Quick Yale Cap Recap

Oh jeez, I have got to stop writing these late at night. After meetings. 2 weeks after the tournament.

We rolled down in a charter bus. The Raines'es are literally saints. Literally, they are dead, have three confirmed miracles, and have been canonized by the Pope. Cause they got us a charter bus. Bob was the man (our driver) bending the rules to drop us off late and pick us up early. Disc 4 in the morning, Stick It at night, GaS at the Routhier's, Batman Begins and the Prestige always - this bus opened up the miracle of the media for us.

Whatever, recaps.

Brown:
Close. We were up a break (or two?) early. Man, I wish you all could have been there. It was a great game. They climbed back to 9 - 9, and all we had to do was trade points to 11 to upset the 1 seed. We received, and after working it up about 3/4 of the way, C-Mo got a huge layout block. Went for a score. Then on the next pull, the first throw went over Zargham's head for a Callahan goal to lose. Hmmm. This was a stomach punch. But, you know, we showed we can roll with ANYONE. Plus, like many elite teams, Brown seems to have two settings - playing and needing to win. They are a great team, but when they really needed to win, they started fouling a bit on the mark, bodying up a bit more, hand checking on D, etc. I don't comdemn them - I'm not going to claim we are the epitome of Spirit, though we try. But it was great for us to get some experience playing through those types of conditions, and we have been working it into practice a bit (not as a strategy for us on D, but as experience for us on O).

On the off chance someone from Brown or somewhere else wastes their time reading this - no hate intended. That was a great game, and you guys totally earned the outcome. I don't think anyone in this region cheats, we just ratchet up our games sometimes, like all great teams do. Can't wait for the rematch.
11-9 Brown.

Then came a bye. We watched some of the womenses, they looked great, some big hucks by Mandy and great cutting by Bean and Molly. They broke the zone of whatever team they were playing like it was an American Girls doll and they were my little sister.

I loved that doll, Eleanor, and will never forgive you.


Tufts:
We rolled. Man, that felt great. It was a very, very odd game - because no matter how badly Tufts is underperforming, they show that they know what they are doing. Every point that we won was hard-fought, and we had to play our best to get the blocks and complete the breaks. It was just that we did it almost every single time. God, I love our D line sometimes.
13-5 Dartmouth.

MIT:
Wow, where did these guys come from? Some great players, two awesome coaches, and all of a sudden they are up near the class of the Region. Since Yale Cup they have won the Metro Boston Section (over Harvard), and they beat Tufts earlier this day (at Yale Cup). This game was very weird again, I think they were even up two breaks early? Well, we came back, and at 10 - 7 the hard cap went on and the game was over. I wish we had a better game against them, it was shortened and unclear. They are a real solid competitor in the Region this year, and getting some more experience against them would have been great. Still, a win is a win, and this one was even more solid than the score showed. We won without playing a great game, which is always bittersweet. Both teams will bring it harder if we meet again.
10-8 Dartmouth.

Northeastern:
By the end of the day, we were watching Tufts freefall through the pool, and knew that the 2nd seed was more or less locked up. We were pumped, and peaking, at the right time. Northeastern had a few more hardfought games than we did, so we rolled through them fairly easily, isolating their stars and not letting them torch us. This is another surprise team in the Region - I mean, they are always around, but it looks like they are really in the Naties bid mix. I love this parity shit - the region is cwazy. They came in behind MIT in the MB section, setting up an awesome second round game against someone.
13-5 Dartmouth.

Showers.
Homework.
Sleep.
Wake.
Bagels.
Fields.

RPI:
The only good thing about this game was the Chuckie's bro connection - he plays for them. We really played down to them, and against a deeper and more experienced team we might have been in for some real problems. However, we simply have the legs and the experience at this point, and we won fairly easily 11-5.

P.S. At some point on Saturday, Slammy rolled his ankle. This sucked. So we played all Sunday without him - keep this in mind. Plus, Dan's eye continued to revolt, so he skipped the trip altogether.

WUFO:
WUFO is missing some great players. That said, we were too, and we really showed who we are. Williams is a team we have historically (read: last season) struggled against, so taking it to them was satisfying as hell. I am a bit hazy on the details, although I remember some crazy wind and a surprisingly high percentage of upwind scores. God, I am sorry I put this off for so long, this was a fun game with various details I'm forgetting. Oh, they hucked a lot and Cobbles was beast deep.
12-6 Dartmouth.

