Well! It's been quite some time since I posted a real entry.

I was supposed to drive out to a birthday party last night at Rutgers, but my parents didn't want me to borrow their car...more evidence for why I need one myself. I plan on buying a car before I turn 21. That would be pretty sweet--hopefully I can get something semi-nice once I collect enough coin.

But this morning, I drove out to Busch campus for the SASHP Mentor/Mentee Orientation. Neither of my mentees showed up, but that was fine--I got to chill with some other people, compete in various games with them, and then have lunch with another group of people. My team won first in 5 events, and third in the remaining event, so we won the whole thing (like a pimp). The only even we took third in was the one where all the other teams cheated and didn't follow the rules, but my group (group Integrity) did, so what can you do. It was pretty awesome to chat with all the incoming freshman, and most of them seemed excited (and a little nervous) about coming to Rutgers. It kind of made my day to do those silly activities and talk with them all, give what tips and information I could about life at RU and in the honors program...overall, a neat little get-together. I missed the YCC practice for it, which is a little diasppointing, but I think I made the right decision to stick with the SASHP thing, even though my own mentees weren't there.

Anyway. I started rereading Harry Potter 5, then I'll read 6, then I'll get my hands on 7 and read read read. Gonna keep working, gotta get that money in the bank, and I'm fairly content with what I've been doing to keep in shape. I could do more running, but it's hot. I guess I'll have to find some way to motivate myself anyway, because so far I've really only been able to get up and run for yoga. It's alright though, it's base training for now.

They graduated!

Pretty awesome. Brings up a lot of memories for me about graduation, project graduation, etc. I'm jealous, it sounds like it was a lot of fun. Plus, both Caitlin and Travis won something cool, but I didn't win anything last year. My dad and grandparents are up again, or at least most of them, and it's good to spend time with them. It's a very odd summer, being that I'm not totally done with schoolwork (sigh--I know) and have started working, but not a regular job with a traditionally defined schedule. The Ultimate has been pretty good, though, especially Skylands. I haven't been able to get out to MCUDL again, and I'm not really interested in shelling out a lot of money to keep attending club tournaments, but I hope to help out at the YCC practices. Things are up in the air, and it'll be nice when some of them come down, but until they do I'm alright. Having a pretty good time.

Congrats, grads.

So, I've been playing Mixed Club Ultimate. On Friday I got a ride from Jessica up to Boston, where we would stay with my cousin Tim. Boston, just so you know, does not go out of its way to help you navigate its winding ways. There was a serious lack of street signs and an excess of "rotaries", resulting in a lot of disoriented confusion. But savvy navigator that I am, I had drawn a nice map of our route. With my map and a little bit of luck on our side, we only made one wrong turn and made it to Tim's place at midnight.

I slept well, on a futon, and woke up at 6:30am to birds singing and early sunlight streaming in through the window. There was a soft little breeze blowing, since the window had been left open all night, and it was a pleasant waking in general. I did a couple brief stretches, accepted a glass of orange juice from Tim (he was already awake), and we grabbed breakfast at the Dunkin Donuts on the corner--egg on a toasted poppy bagel. The egg didn't seem like real egg to me, but it was food enough. We had an hour drive to the fields, but arrived with plenty of time to warm up.

I threw, took a lap, stretched, did a few active warmups, and felt pretty good. First game was against "Stack to the Future", and a challenging game it was not. We let them get closer than we should have, though. NYNJA wins 15-5. Next up was "Big Red Death Machine", and I don't remember much about this game except that they made us play a real game. We won at the cap, 13-9. Finally, we played "Bytown Flatball Club", a team from Boston? They were good. We lost 10-15. We played a crossover game against Enough Monkeys, and won 15-12. That was a bitch of a game, because we were tired--especially the women, who had played savage all day. We stopped by the hotel so various people could drop off their stuff, and there we saw Amanda Davis (Pippin spit on her shoes). Decided to eat at Olive Garden, where the wait was not as bad as they told us it would be. While waiting, we had a shoe-bocce contest to see who got the first available table, and I won a decisive victory (though it turned out to not matter, because all of our tables were ready at the same time). I had a very large meal--salad, breadsticks, and shrimp over penne--and some nice conversation with the Hofstra kids. Back to Tim's, a long talk on the phone, and rest up for Sunday.

