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.