The Beginning Of It All

It seems to be the thing to do.  After spending most of July and all of August reading ultimate blogs, it seems right to start my own.  I kept a livejournal going for a while back in High School, so let's see how this thing turns out.  Maybe I'll be able to sustain it, maybe it'll crumble but hopefully it'll keep the fire under my ass to keep working and, if I'm lucky/good at it, light a fire or two under yours.  The point is to get things down on paper (as it were) and make it where I want to go.  It seems smart to say, upfront, where I want to go.  Luckily, that's easy- Nationals.
 I want to play, in some capacity, at Open Nationals.  I figure I realistically have six or seven years to make that a reality.  It's not much time, so let's get started.  I'll try to be as honest about who I am and what I think, but honesty doesn't always make things easy, so sometimes, the goal will take precedent over the means.

The best place to begin seems to me to be the beginning.  Ultimate's been a part of my life since 8th grade, but not in any realistic fashion until Senior year of BUA.  That was the year we got a legit coach (not a BUer who seldom showed up) and played some real games and tournaments.  Mike was a revelation to me, at the time.  He was knowledgeable, confident and willing to share it all if you'd just listen.  Over many rides back to Arlington, I picked up a lot of Mike.  His mannerisms, his attitude and probably countless things that don't have names.   It's probably been beneficial that I met him, though not without some stormy seas.

That year, though, was undoubtedly a real change for me.  Ultimate started being something I _did_ instead of a club I showed up to.  I wasn't a captain, but I was definitely a leader.  I think I got offered unofficial captainship at some point but I was such a headcase senior year I have no idea what was going on there or what I did with it.  I just remember a lot of getting angry at Rob for being a douche on the sideline.  That was the year I really started to be able to throw a forehand, the year I started learning what it meant to travel for games, the year I started learning about the culture.  I was no good at leading receivers (a trouble that plagued me for years) but was pushed into a handling role by Mike (and to a lesser extent, Tom) because I could throw at all.  I was simultaneously hesitant and confident but the team improved and we competed.

That summer, Mike put together a summer club team and that, too, was a revelation.  Seeing how much ultimate I could play, learning my place in the hierarchy (I was young, but not the least talented on this makeshift team).  I probably shot my mouth off a lot and probably wasn't very good, but I was on a team and ready for college.

Freshman year was a new revelation, but not a pleasant one.  I walked in thinking I was hot shit for the ability to hit an upline cut and just because I was a cocky bastard (still am, sure).  I was, without a doubt, the kind of kid I hated when I became a senior.  Needless the say, the seniors hated me.  I think I gradually alienated most of them, including K2, who was one of the gentler people I've met, assuming my memory is correct.  He was a new role model and I can remember distinctly the moment I realized he didn't think many positive things.  It was at a Bojangles and thankfully it didn't turn me off the whole chain, because that would be a low down dirty shame.  He said something with such distaste that it seriously stung, not that it took much in those days, and I rode home the rest of the way pretty mad.  I got almost no play time that year, partially because they didn't like me, but probably because I wasn't very good.  I have never been athletically inclined and have had to work to make up for lost time ever since I started.  Meanwhile, Toad got ample PT which, at the time, struck me as really unfair.  It still does sometimes, but it was probably an okay decision and one I would have made in K2's shoes.  I met Rivera but I only really have two memories of him from that year- 1) at Haverween, when I moved into the lane from the front of the stack only to have him scream "GET THE FUCK OUT" as he got cut off by my defender 2) at High Tide (maybe another tournament) when he explained that he was the type to get quiet when pissed.  I thought he didn't like me because of these and only the next year started to realize what a good guy he is.

I remember Nate and Jasper and how inspired I was by them, but I only recognize in retrospect because at the time, I was considering quitting really really hard.  I was the freshman skipping practices at the end of the year because...what was the point?  I got no PT at tournaments and was really resenting my position.  I had been a founding member of the B-team when we formed it after High Tide and only had poor experiences.  Fights with other members, frustration at a perceived lack of support and a lack of purpose.  I thought long and hard about quitting a lot but, because I had no friends outside ultimate and a few inside, chose to stick it out until Dean graduated.

I returned to Boston that summer and again played with Mike, this time adding Sober and a number of women to become a full fledged mixed team and so Merge was formed in the summer of 2006.  I'm sure our record was awful and I don't know what all happened that summer, but I know I was playing with renewed focus.  That was the year Brian joined the team and Rob and I instantly disliked him for his huck-happy style. We had been coached conservative ultimate for so long and he wanted to chuck it long all the time.  He was coming out of Middlebury ultimate back when they were just goofy fuckers, not goofy fuckers who made it to Nats and our ultimates were worlds apart.  Looking back, Mike was in the unenviable position of getting everybody on the same page when nobody was even reading the same book.  Regardless, I made it through the summer, more committed but with only a vague sense of what I wanted out of ultimate.  I returned to CMU that fall hoping to make the A-team.

