We Are Psychotic

Princess on Twitter

2009-05-21T13:42:00.000-07:00

Hi internet folks.

Sorry about the lack of updates this season...Yeah.

Anyways, to make up for it, this now exits: @dmouthpaintrain is the new Twitter account for the team, although this weekend we'll be using it to update on Princess' results from Columbus. So if you're into that kind of thing, start following us.

peace.

lamar

Mardi Gras Part 2.5

2009-02-28T08:52:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-25T13:37:00.001-08:00

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

2009-02-24T15:46:00.000-08:00

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.

Brown Huck-A-Hunk-'O-Burning-Pumpkin

2008-11-28T17:22:00.000-08:00

This was some tournament. By god, it was some tournament.

We left campus at around 6 AM, which all things considered is not as early as it could have been. Thanks to Brown for the first round bye, which got us an extra hour and a half of sleep. Bmac, wonderful president that he is, made everyone homemade breakfast sandwiches and cereal bars to go with our directions. Some guy, that guy...

Our first game was against Brown's alumni (aka Hellfish). It was an interesting game, as they were all flaired out in clothes that would have made Dartmouth, the home of flair, proud. Some of the best players in the country played for them, although they were obviously difficult to distinguish, what with their wigs and dresses and all. Colin Mahoney, Josh Ziperstein, and Mike Vandenberg were some of the big names/faces I recognized, and although they obviously didn't play as hard as they could have, it was still pretty cool seeing some of the biggest stars in the game. Relative celebrities in our little isolated community, if you will. The game wasn't particularly close, they obviously played a little lazy, and although from what I vaguely remember, we didn't play all that badly either, we still lost 13-7.

Our second and third games were against Boston University and Brandeis, respectively. I also don't remember too much about these games... We won them 13-5 and 12-10 respectively, although I feel like we should also have won the second one by a larger margin. I think we just let Tron crawl back into it in the middle of the game.

These first three games had some pretty grim weather. As previously stated, the forecast didn't look promising at all, to say the least. The first game against Hellfish was actually decent. There was no rain, a comfortable temperature, not too much wind (compared to the other games this weekend). However, conditions got pretty shitty for the second and third. Much more windy, sporadic rain that came down pretty strong, all that nonsense.

The last game of the day was against Brown as the showcase game of the tournament. We had to drive to Brown's campus from the fields at Colt State Park in Bristol, RI during the round before the game, as we would be playing on a turf field at Brown under the lights. Getting some food along the way, we got there and warmed up, during which it began to pour. It rained like I'd never seen before. Ever. It came down in sheets, almost as if my frustration from the day materialized into the form of furious, angry rain. The wind also picked up to the 35 mph wind (or possibly more, I didn't know exactly at that point) previously promised. It was truly an experience in my ultimate career that I'll never forget. It really looked like something straight out of a movie (or an episode of Friday Night Lights), and we all felt the electricity and the excitement of the moment. I really thought that the conditions were absolutely unplayable, and that if it were almost any other sport played outdoors, the game would have been called. Even though the weather was that bad, and that we play a sport that involves throwing a thin, 175-gram piece of plastic through the air, the show went on.

The game was insane. It was pretty much impossible to throw upwind and precision ultimate was made pretty difficult, so we punted a bunch of times downwind to try to force a turn closer to the endzone. There were also more than a few plays where Ds would float back right into the cutter's outstretched hands, and one where a mac'd disc actually carried back about 45 yards back downfield. On defense, we blue-crushed too many discs, and although it was nobody's fault, it was shitty as hell.

We lost the game 11-6. Most of Brown Ultimate assembled for the game, and the sidelines had the whole extended family of Brownian Motion/Disco Inferno to cheer them on. They simply played better, moved the disc down the field effortlessly, threw I-O flick breaks at will, and we couldn't get many Ds.

Next day:

We left, got some breakfast, and got to the fields an hour early. Games started at 10:30 after the Brown guys decided to green light games after the beating that the fields took yesterday. In the parking lot, there were almost a dozen or more cars full of tired, sleepy ultimate players waiting, passed out just like we were. A pretty funny sight.

We played our games in a field in the outfield of a baseball field. The field wasn't actually too bad, but was pretty short. In addition, Mother Nature just wouldn't quit. New surprises of the day were a ten degree temperature drop from the day before and a consistent 30 mph crosswind.

Our games were against UMass and Northeastern. The game against UMass was the first round of bracket play for the championship. All UMass wanted to do all day was huck it deep, and judging by their team, you can't blame them. They definitely play to their strengths, and had the throwers and cutters to make it happen. We tried to take it away as well as we could, but they knocked us out in a heated game 15-8.

Our next (and very last game for the Pain Train until the spring) was against Northeastern, a small 13-player team that the Discomfort Trolley faced the weekend before at Yale Cup. The captains/coaches (by the way, Coaches Nate Raines '07 and Dan Yi '06 graced us with their presence this weekend) competitively subbed for the most part for the UMass game, most likely in an attempt to advance to the next round, but kept the rotation more open for the game against NUGC.

We won the game 14-11. The score looks a lot closer than it could have been, but all the tryouts played very well, and we won. Good note to finish the fall season on.

Yale Coffee Cup 2008: Sunday

2008-11-09T19:35:00.000-08:00

(Also excerpted)

After a great night's sleep, breakfast, and a Dartmouth Ultimate a cappella rendition of 'You Are My Sunshine' to the Routhiers, we left for Yale. We got there a few minutes before 9, which was when we thought our first game would be.

There was a lot of confusion late yesterday and early this morning about our schedule, and to be frank, I don't think the TDs communicated very well with the teams (one of the TDs played with his team all day?). Apparently, yesterday afternoon was supposed to be the first round of bracket play, but we thought it was only pool play and went to watch the women for the rest of the day. The TDs changed the format late on Friday afternoon, and although we should have realized we had another game yesterday, the other team (Rutgers) took the forfeit only 5 minutes after we failed to show, although we easily could have been found. However, after some confusion, it apparently went the other way around, as they forfeited instead (our first win of the year!), and we played Northeastern in the semifinals of the chumpionship bracket at around 10 AM this morning in an abbreviated game. It's true that a decent amount of blame for what happened was confusion and lack of knowledge on our part, but a lack of communication is never a good thing.

EDIT: So it turns out that the TDs did send information about all this by email, but seeing as how it was all sent to the official account and no admins checked it Saturday night (they were all at CCC), we never got the memo. Ouch.

The weather was much better today (sunny and warmer) than yesterday (wet, raining and cold), but of course, a tournament can never have beautiful weather, it's just not possible. As a result, Murphy's Law brought us a strong 15 mph up/downwind to our fields all day, and Northeastern capitalized by using a zone defense on us for every point. To our credit, we only had 11 players (several of our players left Saturday afternoon). We came out strong to start, but still lost 8-0. We definitely had our chances to score a few points, but some late impatience after working the zone O efficiently cost us.

Apparently, after that game, we were scheduled to play Brown. Yep, you heard me. Brownian Motion, B-Mo, the team of the worst Raines brother itself (kidding. maybe least hairiest?). I guess it makes sense logistically according to the schedule and everything else, but the fact that B-Mo fell to the 11th place game, same as Dartmouth's B team, was pretty surprising to say the least. After some discussion and mutual agreement, we decided to scrimmage Brown-B instead, which was finally our first game against a fellow B team all weekend.

And boy oh boy, was it a good game. We traded points all game, a new feeling for the weekend (scoring points!). The game was marked by the intensity and momentum that we carried over from our game against Northeastern (perhaps the only time in history that a team has used momentum from an 0-8 shutout into their next game). There was great cutting, man and zone defense on our part, bids everywhere ('12s can layout already!).

The game ended in a 12-9 loss, although we decided to continue to play for fun afterwards because we just didn't want the fun to stop. Some of the highlights from that mini game were a beautiful full-field huck from Mothra to Enzyte, a really convincing tiger trap by Jam (I still can't help laughing thinking about it now), an upside-down point, etc.

After the game, we hit the road, got some lunch at Friendly's on the way, then got home to Hanover at around 5 PM. Overall, a great tournament experience.

CCC: A phone call to Bmac himself (hi Bmac!) revealed that the CCC guys beat both Alabama and UCF in bracket play of the C bracket, but lost a 'squeaker' to Texas in the finals. I'll learn more when I talk to the guys at practice today, I think they got in sometime this morning.

Yale Coffee Cup 2008: Saturday

2008-11-08T22:30:00.000-08:00

(Excerpted from my own blog)

It’s currently Saturday night at the Routhiers, and it feels so much later than it actually is. It’s awesome to finish tournaments at a decent time, get an early dinner, and relax/rest early.

So last night, about ten of us decided to go down to Jam’s (hi Jam!) house instead of this morning, saving us about an hour of sleep in the morning. After much confusion and hurried planning, we got there at around 10 PM, and went to sleep at around midnight.

We woke up this morning at about 6 AM, got out of our beds (we all had either a bed, sofa, or futon, pretty unheard of for ultimate-team-crashing), had an awesome breakfast made by Jam’s mom, then hit the road for Yale. We got there a little early so as to be there for the captains’ meeting, letting the others leave a little later from Hanover. We actually started our first game of the day pretty much savage, but soon thereafter the rest of our team arrived.

We played three games today with no byes, against Cornell (seeded first overall), Connecticut, and Maryland. All solid A teams. As for the games, we lost each one 13-1. Yep. To our credit, we did learn a lot (cliché I know, but we really did), and it was also the first experience playing competitive ultimate for many of the ‘12s. Even so, many of us upperclassmen definitely could have played better. We weren’t playing to our full potential, playing down is something we can't do. It’s something we constantly have to keep in mind.

Last night, on the way to Jam’s house, our car decided to call Socks (i.e. beloved ’08) and ask him if he wanted to come to Yale and see us. After a pretty miserably ‘Deez nuts’ attempt, he agreed to come, and we kept it a secret from pretty much everyone until he arrived at around noon. It absolutely made my day (probably even my term) just to see him again. He even played a few points with us, and from what we saw, it looks like he's still got it.