Woke up a bit late, got to the fields a few minutes before our first game to find out that we got totally screwed in the seedings for the championship bracket. So there are 32 teams at the tournament, we were seeded 12th overall. We held seed in our pool, and won our crossover game against seed 21. For some inane reason, they bumped us down to the 16th seed for the champ bracket, meaning our pre-quarters matchup is Slow White X, the first seed and eventual tournament winners. The only games we lost this entire weekend were to the 1st place and 2nd place teams. Whatever, we didn't play well against Slow White X, lost 4-15. I didn't like this team, because they were very physical on defense, bumping on purpose and holding me back from cutting with their arms, etc. Which is fine. Except they also made a lot of bad calls. In my opinion, you can either play dirty or make bad calls, but if you do both you're a fucking cheater. By bad calls, I mean travel calls when I definitely did not travel, and they contested fouls where they definitely initiated contact. I think there was also a pick called when their guy was not within 10 feet. Still, there were a lot of rushed throws and poor choices on offense, so we lost.

Consolation game against RIP, some Canadian team. They were up 5-10, we won 12-11. The comeback felt great, we started clicking on offense and finally converting the turns that we had been generating the whole time. I specifically remember D'ing a huck (I outran my opponent, but didn't really sky him), completing a lot of break throws (some for goals), and assisting with several forehand hucks. Actually, the whole tournament was like that for me. My only errors came from handling behind a cup or hucking too far--but they were such flat pretty hucks, and I completed a lot of them. I scored once or twice, assisted more, got some D's. I missed two layout-D opportunities, but both times I would have been demolished by a huge dude, so I am not upset that I didn't leave my feet. I got knocked to the ground a few times by some giants, which hurt--5'8" 137lb vs tall/heavy just sucks. I also got trucked in the endzone, but held onto the disc for the score. That was cool. 11th place overall.

NYNJA might disband, there's no committment. I don't really have the money to keep travelling to tournaments, so I might just stick with summer league. I think I have improved as a player already this summer, and I am starting to come up with a couple things to focus on for Skylands. I'd like to develop both my handling and my cutting, so we'll see. My defense needs work either way. I am very sore, but will have to keep up my conditioning. Air Alert starts June 11th. Uh-oh.

I start summer conditioning today.

Here's my writeup of the Girls' SJA Invite:

We arrived in St. Johnsbury late on Friday night, having hit traffic on I-95 on the way up. The host family was very accomodating, setting up our parent/chaperone/driver in one room and the rest of the girls in the room behind it. They gave me, as "the coach", a bed in the guest room downstairs.

The captains' meeting was scheduled for noon, so we woke up at 9:30, had a leisurely breakfast, and drove to the fields around 11am. I had the girls do partner throwing while I went to the captains' meeting with Caitlin, where we found out that we had a first-round by. I was frustrated, because this meant that we could have driven up Saturday morning after a decent night's sleep, and it also meant we would have four games in a row on Sunday. With only two subs for a total of 6 games, I would have preferred three each day rather than two and four straight.

C'est la vie, however. We did some straight-up marking drill and then watched our first opponent (Longmeadow) play our third opponent (NMH). They both played exclusively zone, but it was hard to tell whether it was the best strategy--Longmeadow had a good dump-swing going, but couldn't break through the middle, so they would eventually turn it. The wind was a factor, so there was garbage aplenty and NMH was coming down with more of it. Neither team had consistent hucks, but NMH was putting more of them up and they had the height advantage. Both teams had a lot of drop and unforced errors--painful to watch, but not unexpected. At half, we went down to the fields to warm up for our game. Some throwing, where I helped the soph handler and the tall girl with their hucks. Then, a go-to drill while I wondered where Longmeadow was--the game was supposed to start in 2 minutes and they were nowhere. I ran to find them, asked them to get 7 on the line, and said we wouldn't bother with assessing points.

I took no notes, but I remember my impressions from each game. Longmeadow had a lot of players, a couple with throws but none that really took over the game. For the whole game, they played only zone D and we played only man D, force-middle. Our dump-swing worked well enough, but really we were effective at moving it up the sideline and breaking through the middle. The poppers found holes, the wings found spaces, and the handlers (Caitlin, Sam, Steph, Emily) did a great job of getting it to them and getting it back. We were able to score both up- and down-wind, mostly because our defense forced turns near the endzone. Longmeadow really was not prepared for man-to-man, and there was less wind on the lower field, a great boon for our zone O. We closed out the game 8-3.