To that end, I stayed after practices throwing with Toad, working my dump cut, working my swing.  Corey was a captain and I still remember getting his email or call or whatever offering me a spot on the A-team.  He said my hard work showed and it was one of the biggest compliments I'd received with regard to ultimate at that point.  I was psyched and ready for a new season.  I still hated a bunch of the leadership, but hopefully this was the opportunity I needed.  At least it wasn't the B-team, yeah?

Well...kinda.  I received almost no play time again, the team was massively dysfunctional due to personality conflicts at the high level (mainly corey vs. almost everybody else his age) and it just served to disillusion me again.  At the same time, I was living with Toad and, when not getting pissed about his burgeoning relationship with Katie, we were usually talking ultimate (or shooting each other with rubber bands).  The night, during the first week we were together, that we spent literally 8 hours talking ultimate until wee hours of the morning was, realistically, the first stitch in what has become a reasonable friendship.  We only lived together because I had no intention of living with Jeff but didn't really know anybody.  It was almost certainly life-changing that I asked Toad to room with me that night at winter league.

The year passed without anything spectacular, really.  Except High Tide.  High Tide is the only strong memories I have of that year.  I headed down with a car of people I didn't like, arrived in a house of people I didn't like and was generally miserable for a few hours until Corey's car showed up with Riv.  He and I ended up drinking on the porch, shooting the shit and laughing at ridiculous things that were happening around us.  I remember Phil getting pushed down some stairs by Sugar, almost dying but being so drunk he didn't realize and simply stood up at the bottom and said "I'm okay!".  He was really the only ray of sunshine.  Him and the hat tournament.  I got to play with Alex Peters, which was enjoyable and we played to the Div 2 finals of the Hat.  I beat myself to hell and it showed in my pt during the tournament regular, but I doubt I would have enjoyed myself more any other way.  I was not happy at the team that year either.  I sat 78 consecutive points at sectionals on our way to not going to Regionals.

The summer returned and nothing much happened.  I had improved only slightly, I'm sure, due to my minimal experience from the year.  Merge came and went.  I probably went to my first full BUDA tournament that year, 2007.

Junior year was a new beginning.  It was clear from the beginning of the year that I would be taking more of a role, playing side handler to Cereal's central.  It meant slightly more touches and significantly more field time.  I started enjoying the team, despite many personality conflicts with Cereal.  This enjoyment was almost entirely due to having a relatively successful captain in Tommy.  Tommy may have hated the team members, but he loved the game more, so he tolerated us.  Tommy introduced me (well, really he was the one who made it sink in) to taking pride in your play, to making it worth something.  I was living with guys from the team and my commitment to ultimate was growing.  Toad introduced House Plyos and I felt like I was doing hard work to get better.  Looking back, it was barely more than the minimum.  The lack of work was felt in the results, though I couldn't recognize it for what it was until later.

Merge that year was more enjoyable, playing with J, Beez and a relatively higher standard of play became normal.  Merge started trimming fat from its roster, players who we liked but really weren't doing any ultimate other than Merge.  I felt like I was on top of my game.  It was true, but my skills still left much to be desired.  I had no appreciable flick huck to speak of, nor real control over my flick and was wont to underthrow receivers on probably 10% of cuts.  That year's BUDA tournament was when I solidified my need to beat BH every time after a crushing loss in Div 3 finals.  I knew we were better than this old ass team of hooligans and it killed me every time we didn't destroy them on the field.  I knew we had the skill, we just had to tap into it.

I returned to school with my head held high; Toad was the captain, I was certain to be a main handler and things were looking up.  Toad introduced new workouts, a new offense and gave the team _focus_.  I took time off to rehab my hammy, tried to do as much team stuff as I was asked to do and felt like a badass every time I ran a track workout alone in the dark.  I went into the winter and quickly lost much of my conditioning, but returned in the spring ready to do some work.  Weekly plyos, four to five ultimate events (workouts or practices) per week and I felt like I was making real advances in my fitness.  I wasn't watching the nutrition side of things and probably wasn't reaping as many benefits as I could have, but there were real changes nonetheless.  I was quicker and my ultimate was way beyond anywhere it had been before.  I had plans to go to Tufts grad school and play with them, figuring to make their B team with whatever commitment I could muster as a first-year student.  When I didn't get in, it was pretty difficult for me on many levels and left me drifting for a long time.  I was, at that point, pretty much living for the series.  Tournaments were canceled all spring for weather and we didn't end up playing a Sunday in a real tournament until Sectionals.  Watching Regionals slip out of our hands in the Bucknell game was one of the hardest things to do, but clawing back into the Boro game before our eventual loss was immensely gratifying.  Competing sideline cheers, hard play, spikes on both sides of the disc (sometimes after a single point)- this was the ultimate I wanted to play all the time.  It felt like a real sport and a real team, not just some guys who get together on weekends.  We lost, we huddled up, we cried.  We got over it.  We spent the last few weeks dicking around- boot in the ditch, 3v3, light sprints; we went out to Ohio to watch Natties and it was enjoyable enough.  I still wasn't comfortable with my ultimate and I felt like these places were forbidden to me- only accessible to a chosen few, privileged at birth with athleticism, as though they came out of the womb with cleats (their poor mothers).  I had no plan, no goal, and only the weakest desire to go anywhere.  I wanted to work somewhere that could positively affect ultimate players and the ultimate community but had no idea where or what.