As most of our games ended well before the end of their respective rounds, we spent a decent amount of time watching the women and bringing the spirit, which they did for us in turn for the beginning of our last game against Maryland. Most of the guys, who were pretty exhausted, cold and wet, decided to call it a day halfway through the womens’ last game (against Yale Ramona X for the chumpionship, which they won). I decided to stay and cheer the women on, and I also got to catch up with a high school friend who goes to Yale afterwards. It’s so much fun to watch the women play because they play with such precision, and so many of them were playing so well/much better than I'd last seen them last year. I'm such a big fan, and I just can’t help feeling so excited for the womens' team this year.

I also spent some time watching some of the other open teams play this weekend. I saw a great game between Maryland (I caught up with some of the Maryland players I got to know on SB last year) and Connecticut, as both teams were pretty evenly matched and played some pretty awesome ultimate. I also saw Tufts take on Rhode Island in a closely contested game that URI ended up winning. Some great college ultimate is being played already, and it's not even the spring yet. The Northeast could be highly contested this year (not if we can help it, obviously), but mark my words: it’s going to be way exciting with more teams emerging onto the scene this year, no matter what ends up happening with C1/NCUA.

By the way, short note on CCC: the guys in Georgia went 1-4 on the day with a sole win against Clemson. Not the best ultimate they've played, but it's early, and I'm sure everyone was relatively rusty. Nothing to worry about, but it definitely should also light a fire under this team to up it up this winter.

More to come tomorrow night.

West New England Club Sectionals

2008-09-20T16:45:00.001-07:00

I don't have an official recap, but if you'd like to read my own, skewed, self-centric post on Saturday of WNE Club Sectionals, Dartmouth Ultimate's first tournament of the year, feel free to read it here. I'll probably do the same for tomorrow unless Lamar wants to do it, so check it out for Sunday coverage too tomorrow.

Rock.

New Dartmouth Ultimate Websites!

2008-09-01T16:54:00.000-07:00

For any of you '12s out there who may have stumbled upon this blog (in addition to current players, alums, fans, haters), I'd like to share the fact that Max Friedman '10, our new webmaster, has finally beautified our old rundown Dartmouth Ultimate website(s). They're awesome, go check it out. Especially if you're a '12, since we updated it all for you:

Dartmouth Ultimate

Pain Train - Mens' Team

Princess Layout - Womens' Team

Also, remember that if you have any questions whatsoever, whip out your new knowledge of everything Dartmouth and shoot us a blitz at MUF@dartmouth.edu for the men, WUF@dartmouth.edu for the women, and cuddle.puddle@dartmouth.edu if you're looking for a good time... just kidding. Forget that last one.

In keeping with lamar's recent trend of posts with pictures, here's one at UPA College Championships 2008, Matt Mackey '08 (left) and Carson Thomas GR (right) showing up the 2008 Callahan Award winner (the MVP of college ultimate), Joseph Kershner of Arizona.

Zing!

Thoughts.

2008-08-21T22:58:00.000-07:00

I know this isn't my personal blog. And also that nobody reads this anyway.

But I'd like to strongly recommend that anyone who can take 5 minutes to read this. Especially if you're still an undergrad, but really no matter who you are. It's a fairly brilliant summation of many of the flaws I'm aware of in myself and I bet many others notice as well.

I hope everyone's summers are going well. It's going to be a great year.

Waste Time!

2008-07-30T19:13:00.001-07:00

So, the dog days of summer are fully upon us. A lot of us are playing in various summer leagues, some have hooked up with club teams, the '10s are kickin it yak-ball style up in Hanover from what I've heard. Excellent all around.

But these dog days can get hard. It can be tough to get up and run, lift, toss, stretch and just generally build your foundation when your teammates aren't around and it is hot as the dickens. So I thought I'd share a few of the ultimate media sources I've been pumped up about recently.

Ultivillage 2005 Highlight Reel - featuring Seigs!

Sockeye 2007 highlights - featuring a Soulja Boy mash up and one of the filthiest bids I have ever seen (1:16)

This one used to be available in HD. Gorgeous. Still pretty cool, with lots of selective editing.

And finally, just a general highlight reel someone put together from lots of sources. That techno beat just revs my engine.

Okey dokie. Up top's a pic of me skying some chumps on Arizona at Nattie. I rule.

-lamar

Oh, and lest I forget, a little taste of that Pain Train sass, courtesy of fellow blogger JK CP DCB.

Summer Plans

2008-06-09T21:09:00.000-07:00

Howdy do, Pain Trainers old and new. Just a few things about the summer - read up and then get back to sitting around in the air conditioning with the DVDs and the computer nonsense, or whatever it is you kids do these days.
Basically, if you are interested in trying out for the Pain Train next year, or just interested in getting better at ultimate, we want to make it as easy as possible for you to work as hard as you like. We'll be posting some detailed workout plans here and on the team website, as well as some general tips and so forth. But aside from all that, here's what you do: throw, and live your life strenuously.

Throwing - do it every day. Do it as much as possible. And do it in such a way that you are not consistently hitting your target. That means stepping out further, releasing lower and quicker, etc. Tossing is wonderful and fun, but only by pushing your comfort level can you quickly improve.

Living - also do this every day. Basically, if you are biking down to the library (nerd), do it quickly and work up a sweat. If you're playing soccer, do it for real. Go for runs. Take big steps and set a fast pace on any hikes you can. In general, you can do some great training by just focusing on making the minutiae of every day work for you.

And above all else, have fun. Holy balls, I haven't even met any of the '12s yet (and good for you if you're reading this), but I am just so pumped. AHHHHH. Keep checking back here for updates on workouts, thoughts on the summer and, eventually, a tedious recapping of Regionals and Nationals that will allow us to relive our season.

Questions? Hit me and the other captains up. Twelve, Dermo or Misha.Sid , all (at) Dartmouth.edu.

lamar

Clarification

2008-05-05T18:02:00.000-07:00

The Dartmouth Pain Train, for the first time in its history, won New England Regionals this past weekend. We qualified for Nationals in Boulder, CO by defeating the University of Rhodes Island (15-9), Boston College (15-7), Brown (15-10) and, in the finals, Tufts (15-11).

There is a lot of video and other media from the tourney, so as I review it during the next few days and as we start gearing up for the competition in Colorado, I'll post a game-by-game recap. But if there is anyone out there reading this, and you're an ex-Pain Trainer, then know that we only made it because of the foundation you left us.

woot woot. we are psychotic.

lamar

NOTICE

2008-05-04T18:02:00.001-07:00

I A MD RINK.

WE ARE BALLERS>.

NEW BENGLAHD. NUmEBR ONE.

WOOT WOOT

Sectionals

2008-04-29T12:16:00.001-07:00

See, it is one thing to bang out a quick recap of what we do at practice. Writing a full weekend's worth of game updates is much less pleasant - add to that the fact that I can barely sit still this week in anticipation of Regionals, and man, I don't know how much effort I'm going to put into this. I guess I gave away that we made Regionals.

We got there somewhat latish, cause the bus got lost? I dunno, I was amazingly fast asleep on the bus. Hibernation. Warm ups, scrimmage ourselves with a litany of spies from the other teams in the section watching us, etc. Luckily for us, we got all of our weak playing out in that first scrimmage.

A few teams never showed up, costing the section a bid to regionals, and turning a 4 (and, for a brief moment, 3) game tournament into 7 games for us, the top seed. Started against Bridgewater State once the situation was fixed. Umm. It wasn't close. They've got a good handler guy. Nobs took a girl to the house quite a few times. Huge layout Ds by Carson, Cobbles and Dermott in this game.

Then, UNH. We've played them a bunch over my tenure at Dartmouth, they always seem to have some type of chip on their shoulder - hard to explain exactly what I mean, but they certainly don't like us. Last year at Sectionals some short chump threw up a big spike on us when they scored to make it 12 - 2, which I didn't appreciate. Anyways, we played them hard, and stuck to the fundamentals. They have some very legitimate talent, which we shut down for the most part. A lot of teams in the section like to rely on the deep game, not wanting to do the work required to be a good ultimate team, and we never let them this weekend, which was baller.

Next was Colby. I always wonder what it would be like if I was playing Denton King in these games, and he was just some dude in a blue shirt with a big C on it, instead of this glorious ATLien I know and love. Anyways, I don't recall all that much about this team except that it had some good Ds against us - really the only team that I recall actually blocking discs we threw, as opposed to getting turns off our drops. Not that they did it often, but I recall a few shots to the endzone getting knocked around.

Last game of the day was Bowdoin. Now, this is a legit team. We're better, no doubt about it, but these guys have some good skillsets - interesting D looks, good break throws, rips in the air, etc. I think they actually broke us before we broke them, but once we busted out our zone look, we got Ds pretty reliably. This was by far our closest game of the day, in fact of the weekend, 13-8. As Socks said afterwards, we done well, but man, we need to fire it up, actually force those turns instead of waiting for them.

Bus to Chinese buffet and then to Graham's, I slept through what I'm told was a nice desert. In the Maineline motel, we got a bunch of rooms. Some folks played video games, Dermott watched Planet Earth, I saw the Flyers sucker punch the Canadians in Montreal, then flipped over to the end of True Lies.

"BYE!"

Ok, so we went back on Sunday morning, I don't recall much of the last pool play game, but then we had Dalhousie in the semis. Dal, I feel, has always demanded some respect on this team, ever since they destroyed the Pain Train in 04 or 05 with a bunch of ineligible players. In years past, they haven't brought many guys - it is a long, long drive, and usually during their finals or something. THis year, they had a lot of dudes, and I'd estimate the median age at 47. But we came out firing on all cylinders, really ready to lay it down. They planned on forcing us out, but we both managed to easily get open under and take those deep shots they were giving us when they were open. Beautiful, really fun game. There was an awful travel call against me, but so goes life.

