Mardi Gras Part 2.5

So, Sunday. We had rested up the night before, desperately tried to figure out when and where our game was and ended up seeing on RSD that we were the 6 seed coming in to the second day. Pretty inexplicable to me, but whatever. This set us up against Georgia Tech, a team that we've played a few times before (Centex 2006, when they had this crazy fast dude Hensely Sejour or something, last year in Georgia after the tornado-shortened Terminus). They have a solid team, and we both traded for a long time (although I think they may have broken us on the first point...)

Basically, we weren't totally woken up. This is going to have to be a particularly big point of emphasis at future tournaments, having every player being up, active and into it from the moment we get to the fields. That's cool - for the most part people were chill at Mardi Gras and that's how it should be during our winter tournament, where we're really knocking the dust off our cleats. But come Spring Break, we're going to need some truly Psychotic sidelines and on-field attitudes.

So that was pretty much the story of the GA Tech game - not much interesting in either direction, a few breaks, some shifty foul calls at the end of the game in their favor, oh and totally insufficient marks. Marks marks marks. Man, we have got some work to do there...

Ok, so as often seems to happen we ended up playing Texas outside of the main bracket. We faced off with these guys like 7 minutes after our Universe point loss to Arizona that ended our season at Nationals last year (hold on, I need a second... alright). We also played against them in the finals of the C bracket at CCC, not a place either of us meant to end up. They won both of those contests, never by a ton (although we never really put up all that much of a fight at Natties...), and now we were seeing them in consolation on Sunday of Mardi Gras.

Our guys played well in this one too, particularly with some of our older vets really feeling the long weekend and resting more than they had been. Our offense ran relatively smoothly, setting up in cuts well and managing to get consistently open on the force side, although we had more trouble swinging to the break or executing our endzone plays. Still, the 8 members of the class of 2012 all stepped up in this game, playing within themselves to make nice stops, heads up cuts and chilly throwing decisions, an aspect of the mental game that we asked them to put a special emphasis on. The maturity was pretty astounding - I don't think I counted one freshman hammer, usually the bane of a Pain Train winter tournament, especially surprising given that a few of these youngins actually have good hammers.

So, the Texas game went down with a close loss, 13-11 or so. Dermo played some good D on their main handler, Steve Pressley, on the final point, almost connecting on a layout D against the dump, but ended just centimeters shy and could only watch the next bomb that ended it.

So, there are worse places to be than lying out in the Louisiana sun, with your cleats off. We stretched down together and migrated over to the finals fields, where Michigan was leading Wisconsin going in to the half. We watched a decent second half of ultimate, with the Hodags coming back huge to win the game on a 7-1 run, but while resting our legs more than one freshman would remark that they had realized how important it was to value the disc and not concede any self-imposed turnovers. Good lessons to learn from some other schools, both of whom were playing well all things considered.

After a shower back at our hotels (which we eventually managed to get into after a room reservation snafu), we drove over to a restaurant on the beautiful LSU campus for dinner with Princess Layout. Blackened alligator appetizers, hush puppies and crawfish etouffe were all on the menu and on our tables, but eventually we managed to push back from the feast and head to the hotel holding Princess for some Clinic and haphazard watching of the Oscars. Eventually we had to let them get some sleep (our intrepid women were flying out of Baton Rouge at 6 am), so we headed back to our hotel for a final night of falling asleep to Sportscenter. The travel back was long but relaxed and relatively unproblematic, although apparently one Alex Kell 2010 was seen sprinting through the Chicago airport trying to hold a flight for some of his teammates. Good thing he's got a Mackey-esque top speed.


Ok, thanks for reading. Winter term is drawing to a close, although we're going to reverse the natural momentum and really step up our efforts right as we come into Spring Break. Keep checking back here, it's going to be a sprint from the first moment of Spring Break through the UPA Series. Pain Train 2009 is comin'.

Mardi Gras part 2

So the surprisingly good-natured handshakes with UNT were behind us, and we moved fields over to some smaller, more pitched fields that had lights for our final round, a play-in game to earn a spot in the A bracket. Our opponents would be Truman State, a team we weren't familiar with. As usual, an unknown opponent would spell trouble for the Pain Train.

