Ok so the biggest issue I had yesterday (Monday) was that it was BC Day. For those of you that are not familiar, BC day is the day they changed the name of the Province from Labatt Blue to British Colombia. Apparently the custom is to abstain from alcohol in rememberance of the states goal of getting away from drinking in excess. It is a great time in a sober sort of way, but when the nation doesn't sell booze on Sunday either, it gets old fast.
Anyway, we managed to find a retail venue that came up with the bright idea of selling alcohol in such an opportune moment. Captialism, however, is not lost on these canucks and they jacked the prices up big time. We're talking $60 for a 30 rack, $60?!?! Needless to say, I wasn't prepared to take out a loan to get blitzed. However, be that as it may, we managed to secure a decent bottle of Bacardi for a better price and were ready to party.
Ok back to Ultimate.
My cousin got in Sunday night and because I was wiped out and he was coming off a two month bender in Europe, we took it easy. We got up early to catch the morning games and becuase I have a soft spot for Canada, we took a peak at the Furious vs RSA game. Can anyone guess what RSA stands for? Apparently its South Africa which I'm assuming stands for republic of South Africa, which makes sense but when you are looking at CAN vs RSA, I got scabs from scratching my head becuase I didn't think Russia had sent a team
Anyway, if you take a peak at the score from this game, it was bascially your average slaughter. Canada came at the poor fellows from the Coogeran state with more speed and experience than they could handle. I liked belting out the "Lethal Weapon 2" cheer when I deemed it appropriate but RSA scores were few and far between.
After this game was the USA Juniors vs Germany and this game was equally one sided. Tiina Booth finally made an appearance and it was nice to talk to her. She pegged Team USA to win 17-6 and she was dead wrong (when she reads this she is gonna get mad because I gave her shit for only giving Germany 6 points when in reality they only scored 3).
The biggest issue for the Deutch folks was their throwing ability. Hucks were very outside in on the flick side and after watching a ton of Open, you begin to realize how difficult/rare a full field flick bomb on a line is. The Stars and Bars came at Germany with an exceptionally fast ho stack weave and despite the Germans height, they could not connect on hucks. I figured they would be like Great Britain with significant abilities in the air, but that wasn't the case.
I spent most of this game chatting it up with Tiina because she is so much fun. One thing I liked that she was talking about was that she is the Queen of knocking players down a few pegs. I may be the King of building egos, but she shatters them with every breath (if she choses). Some of my favorite quotes were "You dropped that disc in such and such game", "you never beat us", "I remember when you couldn't even throw that IO flick and it still needs work". Great ultimate personality.
After this game we hit the road and went on the booze hunt. As mentioned above, we had some issues, but we came back with our Bacardi and coke and began hitting the sauce fairly hard. I suspected this would become an issue later in the day but considering I hadn't done any vicing in the country yet, I figured I was due. Anyway, we got our Rum/Coke bottles and headed back to the fields.
We camped out at Colombia vs Great Britain (open juniors). It seems like Colombia's best program is their junior boys, which is actually pretty awesome. It would be pretty bad if only their masters team was turning heads. Anyway, this game was fairly bad ass. Colombia plays with raw athelticism and intensity and Great Britain plays a gentlemen's game and loves the huck. This would pose to be a decent strategy for most of the game because on average Great Britain had a height advantage down field. Colombia had this big dude, "Ocho", but he handled mostly.
Anyway, Great Britain took half 8-7 and the game continued to be close for the remainder. Because international rules are to 17 or 100 minutes, this game was capped. Finally, a game that was close. Down the stretch Great Britain seemed to pull away going up 13-11, game to 14. Alex and I started taking bets and he took Colombia, so I took Great Britain. Despite the score, Alex took 2 to 1 odds and I got 4 to 1 (for what I don't know yet).