In the finals, we saw Bowdoin, victors of UMF. So we were spared having to directly dreg up memories of last year's nail biter in the semis, 16-14. No question, NONE WHATSOEVER that we would have rolled the Beavers, but it's nice to keep your mental health in positive spirits the whole time. Bowdoin, as they showed with their 3 man team last year, only really cares about making it to regionals, which they had done by making the finals. So, they opened up the rotation a bunch, and we rolled to Sectional victory 15-7.

So, because of various other Sectionals results, we've earned the second seed at Regionals. Harvard is top dog on the other side of the bracket, having bested Tufts in Sectionals. Below us are B Mo, The EMen, Umass, WUFO, BC and MIT. We'll face Rhode Island in the first round on Saturday morning, and from there it's all up in the air. One thing I am happy about is the fact that Bowdoin and UMF got some respect in the seedings this year - I feel that they are strong programs, and while they are rarely talented enough to get out of the first round of regionals, they can certainly do damage to any team in the region.

Ok, that's all from me for now. It is raining in Hanover, which meant we just had tossing, no practice yesterday - but that's ok, we needed to get our legs back under us, and touches in the rain are valuable as well. Wow, regionals in like 4 days. Go pain train.

Lite

2008-04-25T17:33:00.000-07:00

As in, Lite practice today. Also, DUF Lite is a yellow bequest shirt someone (Jake Routhier?) has.

Where was I?

Oh yes - practice. And its comparative lack of weight. But only in a good way - we ran a good hard scrimmage to three, or maybe it was to five, and then worked on mark positioning, man defense and cutting off of one another's cuts.

Then talkie talkie and stretching. Series starts tomorrow.

woot woot.

Scrimmage Scrimmage Scrimmage

2008-04-23T18:13:00.000-07:00

A recipe for today's Pain Train practice. Winds picked up at Sachem for the first time since we got back out there, so we focused on running zone. In the first scrimmage, it was a lot of D line pulling, throwing a zone look, O line working it fairly well but not all the way and then D line trying for a quick score before O's zone got set. I guess that is somewhat close to the things we can expect to see against other teams - our D might face some zones, but I'd guess not a ton, and I don't know for sure how often our O line is planning on running a zone (since I've predicted zero turnovers for them from here to Worlds, I'd guess never.)
Then a break, some more scrimmaging focused on getting off the sidelines, then another scrimmage that the O line romped in. At the end, huddles and optional half hour of plyos as the thunder rolled in.

Sectionals this weekend, good focus on that at the moment. I heard we might be staying at hotels, which will be different from previous years, but I'm looking forward to insisting that ESPN be on at all times, as that one book about ultimate clearly states is my right.

lamar

Not Much To Report

2008-04-21T19:40:00.001-07:00

We practiced again today. As Schmidty put it in part 17 of his Day blitz, "As it is a day, yes, we have practice." It was fun, although we were missing GBot, Ziggity and Mackey (all for valid reasons) and it was amazing how different practice feels when you don't have even one of your teammates there (or rather, when even one of your teammates isn't there. I could go back and change that sentence, but why bother?)

Oh, and the PLayout won Sectionals by like a million and three.

lamar

Back At Sachem

2008-04-20T16:01:00.000-07:00

It is real sweet to get back on our homefields at Sachem. We've finally been approved to play their with our cleats on, so we have at this point moved away from Radclif, as well as it has served us, to get back at our home base. A field is a field, but it is great to get out there and be right next to the BNess guys, who brought their heckle during the warmups and alternated between playing boot and ultimate.
On the A side, we started with an O vs. D scrimmage to three, with double scoring rules in effect. For sort of the first time, the need to score twice was an impediment - I think we turned it two or three times after the initial scores? Anyways, as always when we're playing ourselves it is difficult to know if we should be encouraged about the good D or frustrated with the stagnant O, but whatever.

So then afterwards we started to do some sortof 5 pull with the 'stud' lines on O and D playing against the other guys. If nothing else, it was a lot of fun to play with guys we normally don't get to - swinging to Dorner and communicating in the zone with Nick Brown and Schmidty was cool. Anyways, O Studs struggled in the first 5 pull set - they didn't get a score, although most of their turns were just misexecutions, and the other guys line did get one score for ourselves. In the next set, O started to do a bit better, with some big flick puts from Mischa getting pulled down.
Next, we switched it up so that the stud D line was playing against the rest of the team, and this time we played normal scrimmage rules (i.e. play until there's a score, not just two turns) except with the D pulling every time. This was fun - our studs only really got beaten when the other team scored very quickly, from what I recall. I think there are some good things to pick up from that, and also that we've got to run our zones more in that set so that when we want to throw them we're totally prepared.

Conditioning was 10-20s, with throws. I actually prefer this to 5-10s, you're not hitting the same turns, and the rest is longer. I dunno, it was a good one, especially because it helps the guy about to run work on his throws - they've got to be flat, spinning hard and reaching the guy just as he turns. Money money money.

After practice, we talked about the day, the week and so on. After the huddle, discussion turned to the playoff beards we're all working on, and particularly to Mountain Man Meyers, who insisted he was about to shave. This couldn't be allowed to happen, so after a ton of berating he agreed to Rosham for it with Watson. The stakes were high - if Beans lost, he couldn't shave until our season was over, and if he won Watson had to wax his back at the post-Regionals party. However, Watson won the first throw, and after a dramatic pause threw his Fire to win the battle and condemn Molly to a few weeks of discomfort.

Oh, and the new shorts came. Ballllllller.

lamar

Saturday Practice

2008-04-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

Sectionals was canceled for us Male-types, because Maine is wet still, or something like that. I don't really get it. Anywho, we'll play in Sectionals next weekend, location tbd, but we didn't let this gorgeous day go to waste. We got out on the fields around 12:15, fought hard to three and then broke the team into handlers and cutters. Seigs, who came up to help us out for the day, worked with the 6 handlers on dump positioning in a variety of situations and looking for a second break look when the mark has overcommitted. The cutters worked on timing in cuts on top of one another and then timing in cuts to deep looks - from what I could see there were some purrdy, purrdy connections out there.

After the drills we went back into a scrimmage between O and D, which was originally supposed to go to 5 but kicked our asses during the first few points because of the stipulations that each turnover be moved to the sideline before the other team could play and that every score needed to be thrown twice. Big stuff in this game from Kell, who got deep for some puts (and also had a gorgeous put of his own in the first game) and used his body well to keep the defenders off of him. Watson and Misha had nice deep looks to Misha and Carson respectively that were juuuuuust out the back, and Cobbles put up hucks on the break side with seeming impunity. I'm not totally convinced I used that last word correctly.

We're headed back out to Radcliff tomorrow, some time in the afternoon so everyone can recover from their Manischevitz rage tonight. Go Tribe!

lamar

Ugh

2008-04-18T16:42:00.000-07:00

It was friggin hot today, just a gorgeous day for ultimate. I was so psyched to play all day, and then I got out there and sucked like none other. So I'm going to move past this and give the practice less attention than it deserves, except to say that the O line stepped up and finally beat down the D in a scrimmage.

Don't think I'm losing my blogging mojo, I'm just not pumped to replay the day.

lamar

Practice Report Wednesday

2008-04-16T20:46:00.000-07:00

Back to the fields in White River Junction - good stuff. Great stuff. Tons of folks out there today, only missing what, 2 guys? Awesome. Particularly encouraging is seeing guys like Baller and GMail get out on the fields with their teammates, even when battling injuries that keep them out of scrimmages.

So we scrimmaged a lot, O vs. D, and worked on some defensive sets. More power position and hucking work, I was particularly stoked about the Misha-Mackey and Kell-Dermo match ups, which we got to see time and time again. Today was a 'big shot' heavy day in scrimmage, as relatively few goals were scored by just working it up. Billy and Kell both cut well for the D line, opening up space and providing bail outs when the handlers got too passive or covered, and Dermott's breaks up field set up a lot of yard gainage. On the other side of the disc, the boys in white played chilly offense and were not perceptibly thrown off by our defensive looks. Good to see, frustrating to practice against.

Conditioning at the end, throw and run in pairs. Buzzam.

lamar

First Monday Practice

2008-04-14T16:28:00.001-07:00

MWF

3-6

That's what I'm talking about.

So we got pushed around by some lacrosse bullies, who we totally could have taken, and that sent us out of the friendly confines of Kilowatt field in search of greener grass. We found it somewhere in Vermont. I could not lead you back to those fields if I had to. Which I might have to at some point. Better get to memorizing.

Today was a day all about zone. We ran the same offenses against the same zoney looks for point after point, trying to iron out all 4 sides of the disc (O line offense and defense, D line offense and defense = 4 sides of the disc). Made some progress, particularly on the O-line's zone communication, which is key because we can plug some of those guys into D line spots when needed. Then we played a hard fought O vs. D game to 5, which D took 5-3 thanks to some heads up bailouts by Will, a huge grab by Dermott and nasty run past D on the final point by Alex Kell. On the O side, our superstars Watson and Cobbs dominated, but everybody spread the field well, opening up huge looks to Nobs, Schmidty and Nick Breezy.

FIRST PRACTICE!! HOORAY!!

and it was Kell Day. We're in to the '10s.

Up it up,

lamar

Practice Report April 13

2008-04-13T17:16:00.000-07:00

The Pain Train headed out to Kilowatt fields again today, again short of a full cohort but just barely able to reach the magic number of 14 with the inclusion of Capitan Emeritus Ranger. Started with a basically O vs. D scrimmage to 3, a bunch of miscues on this one. Then, after some minor personnel swaps, we ran it to 3 again, with promised punishments for any and all turnovers. O line had two turns, both enormous lay out Ds from McLargeHuge, and good heads up-ness by the D line saved two other turns (arguably even three). Ran some 5-10s as punishment.
Then, in the last scrimmage, we mandated everyone play zone, and there were no fast breaks. Worked in the Box and 1 we saw from the boys from Cambridge, and both sides generated a lot of turns, which is both exciting and worrying. Now is when we work.

Anyways, punishment this time was kill drill, we ran 20 double cuts, catches and throws. Nick Brown showed up just in time to not play a single point but to get to run this workout.

