact they're in a position to have people lamenting the death of the UPA at the drop of a new website speaks volumes about both where the college scene is now and just how big a deal this could potentially be.

• that said, the key word here is potentially. according to The Huddle, only Florida and Texas have officially signed on, and even then, if no one else participates i'm sure they'll bail. while i can see a lot of teams wanting to do this (the whole free jersey and no tournament fee deal is, well, a sweet deal, and if all of the teams invited were to participate, the level of competetion would certainly be pretty hard to beat), there are some things that have me skeptical. rostering issues, the short notice, and the potential controversy of two different college champions are some of the things that make me wonder if those who see this as a simple ultimatum to the upa are right. still, Cultimate seems to be on board the whole "gowing professionalism in frisbee" thing, so i suspect they have some kind of reason to confidently break this kind of news.

• as for whether Conference 1 would be a good or bad thing if it actually happened is really dependent on who you ask. for people who really want to see the sport get more exposure and gain "legitimacy" (whatever that means), it's probably a step in a favorable direction. for those who never even have a shot at getting into double digits during sectionals, i doubt it matters much at all. maybe i'm being selfish, but i feel like those who would really affected by the current proposal are those playing for teams who seem themselves as on the cusp-- the type of team that made sunday in arguably the nation's toughest regionfor the first time in a while, lost somewhat respectably to one of these Conference 1 teams, and is returning pretty much everyone. i think everyone's first reaction is to think that things are a little unfair. obviously, the possibility of not really being given a shot to show we belong belong is stomach churning. still, though, i'm witholding my judgement. there are so many maybes surrounding this whole thing that it's senseless to draw any conclusions. besides, Cultimate ain't got shit to do with shit when it comes to Wolfpack and CCC.

• this whole broughaha does drive home a reality that i've been thinking about a lot lately: more and more, we're seeing the emergence of a college ultimate elite. a decent, but still small enough to make it exclusive, number of teams are getting more and more selective with the tournaments they go to and the teams they play. while i certainly don't think that right now this means they have the best athletes and players accross the board, i do think this trend could lead to a drop-off in the mobility among teams that aren't quite top tier. when you play a better team, you learn from it: how they act, what sets they run, how good of shape they're in, etc. really, it's the whole reasoning behind an up and coming team wanting to go to centex or stanford in hopes of being better prepared at regionals. if high levels aren't accessible, this phenomena could really decline. moreover, one thing that i really love about ultimate is the lack of stratification. the idea that making nationals and being guarded by a callahan winner isn't that far out of reach is pretty cool, and i'd hate to see that possibility go. i think, though, that i'm getting ahead of myself. besides, who's to say that if the current "elite" teams block themselves off they won't end up recycling stale match-ups and suffer a fall off themselves?

• from the few times i've talked to Skip, he seems like a genuinely nice guy who has ultimate's best interest at heart. i'll reserve comment about Cyle.

like i said, i'm not ready to jump to any conclusions about this thing. if anything, it's nice to see so much concern and engagement with regard to our sport's governing body (keep in mind that you have another two weeks or so to vote in upa elections).

really, though, i'm just waiting for dar's commentary.

happy birfday

it's my brother's birthday.
i've come across this post a few times and it always makes me think of him.