Just got back from Sarasota. Welcome back to long posts about Ultimate!
With the Masters division format, the 12 teams are split into two 6-team pools. Each team plays each of the other 5 teams in its pool, then the top 4 teams in each pool move on to the quarterfinals against each other (1A vs 4B, 2A-3B, 3A-2B, 4A-1B) while the others go on to play games no one really cares about to rank the bottom finishers.
In the Open division, where I used to play with Sub-Zero, there are several tournaments throughout the year where the top teams go to play each other. For example, this year Zero played tournaments against other elite teams in Denver, Seattle and Chicago, and in previous years in Boston and Santa Cruz, too. The end result is that by the time nationals rolls around most of the teams have already played several times against the others so the nationals seedings can be largely based on those tournaments' results.
The Masters division, in which I played this year with Surly, ain't like that. A few of the teams play and practice together through the year, though most of the tournaments they go to will tend to be against middle-level Open teams, often with just a fraction of the players that will play with them in the fall. Other teams exist only to compete in the Championship series. They're usually based on a core of players who've played together a lot in the past, sometimes _way_ in the past. It's hard to know which teams will be particularly strong in any given year other than by looking at the roster and guessing how in-shape some stars from the past will be today.
This year's Surly team was much different than those of the past, with some overlap but with a large influx of fresh talent. We wound up entering the tournament as the 7 seed overall, ranked 4th in the A pool. And while seeding is a challenge, we knew our pool (with winners of 4 of the 6 regions) would be tough.
This year we've had trouble at the start of tournaments, and we had trouble at the start of this one. It didn't help that some of us (like, say, me) had had about 4 hours sleep the night before. We started at 9:30 Thursday morning facing the tournament's 6 seed, Mileage (Dallas). They have a really good tall guy and one or two other good receivers, and their offense is to throw them a lot of long passes and let them jump up high to catch them. Which they do very well, and we had trouble getting into synch offensively. So we had several leads in the game, but we kept letting them back into it, in the end losing 17-16.
Next up was the tournament's 1 seed, Troubled Past (mostly Bay Area). They'd won the Northwest Region, home of both of the finalists from last year, in their first tournament, and some of the players hadn't been able to make it, so Nationals was their first time together. I think they were still learning each others' names. But they have several players who'd competed at the top levels of the game, and they were also able to come back after we'd opened up a lead. It was tight through most of the second half, and at 14-13 they intercepted a pass in our own end-zone for the 15-13 win. 0-2.
The third game finally went better. Boneyard (NC) was apparently pretty weak in past years. This year they'd picked up a couple of big-name former Open players, but they were pretty old, most of them 40+. Apologies to any actual grown-ups who read this...I'll just point out that the Masters age in swimming is 25+... We were in control the whole time and beat them 15-8 (which turned out to be their worst loss of the weekend). We ended the day 1-2, but still in okay position for a spot in quarters.
Dinner back at the condos, we grilled out and looked at the ocean (bay, gulf, whatever). I slept.
Friday morning was against Ironwood (CO), the 5th seed in our pool. They weren't very deep, and their uniforms were ugly. Bright yellow? We didn't have much trouble beating them. 2-2.
Our final game in the pool was against DoG (Boston). The core of the team had won six straight national titles in the open division in the '90s. And they'd won all of their games so far (17-16 vs Troubled Past, I think 15-13 against Mileage). At this point they'd clinched the top finish in our pool. And we'd clinched a spot in quarterfinals as at least the #4 finisher in the pool. To move up to #3 we'd need to win and get help--Ironwood would need to beat Troubled Past, which seemed pretty unlikely. Each team's reserves (including me) got a lot of playing time while we saved our stars' energy for the next round, and everyone was pretty relaxed. They won.
2-3, fourth in our pool, we get the honor of facing the top finisher in the other pool in quarters on Friday afternoon. Old And In The Way (CO) had finished in the top 3 in this tournament for 9 years running. They were not psyched to have to face us in the quarterfinals.