UMass:
This was going to be interesting. We saw them gut out a win at the end of Day 1 over Harvard, and these guys have been called out as a team to beat / watch out of NE since the Fall. This was our first real shot at them of the year, and I liked how it went. We figured out their zone, threw our own and really, really pressured the hell out of their resets. Again, I am doing this game a disservice - expect to see these guys still alive Sunday of Regionals.
14-9 Dartmouth.

THE FUCKING FINALS:
We never make the finals. No longer true.
Harvard:
We came out pumped, went up a few breaks, really played great. This game is pretty easy to summarize - we struggled against their clam.

It won't happen again.

13 - 9 Harvard.
2nd place at the tourney.

Ok, so on to Regionals. Some crazy shit has happened so far. Brown took the top spot out of SNE, and thus the top spot at Regionals, because MIT won MetroBoston section (Harvard took third, behind Northeastern, followed by BU and Tufts). The other SNE teams to make it were Wesleyan, Conn. Coll., RWU and Yale, in that order. WNE and ENE both have three bids and will play sectionals this weekend.

If we win ENE, I think we have to get the second seed (head to head wins over MIT, UMass and WUFO, other sectional winners (UMass and WUFO have yet to play in WNE), plus a head to head loss to Brown.) If UMass wins WNE, they should get the three seed most likely (further at Yale Cup than MIT, both have wins over Harvard, losses to Dartmouth, UMass has higher RRI by almost 200 points, and no losses like MIT's to Vermont). Then I guess you put MIT (is there a case for WUFO at 4? Not really - lower RRI, losses to Tufts and Harvard where MIT has wins).

I think that WUFO should be ranked below Harvard, due to their head to head loss. That would mean that Northeastern gets the 5, Harvard the 6, and then there is an argument between BU, the fourth seed out of MetroBoston, and WUFO (assuming they are in fact the 2 out of WNE. Who knows what will happen?). I think WUFO will get the nod, based on a head to head game at Yale. So then Tufts gets the 9, with the rest of the seeds (10 - 16) being distributed between Wesleyan (loss to Tufts), Connecticut College, RWU, Yale, WNE 3 and ENE 2 and 3. I don't really know enough about these teams (or even who they will be in some cases), so no seedings.

This gives us (dependent on a UMass win in WNE, a WUFO second place and a Dartmouth win in ENE - none of which are a sure thing):

1. Brownian Motion
2. Dartmouth Pain Train
3. UMass Zoomass
4. MIT Engineers
5. Northeastern Gentlemens Club
6. Harvard Red Line
7. WUFO
8. BU Ozone Pilots
9. Tufts E-Men
10. - 16. Unclear.

Enough lame seeding stuff. Let's see how it all shakes out after this weekend. Plus, let's see some chatter on RSD, eh? I give you a link, none of you use it, and I'm stuck reading about seeding of the 10 and 11 seeds in the ME and pondering the inclusion of Arkansas down South.

Whew. Bed time. I wonder if I'll get in trouble for these predictions.

lamar

Princess at Yale Cup - April 7th and 8th

Game 1: Dartmouth vs. Tufts EWO

The morning was frigid and Dartmouth’s princesses were wearing just about every piece of warm clothing they owned. They got their adrenaline flowing by watching the first half of the Dartmouth Paintrain vs. Brown game, followed by a solid warm up. Dartmouth took the field with an intensity that rarely comes out during first round games and really kept Tufts on their toes. For the first half, Dartmouth and Tufts traded points. Highlights included a beautiful huck from Mandy to Dai for the score, a couple breakside hucks from Nora, and a pseudo layout for a score by T-ho. Princess Layout pulled out its clam for a few points which looked pretty good. After half, Tufts pulled away and Dartmouth struggle to contain their hucks and shut down their offense.

Final Score: Dartmouth 7, Tufts 12

Game 2: Dartmouth vs. Wellesley Whip Tails

At this point in the morning, not only did it remain freezing outside, but the wind started to pick up. Wellesley threw a lot of zone, but our handlers remained patient and slowly worked it up the field. For the first point of the day, one of the handlers shredded the cup with a pass to Bean who was tackled by a Wellesley girl. From a half tackled position, Bean threw a pass to Blair for the first point of the game. For the second, Katie threw a nice OI forehand to Bean in the end zone. Dartmouth started throwing a zone with a four man cup on Wellesley which forced a lot of bad hucks from their handlers. Masi caught a ton of Wellesley’s swill near the endzone. Dartmouth and Wellesley continued to trade points as the wind picked up. Nora hucked to Anna in the endzone who impressively caught it into her body to avoid her burnt had to tie the game up at 6s. Then, after a long wind and zone filled point, Nora threw a long OI to Masi in the endzone to take half, 7-6. After half, the soft cap went on and Dartmouth pulled through to a 9-7 win.