As luck would have it, Great Britain could not match Colombia's intensity and the victory slipped through their fingers. When they recieved at 13-12 one of the GB kids told the kids on the line "Its game point chaps, seal it now". Word to the wise, don't do this. There is no need for players to know what the score is until the game is over, it just adds more emotional pressure which is never a good thing in cases like this. Needless to say, Colombia continued to bring a defensive pressure that GB could not handle and they coughed the disc up two more times and let the boys in yellow long sleeves snatch the victory. This was easily the best game...so far.
Anyway, we managed to find a retail venue that came up with the bright idea of selling alcohol in such an opportune moment. Captialism, however, is not lost on these canucks and they jacked the prices up big time. We're talking $60 for a 30 rack, $60?!?! Needless to say, I wasn't prepared to take out a loan to get blitzed. However, be that as it may, we managed to secure a decent bottle of Bacardi for a better price and were ready to party.
Ok back to Ultimate.
My cousin got in Sunday night and because I was wiped out and he was coming off a two month bender in Europe, we took it easy. We got up early to catch the morning games and becuase I have a soft spot for Canada, we took a peak at the Furious vs RSA game. Can anyone guess what RSA stands for? Apparently its South Africa which I'm assuming stands for republic of South Africa, which makes sense but when you are looking at CAN vs RSA, I got scabs from scratching my head becuase I didn't think Russia had sent a team
Anyway, if you take a peak at the score from this game, it was bascially your average slaughter. Canada came at the poor fellows from the Coogeran state with more speed and experience than they could handle. I liked belting out the "Lethal Weapon 2" cheer when I deemed it appropriate but RSA scores were few and far between.
After this game was the USA Juniors vs Germany and this game was equally one sided. Tiina Booth finally made an appearance and it was nice to talk to her. She pegged Team USA to win 17-6 and she was dead wrong (when she reads this she is gonna get mad because I gave her shit for only giving Germany 6 points when in reality they only scored 3).
The biggest issue for the Deutch folks was their throwing ability. Hucks were very outside in on the flick side and after watching a ton of Open, you begin to realize how difficult/rare a full field flick bomb on a line is. The Stars and Bars came at Germany with an exceptionally fast ho stack weave and despite the Germans height, they could not connect on hucks. I figured they would be like Great Britain with significant abilities in the air, but that wasn't the case.
I spent most of this game chatting it up with Tiina because she is so much fun. One thing I liked that she was talking about was that she is the Queen of knocking players down a few pegs. I may be the King of building egos, but she shatters them with every breath (if she choses). Some of my favorite quotes were "You dropped that disc in such and such game", "you never beat us", "I remember when you couldn't even throw that IO flick and it still needs work". Great ultimate personality.
After this game we hit the road and went on the booze hunt. As mentioned above, we had some issues, but we came back with our Bacardi and coke and began hitting the sauce fairly hard. I suspected this would become an issue later in the day but considering I hadn't done any vicing in the country yet, I figured I was due. Anyway, we got our Rum/Coke bottles and headed back to the fields.
We camped out at Colombia vs Great Britain (open juniors). It seems like Colombia's best program is their junior boys, which is actually pretty awesome. It would be pretty bad if only their masters team was turning heads. Anyway, this game was fairly bad ass. Colombia plays with raw athelticism and intensity and Great Britain plays a gentlemen's game and loves the huck. This would pose to be a decent strategy for most of the game because on average Great Britain had a height advantage down field. Colombia had this big dude, "Ocho", but he handled mostly.
Anyway, Great Britain took half 8-7 and the game continued to be close for the remainder. Because international rules are to 17 or 100 minutes, this game was capped. Finally, a game that was close. Down the stretch Great Britain seemed to pull away going up 13-11, game to 14. Alex and I started taking bets and he took Colombia, so I took Great Britain. Despite the score, Alex took 2 to 1 odds and I got 4 to 1 (for what I don't know yet).
As luck would have it, Great Britain could not match Colombia's intensity and the victory slipped through their fingers. When they recieved at 13-12 one of the GB kids told the kids on the line "Its game point chaps, seal it now". Word to the wise, don't do this. There is no need for players to know what the score is until the game is over, it just adds more emotional pressure which is never a good thing in cases like this. Needless to say, Colombia continued to bring a defensive pressure that GB could not handle and they coughed the disc up two more times and let the boys in yellow long sleeves snatch the victory. This was easily the best game...so far.