Good stuff, train. Oh, and it was Bullocks Day. Nice.

lamar

Practice Report April 12

2008-04-12T16:17:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a practice on a local field. Good stuff from our leadership, getting creative in order to get us some touches on the grass. We were missing a ton of folks today - Watson's becoming an engineeeeeer, Mackey and Bullocks had business in the NY State capital, Nick Brown is out melting hearts somewhere, Kell is out crushing skulls somewhere, etc. etc. Still, we showed up with 14 plus an injured Robin and then we scrimmaged O line vs. D, ran a drill meant to improve our big puts out of power position and ended with some 7 offense against 6 defenders, a drill meant to improve our on-field communication. D-line, I'm proud to say, got 3 Ds before our buddies on the O could even get 3 goals, but alas when we were on O we only managed 4 goals before they won with 3 turns. It was good stuff all around - a full field, a lot of us in cleats, shorts, t-shirts. Working towards Regionals.

Also, a cool thing happened yesterday on the Green. Miserable day - cold, rainy, windy. Great for working on throws and catches in adverse conditions. So a bunch of us were out on Baker Beach, about to start going over D bids, when this guy shows up, asks to talk to us. He lets us know that in general, we should be going through Club Sports, but then says "You guys are pretty good in general..." He notes we're not wearing any cleats, and based on our reputation for being careful, he lets the few of us out there play on the Green, as long as we promise to keep moving around, going to different spots so as to not hurt any grass.
It was a really nice moment in what often seems to be a contentious, difficult relationship with the College administration. It is great to hear that the work we put in at being good Dartmouth citizens can come back to us, and it absolutely made me more likely to take good care of public spaces than I was before.

Practice again tomorrow and Monday, we'll be spending this week getting our own individual games ready for the Series (Sectionals is next weekend) and then spending the following two weeks really getting ourselves together as a team.

Rock.

-lamar

At Long Last...

2008-04-11T21:47:00.000-07:00

THE ROCK .... HAS RETURNED ... TO HANOVER.

Ok, so I am sort of declaring blogger bankruptcy for the moment. I sort of, um, lost my password for a while, and was busy, and there's this war... anyways, lots of excuses for not keeping this lil blog updated. But I'm back, and I'm doing a quick recap of the regular season, and then I'll be all over this blog through the rest of the Series.

VEGAS

Las Vegas was awesome. We made our annual sojourn to Nevada (ask Carson how to pronounce it) in February, and played one of the most outstanding games I have ever been a part of, against UCSB. Despite our best efforts, we didn't stay off UltiVillage (an oft-repeated goal), which is sort of nice, as some damn good ultimate is now going to live forever on the interwebs.
We also played UNT, Whitman (right?), St. Olaf, Wesleyan, Humboldt, Colorado and Davidson. Although the Tide game rightly stands out above all the rest (it was a Universe point loss, by the way. No matter.), I was particularly pumped by the game against Colorado. We kept it close, losing 10-13, and that was without playing particularly well or firing on all cylinders. I wrote on this blog last year that I was disappointed after we faced Colorado for the second year in a row (it's now been three) because we didn't make much improvement. This year, there was no question that we were in the game with them the whole way.

SPRING BREAK

Spring Break was interesting. We lost the first weekend to God's wrath in the form of tornadoes, but still got in games against NC State (win), GA Tech (win) and Minnesota (Universe loss). We then spent a fun, if a bit too Spring Break-y, week on Folly Beach, playing brutal, uninspired ultimate in our daily scrimmages against a series of chumps in shirts.
HOWEVER... Southerns. Long my least favorite tourney, we have hit up Statesboro on our first weekend of Spring Break for the last two years. This time, however, we showed up after having been out of New Hampshire for a week, and we took it to teams. Boom boom boom.
Day 1, in pool play, we take down Ohio, Rutgers, Northwestern and LSU. Nothing too amazing happening here, but we did take care of business, which was a good thing for us to learn to do. Come Day 2, we faced WUFO first, and man did we do it. Watson had to leave us that morning, but we adjusted, Schmidty and Dekrey ABSOLUTELY DOMINATED and it was as if we weren't missing one of the best players in the region.
Next, Ohio State. I don't really get why people like this play ultimate, which may seem odd coming from me, a guy known to get chippy from time to time... but seriously, how is that mindset fun? We were up big at the beginning, they clawed back and we put the cap on, apparently 15 minutes too early. Curses were exchanged, blah blah blah, but then we got the chance to come out and take the last two points, to win the game on our own terms.
UNC-Wilmington awaited us, the one seed at the tourney, like us a Centex-invitee that stayed out of Texas this weekend. After living and dying with our D line all weekend, the O line played clean, efficient, almost flawless ultimate during this game. That allowed the few breaks our D line eked out to provide enough, and we won this one on Universe. This is when you learn to win these games, not at Regionals. Man, awesome.
So then we showed up, played Tufts in the finals. They were up big in the beginning, and really patrolled the skies. But they didn't have the depth our roster allows us to employ, and towards the end of the game we were able to just run them into the ground, playing boring, handler-based ultimate. We won going away, taking the tournament.

wow.

YALE CUP

We didn't play very well. I hesitate to play psychologist and write this off to the fact we were the one seed - I really don't think we came in thinking we were going to get this tourney on a silver platter or anything. We just didn't play well. It is good to know that we haven't done jack yet, that a win in Georgia doesn't get us any closer to achieving our goals at Regionals, nor does a loss in Connecticut push us any further away.

So that's where we stand. We're 23 guys, 22 days away from playing at Regionals. Keep checking back, I'll be jotting down notes about workouts, practices, team meetings and tournaments as much as possible.

lamar

CCC Saturday Scores

2007-12-01T17:08:00.000-08:00

I'm gonna let Pooh or someone write a real recap, but for the sake of posterity, here is how the first day of the Classic City Classic went down.

Dartmouth 13 - 9 Texas State
Dartmouth 13 - 5 LSU
Dartmouth 11 - 5 NC State
Dartmouth 5 - 9 Florida
Dartmouth 8 - 11 Michigan

3-2, good for 3rd in Pool C, after coming in ranked 6th. They will be in the B Bracket tomorrow, starting against Illinois and can finish as high as 9th. Rub Warner Bentley's nose for them.

lamar

Lemony Fresh

2007-11-11T08:48:00.000-08:00

Shabooyah, sha, sha, shabooyah roll call!

My name is James,
I am an ’11,
I’ll tell you about our games,
And nothing rhymes with eleven!

Shabooyah, sha, sha, shabooyah roll call!

For some reason, I decided a few days ago that that’s how I’d start my very first post.

So, all about Lemony. Lemony Fresh, a five-year tournament that has a spring and a fall classic involved, went down in East Greenwich, RI in Goddard Memorial Park on Saturday, November 10. Nobody knows where this is and probably no one cares. Well, I guess it’s kind of relevant because the A men were at Brown, so a weekend full of Rhode Island ultimate about to be dominated by the residents of Hanover? We will see.

We left campus at 5:15 in the morning because it was a three-hour drive and our first game was at 8:30. That makes enough sense. So we were ridin’ dirty, most of us passed out after a big party night the night before (or the night during?)

We finally get to the tourney at around 8:30, where we check in and realize that the TDs rescheduled our games so that we’d get a first-round bye. First-round bye. Meaning, first game at 10:30. Commotion ensues.

A bunch of people are out like Aurora Borealis for the next two hours, while a bunch of us went on a mission to find Sam Welch some cleats, which we found at Robert’s Music Soccer World. Sergio Mendes - Mas que nada anyone? On our way back to the park, we drive to our fields which were a ways from the front fields, and in the process, bam! We hit a cancer walk. No joke. We drive right into a bunch of grannies walking hard for a cause, and for a good 5 minutes feel worse than someone watching Diversity Day at The Office.

Anyway, games! That’s what this is for. Our first was up against Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s B team on a field with rolling hills. Estimated conditions of first pull: 30 degrees with wind the both of us, we were a little rusty and getting the hang of things, but we scored first. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then again. Then halftime. I won’t lie, but some of us were having delusions of fall season B team grandeur until WPI took maybe 50 seconds to score right after the half. They came back but we were able to tough it out to the hard cap, victorious 9-6.

Teeny analysis: Wind was going pretty cleanly either downfield or upfield, which made for some great hucking conditions, which although WPI recognized, may have been a little ridic wit (Gardner at one point actually pleaded with them to stop). Our zone defenses were unstoppable, they may have seen a zone at some point in the past but had no idea what to do with ours, too many floaty D-able passes. We made the right decisions by keeping it between our handlers with short passes, they kind of put the heat on with their first zone D in the second half but we converted a lot of our endzone opportunities, who said freshmen can’t be chilly?

Game 2: Brandeis B. Another horrible field shaped like a trapezoid, but disc is disc! They had two or three decent handlers who knew their way around, a big dude in tight jeans who was unstoppable on in-cuts, but come on, this is Disembodied Titty! Up 7-1 at the half, kept cruising to a 13-4 defeat. Wait, did I say defeat? I meant win.

We were nice and warmed up from our first game and knew exactly what to do and how to do it. The wind calmed down quite a bit too, almost a serene setting. We found out that they were in love with their flick, so much so that I boldly predicted that I felt a d-block on one of the handlers coming on. I did in fact get an index finger on one, but later we switched to zone so the fun was over. (If I self-call again, I’ll have to carry Pat to Sachem on my back.) Our zone at one point almost pushed them out the back of their endzone. But we played a lot like a Spring Break B team (I actually don’t know what Spring Break is all about but that’s what I hear), downright frosty with the disc, great decision-making, short passes, not many hucks, and another Gardner reference:

“We should stack behind the handler and run baby talk all day.”

- Quoted ad verbatim at halftime.

In the words of Trey, it was http://www.tittybombs.com. Click! I never have, so I actually have no idea what you’re about to see and am in no way responsible.

We went into town for lunch during our second bye, which technically now registers on the UPA site as a forfeit by Rhode Island College for never showing up. Fat and happy from some Subway’s we play our last team, Hartford B, which looked menacing to me because of their coordinated red jerseys and a tiny fear deep down within my soul that had be contemplating if we were just a puffing, choo-chooing fluke.

