Turkey Bowl - The Illustrated Version!!!

By guest artist Ewu (click for larger image):

I miss Thanksgiving... last night I made an apple pie and a pumpkin pie to fill the Thanksgiving-shaped hole in my heart. Mmm... pie :)

Turkey Bowl!

On Friday afternoon a bunch of us went to the park on Broadway and Norfolk to play two-hand-touch football! Team Awesome: Charles, me, Clare, John Joo, and Eugene. Team Not-So-Awesome: NG, Chris Wai, Rich Wong, and Keith. It had just rained so there were giant mud puddles everywhere on the field. A couple people didn't wear cleats so they were slipping and sliding everywhere. Even the people who did have cleats didn't have much traction either. =P

The first half an hour was pretty uneventful with no scores and a lot of dropped passes. I scored the first touchdown when Charles threw to me when I was just standing in the endzone. Eugene scored another because everyone on the other team was too busy pushing Charles into a mud puddle. Team Awesome went on to score two more touchdowns and Team NSA only scored one. But towards the end people lost interest in the game and just focused on pushing Charles into the mud. The end result:

Hahaha the game was a lot of fun. Everyone should stick around for Thanksgiving dinner and football next year :D

Turkey Run!

On Thursday morning a bunch of us went to Davis Square to participate in the Gobble x 3 Turkey Run! It was 4 miles around Davis Square. This is Keith, Rich Wong (this turkey run was his idea in the first place =P ) and Bryan.


I had been feeling sick since last Wednesday but I figured I'd give it a try since Bryan had already paid my registration fee. =P



It turned out to be really fun. I don't remember the last time I ran 4 miles... I think it was senior year of Northwestern when the frisbee team went on a "conditioning run." Now that I think about it, I think that's the only other time I ran 4 miles =P

Anyway, I ran the whole thing with Bryan. Keith, Rich Wong, Charles, John Joo, Clare, and Anna had run up ahead and were way ahead of us. After the third mile, we passed Charles who was walking because his knee was hurting. And then towards the end of it, Bryan was like, "let's sprint to the finish line!" and I was like, "noooo" and he says, "It'll be like a track workout!" Gah, that doesn't make me want to sprint to the finish line =P Anyway, he ran off, so I sprinted after him for the last 400. Right when I cross the finish line, this random guy came up to me and said, "Are you under 18?!?!" And I shake my head because I still didn't have the breath to say anything. And he was like, "What? Really?" And I just give him this exasperated look and walked away to find the rest of the people. What the heck was that?

Clare and Anna on the T ride back to Central:


Afterwards we go back to Antrim to prepare for our thanksgiving feast. Charles had prepared a 30-lb turkey, we also made cranberry relish, green beans (omg my favorite!!!), mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, stuffing, gravy, pumpkin pie, and pecan pie. Rich Wong made bacon wrapped shrimp and stuffed mushroom caps. Everyone drew hand turkeys and wrote what they were thankful for on the fingers. I was thankful for Bryan, puppies, pandas, green beans, and my friends :D Bryan was thankful for me, Arnold Schwarzenegger, crayons, and 30-lb turkeys. Eugene is thankful for ninjas, santas, robots, and monsters. =P

More thanksgiving stories to come :)

Happy Turkey Day everyone!!!

Scrimmage against Harvard

Two Fridays ago sMITe went to Harvard for a scrimmage. We started around 3:30pm and conditions were very windy and COLD. Harvard played a lot of zone defense on us, using a large 3-man cup where the off-point poached off and tried taking away the other handler. It was largely effective because it's always scary throwing to someone when there's a defender so close to them, but faking and pivoting always does the trick. I think we won the first point with awesome zone offensive flow. Then things got more hairy (harry?) as the game went on.

sMITe mixed up our defense, playing zone D, clam, and man. I think all three of our defenses were average. Our zone D worked well because we have a fast cup that stayed together for the most part, but we needed better communication and switching between the wings and short deep. Our clam worked well with the two defenders on the open side passing people off to each other but we got stuck many times with the disc flowing down the break side. Our man D could be a lot better - staying on the open side, dictating, and backpedaling.

Halfway through the scrimmage, the lights went out! It was pitch-black for about 10-15 minutes so we played some "WAH" to keep warm (not really - it was still ridiculously cold). Then the lights came back on and we were able to resume our game. =P

There were a few points were it was so windy that Meri, who was playing wing on zone O, couldn't grip the disc tight enough to wind up to throw the swing. She kept faking me out by almost throwing it and then deciding to keep holding on to the disc because she didn't have a good enough grip to throw. I also threw a lot of turnovers just from the cold, poor decision making, etc... it was not a good game for me.

The season is winding down and we're having a goals meeting tomorrow and an end-of-season dinner after Thanksgiving. Then Christmas and then IAP and then spring season!

We have a new play called Bob! Heh heh...

Throwing low!!

Because it allows you to get around your mark, throw more consistently in the wind, and it's fun!