I should also mention that Ray Illian's dad made a cameo at this point and he definitely brings a "Jolian's Dad" kind of feel if you know what I mean. He seemed more proud than anything of his son and it was interesting to hear about how Ray is a second generation player. He talked about how he brought them to games when they were kids and how he used to make them complete 10 throws before Ray and his brother could go inside at night. He was cool though and its nice to see so much support for his son.
By this time, I was feeling the rum and was excited to go over the showcase game (USA vs Canada, masters). I wanted to go over to Australia (open), but once again, they were a hike. I got into the "Spirit Enclosure", yeah thats what they call it, and took a spot on one of the sidelines.
In a game that I thought Team USA would do fairly well in, they were down early. Canada took a 9-5 lead into half time but at no point did I feel that the game was out of reach. Alex and I took a bathroom break behind the bleechers and when we came back, I was ready to bring the ruccuss. Considering my enebriation at the moment, I turned into an ass, which in retrospect I am bit embarassed to admit. The area we were camped out in was ALL Canada and considering my mental state, things got ugly quickly. Thank god Alex is level headed and he got me to play nice as quickly as I got obnoxious. I definitely felt some America Free Speech pride but I quickly realized how annoying I was and kept it clean.
As for the second half of the game, it was awesome. One thing I have been dying to write about is the fact that Dugan, Namkung and Husak are all playing with the DoG guys. So crazy that the Condor/DoG rivalry has found its way here. Considering that all 3 still play Open they were definitely helpful. Namkung went down early with some sort of should injury but Dugan and Husak worked well on the D-line. I ran into Parinella today (Tuesday) and he was telling me he liked that they were here, but still had not been on the field yet. Apparently the deal is that they the Condor guys have to win Nationals in '11 so the DoG guys can poach spots. As for the game, as expected Jim and the Count played very well on Team USA's O-line and they were definitely instrumenal in keeping the Red, White and Blue in it late. Mooney isn't here yet but he will be for bracket play.
As I mentioned before, this game never seemed out of reach, and the D-line worked well. They brought a lot of pressure that Canada didn't handle well. They made careless mistakes and dropped discs which resulted in break after break going our way. Before I knew it the game was tied at 12s and then at 14s.
On game point, Parinella caught the final goal and I went nuts. If I had been all by myself or in an American section, it wouldn't have been that big a deal, but the hostil crowd got me feeling patriotic and so I was happy. I caught up with Al after the game and despite the fact that I bought two $3 beers, he wasn't prepared to shotgun yet. Oh well, I'll have my chance later in the week and I probably would have sucked because I was pretty bombed.
We walked back to the dorm, ate some microwave dinners and before we knew it we were talking about "naps" at 8pm. We hit the hay and were done for the night. We did pop up at 2am and were feeling a little disoriented but it wasn't too long before we passed out again.
After 11 hours asleep we were up again to catch the first round of Team USA (mixed) vs Colombia. This game, like the Canada/RSA game yesterday, was pretty one sided. Shazaam had great thrower execution and despite Colombia's athleticism, made some suspect choices. They took half 9-0 and I kind of "spaced out" at this point.
Today is the epic game Sockeye vs Buzz Bullets game. I'll take some good notes and hopefully get something up either tonight or tomorrow. Hope things are moderately interesting to read, I'm doing my best and abusing my media pass in the process. Have a good one folks, stay tuned.
just my thoughts
match diesel
3 comments:
match, it may be just my 48 year old eyes, but I find it difficult to read your red letters on black background to the point where it is practically unreadable. I suppose if I cared enough, I could cut and paste your posts and read them in MS word or something.
eat as much sushi as you can- its what i miss the most about vancouver.
I'm pretty sure I was sitting close to you when you were causing a ruckus during the USA/Canada game. I thought it was badly needed. There wasn't enough excitement or controversy, especially in for masters game. The best we came up with was shaking a cowbell after scores.
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