Hartford was athletic, stayed with us on most of our cuts. That said, a quote from an unidentified player on our team: “They got druids on their team and we’re still kicking their ass.” REMAINS unidentified. (They were just dudes wrapped up head to toe in blankets, but two girls and a dude who looked like a girl actually came in the game.) 7-2 at the half, they actually had some no-swill throws, but this trolley couldn’t be stopped.

After the half we threw a zone for fun, just kept going up and up, and 13-3 was the final tally after maybe 50 minutes of play. Faster than a sleepy Trey who consistently drove 80 miles per hour and made it look like 55. By the way, shoutouts to our drivers who were on the road for a total 7 hours, starting from the wee hours of the morning.

Team analysis:

This team is learning very quickly. A little more than a month ago, a lot of us were fresh or pretty fresh, but we’ve been learning all our schemes, throwing better, deciding better, hustling harder, and we’ve been improving together as a team. I believe it was Victory (or someone in Trey’s car on the way back, it’s my last memory of yesterday) that said that there were no weak links on this team, and it’s so true. In addition to the ‘11s that make up the vast majority of the team, our veteran upperclassmen leaders are really showing us how to do it, and together we make a great team. World, watch out: Discomfort Trolley is on the loose.

Final story of this post that went on way too long:

So on our way out, I was disturbed by the fact that we hadn’t seen any TDs come by our slummy fields in the boondocks the whole day and check up on us, get our scores, anything. So after we won our last game and headed out a little earlier than the rest of the team, I decided to go to the gazebo where they organized whatever organization there was. Here’s my conversation:

Me: Hey, I’m from Dartmouth, so I guess we won our division, do we just go home now or do you guys have something for us… or anything?

TD: Oh yeah, I do actually, give me a second (continues to fill our division’s scorecard, I see those 4 wins and 0 losses)

He then goes into the back of this big van in the parking lot with a bunch of stuff, rummages around, and after a few minutes, emerges from the depths with a bottle of J. Roget champagne in each hand.

Welcome to Dartmouth Ultimate.

- Cuddle Puddle

Meaningless Site Update!

2007-11-09T05:43:00.000-08:00

Hi Dartmouth. James Kim is joining the roster of posters to this glorious site. He'll be joining us with a recounting of the Lemony Fresh tournament just as soon as he gets back from playing. Let me know if he's awesome or whatever.

lamar

Pain Train Destroys Williamstown; Residents Thankful To Finally Be Free of WUFO Tyranny

2007-10-21T10:49:00.000-07:00

HI!

So at some point over the past few months, Dartmouth Ultimate rolled down to Williamstown, MA. Leaving Hanover to go to Williams is like moving out of a Mass Row single and living in a shack around town: nobody in their right mind would do it. But still, it happens roughly twice a year, because the survival of Dartmouth Ultimate as a gene pool demands that we procreate outside of our own group at least occasionally. That's what the PV Party is for.

Now, I played really well. I was sort of a cutter-handler-coach-observer hybrid - it worked because I've never once thrown an incompletion or made the wrong call. We kept stats until the boxes next to my name were all filled up, then we crumpled it up and lit it on fire. And that's how the bonfire tradition started.

But as good as I was, I couldn't make up for one person: Thomas Donahoe. He was playing so poorly I am pretty convinced he is doing some primary research for his Benedict Arnold biography he's writing. Yeah, I said it: Steve HOLT! is a traitor. And were it not for Crew's investigative reporting, we never would have known.

After going 9-3-5-1 during Saturday, we went to the party. That one band played, it was sweaty, security was everywhere and some freshman climbed a tree. He came down after a few minutes, but we were worried. Oh, and Wheaties solo-landsharked. It was one of the top 3 Ian Wheat-related things I have ever seen, and by far the best one I have ever smelled. Dave Chappelle flew in from Africa to recreate his Howard Dean impression, and by midnight we were all sucking our thumbs, visions of plums dancing in our heads.

On Sunday we lost all our games.

Princess at Purple Valley

2007-10-21T09:48:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, the Dartmouth ladies headed to Williams to rock the annual Purple Valley tournament. Armed with freshwomen, flair, and the Princess Train, the team showed up ready to make their debut for the season. On Saturday, the women went 1-3. We lost to UVM, Wellesley, and Tufts (who was stacked with alumni that refuse to say goodbye to college). Fortunately we were able to knock Harvard into place. Highlights included HOT layouts by Tien, Ana, and Jing Jing. Our freshman and newbies played awesome defense all weekend long, and our flow was looking great by the end of the day Saturday.

The team then ate a delicious pasta dinner and returned to the dorm to prepare to serenade Whufo's mom. Coached by Molly Roy, this year's cheer was performed to the High School Musical Theme Song and both the delivery and reception were impressive! The women then proceeded to spice up the party in "internet" attire. Apparently there was lots of dancing, some skilled cock blocking, and chatting it up with the security guards.

The next morning, Dartmouth women warmed up by dancing to some classics like "Best Friend". We then came out strong against Whufo Y but began falling away after half, ended up losing. Next, both the men's and women's rookies combined with the GW women's team to play a Newbie Showcase Game. Our freshmen totally rocked the field with sweet cuts and hucks and layouts galore! Nice work!

Potlatch Report

2007-07-24T23:25:00.000-07:00

By way of Chimpo and some other ballin' alums comes this report out of Potlatch in Seattle a few weeks back. I'll hopefully be posting the story of the undergrad trip to MARS soon. Til then, enjoy. - lamar

Dear Dartmouth Ultimate,

Report from Potlach '07.
Best tournament outside of the College series that I (chimpo) have ever been to. Seriously, next year, you want to come to this tourney. Alums and undergrads, old friends and new ones all meet under wonderful Seattle summer weather, and the ultimate is goooooood. Like the traditional Native American gathering that the tournament takes its name from, every team competes to give the best gifts to each other. With the help of Flan, Colin, and Raindog, the Dalums gave the gifts of horfing and rice krispees treat beer cozies.

(from Geoff, '94) Note to older Dalums: it is fun as hell to play with a team of young alums -
they run fast and do all the hard work, and they're nice to you just for
showing up! Let me guess: you already knew that.

Thanks to Colin and everyone else for the warm reception!

Here are the stats I have, for those interested:

Roster:
CoPow - captain
Vi
Ariel Dowling
Jess
Nora
Masi
Hoffer
Phelan
Alex Price
Crank
Lorraine and friend Sean
Nate Merril
Brain Greeno
Mike D
Chimpo
Geoff (2 games only)
Sorry if I missed anybody...these are the names I can remember.

Saturday 1-3
round 1: lost to last years tournament winners.
round 2: beat Whitman alums. We were behind until we started going 3-4 with four female cutters in a ho-stack. Our women ate their women for breakfast. 16-14
round 3: Lost to a team of 18 Junior Worlds players and Miranda Roth. If you want to know what it's like to play against a team filled with Nora's and Nate Raines', ask any of the people above. The under 19 year olds then beat 3 teams of Dalums in rolling rock and flutterguts.
round 4: bye
round 5: lost to "road runners & coyotes" 9-15 - we should have done better but
played flat - Abbie Roberts '98 was one of the roadrunners!

Sunday C-pool
round 1: beat "soflo," from Florida/Columbia 15-9 - fun game, we were clicking. Tried to play shooters during a time-out. Had to stop after one of the guys from Miami couldn't figure out the rules.
round 2: vs. UPenn alums - Lost 14-13 thanks to hard cap you-lose-even-if-you-score-this-point rules. We were coming back. Had lost a few players to injuries and early flights, but never let up. I saw lots of heart, and lots of pride in this game.

Finally, some brief, unmissable moments.
After Whitman game. Chimpo taking on 5' girl in disc jousting (with wierd rules). As soon as they say go, Chimpo kicks the disc out of girl's hand. Girl swears at Chimpo. Her team gets ready to fight. Chimpo looks confused. They didn't say no kicking.
At tourney party. Vi and Masi running against A. Price's racewalk (which he still does competitively). Price wins by a landslide.
After tourney party. Someone (hoffer? copow?) comes home and yells "CRANK, WAKE UP (x20)". Crank doesn't wake up. Everyone else does.
After Geoff came by. Geoff learns that everyone knows about Rodney, then perfectly imitates Rodney's stationary forehand fake. Young alums then ask a 50 questions of other legends like Stu Downs, Ray Wagner, Lars, among others.

Yours,
Geoff Wittreich '94
Chimpo P Cahill '07

Regionals Day 1

2007-05-05T15:18:00.000-07:00

On the off chance someone is hoping to follow us, here is a quick recap.

We started out against Yale, beat them fairly solidly. 15 - 5.

Next came Tufts. We rolled them in the first half, they won the second half. There was some intense chipiness with their coaches, but whatever. This time, we gutted out a win. 13 - 11.

In the Semis, we played WUFO. We again rolled the first half, but could not execute in the second half. I can't quite write about this yet... we were up 8-3, they tied it 11-11, we went up 14-11, then they came back to 14-14, we went up 15-14 and got the disc on the endline, almost scored twice, and then did not quite execute correctly. 17-15 final in WUFO's favor.

sorry about the lack of stupid jokes. I guess people probably prefer it this way anyhow.

lamar

Sectionals, or How We Learned to Stop Coming Out Flat and Love the Game

2007-05-04T06:09:00.000-07:00

Pretentious title? Check.

So we rolled to Colby once again this year for sectionals. We were supposed to assemble at 3:45 in the morning outside of Rauner for a chartered bus ride over to Maine - well, we upheld our end of the bargain. The driver? Not so much. So we had to somehow wake ourselves up, assemble a fleet of cars, and drive over to Sectionals. Much consternation ensued.

Well, we arrived about halfway through the Bness's first round game against Bridgewater. Sectionals fell this year on First Year Family weekend here at Dartmouth, so several freshmen couldn't make it to help out their B team brothers, but this first game still came out in favor of Discomfort Trolley.