Next up was Columbia, a team the girls have played two or three times over the last couple years, as they are the only other nearby women's team. We both played man for much of the game, although CHS threw zone for one point and we worked it right past them. They were led by a very talented player, Judith, who will attend Rutgers next year and play with Shakti (a great pickup for a struggling program). The Judith-Caitlin matchup was fun to watch, with neither player having a clear advantage. Judith seemed to be able to get open pretty effectively underneath, but not at will. She played good dump defense on Caitlin, but couldn't take her out of the game. It was pretty clear that Watchung had stronger supporting players to back Caitlin up, though, and we saw a lot of high-stall turnovers because of our strong defense. Highlight of the tournament: near the end of this game, Judith was on the CHS goal line, forced middle on the backhand sideline. Caitlin handblocks Judith, but her hand hurts too much to pick up, so she calls herself the iso in the endzone. Our soph handler puts out a low forehand, Caitlin lays out--full extension sideways--for the goal. Prettiest 30 seconds of Ultimate I can remember, but she hit her head pretty hard on the landing, and had to sit. The next point, we play great defense and got a lot of blocks and run-through D's (then repeatedly turn it over on the goal line), Emily scores with a layout. I think we trade points, then we lose the last point, winning at hard cap 12-4.

Sunday was a more difficult day of Ultimate, however. Our first game against NMH was ugly--they are another zone team, and kept changing the kind of zone they played to confuse our handlers. They tried three-man cup, four-man cup, three-man cup plus a girl permanenetly on Caitlin, and probably something else that I missed. The girls struggled with these different looks, especially when NMH tried to shut down Caitlin and she couldn't stay back to handle. Our dump-swing was less efficient, and there was miscommunication without Caitlin. Plus it was windier that day, making it was harder to go over the top, and we had a lot of drops. Caitlin wanted to try zone D for a point, but they shredded it (like I said, a zone team). So the beginning of the game was rough, and we lost half 4-8. During the second half, we took more of a huck-and-defense strategy, went back to man and started forcing trap rather than middle, once I saw that the NMH throwers had more trouble with it. The punting worked especially well with-wind, and our defense got us enough turnovers that we would eventually work it up against wind as well. NMH tried to come back at us with the punting strategy, but Caitlin poaching in the backfield was too much for them--she was more aggressive than the other girls when the disc went up. So we crawled back into the game, the cap went on, and we scored an upwind break to make it 9-9, double-game-point. We put it in for the win.

Next up was Stuyvesant, a team of many players, most of whom were athletic and had decent throws. They played zone-D, perhaps the most organized zone we had seen yet. Our dump-swing worked well, especially when we broke the mark, but they shut down our downfielders and wouldn't let the handlers gain yards on swings. Add to that a few handblocks trying to break the mark, and our offense was pretty much tied, and we ended up trying to punt again, with less success. On defense, we were not fronting like we should have been, and we had a lot of trouble getting the mark on and forcing the right direction. Since Stuy had a bunch of solid players, they were able to work it right up the field against us. Another big problem for us was fatigue, and I saw Stuyvesant players streaking deep after a turn and only Caitlin running deep with them, the rest of our players lagging or looking around confusedly. We lose 4-11.

But we had upset seed to make second in our pool, putting us in the semi-finals against St. Johnsbury. They have two or three girls taller than 6', and we played the game on the field with the most wind. They played zone. Our dump-and-swing was great when we could get it off, but sometimes the dump would get stuck with the disc and we only lost yards. We broke through the cup fairly well, but could never get any flow once we did--it would go back to a handler, and SJA would push us back again. Punting never worked because of their tall deeps. We played man D again, forcing middle with moderate success. I told the girls to force one of the SJA handlers permanently forehand, because I noticed that her backhand was much stronger and she often turfed the flick. Eventually, we went to permanent force-forehand, but our offense simply wasn't working in the wind, and we ended up getting shut out 0-11.

For the 3/4th place game, we went up against the Canadian team, Sherbrooke. We pulled ahead right away playing zone-D, trying to conserve energy overall by making three girls work hard at a time. We were up 5-2 when Sherbrooke found their dump-swing, and started working it up again. Our deep looks were working well, especially in the beginning, but we had some trouble with endzone offense. Fatigue really hurt us, and our offense overall stagnated. We scored to tie it up at 7-7, double-game point at the cap, but we were pulled against wind and lost 7-8. Overall, I was very proud of how the girls played. It seemed like they improved, but the lack of subs was really rough in later games. Even so, it probably helped early on to have a tight rotation, and I don't know how much better we would have done with more subs.