We started well, as they dropped the second throw in the start of the light rain, but soon started to play down to a team that was fairly one-dimensional but did that one thing very well. Point after point, our O line played horrendous transition D - understandable, given the number of points all 7 guys had played that day, but still unacceptable. And time after time, bladey flick hucks went up from one of their handlers and came down in the endzone with their primary cutter. Ugh, it was annoying. Particularly given the fact that it was too dark under the lights to play decent ultimate and Truman was decked out in their black jerseys, disappearing like ninjas all over the place.

Princess showed up after putting in a masterful performance over at their field site (they would end up only losing two games, to the two teams that ended up in the finals, and ended in 3rd.) It was really starting to rain at this point, and points continued to be traded to 10-10.

Eventually, you've got to step up. We had played pretty decently all day, particularly given our D-plan shortened roster and heavy proportion of freshmen (all of whom fit in extremely nicely and really showed their progress from a winter rolling with the A side.) But eventually, as mentioned above, you've got to stop playing well enough and actually put your head down and do your job. A particularly scream-y timeout clarified this for all 21 of us, and we attacked the end of the game with an improved sense of urgency. The sidelines were in it, pushing past the various groups of fans and Truman State players to actually pump up the guys on the field.

Receiving at 10-10, the Train O face punched the disc in without turning it, then got a quick stop against Truman and converted the break with a huck to Chase. At 12-10, Truman was headed downhill and did punch one in, setting up the pull to the Train that we could convert to avoid yet another Universe point situation. As Kell loudly warned everyone to be relaxed, telling Nick Brown "I don't care if I'm open by 20 feet, don't huck it to me," we got the disc and started to work it down the flick sideline. Eventually we hit Kell, and with Will and myself back to provide an outlet, Breezy took off for the endzone. Having forgotten all he just said, Kell unloaded a floaty flick that Nick bodied his defender up to rip down. Win, Pain Train, 13-11.

We quickly departed, trying to get out of the rain and desperate to join Princess at a local Qdoba that Molly Roy painstakingly and poorly described. Fed, we went back to the Ramada and variously showered, passed out or briefly went over to watch some TV with Princess in their hotel. We had to get home early to get up the next day though.... and I'm sick of writing, so you'll have to wait a bit to find out about Sunday and the jambalaya.

Mardi Gras 2009

Or, "Like belated geese, the Pain Train finally heads South."


So we just got back from our winter tournament of the year. For the first time since I came to the College and started rolling with the Train, we decided not to make the trip out to Vegas, instead focusing our efforts on the smaller and later tournament in Baton Rouge, Mardi Gras. I won't bore you with the hideously awful details of putting this trip together - suffice it to say that several Pain Trainers, most notably President Billy McCarthy, are intimately available both with every travel website online and with that sinking feeling you get when your search query comes back "Tickets available starting at $782 round trip. Would you like to continue?"


But eventually we made it down to Baton Rouge by way of the Jackson, MS airport. Immediate improvement over Vegas number one: the airports. Instead of the fifth circle of Hell, where the security videos all feature Carrot Top and the Thunder from Down Under stares down at you while you wait for your bags, we flew in and out through a small, 4 gate airport that was clean, convenient and efficient.

Eventually we made it to the Ramada in Baton Rouge and bedded down for the night. We woke up the next morning bright and early, ate the free breakfast and drove the 5 minutes to the fields, which was also a really nice perk. Chase came down to join the 20 refugees from Hanover, which gave us a solid player core to work with.

We got to the fields and pulled on our new uniforms - a 5ultimate sponsorship has us in brand spanking new charcoal jerseys and forest green shorts, while a Thursday night spray painting session had provided us our whites while we wait on the Titcombs to propose and create our sure-to-be-baller sublimated white jerseys.

We started against Michigan and actually broke them on the first point. We would trade points to roughly 5-4 or so, before they started to reassert themselves and slowly pull away. We played well and certainly executed on offense but after the first point had real trouble forcing turns and converting on the chances they gave us. As would be the case all weekend, players like Kell and Chase were out there a ton, so we were all glad to have a second round bye after a brief reminder of what it was like to play on grass. Freshman Sam Ross inexplicably spent several points up in a tree overlooking the field. Not much I can add to that. We lost 12-7ish.