Our first game was against Bates. We were already exhausted and not quite ready to go, so we only managed to win 13-8 or 9 or so. This game was marked by our simple lack of hustle - the outcome was never really in doubt, so we were happy to just make it happen with our throws and ultimate IQ instead of really breaking a sweat. Seigs, there to coach us, and the triumvirate of captains did recognize this and really lit a fire under us for the rest of the day.

Our next game was against Maine-Orono - an odd team, in that they sort of lacked spirit, bidding into our legs after catches were made, kind of grunting when we talked to them about it. Oh well. They also all had snazzy (read: not particularly snazzy) jerseys, but most of them weren't wearing cleats. Priorities boys, priorities. 13 - 2 or so.

Next came Colby. We really took it to these guys. I don't really remember the score or any particulars (was this the game where Tom cemented his spot on the checking line with one hard shoulder?) but we played as hard as we had against UMO against a significantly superior team. Had to be pumped after this one - someone remarked that this was the first time that the Dartmouth team from Yale Cup showed up.

Finally, for Day 1 - UNH. Not a ton to report about this one either, we played decently, they played significantly worse, and got upset even though we didn't really spike the disc ever, more just threw it back to the line after a score. This led to the ridiculous spectacle of one of their undersized dudes catching a score to make it 12-6 or something and throwing up a HUGE spike. Luckily, Nate ignored my counsel to "spike the shit out of it" when he caught the next score, and we made our way to Dana dining hall (free food night!) to rest up after the day.

We spent the night at the Marden's, who were the most gracious hosts we could imagine. Luckily, we were all so exhausted that snores were plentiful from the living room by 9:15 or so...
We woke up to delicious pancakes and a steady rain. What an unbelievable turn of events - it was raining at Colby during Sectionals. My jaw is literally on the floor.

Ok, so it gets ugly now. Our first game was the Semis, against Maine-Farmington. They matched up perfectly with us - good in the air, excellent break throws. They came out and jumped on us 4-0. Holy balls I was terrified. It would get worse. We broke them twice in a row in the first half to take half on serve 8-7. Things seemed ok. But in the second half, we couldn't get rid of these guys. We went up a break, and then they broke us back twice. They were up 13-12, game to 15. But we battled back, forced some bad throws and once we got the disc just refused to give it up. Brett Carr stepped up huge with a big D in the endzone, and our O just clicked. We were up 15-14, game to 17 hard, when we just decided to end it. Nobody allowed their man to get open on D, Chimpo absolutely locked down on their stud handler, and they threw away the dump. Cobbles easily broke his man on an iso play for Watson to win this one.

I couldn't really eat for a few days after this one. This was like a nightmare where your house burns down - you can't really be comfortable for a while. Goodness gracious.

Anyways, Bowdoin decided to concede the finals, having cemented their bid to Regionals, so they just showed up with three guys and played out the game. We were psyched to play, but we're not gonna complain about making it out of there with no losses.

Ok, so Regionals is this weekend. One quick note - I literally can not stop smiling after I read the blitzes alums are sending in. Over the past few days we've gotten advice from guys who went to Natties in '03, words of wisdom from Dartmouth alums who were captaining this team before most of us were alive, even offers to have Ugandan witch doctors bless our team and call down hexes upon Brown and Harvard. Oh, and once again, UMass and Harvard did not take care of business, finishing third in both of their sections, and throwing the Regional seedings into a bit of a tizzy. Luckily this year we were above the fray as far as seedings were concerned, holding onto our two seed behind Brown instead of getting dragged down behind teams we lost to earlier in the season but who underperformed in the section, a la last year.

We play Yale in the first round Saturday. That is the only thing we know for sure right now.

Wish us some luck. We're gonna turn some heads.

lamar

Quick Yale Cap Recap

2007-04-25T21:34:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-10T05:29:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-02T23:50:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-02T20:56:00.000-07:00

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

Vegas Day 3

2007-02-21T21:09:00.000-08:00

Wind.

Not to be found in Leverone. Somewhat kept out of Scully-Fahey. Not to be found in that 2 v. 2 ultimate video game Uptown has.

Plenty of it in Vegas.

Yes, day 3 of our Las Vegas adventure featured some wind. Nay, lots. And on the fields we played on, it was pretty much blowing right from one end zone to the other, meaning that every break was basically worth two (because you got the score upwind on D, then pulled to the other team, who you could most likely break as you were going downwind.)

(Disclaimer - it's getting late. These won't be too long.)

We started the day off with UC-Irvine, continuing our steady assault on the California public university system. They really should not have been able to hang with us, but the wind was an equalizer, to a point. From what I recall of this game, we broke them on and off to go up early, and they played a lot of deep looks that got gobbled up by our last backs. Nothing too extraordinary about this one, except for the fact that we managed to break against their zone going upwind to win the game, and the fact that we unveiled the clam, which forced some serious turns. 11 - 9, according to score reporter, but I do not remember it being that close.

Then came GDub - a solid MetroEast team, they've taken the third place in a two bid region a few years running now. I'll be honest, I didn't think we would win this one, but we played gritty as hell and really came at them harder than they could handle not once but twice. This was because after going up a couple of breaks, we gave up 4 breaks without getting one of our own, leading into halftime. In the second half, though, we punished them. We scored 5 breaks, 3 upwind (including the game winner) to take the game 13 - 10, a really satisfying win against a known team after the near misses of the day before. Once again, we gobbled up the deep swill (hi Nate!) and confounded them with our clam.

Last game of the day/tournament came against Western Washington Dirt, and we played some good Dartmouth ultimate. The wind had died down, but a long bye had left some of us decleated and unable to play. We opened up the subbing and still played right with these guys, even starting off the game with an upwind break. Dirt might be the most polished team we beat at Vegas, and they have some serious players, but we still gutted this win out on two excellent final points. There were a plethora of turns, but our handlers adjusted to the conditions as the game went on and moved the disc around on their short throws extremely effectively and safely. Dartmouth thus won the 25th place bracket by going 3-0 on day 3, which for me is more satisfying than making the braket above and losing all your games to earn 24th.

Ultimately, we played some sweet teams. UgMo, Mamabird, and CUT are all top tier teams, while aTm, Smaug, Chicago, Western and GDub are all at the level slightly below them. No teams from the Northeast, no B teams, and a team that was psyched even when they lost made for an extremely successful weekend.

Win-Loss: 4 - 5
Aces Won: 5
Asians in the top 3 of the Poker Tourney: 2
Ridiculous Nate Raines scoobers: 1 (in game, at least)
Players who ate that gross pizza: 5 or 6

Right. Pain Train, baby.

Vegas Day 2

2007-02-21T20:36:00.000-08:00

Another morning where we all woke up with all of our organs is another successful night in Vegas. None of us will ever forget when Dan had his spleen removed last year as he slept in that tub of ice. Yeah, it was pretty dangerous, but he lost that Rosham, and Watson had every right to cash in on what he was owed. His pound of flesh, or 1.54 pounds of spleen, if you will.

So, with Yi all healed up by now, we drove back out to the fields. After initially predicting we would be opening against Cornell, we were happily proven incorrect when we learned that UCLA were to be our opponents. Unlike last year, we really did get a chance to play against some diverse as hell teams at Vegas this time, and it was also much easier to figure out where you stood exactly in the overall scheme of the tournament. Kudos, cultimate. Kudos.

Smaug, a clever literary/climatological reference, came out playing pretty well, and we fired back. Breaks were traded, from what I can remember, and we played well enough at first. What was pretty cool about this game, from a Dartmouth perspective, was that we really adjusted well to one of the problems we were having - dump set up and pushing the stack up the field with our handlers. After a halftime demonstration from Coach Seigs and pretty consistent reminders from the sidelines, our handlers got much better very quickly at setting up in a more dangerous position before making their cuts. We ended up losing this game because we could not finish on D, not getting breaks on points where we held the disc 2 or 3 times. A shitty call towards the end allowed them to end the game on a break, 11-9, but as frustrating as it is to play a solid game and have it marred by an egregious call, that was not the reason we lost. We convert a break earlier, or hold onto the disc a bit better on one of our O points, and it doesn't come down to Charlie's decision to jump over a player instead of implanting his pivot foot on the dude's neck. Ah well.

Next came UC-Berkley, UgMo, who we lost to at Vegas last year on Universe point after controlling the game for most of the way. This year's team impressed me way, way more than the 2006 incarnation did and did not depend on one stud the way that team seemed to. That also meant we couldn't just isolate one guy, and instead had to play their whole team. And in that respect, this game was really what we hope for out of our trip to Vegas (besides those free cards Crank was still distributing late last Spring. We come for those too): an opportunity to play solid ultimate against a West coast team that has a bit more practice, but at least 2/3 less grit, than the Pain Train does right now. We ended up losing this one 12 - 9, and from what I can recall the end was sort of like the end of the aTm game - we played hard, dug our heels in, but just didn't have time to make up the lead that had never seemed too daunting the whole game. Still, the attitude of this team again shown through, and we took these two successive losses for what they were - learning opportunities, games we could have won but didn't necessarily blow.

Plus, due to a surprising loss to Las Positas, we had the pleasure of taking on Carleton in the final round of the day. CUT is, like Mamabird, a top-tier team in college ultimate right now, and they rely on gritty play and rock-solid disc skills to take them places, due to the frigid, Hanover-like weather they go through. We really wanted to step up against this team and knock them on their asses right off the bat, but while we traded points at first, they scored on two throws on both of their first posessions thanks to a complicated play in their Ho-stack setup that looked like a weather pattern - the swirl, as Chimpo so elegantly put it. Long story short, we lost 13 - 7 and could have played better. Still, we scored on a decent percentage of our chances, even breaking them once. Still, our D did not force many turns, and if we can get to the point where we can rely on our stud D line to make every single throw a difficult prospect, games even against teams as gifted as CUT will be closer. Not a huge step forward, unlike most of our other endeavors this tourney, but still no grounds for discouragement.