With good reason. We started out trading points for much of the first half, then we got a break at the end to go into halftime up 8-6. Or 8-7, but definitely up a break in the worst conditions so far in the tournament. And we came out strong to start the second. We score on O, then PBo had a layout D where he beat his guy to the disc by at least a yard to give us a short field. Then another break to go up 11-7. It's kinda cold (well, for Florida) and it's raining. We exchange scores, give back the break, and they get a D and are on O when the lightning break comes with us up 12-10. The weather cleared pretty much right away, and I went to hang out in the pavilion while we waited the mandatory half-hour. After about 15 minutes to warm up again they score. But then I think we got two in a row to 14-11, they got two for 14-13, and we receive the disc for the win. Turtle had the disc about 45 yards out and makes eye contact with Boardman. They mark him with two guys, but he finds some way to get off an inside out huck that's _high_ in the air. Then....silence. Everyone figures there must be a call, and no one's moving. Dave's defender is on the goal line, with Dave about 15 yards behind him in the end zone. The defender looks up, hangs his head, and Dave patiently waits for the disc to come down for an easy catch. Surly's in the semis.
We were happy. And, better news, we got the rematch we'd hoped for. As suspected, the A pool had been tough--DoG, Troubled Past and Mileage had all won their quarters as well. Yeah seedings. But we get to play Mileage in Semis, and we were confident we could play better. For now, back to the condos. We'll grill out, and we've got 2 massage therapists coming by for the evening. Fifteen minutes on the table did wonders for my calves--turns out, my ankles don't bend far enough to stretch them out.
Saturday was...less exciting. We led the whole way in the semis and it was never close. We were glad to win (15-10), but we'd expected to all along. We popped over to watch the end of the DoG/Troubled Past game. DoG had been up, TP had come back, then they traded points to 14-14. Then, after some sloppiness from both sides, TP has an unforced error on game point and DoG punched it in for the 16-14 (or 17-15) win.
Several hours later, we play DoG in the finals. We play on the showcase field. Lots of people went to the beach or the beer garden, but there's still a crowd (which grows after the Open semis end) and they're filming the game for the DVD. But I didn't really notice.
Unfortunately, we played pretty flat. We had some unforced errors, and DoG got some Ds. And, well, they didn't give us the disc much. They jumped out to an early lead. We got back a few late in the first half, but still went into half down 8-4 or 5. And more of the same in the second half. I think they had a total of 5 or 6 turns in the whole game, and we weren't nearly efficient enough to counteract that.
I got in on D in the second half. I get down on the pull quickly and shut down their first throw. I'm covering the dump, and they don't get it to him at all. They wind up on the line about 25 yards out, and my only goal is to prevent an up-line throw. My man goes back for the dump, I follow, then he cuts up-line. I can't recover in time and I'm nowhere near him when he gets the disc and throws a continue for the score. Because I'm that good.
They wind up beating us 15-9 or so. So no World Championships next year for us. But we still had a fairly successful year, and we still have a lot of good beer to drink. We drink it. We actually wound up winning the Spirit award, too, which isn't that big of a deal but is still kinda neat. In every other division it went to the last seed in the tournament, so it's nice to win it while not sucking. Kinda like, say, DoG, who was known for being gentlemen during their 90s run.
Not much else to report. The finals in the other divisions were not that exciting either. Open was a close game, but really sloppy. Sammy actually dropped the pull on game point, but Bravo's first throw got D'd. Mixed started out 5-0. There were a total of 55 turns, which was actually way under our projection. I think 3 points had no turns, 1 point had 13. And the women's final score was 15-6.
Halloween was okay, nothing special. Most of my ladies are or were recently pregnant, so I only had a couple to hang with at the bar, which was packed with annoying young loud (mostly Zero) guys. After we left I tried to find Ellie's team's party but failed.
Hope all is well. Next installment: the G bar mitzvah!
Ta,
sg