Final Score: Dartmouth 9, Wellesley 7

Game 3: Dartmouth vs. WHUFA

Whufa started out the game very strong, breaking our marks IO, hucking across the field, and contesting everything in the air. It was not looking pretty. Before long, Dartmouth was down 0-6. But, pretty soon Dartmouth shook it off and Katie threw to Bean for our first score of the game. We threw our zone with a four man cup and completely shut down Whufa’s offense. Bean forced a turn, and Nora threw to T-ho for the score. Then Dartmouth caught on fire and totally got inside Whufa’s head, going a 7 point run to take half 7-6. Whufa got pissed and played hard, but Dartmouth continued to play harder, winning the game 10-6.

Final Score: Dartmouth 10, WHUFA 6

Game 4: Dartmouth vs. Yale Ramona

Yale, (having acquired former captain Liz Middleton) came out quite strong, scoring the first point after a couple turns. Dartmouth came right back with a huck from Molly to Marika to tie the score, 1-1. Yale stepped it up and scored several points in a row thanks to many break throws by Liz and some quick cuts by Yale’s captain. Soon, Dartmouth went on a 5 point streak to take half, 7-5. After half, Yale threw a four man zone similar to the one Dartmouth had been throwing against them, and quickly scored, taking the game to 7-6. The soft cap went on. Yale threw another zone which trapped Tien on the side on the edge of the endzone. Tien calmly through a hammer over the four man cup to Molly to take the game to 8-6. The soft cap went on. Yale scored another point, but Dartmouth came back to score again, winning the game 9-7.

Final Score: Dartmouth 9, Yale 7

Dartmouth started the day as the 5th seed in Pool B, and finished the day with a 3-1 record which gave them 2nd seed in the Pool B.

Day II:

Prequarters: Dartmouth vs. Brown

This day started out even more miserably than the previous day. Not only was it colder and windier, but flurries were also falling from the sky. Dartmouth tried hard to warm up, but the bitter cold and a blustery cross wind interfered with most of the drills. Despite the difficult warm up, Dartmouth went into this game intense and focused. Although we hadn’t seen Brown yet this season, we knew it was an important game to win. Dartmouth came out fired up, and scored after a long windy point with many turns. Dartmouth then threw a great four man cup which forced turn after turn after turn. Brown tried to break the cup by sending in a girl to crash and throwing across into the newly made space in the cup, but Dartmouth’s sidelines were too good and the cup adjusted to entirely shut down Brown’s offense. Both Apay and Bean had some fantastic handblocks, and Dartmouth’s handlers (Katie, Nora, Tien, Masi, and Elsa) worked the Brown zone incredibly well. After a while, perhaps out of desperation, Brown began throwing a loose 1-3-3 which was quickly broken by our handlers to finish out the game.

Final Score: Dartmouth 13, Brown 6

Quarters: Dartmouth vs. Delaware

The wind continued to pick up just as Dartmouth’s game against Delaware began. Delaware was a very solid team with a zone similar to Dartmouth’s and a lot of good huckers. Although Dartmouth’s zone did put a cramp in Delaware’s offense, they managed to pull out a few long hucks to score. Delaware also had a thrower that pulled to the back of the endzone, so the Dartmouth handlers got trapped in the end zone with a four man cup. Dartmouth’s handlers worked the disc back and forth with a ton of patience, but as the disc got down the field, a combination of the cold and the wind led to several drops which Delaware managed to capitalize on. Delaware took half 7-3. After half, Dartmouth stepped it up a notch and started to close the gap. However, before long the soft cap was on, and Dartmouth couldn’t catch up fast enough.

Final Score: Dartmouth 6, Delaware 9

Consolation Game: Dartmouth vs. Tufts EWO

Dartmouth took on EWO once again, this time fired up. Dartmouth used its entire bag of trips – the four man cup zone, the ho stack, the clam, the “in disguise” clam - to keep Tufts on their toes and get their coach worked up. Dartmouth played great defense and strong offense, taking the game to universe point. Sadly, the game was lost on a Callahan by a Tufts player, but overall, it was a great game.