So, an 0 - 3 day. Hey, it happens. I can say with absolute certainty that we have never played ultimate that well without winning a game, and we were straight chillin as we stole our pizza and watched the coaches game under the lights. Seigs, decked out like he was playing the title role of "Little Miss Sunshine" in a production directed by people who had never seen the movie, threw nothing but "Completions. Completions." Except for one turnover. Still, he D'd up Ben Wiggens, extending the rivalry which is approaching Mongoose vs. Black Mamba proportions. (Seriously - white guy with dark hair, defensive specialist, taking on the former MVP? It was destined. And if you got this joke, please let me know, because an obscure TV commercial for a Playstation game is a pretty pathetic name to drop.) In conclusion: my jersey got major facetime.

Vegas Day 1

2007-02-21T20:03:00.000-08:00

I'd start this post with an explanation for the 4 month hiatus, but nobody reads this anyway, so whatever. There wasn't much ultimate for me, although my winter league team did just win a 48 minute game last Sunday by a final score of 64 -13. No lie.

But yeah, apparently there is some sort of ultimate tournament in Las Vegas every year now, and Dartmouth ultimate flew out once again to take part in the festivities. One of the selling points this year was the apparent lack of any mortalities the year before. I am fairly certain that my careful perusal of RSD has proven that there were no fatalities once again, but if this tournament had been held one week later, during the NBA All-Star festivities, I'd lay down 50-50 odds on the fact that some ultimate player would have looked just a bit too hard at Stephen Jackson's entourage and we'd have to rename the Callahan award the McHugh or something. Holy balls, that was a 71 word sentence. I am the William Faulkner of ultimate blogging.

On to the action. I'll spare you the whining about my arrival - suffice it to say that Chimpo shouldn't rest too easy - and just jump right ahead to the first day of games. We started out against Chi-Town, who spat on our dreams last year. But that was a Chicago team featuring X and V (Ex and Vee? Ehx and Vhee? Who knows. The Titcombs.) This year's manifestation are not scrubs, but after the upset they pulled on us last year we came out firing and we really controlled this game after trading points for the first 8 posessions or so. I don't recall the exact score at the end, but it was around 13 - 6... or so. Dartmouth wins. Woo hoo.

Next, we moved one field over to take on Colorado. Mamabird is one of the top programs in the country, and they absolutely dismantled us when we opened our inaugural Vegas run against them last year. I'm gonna come out and say this: they crushed us again. We talked a lot coming into this game about playing like we had nothing to lose and really relishing the opportunity to play against one of the best teams the country has to offer. And while I do think that we, for the most part, carried that attitude into the game and did not play scared, we also got our asses handed to us. No contenders should lose by that lopsided of a score (13-4) to another top team, and while we are not at Mamabird's level yet, we really could have given them a better match.
Much of the problem this game was execution, it seems to me - passes thrown away, potential scores dropped, defensive dictation completely abandoned. And that is not a tremendous surprise from a team that hasn't played in conditions like the ones we faced at Vegas (namely grass, wind, etc.) for a few months. But I really hope that next year, I'm not writing that we managed to score 5 on Mamabird, and thus are showing some improvement.

Phew, ok, I think I got all of my negativity out of my system. I realize the above passage seems bleak, but we really came into and out of that game with the right outlook, the right attitude, and unlike last year we didn't really let that loss deflate us at all. Still, I think enough time has passed to point out the obvious - teams with the aspirations and potential we have should ALWAYS have a better showing than that. My two cents, I guess.

We concluded day 1 by taking on Texas A & M. These guys were fairly large, fairly athletic and not all that polished. They were a good ultimate team, and played within the system they had worked out for themselves well, but we had our chances. At some point in the second half they rattled off a few unanswered breaks before we got our heads together and dug in towards the end. Unfortunately, we didn't really have the ability to mount a convincing comeback, and we dropped our second game in a row by the score of 10 -13. This is exactly the type of team I would love to play in the spring, when we are ready to play gritty for the whole game and have better realized what type of offense and defense we play and made it fit. aTm, as they call themselves, were pretty well-spirited, although they did push me to get chippy on an out-of-bounds call after prestalling without provocation. Seriously, who does that? In pool play? Really?

Day 1 Result: 1 - 2, Demeanor: Sunny, Faces: Sunburned.

That night, most of us chilled in our cramped hotel rooms and watched The Miz wrestle the Undertaker (Devlin: "I think this is the fourth Undertaker they've gone through."), watched the Bulls take on some other basketball organization, including a ludicrous halfcourt shot to possibly win that Mr. Awareness launched with fully three seconds left on the game clock, like the ball was hot potatoe ("Get this shit outta here!"), and of course tuned in to catch the end of the Batista - Mr. Kennedy match. Batista has extremely large shoulder muscle thingies. I can't imagine being his tailor. Or really being anyone's tailor. Really, the whole fashion industry confounds me. Aaaaand on that note... I'll bid you adieu. Until the recap of Day 2. In, like, 12 minutes.

Pain Train at Brown's Hucka-Hunka-Burning-Pumpkin

2006-11-11T15:39:00.000-08:00

Dartmouth rolled into Rhode Island for its final tournament of the Fall Season, and the first since the official split between the Pain Train and the Discomfort Trolley. Before we even got to the field, Kevin Pfeiffer proved his dedication to Dartmouth Ultimate by spending the entire trek in the trunk of Charlie’s car (don’t worry, we poked some airholes in there to keep him conscious.) Dartmouth was the second ranked team at the tournament, a position we had earned and intended to keep.

Pain Train vs. Brown B

Brown entered no less than 4 teams into this tournament (they also entered no more than 4, but whatever) and we started out against their B squad. As we got our legs under us, we made quick work of their defense most of the time, the main exception being a 20 minute hell point that featured more turns than I am comfortable acknowledging on a public blog. Still, that hell point ended with the familiar cries of ‘Fiesta!’ and started the trend of pulling out the grittiest points that Dartmouth extended throughout the tournament. The kid on Brown B who was dressed as a Campbell’s Soup Can last year (until his costume exploded on a bid in the endzone) reprised his role as “Slow guy in a spherical cardboard costume” by playing as a can of Pawtucket Patriot Ale. No sweet bid this year, but I’m sure he was game for it.
Dartmouth 13 – Brown B 0 (what? We never bagel teams…)

Pain Train vs. Boston University

BU refuses to get rid of all their wiley handlers. Luckily, they have lost a few, and the corp of Russian-looking big men all seem to have graduated. The game started close, with Dartmouth’s man defense shutting down everything except for the upline cuts from BU’s handlers. Once we prioritized that element, this game came together, because the sick fakes they were throwing didn’t get their babytalk cuts open. (yay! Jargon!) After more or less trading for the beginning of the first quarter, Dartmouth buckled down and finished to halftime strong, before rolling in the second half. BU scored at most 1 or 2 after half, and our honest man created both hurried throws on their part and lots of opportunities for Ds on our part.
I’m sure more sweet stuff happened too. But, like, whatever.
Dartmouth 13 – BU 5

Pain Train vs. UMass

This was the game we needed to win to start defending our seed. The third seed in the tournament, UMass graduated only a few players from the team that lost in the game to go last spring (although they were missing a few other key components). Our mental game was still surging, despite coming off a bye round, and we came out firing. We outscored Zoodisc solidly in the first half, and Seigs, recently arrived to offer his coaching skills and help out the captains by observing our play without worrying about his own play, helpfully reminded me that it is ok to some times beat a team soundly. “They’ll get over it,” he promised, but if there is one thing the Pain Train has learned over the past years, it is that Seigs’ advice is usually best left unheeded. So we decided to let them back in it.
UMass certainly won the second half, and because Brown and Harvard were back in Providence playing their last round as a showcase match, the fields were emptying out around us. At 11 – 9, we started discussing the cap rules, which are ludicrous at Brown every year – an absolute time cap, so you finish the point, if the game is tied you play one more, if not then the game is over, no matter who scored the last goal. We pulled to them and they marched up and scored their fastest point of the entire game, which came at the perfect time as the horn was blown within 10 seconds of the score. Per ultimate convention, the next point was thought to have started (although there is some debate as to whether a point starts with the pull or the goal caught before it). Anyways, it was 10 – 11, and if they scored we would play a Universe point. We finally realized that Seigs did have somewhat of a point, and that winning sooner we significantly better than winning later, and therefore marched the disc up the field and stuffed it in for the score and the win. The pool went to seed, and we headed back to the Brown campus for the night.
Dartmouth 12 – UMass 10
The Night

Highlights include:
The fact that nobody on Brown’s campus has ever heard of Diman House… even though it is a real dorm.
Learning that lots of Brown’s frats are physically connected to particular dorms.
The Borat movie – “Buckaw!”
Hiking back from the Borat movie.
Observing the Brown scavenger hunt, refusing to partake.
“No, if you do, I’ll punch you in the neck.”
Seigs eagerly rallying party backup.
Dartmouth men losing to BU women in flipcup.
Seigs not being there when we woke up.