After relaxing a bit and going over our handler protocols during our bye round, we came out against Iowa State, the 2 seed from our pool. None of us had ever played them before, and they had one huge guy who ripped down most of their goals. Points were traded back and forth all game - to be honest I can't remember much of the game, neither team was executing all that well, except for their big guy. Eventually the game came down to Universe point, and the Train worked it all the way to the endline before a leading pass meant for me as I went upline against yet another hapless defender sailed a bit and knocked into several players. Luckily, all of these bounces directed the disc towards our endzone, where Dermott caught it just inside the goal line for the bizarre win. This was Dermott's 4th goal in roughly as many points (after sitting out most of the game recovering from a big bid in the first round against Michigan).

Exhausted but excited, we caught our collective breath as Virginia Tech warmed up and tried to get started. We ended up starting relatively on time, but went down huge in the beginning thanks to our top line's exhaustion at the previous universe point win and a complete sense of complacency from all 21 Pain Trainers attending. Down 6-2, I was shocked to learn the score - I knew we'd been turning a lot of silly execution errors against their slow zone, but from the sense of urgency our players were showing you'd think we were down at most a break or two.

So this was completely unacceptable, clearly, and we turned it on. After that initial deficit, we tightened up the lines and forced them to actually make Ds and execute on O instead of constantly turfing our cross-field looks and not playing transition defense. Eventually we even forced them out of the zone D they were clearly more comfortable throwing against us on a somewhat windy (but extremely bright and warm) Southern day.

Eventually we again came to universe, and Will Flanary, a first year DMS student who stepped up huge for us all weekend and looks to be an essential part of the 2009 Pain Train, snagged a D out of the air. Unfortunately, we weren't able to connect on the next pass, and VTech took over again to punch it in. We simply dug ourselves too deep of a hole to get out of, despite playing much closer to our potential in the second half.

Our final round of pool play had us up against UNT, a nationals attendee last year and generally athletic bunch of dudes. After two universe point games in a row, our top guys had seen more than their share of points and were really dragging, but we came out fired up, determined to play with the team that looked set to win our Power Pool after defeating Michigan the previous round. The energy propelled us to huge heights as we immediately began trading points, both teams' offenses operating at high efficiency. The difference turned out to be two huge plays. First, a UNT handler stuck on the sideline had absolutely no options, even deep where they normally operated in the air, and had to look back to a covered dump in the endzone, which Misha gobbled up for a Callahan and a break. Several points later, after a monstrous pull by Dermott, UNT was stuck deep in the same endzone and as Nick Brown begged his teammates for another Callahan from the sidelines, Chase swooped in on IO flick to answer Breezy's wishes.

We came out in the second half in control, but UNT was far from done. They finally managed to break our O line twice in a row and put us back on (or near) serve. Both teams struggled to convert breaks but did do so occasionally, and our plan to force some of their bigger receivers under did hinder a generally huck-intensive southern offense. After much confusion about the cap, it seemed to go on as we received the disc at 12-12 - our third universe point game in a row. We marched the disc up, I toasted my defender for the upline power position once again and put the disc up into the endzone, past the defender...






And we didn't come down with it.

Which was fine. 98 times out of 100, we execute that play perfectly, so it is silly to have our memory of the game determined by whether or not we make that one grab or they toe one extra goal in or whatever the issue is. This was one of the first times that I really got what it meant to be process oriented - playing without about half of our returning A teamers, we took one of the top teams in the country to universe and should have won. The fact that we didn't doesn't matter, because we played with the type of character and drive that you need come Series time. Winning that game would have felt great, but losing it the way we did taught us just as much about ourselves and set us on a great path.


Oh, and next time, clap catch it, BDK.


Coming Tomorrow: The play-in game under the rain and the lights, Sunday bracket play, blackened alligator appetizers with Princess and how ungodly amazing I've become at Clinic.