I returned to Boston late in the tryout season with no job prospects and no clear idea of what I wanted to do in my life.  I went out for RSRD and met a lot of the 2nd tier Boston open community.  RSRD folded after the invite and i was left stranded again.  Lost in a sea of ultimate on my own island with no idea how to get where I wanted.  I played only Merge that year and I was a fiery douchebag to my own team.  I was angry and I was frustrated and it came out onto my players.  I made a poor captain but I had some good ideas and knew I could be a better one.  Often, I felt like I was better than I was, trying to make Merge into Yuk, which I now know was never going to happen.  It was an incredible year, with tournament successes both for Dammit Brain (Wildwood) and Merge (BUDA SCL).  At the same time, it was a year filled with frustration, mainly at my inability to play any high-level ultimate to improve.  I was stuck with Merge until almost the end of summer, when Hayden passed a reference on to Johnny Love and Verbal about me via one of her Godiva friends.  I met up with the Clunker guys for practices and it was an introduction to still other new people in the area.  I was never too close with any of them but they're still people I can smile and say "hi" to when I see them.  It was enjoyable enough for some low-key ultimate and it served to introduce me to Clambake, but it was nothing special.  Just some time to keep my hand in.  Through Clunker, I met Josh who I then met again, sideways through Brian.  Throwing around with him, he mentioned in passing he felt I could make Sons and I made that my new goal.

After Clambake, things quieted down for a long stretch, but that was when Toad and I started working out together.  We would meet up at nights or on weekends for an hour or two to throw around, work on our defense and all that.  It was like a miniature version of house plyos, but focused more closely on our ultimate.  It was the constant chatter that "I bet Tommy never did this" or, conversely, "I bet Tommy used to do this" as we practiced layouts against nobody or throwing through intentional hard fouls.  It was an enjoyable time in many ways and probably paid off slightly, but working such things at the end of the year against a single person over and over?  It can only be so useful.  Its main success, I think, was making me feel badass.  I shared with Toad Cricket's words about Sons.  This was the beginning of the plan to go to Nationals.  I knew it would be work and I knew the odds of me making it were, statistically speaking, rather low.  I didn't, and don't, care.  I became aware that ultimate was the only thing in my life that makes me happy like this.  Preparing myself, pushing my body, improving my skills, these were the things that I looked forward to every day, every week of my long unemployment.  I look back and wish I had done more.  I know why I didn't, but....it just seems so...pointless in comparison.  When Toad was out of town and we didn't work out, it would be only a week or ten days before I was so antsy I went and ran something on my own.  I had poor discipline most of the time for lifting or plyos, but I could run.  I ran hills or agilities or any number of similar skills, but it was unfocused and too seldom.

Fall club came and went.  Winter Hat came and went.  Toad and I had a pretty good deal going where he could get me into his gym once a week for free, then we'd have Winter Hat the next night and over the weekend we'd run stairs in Alewife.  It was a tough but encouraging schedule, keeping us busy relatively often.  We kept our relationship relatively professional and it was a classic example of a workout buddy keeping you honest.  Toad maintained his usual Toad attitude of being better than me and I maintained my usual attitude of trying to show him up at every opportunity.  Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I failed but I stayed motivated.  Knowing that Toad was trying to take my handling spot come tryout time was a major motivator in getting my ass off the couch any number of times.  In fact, it ended up not being enough, as he took a D-line handling spot on Ubuntu while I got cut in the second round, but that just serves to convince me I need to re-up my commitment.  He often beat me, as has been the trend often in our relatively parallel ultimate careers.  There will come a time I need to beat him.  That time is, if I'm taking the hard line, now and all the future.  He tells me about how he's not working out or running track workouts and in my heart, I know I should be better than him.  There will have to be a time when I nut up and make it happen.  Tryouts are in 9 months.  There's time in there to make it happen.

