Monday, June 6, 2011

Mixed Easterns

I played in my first real mixed tournament this past weekend, Mixed Easterns! I know I've been to other mixed tourneys before, but this one was the first time lines were called! The team I played for was Mixed Nuts, and there are all sorts of creative/gross cheers when you throw the word "nuts" into the mix :)

We went 2-2 on Saturday, and the 2 that we lost were both on universe point.. heartbreaking :( I feel like our team just fell apart towards the end because we were so tired, at least I was really tired. I don't think I've ever been so tired after day 1 of a tournament, not even when I played college where sometimes I played like 90% of the points.

I also kept cramping. At first, my toes would cramp, and to stretch out my toes, I would walk on them, which in turn made my calf cramp. It was a vicious cycle. There was one point where Bryan's groin cramped, so he took an injury, and 5 minutes later (yes, same point), my calf cramped when I was handling in zone, so I had to take an injury too. Couple fail :(

All in all for Sat, I give ourselves a 5/10. I think we played pretty well for a bunch of people who sorta know how to play with each other, but we still have a long way to go in terms of actually learning how to play with each other. A few things come to mind regarding what we need to work on:

1. A standard dump. I think guys and girls set up for dumps very differently and at least for me, it's hard to tell where someone is going to get open for the dump. I remember several instances where I got faked out by the dump's cut and made him lay out for a dump (sorry, Bling). Personally I need to be better about recognizing when a guy is open on the dump, and be better about putting it to space.

2. A standard endzone. Oh man, our endzone was messy. There was no stack and so much clogging, so many double cuts. I think we had one nice dump swing, score on the break side. But otherwise, our endzone was always breaking down.

3. Flow. I think people cut each other off a lot and there was a lot of inefficient cutting. I think having girls on one side for ho-stack, guys on the other, helps to some extent, but there was still issues with flow.

I felt like we played a lot better as a team on Sunday. We one our first two games, and lost the third, which made us tied for 19th or something (out of 36).

Some things I need to personally work on:

1. Dump cuts when the disc is in the middle of the field. I did it a few times this weekend but I had to really think about them before cutting, it's not the most natural dump cut for me.

2. Scanning the field, no tunnel-vision, not throwing to poaches.

3. Execution on throwing. There were a few times I tried throwing softer/putting more touch on my flicks, which backfired. I should just throw normally and expect people to catch them.

4. Backpedaling and dictating, I need some backpedaling drills or something, there was one point where I tripped up on myself and fell backward, that was kinda embarrassing.

Anyway, some memorable points this weekend:
  • Shawn's layout point-block from behind the thrower. I have no idea how that happened, but it was amazing.
  • Shuangy has some mad ups on Sat, jumping for dumps that were too high. Sluts said there were people on the sideline from the other team saying, "Shorty's got ups!!" hehe :)
  • Sluts' layout grab in the endzone for the score on Sat.
  • Dillon and Craig's couple point! Craig to Dillon to Craig for the score! awww
  • Kes layout grab D in the Ballo game on Sun.
  • Bryan boxes out a guy a head taller than him and then layout catches a score. The next point, Doris does the same thing. :)
  • Bill Bling's amazing hammers in zone O
  • Doris skys two people (a girl and a guy), I guess that's pretty standard for Doris :)
  • I toed the line for the first time! And for a score!
  • I think Dent and Randy, our pickups for the weekend, were both awesome.
  • This morning when Bryan and I woke up, he turns to me (groaning and going "ow ow ow" the whole time) and goes, "Do you think this is going to be us all the time when we get old?" and I said, "Bryan, we are already old." SiGH...
  • There are obviously many more spectacular points but I can't remember them. Can you??? :)