Happy Friday 🙂

[Note: this post started laaate Thursday, finished Fri morn.]


Top: Shawn pulls the disc. Bottom: Dos Manos player Rich attempts a throw to his teammate.
Wow, had a fantastic time at Ultimate tonight. We were playing against Dos Manos, the team we played against in the league finals last summer. Our teams traditionally get along quite well, and tonight was no exception. To give you an idea of how laid-back the game was, there were a couple moments tonight where not one of the 20-something people on both teams knew the score. We ended up winning 15 to 8 (I think — Cam?) Speaking of Cam, he had some incredible plays tonight! The first was defensive — he rocketed down the field in time to bat down the other team’s second pass! The second was an offensive play, with Cam laying out for the disc, catching it, and just barely keeping his toes in-bounds. I didn’t have a very good vantage point (I was on the opposite side of the field), but my teammates assure me he was in. Good stuff!
So you have a better idea of what the game looks like, I took a couple of video clips tonight. The first one is a “long-bomb” kind of play, with a “handler” (someone good at both passing and catching… worker bees which move the frisbee up the field to get within scoring distance) “hucking” (throwing long) to someone who is “long” (close to the endzone). Our opponents were doing a lot of this tonight. And, oh yeah, my team is in blue.
Clip 1
In the second clip, you can see several things going on. The first thing you hear is a loud voice calling “backhand!”. That’s a white player (Dave) requesting that the white player guarding frisbee force the thrower to throw a backhand. After this, you can see the blue team make a number of quick passes up the field. Again, these are the blue handlers “working it up” (moving the disc toward our opponens’ endzone). After the second pass, you can clearly hear a white player (on defense) calling out “stall 1, stall 2, stall 3” etc. On offensive, you have ten seconds to throw the disc, so if the defender gets to the “t” in “ten” when he’s calling out “stall ten”, it’s an automatic change of possession. If you listen closely, you can hear the subsequent defenders calling out stalls. The word “stall” isn’t explicitly necessary, so long as there’s one second between each number. A few moments later someone yells “Pick!”, followed by a voice echoing “Pick called!” and everyone freezing their position. A pick means one player cut another player off. This usually happens when an offensive player runs too close to another person, leading his or her defender straight into said person. Creation of this situation is explicitly prohibited by the rules, and usually occurs by accident. There is no penalty; instead, the cut-off (“picked”) player is allowed to catch up to the person s/he is defending and play resumes. Shortly thereafter, I get interrogated on the whereabouts of my shirt (which, sadly, had not made it out of the laundry in time), and we see a forehand rise much too quickly and fly out of reach of the blue player in our opponent’s endzone.
Clip 2
After our winning game, a bunch of us went down to a tiny, smokey little bar — the Mahi Hut — whose specialty was “sneaky-tikis” and mai-thais. See smoke in a bar was such a weird thing. We chose the place because it was a halfway point for most people. We had an easy view of the bartender from where we sat, and I’ve never seen stronger drinks poured. It was just crazy, the bottles were upsidedown for well over 15 seconds. I had a sneaky-tiki, and while it was good, it was a little sweet for my tastebuds. If I ever go back, it’s the mai-thai for sure. And I won’t bring my visor; for some reason hats aren’t allowed (though a few other people had hats).

Drinks

Water/Mai-thai

Scotty & candle

The ghost of Eric J

“The man no legs!”

Me, Sonia, Scotty. I think my reaction time must just be too quick. 🙂

Alec, Eric J, Gustafson

The lamp above our table.