By the time March rolled around and tryouts began, I was amped to begin.  First, a Ballometrics practice tryout to get my legs under me.  This ended up not working out, as I pulled a quad almost immediately and couldn't play, nor could I leave, as I was Toad's ride.  This left me standing on the sidelines, helping keep up the chatter and watching miserably in the rain.  I took a light week and went into Sons tryout feeling pretty confident.  I rolled in and was immediately knocked back.  Dozens and dozens of high-level college and club players were warming up, throwing and preparing to do what it takes.  I had never experienced anything like the Sons/Ironside tryouts.  They were huge and there were players of the utmost quality there.  I played decently, though I didn't really do anything spectacular.  I passed the first round with Toad, then we got cut after the second.  I returned to Ball tryouts, where I again got cut after a weekend I played decently on.  I then went out for Ubuntu and, after some stormy tryouts, was again cut, while Toad got passed through and eventually taken.  Finally, 7th Wheel, whom I was cut from after their final tryout (which was also my first with them), though they placed me on the practice squad.  At this point, I had put in lots of work with Merge, put myself on the line repeatedly for tryouts and was incredibly burned out.  I dedicated myself to making Merge as best I could in the midst of all the politics required to navigate the captainship and to getting what I could out of practice squad.  Ginie made 7th, so I had good reason to keep going.  It was frustrating at times and rewarding at others.

This summer has been a rollercoaster of the first order.  Up and down amongst the tryouts, up and down amongst the Merge shit.  Placed against the backdrop of my frustrations with work and whatever relationship troubles I was or wasn't dealing with at any given point.  I had made the decision, after getting cut from 7th, to simply focus on myself.  Take the time to get my head right and stop worrying about anything else.  This goal was harder than I thought it would be, getting caught up with all kinds of captaining.  In late July, I discovered ultimatethoughts.com, Matt Mackey's blog.  I remembered Mackey from the Ironside tryouts and multiple small events since and I liked him.  He represented something attainable and very worthwhile.  He was not tall but had made it deep into the Ironside tryouts.  I figured if he could do it, why couldn't I?  I subsequently stubbornly ignored any efforts by my internal self to answer that question.  He became a beacon of hope that I could, after all, achieve my goal, especially before he, too, was cut from Ironside.  Adrian, meanwhile, made Bodhi (and deserved to) as did Arvil (perhaps not so deserving).  They would likely be going to Nats again, so there remained multiple routes open to me.  From Mackey's blog, I became convinced to join a gym.  When mom announced there was one near work that had rates significantly below the BSC rates, I wavered briefly, then lept at the chance.  I was on the way, I thought.

I was working out regularly, two to three times a week, getting full body work done.  Deadlifts, squats, bench work, abs (my abs have begun really coming out now, as I move toward an older goal of getting a six-pack for shits), the like.  I was happy.  I felt myself getting stronger again.  My parents signed up for training and I, again, felt the draw of working harder.  I shortly thereafter met with the trainer, met with his boss and then, in a moment of impulsivity guided by goal-setting, signed up for 1200 dollars worth of personal training.  I have been working with him essentially since the beginning of August, perhaps mid-August.

The season has wound down now, and I begin the long, slow decline that marks the off-season.  My aim is to make the decline as slow as possible so I can show up at tryouts as fit as the college kids.  I hope to move in with Adam so we can both work our ultimate and bring it to a place where we're making teams come next March.  I find myself returning again and again to ultimate blogs during work, reading them and trying to soak in as much wisdom as Mackey, Parinella, Dusty or any others care to disseminate.  The weather will stay nice for some time still, so perhaps there will be time to work out with Toad again.  Perhaps I'll just be doing plyo work with Ken.  Who knows what the future holds?  I certainly don't, but I'm excited to find out.  I'm looking forward to the months ahead with a sense that I hold my future in my hands and can make it what I want.  It's the American Dream, miniaturized and applied to my ultimate.  I'll have grad school apps, work increases, what have you, but it all falls to the side when I think about training.  I _want_ to train.  I miss the structure of college.  I miss the camaraderie of a team to call your own.  I want it back.  I will get it back.

That's me.  That's my life.  The parts I care to share, at least.  If you couldn't muddle through it, I don't blame you.  It took me hours to write over the course of two days.  If you could, I'm heartened that perhaps there's hope for this blog after all.  If nobody else reads this, then at least it will be a lasting record of what I have been and what I'll become.  If others read this and I inspire you to come compete with me at tryouts, well, perhaps it would be wrong to say I'm happy to have the competition, but I believe in this sport and every body on the field is good for it.  Good luck, to you and to me.  Hope I'll see you out there.
~#28