Clambake was a great time.  I picked up with a team that was composed of about half One Trick Pony/Flight School and half pickups.  We had a sizable roster on paper, though it ended up not feeling that large, especially as we started losing players to injury.


Ginie and I showed up late on Saturday morning due to getting absurdly lost on the way from Portland to Brunswick.  Nevertheless, pretty much the second I got cleated up, I was called on the line.  That was certainly a nice way to start the tournament.  I tried (failed) to learn the names of people on the team, then we went out and did our thing.  All through Saturday, I felt I was playing pretty decently.  I was quickly pushed to a d-line role, which was kinda mindblowing, given past experiences, but perhaps I can thank the wind for some help on that.  I played handle and cut and was enjoying myself on all sides of the disc.  Our guys were relatively solid and in fact I was likely responsible for many of our thrown away discs, trying to do wacky shit because I started out not taking the tournament too seriously.  Things like Stall 2 hammers to the force side, y'know.  However, because it was a pretty gusty day, there was Zone aplenty and I found my niche in short deep for a while, also moving to wing occasionally.  Anyway, as I said, our guys were pretty solid and we were making d's happen pretty much every point.  This may mislead you into thinking we won any games on Saturday.  We didn't.  We went 0-3 on Sat. though with a point differential of maybe -4 or -5.  Not bad overall.  Also, I still hate Flowchart.

Anyway, I can remember distinct times when I was completely in the Zone on defense, only to pull myself out of it by going "man, am I in the Zone or WHAT?!"  I remarked to Ginie in the car how much better I feel about my defense having hit the gym more.  I feel quicker, I feel stronger and I feel both those things translate to ultimate skills.  Once, in college, Toad and I had a discussion about whether our heads or our bodies let us down more on the field- his answer: "Head".  My answer: "Body".  And now that I'm putting 250 bucks a month into making my body better, I'm seeing results on the field.  And they're making me very very happy.

Saturday night rolled in late during our last game, which got night-capped leading to a frustrating U-point loss. Flight School offered to clear the fields so we start wandering, picking up anything we can see on the grass which means pretty much anything we step on or is fluorescent.  After a lot of stress, I find a DD for Ginie and I so we don't have to stay sober at the party and the whole group heads out.  I find myself constantly marveling at the number of players in Boston that I know.  It increases all the time and it's often not one-directional.  I was surprised to have AJ from Sons give me a smile that strongly implied he knew my face (maybe there was somebody behind me, maybe it was the three boat races Harvard had just competed in), as well I saw many Ballo's, a guy from Clunker, and generally just had a pretty good time getting slightly tipsy with Ginie.  We made our way back to the hotel and ended up falling asleep unshowered.  Looking back, that's kinda grody.

Sunday morning was an early morning for us, not knowing when our first game started.  Ginie and I showed up at the fields around 9-9:20 and headed in from the parking lot only to find that there was _nobody_ there.  Like, seriously.  ten people was the entire tournament at that point.  We quickly headed back to the car for 40 minutes of napping.  In time, people showed up and we wandered BACK out to the fields to cleat up and prepare for our opponents...who ended up arriving 80 minutes late.  We declared ourselves the victors, then played a (mostly) friendly game to get/stay warm.  After that, a bye for two hours, followed by a game against some chumps.  Having worked our spikes during the bye, I thought that my mentality to be a joking douche (contradiction in terms?) would play amusingly, but the other team didn't seem to enjoy my first-point clap-slam spike.  In the end, I did exceedingly little that game, neither making D's or opening up offensive opportunities.  We won, but I felt pretty blah about that game.  I then had a chance to go out and do better in our last game, the chumpionships.  We were playing a team objectively better than us but we had real opportunities to win and never seemed to understand what it takes.  In this case, it was more help calls from our women and better cutting from our men.  We started working out of a ho (for some reason changing from our tournament standard vert/zone offense...well, I can understand not running Zone O when it's Man D but you know what I mean....) and their bracket proved all too effective.  Nobody seemed comfortable with the spacing and they punished us steadily for that.  I had a great moment in that game, however, that really boosted my ego.  It was Lewis' team and I expected him to cover me as he often has.  He did so at the Souper Bowl in July and I expected he would do so again.  However, they pulled to start and down came some seriously athletic looking guy from Brown and I was both surprised and rather complimented.  I don't know if Lewis felt he couldn't contain me or if he wanted this Brown guy to completely shut me down or if he just wanted Hipps more, but I took it as a combination of the first two and then proceeded to get open underneath with some great power moves at this guy.  It was a good feeling.

Speaking of good feelings, I managed to play the entire tournament without my ankle brace and with no pain whatsoever.  My whole ankle felt great the entire weekend.  Granted, when I woke up this morning it was very very stiff and sore and again all through the morning but by now (11:50ish), it's almost back to normal.  I'm feeling really happy about that.  I also put some surprisingly well placed shots out and had a fair few D's.  Of course, the one D I'll remember the entire weekend is the one I didn't get- playing wing/hammerstop on Lewis' side, I watched the swing get prepared and got ready to go.  Started moving in and got a full extension layout only to touch only air as the disc went just past my hand, leaving Lewis wide open to hit a girl who was then (possibly gratuitously) layout-D'd by our 6'4" guy.  I was pretty amped at that point.

Anyway, I've got training again today after work.  If Maila hadn't left the N2 open all weekend, this wouldn't be an issue at all, but the time it took me to replace the tank ate seriously into my buffer time before needing to be at the gym.  We'll see what happens, then, neh?  I'm looking forward to it.