Fake:

• Faking makes your mark move and thus gives you more time and more space to throw. Fake hard one way and throw the other. For example, step around to fake a backhand and then come back to throw a low flick. I've tried faking high and throwing low but it doesn't really work for me. Other fakes that work well: shoulder fake or high release backhand fake over the mark's shoulder.
• Don't fake too fast. Remember to fake hard, not fast. You need to give your mark time to bite on the fake and shift over so that you have time to throw what you really want to throw.
• Fakes are much more believable when you flick your wrist like you're actually going to release the disc. I know it's obvious, but good fakes are throws that don't actually go off. As a beginner frisbee player, one of the hardest things about faking is changing your grip between a flick and backhand. Walk to class with a disc in your hand and just practice changing your grip over and over again. You'll look awesome and become a pro in no time :D
• Faking is really fun when you can fake out your mark and they start walking away thinking you've thrown the disc when it's actually still in your hand :)
• The word "fake" looks really weird now that I've written it and repeated it in my brain a bunch of times. =P

Watch were you step:

• I'm a pretty non-confrontational thrower, meaning when I throw, I'll step out to the side, even slightly backwards so that I don't have to get involved with the mark. Work on stepping out in various places when you throw to mix it up. For example, practicing stepping forward through your mark, and out to the side, slightly behind, and all the angles in between.
• Being tall with long limbs helps so much with getting around your mark. Most of the time I can't really see around my mark when i forget to fake, and I'll be honest, a lot of times I'm throwing blindly at a receiver I saw cutting in and hope she's still cutting in. =P Yes I know I have to fake more.
• Bend your knees when you throw low. It makes you more stable and helps you get low.
• Personally I need to work on stepping forward, through my mark on both my backhand and flick, but especially on my backhands. I think I get fouled a lot and I don't even know it. =P

Angle of the disc:

• Because you're releasing from low point, you need to tip the front edge of the disc up so that the disc will travel upwards to your receiver's chest. Discs flying 4 inches above the ground are really hard to catch.
  

Practice a lot! Start throwing at knee-level, then work towards shin-level, then ankle-level, then you can work on what Shuangy does, which is dig a disc-sized hole in the ground, throw beneath ground-level, and then cover the hole back up. =P One of your butt-cheeks will be really sore from trying to throw that low, but that's okay, it's a mark of a good thrower :D

Talking about my friend Steph who's visiting this weekend:

Me: She's in residency now. I wonder if her life is like Grey's Anatomy. I bet she's sleeping with her attending. And that he's hot.

Bryan: Probably, but probably not as hot as those ex-materials science gone consulting who wants to leave consulting types. Those people are extremely hot.

=P

Coffee Cup (Oct. 31 - Nov. 1)

sMITe had 11 players on Saturday and 8 on Sunday for the first ever 2-day Coffee Cup tournament at Yale. Conditions on Saturday were the windiest I've ever played in, where there was strong winds going in the direction of the field with occasional gusts.

We started off playing Dartmouth where we switched off playing vertical and ho-stack depending on which direction the wind was blowing. Zone points didn't start happening until the second half. We traded points for a while and I think Dartmouth got one upwind break, final score 7-10.

Our second game was against Brown and the winds picked up even more during this game. Both teams played a lot of zone and our poppers including Cindy, Clare, Lydia, and Sluts did a great job on getting open through the cup. Scoring downwind was also really difficult and we had a lot of points with ample turnovers 5 yards from the endzone line because neither team could throw more than 2 passes without turning it. We had one upwind break from amazing zone offensive flow, final score 6-4. We didn't even reach half!

Our last game was against Yale-X. I don't remember much from this game but I think both teams got upwind breaks and we ended up losing a close game 9-11.

Saturday's games ended at 2pm, which was dumb in terms of scheduling on Yale's part. We ended up wandering around Yale's campus looking for showers since we couldn't get a hold of our contact who was supposed to show us where we're staying for the night. When she eventually called us back at 8pm, we found out that we're supposed to stay in this music room that didn't have a bathroom, smelled like musty grossness and had damp dusty carpeting. Needless to say, we went to look for other accommodations. We found Wellesley who was staying in one of the newer dorms in the lounge / game room so we stayed in a room adjoining theirs. Even though we couldn't turn off the lights completely and there was a hip hop dance class right next door (who practices at 11pm on a Sat night anyway???) and hardwood floors, it was still much better than the original room we were assigned.

Sunday's conditions were colder but a lot less windy and we started off playing Harvard. I don't know why but it took us SO LONG to get our heads in the game. We lost the first half 0-7 in like 15 minutes. We kept getting beat to the open side, letting our girls go deep on us, and not running through the disc. Everyone was really quiet on the field and there was just no motivation at all. Finally when it was 0-10, we started scoring some and trading points with Harvard but it was way too late. Final score 3-13.

Our second game was against Brown again but it seemed like a completely new team and turns out that they had too many people so they sent down two teams, one for Sat and one for Sun. We were like, "They tell people NOT to come to tournaments???" Anyway, we started off the game much more alert and focused than the last game. We played a lot of zone which was fun and started getting our legs moving more on defense. Final score 11-9.

Our chumpionship game was against Wellesley. We played zone for a number of passes and then switched to man to work on transitioning between defenses and also to not tire the cup out since we only had 8 people. Amy had an amazing layout grab for a dump pass that had gone a little too far. Full extension and everything! There was a lot of good offensive flow in zone where the deep would cut in for a popper's throw, which is something I hadn't seen too much in sMITe. Halfway through the game we were pretty exhausted, especially the cutters. With visions of food and going back home, we pushed through. We thought we had won at 13-3 but somehow Wellesley convinced us that we can't do math and the score was actually 12-3. Fine, another point, or two. Final score 13-4. We cheered "Good game Wellesley, thanks for letting us sleep with you!" which they all cheered at. =P

Some pictures from this weekend:

Sluts played as a hot dog for a couple points. Later that night we saw another hot dog walking the streets of New Haven. Like a match made in heaven...


Our game against Brown


Sluts wearing Amy's angler fish costume


Hahaha so cute!!


"The dodo's downfall was brought about by its fearlessness and flightlessness, as it would inquisitively approach strangers (and predators). Unfortunately for the dodo, it was also very tasty..." Hahaha poor flightless Dodo. :(