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.