Final Score: Dartmouth 9, Tufts 10

Thoughts: This was a great weekend! This was the first time the Dartmouth women’s A finally played together and the gelling over the course of 7 games was incredible. There was a ton of intensity and lots of great things happening all over the field. As Masi might comment, “we have an exponential growth curve”. Tons of improvement happened this weekend, and I think there is much more to come. Watch out New England!

Pain Train Break

I figure, we're going to Yale in a few days, there is really no excuse for me to not have updated the blog by then. So now, starting at 2:51 AM, I'm going to knock out an entire week-and-a-half worth of ultimate business in the fastest time known to man. I'm part hummingbird when it comes to this blogging business.

Thursday we all drove down to the general Virginia area. One of the Sprinter vans picked Nasher, Slappers and I up outside of DC and then proceeded to rural Virginia to the Nate Raines estate. I'm not going to bore you with the details of how we eventually found it, but suffice it to say that that was the first time I've ever gotten lost by paying too careful attention to roadsigns. Nate's was awesome, even if we did only manage to find it by relying on a cop in a rest stop who knew, in Chuckie's words, "a friend of a friend" who lived near it.

Friday was a day of travel. Our van had a pretty solid iTrip with it, and no real adventurous souls like in the vans of yesteryear, so we stuck to our own music (mainly Tegan and Sara and emo-punk singalongs from Junior year of High school - the Starting Line, anyone?) instead of trolling the Southern talk stations. Blair would later criticize my music selection as too esoteric, and will later criticize me for using that word in a blog, but whatever, the new Shins album just had to be played all the way through, and I still contend that Wolf Parade and the Go! Team are also great Spring Break bands.)

Friday night we continued a team tradition of seeing a newly released movie based on a graphic novel (last year = V for Vendetta, this year = 300). For some reason we all sat in the first three rows, to be near each other I guess? My neck hurts.

Saturday we got our new uniforms. They look fly. Seriously. However, the darks were cut a bit, shall we say skimpily, giving players like GMail the vibe of a belly dancer. But between new warm ups, jerseys and shorts (about half of us got white shorts as an extra - so hot right now.) we looked like, you know, a sports team.

And then we played ultimate. It should tell you something depressing that I remember our playlists but not our games, but score reporter has us winning over College of Charleston 11 - 5, then over Yale 15 - 4, and neither of those teams really gave us a game. Then came Wake Forest, to take top billing in our pool, and we lost. Kind of had the game for a while, ended up having a streak of four breaks towards the end (against us, that is), playing without Yi, Rem and Nate... ah well. It was the next loss, to a team so not legit there's no record of us having played (basically a random assortment of players from schools in Florida, from what I could tell) that was the heartbreaker. I am physically sick thinking about it. God damn it.

Ok, so onto Sunday, out of the winner's bracket, and up against the host team, Georgia Southern. We rolled. Same rolling, although less so, against Virginia Tech. Then after lounging around for a while, we played Duke and beat them solidly in a game whose main value was in teaching us the stupid new pick rule. That is one over rated team, let me tell you. They lost in the PRE - quarters the next weekend after somehow getting into the power pool over us, denying us another shot at them, but I guess one solid win per season will have to hold us.

That was the semis of the Chumpionship, and we then proceeded onto the finals, but LSU had forfeited their semis matchup against Richmond, and our opponents used that freshness to their advantage. We could have won this game with a few breaks going our way, but we didn't, and we should be a strong enough, durable enough, gritty enough team to not need those breaks anyway. So we lost, and it was damn close, 10-12, but all in all we were pumped to be together and be heading further into spring break.

For the sake of my body, which has to run a track workout in 6 hours, I'll skip all of the non-ultimate stuff that happened over the next week. FO was a blast, if scarring for life. On the ultimate side, we had a practice, a scrimmage against Carleton GOP (we won, not as easily as we should have). Then a day of Yoga on the beach. Then scrimmages against Georgia Tech (rolled) and Cornell (rolled first half, traded second half). At some point in there we also eeked out a victory in a shortened game against College of Charleston, 7 - 5, despite being down two breaks early. Jeez.

Ok, then on to Ultimax. Booyah. We got dissed by being left out of the power pool, but it allowed us to finish with the best record at the tourney numerically speaking, so whatever. An easy win over Drexel, a slightly more challenging but never in doubt win over UPenn, and then a win over Northwestern totally based on our D line in the first half and our unreal O in the second half (not a single turn in the half - Ballin'). We only won that one by two, and then defeated Penn State pretty handily in the crossover game to claim the 6 seed heading into the next day.

After a delicious Golden Corral adventure (we need several in Hanover) we watched basketball in the hotel rooms and then headed back out for our last day of ultimate. Started out against William and Mary, we actually started off the game with two breaks against us (real smooth, Dartmouth) but gutted it out for a convincing 13 - 6 win - D line was nasty, starting in this round and going all day. Next came Northwestern again because Duke got rocked in prequarters, so we played NUT again, and this time won solidly, even though our O was not clicking as exceedingly well. (13 -7, if you care about scores, you unspirited blog reader). So that landed us in the Semis, up against Delaware. This was a great game, really solid O and gritty D that couldn't quite keep up from both teams, but they won it, 13 - 10. Considering that they won the Finals 13 - 7, that ain't bad (considering that they lost to both Harvard and Tufts in pool play, maybe it is. I'm just sayin.) So 3rd at Ultimax to start off our season? And we get back Rem, Tom Donahoe, Healthy Nate, Healthy Devlin and Dan Yi

Let's just say I'm excited for Yale Cup. Thanks for reading. That whole thing took exactly 31 minutes. I'd say the quality makes that totally unsurprising.

Spring Break Summary

Courtesy of Princess Blair Burgreen

Princess at Southerns, Statesboro, GA

This was Princess' first apprearance in the sun and we all played well and had some serious improvement over the weekend. Due to low numbers at the beginning of the break, Princess A and B combined forces and lay it all out.

Results from Saturday were:
Dartmouth v. Davidson, losing, 3-13
Dartmouth v. Ohio, losing, 6-13
Dartmouth v. Swarthmore, losing 5-11
Dartmouth v. Williams B, winning 13-1

Sunday we really took it up a notch, coming out 3-1 at the end of the day.
Main results were:
Dartmouth v. Richardson, winning, 13-2
Dartmouth v. Williams, losing 5-12, but just that small dose of Whufo's mom definitely gave us that special little push that would last us the rest of the day.
Dartmouth v. Swarthmore, wining 13-9--which was actually really sweet to win considering we had just lost to them yesterday (see score above)
Dartmouth v. Luther-15-14--Athough according to Rayna, this score should be more like 16-14 since we had a slight difference in the recording during half (basically we each thought that we were one point up on each other and agreed to just settle on being tied---making it feel that much better to win on universe point!)

We ended up coming in 21st overall, not a bad show for our first weekend out.

Monday: HAT TOURNY! A bunch of Princess took the day to relax, but those who came out enjoyed the sun and a fun day of ultimate and meeting people. And my team, the Pandas, won (this is Blair for anyone who's reading this now), with some smooth handling by Sam Routhier and a great show by Ben Weiner. AND I got a great hat out of it. See Brett if you'd like Follywood gear.

Follywood!

Tuesday-Thursday, Folly Beach, SCI don't really remember the scores, but we scrimmaged Northwestern, UMass, Wellesley, OSU, and Maryland. I do recall ALMOST beating Ohio though, and they were quite suprised with our performance after playing us during southerns. We also got the rest of our team back this week with Alho and Samkap coming in from New Zealand, Emmy from the Marshall Islands, Apay from Costa Rica, and Mandy (well, she actually came in on sunday, but who's counting) from Albany. It was a LONELY winter. So few people to cuddle with! But that was definitely one of the highlights of Follywood. And awesome job to Brett who organized this whole scrimmage/tourney series!

Friday-travel to Ultimax in Greenville, NC

Saturday at Ultimax:
After having already played a long hard week of ultimate, Princess really came out of her shell the first day of Ultimax.
Results of the day:
Dartmouth v. Harvard, losing, 9-12
Dartmouth v. Cornell X- winning 13-6; a weaker than expected showing by Cornell because they were playing with their B team.
Dartmouth v. North Carolina B, winning, 13-6--a little frustrating that they even got so many points. They randomly had 2 pretty sick handlers that were able to work it up the field. They definitely gave us a run for our money
Dartmouth v. James Madison, winning 13-6, come on, you can't lose to a team that calls themselves the Bitch Monkeys.

Sunday at Ultimax:
Dartmouth v. East Carolina, winning, 13-3-- This was a messy fouly game. We played well and definitely kept ourselves together considering what we were faced with. Pretty much the only thing that I can remember about this game was having to deal with really poor spirit and the knowledge of how to make calls but not know what they mean.
Dartmouth v. Mary Washington, losing 8-13-- this was a great game, although we were bummed that it ended our day a bit early. We all found things we needed to work on, injuries that we needed to heal, and how much work we have to go to build this team for the spring season.

PRINCESS4LIFE