Dartmouth vs. Harvard

This was our third meeting with the best college team from Cambridge this season, and after splitting the first two appearances, we intended to win this one. We started out on D and absolutely took Red Line’s lunch money. The 1-3 got us a break, our clam got us a break, and then gritty man D got us a break. We cruised to what we thought was half up 7-3, but were then notified that none of us had read the tourney packet, and that games were to 15. Rounds were just as long as on Saturday, so adding points seemed pointless, but whatever. We got broken on our way to taking half, and went into it up 8 – 5.
In the second half, Harvard’s zone gave us a plethora of problems, just as UMass’s had the day before, in an important development that I am not going to go back and add in now. Because our wings were staying a bit too close to the disc, their deeps were able to come in and make plays on the hammers and blades we put up to the poppers or as long swings. However, we eventually figured out the spacing and started to tear through the cup much easier, as the poppers were getting open for blades and then seeing the wings already streaking deep for the continuation scores. The game got tied up at 9s, but Harvard pulled to us and our Universe line marched to about half field, where Watson saw his opening for a look to Dermott and put up a flick that floated over the scrum in the endzone. On a similar note, Derm appeared to float above them as well, and he ripped down the score over Harvard’s captain despite being fouled as he did so.
Dartmouth 10 – Harvard 9

Dartmouth vs. Tufts

Tufts upset UMass in their quarterfinals game, saving us a rematch of the day before by giving us a rematch of our season ending loss from the year before. Just as we did against Harvard and UMass, the Pain Train came out with intense D and fairly crisp offense. Unlike against Harvard and UMass, however, we didn’t let up. The only downside of this entire game was the first and only hell point that we lost all tourney, a point where our offense struggled while our D dominated, only giving up real pass by Tufts during all of the turns. Unfortunately, that one went for a score. However, the rest of the game was all Dartmouth. Robin Myers ’10 got one of the sickest layout Ds of the entire season at one point, and our Ho stack kept ending our offensive points quickly, allowing the D to get back on the field and break the E Men again. Pretty damn satisfying to win this one, after struggling against them all last season.
Dartmouth 13 – Tufts 8

Dartmouth vs. Brown

Wow, the finals. Cool. As the top two seeds, Dartmouth and Brown had both shown their ability to avoid choking so far, and now battled for the win and de facto title of winner of the fall season. We played them at PV a few weeks before, and won that game 13 – 12, but the specter of who wasn’t there that time (Mahoney, Colin) hangs over that result. Finally released from DoG’s practice schedule, the Brown star rejoined his teammates and seemed to give them the spark they needed to derail the Pain Train (whoops, guess I gave away the ending of this game). Neither of the two teams played as well as they could, and while individual players performed out of their minds (hi Nate!), the disappointment of this game was not the loss itself, but the knowledge that we could have done a bit better.
Dartmouth 10 – Brown 15

Hey, second in the tourney ain’t too shabby. We held seed and played our hardest against some of our most intense regional rivals. Feels great to go into a long, dark winter of conditioning and Scully-Fahey sessions with a successful outcome in our last tournament, but with the knowledge that we still have teams to beat inside the region.

Princess Round Robin

2006-11-04T13:29:00.001-08:00

November 4 - Hanover

Game 1: Tufts EWO vs. Dartmouth Princess Layout

A little snow on the ground didn't scare Princess one bit. Dartmouth came out fired up and scored the first point of the day after a few turns. Then Tufts went on a 3 point streak, in which T-ho managed to D a disc with her knee, and on another point she laid out in the endzone and nearly had the D! Next point Katie Nash threw a beautiful break throw to Bean, who threw to Mandy and then Katie again for the score. Mandy and SamKap were connecting really well - a bunch of scores were thrown by Mandy and caught by SamKap or vice versa. Princess was down 5 - 7, and then had a three point streak with lots of beautiful outside-inside hucks by Nora, so we ended up taking half, 8 - 7. Shortly after half, the game transitioned from almost entirely man defense to almost entirely zone. Tufts was quick to score after half, but Dartmouth came right back and scored again. Nora did a great job shredding Tufts cup and Alho, SamKap, and Bean did some great popping. Then Tufts went on another 3 point streak. Tien played great D on the dump, and forced a turn. Later that same point, T ho had a D that managed to knock over 2 Tufts girls. Geetha had a bunch of Ds in these few points as well. Tufts soon threw a 1-3-3 defense and our handlers were pretty much able to run the puke silly. However, Tufts pulled out the win, 14 - 11. It was a good game though. Tufts graduated a lot of key players so we were able to really make them struggle and give their handlers a tough time.

Final Score: Tufts EWO 14, Dartmouth 11

Game 2: UVM Ruckus vs. Dartmouth Princess Layout

Dartmouth started out on D, totally fired up. Geetha had a great intimi-D to start the game that really pumped everyone up and got things off to a quick start. For the first score, Nora waited patiently and stone faced in the endzone for the UVM girl bobbling the disc to finish trying to D it and then caught it easily in her arms. "It had to come down sometime," she reasoned to the line. In the second point, there were a handful of turns, but finally SamKap manage to D a long huck sent by the main UVM handler. Then Nora sent it to Bean for the score. Marika and Tien both played great on the mark, and forced a bunch of turns that point. In the next point, Gabi had a huge D on a UVM girl. The disc turned again, and Mandy had a good D. Then Katie sent another beautiful huck to Blair in the endzone. Next point Nora had a nice break through to Emmy who threw it to Gabi for the score. In the next point Emmy had this super awkward flailing D that was suprisingly effective. To redeem herself she got a D on the dump and then ran into the endzone to catch a score from Nora. Shortly after that, Nora threw another nice long outside-inside throw to Mandy who snatched it, despite the 3 defenders on her. Then Mandy hucked it to Bean (another outside-inside) for the score. Next Dartmouth threw a zone with SamKap, Emmy, and Blair in the cup which forced a nice throw over the cup straight into Nora's hands. She then threw it to SamKap for the score, and Princess took half by a large margin. In the second half, Nora had more hucks to SamKap (SamKap pretty much ate up the end zone all game). Bean played some great D on the dump, forcing a bunch of turns. Tien's hot fakes almost took a UVM girl out in the face, I think that's how they teach you to do it in synchronized skating or something. Later in the game Blair pulled off a great D on the endzone line. Katie picked it up and dumped to Tien who threw it to Bean for the score. In the point just after that, Mandy had a great D and hucked it to Sam, who passed it off to Blair in the end zone. This game looked great. Initially we had a little bit of trouble with getting broken by the UVM handlers, but by half we had fixed that up and were forcing all kinds of swilly hammers and were running them all over the place. Looked good.

Final Score: UVM Ruckus 5, Dartmouth Princess Layout 13

Princess at Purple Valley

2006-10-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

October 20 - 21; Williamstown, MA

Game 1: Dartmouth vs. George Washington University

Dartmouth's Princess Layout began this tournament as the 4th seed in the 4th pool. The first game of the day was against the ladies from George Washington University who appeared to have been there warming up for quite a while. The fields were soaked from the downpour from the previous evening and there was a nice big puddle in the center of our field. We arrived there just shortly before game time, and had little time to warm up our bodies and throws before we were on the field, shivering, and battling against the massive crosswind. With every step people took, a nice little arc of water spewed from their feet. Dartmouth had a slow start adjusting to the wind, mud, and cold but was warmed up and getting dirty by the second half.

Final Score: GW 13 Dart 0

Game 2: Dartmouth vs. Harvard

For game 2, Dartmouth was transferred to a slightly less muddy field that was oriented up/downwind instead of cross wind. The game started out with a few long points. Princess's defense really made Harvard work for their scores. Lots of zone was thrown by both teams. There was some very solid handling by KNash, Tien, and Lydia which caused the Harvard cup to nearly fall apart. Pretty soon, Princess adopted a "huck and z" strategy and soon Beata was throwing gorgeous hucks downwind. Highlights include some great popping by AlHo and Dai, and a BACKHAND huck for a score by Mandy. Sidelines from the men's team were a huge help.

Final Score: Harvard 13, Dartmouth 3ish

Game 3: Dartmouth vs. Wellesley

By this point in the day, Princess was warmed up and ready to go. Lots more zone, with an awesome cup of Clara, Tien, and Blair that forced a ton of turns and desperation hucks by Wellesley's primary handler. Points traded back and forth quite a bit in this game. There were some nice break throws by KNash, beautiful polls by SamKap, great cutting from Allison Caley, and good hucks by Lydia. Not to mention CC's forehand huck to Mandy for a score.

Final Score: Wellesley W; Dartmouth L (but not by that much)

Game 4: Dartmouth vs. WHUFO

Almost immediately, Princess busted out the MILF shirts they had spent the past few days working on, in WHUFO's honor. This was a great game. Princess was moved up high to a field that was warmer, muddier, and had much less wind. All kinds of great things happening on the field; great cutting by AlHo, Gabi, T-ho, Sarah, and Marika, fantastic long throws by KNash, Tien, and Beata, more great polls by SamKap, some great D by Christine, Dai, Blair, and Mandy. Trying to run in the mud was super hard and made for lots of trips, slides, and even layouts (thanks men's team for helping us learn about the glory of sliding in the mud on Friday's practice).

Final Score: Dartmouth 13, WHUFO (??)

Party TIIIIIIIIME

Princess decked out in flare for the theme holiday. This meant anything from Arbor Day (hi Dai and mysterious friend from Williams) to black spandex celebration day (Marika) to Mardi Gras (T-ho) and New Years. Following tradition, the women created a frighteningly graphic cheer to "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Mulan dedicated to WHUFO's mom. Apparently the performance generated some excellent faces from WHUFO's women. Lyrics will not be posted. Good music, good groovin' - what else could you ask for?

Game 6: MIT vs. Dartmouth

This game looked like it was going to be rough. MIT beat us to the fields and had a hoard of grad students (all looking like wyly handlers) warming up. It was cold again, muddy again, and we were on the same field as the first game from Saturday. The situation did not look promising. However, Dartmouth got fired up very quickly and ended up playing our best game of the weekend. Dartmouth played tight defense, causing turns everywhere. There were lots of high stall counts and dumps that just couldn't get open. Some awesome defense by Dai. A few great puts by Nora and KNash. Lots more good cutting by AlHo and SamKap. Some funky head fakes by the MIT women. I think it's safe to say that the highlight of this game (hands down) was Allison Caley's HUGE layout in the endzone for a score. The disc didn't look even within her range and suddenly an amazing layout was followed by Princess rushing the field, followed by a bewildered Allison whose only comments were "oh my gosh that hurt!!". But beauty is pain, right? Anyway, this was a great game. Everyone really stepped it up a notch on offense and defense - smooth flow, contesting discs in the air everywhere, and forcing MIT to make some bad decisions.

Final Score: MIT (13), Dartmouth (6ish maybe?)

Game 7: Dartmouth vs. Middlebury

This was another fun game. Highlights included great defense by Tien and Marika. In one point, Tien had five D's or something crazy on her girl. Some beautiful break throws by Katie Nash. More good cutting by the Allisons. But the highlight came later in the game when Alho hucked to Mandy, who hucked to T-ho who scored with a huge layout in the endzone. (More Princesses rushing the field). Also, Dai was laying out all over the place playing awesome D.

Final Score: Dartmouth (some), Middlebury (more)

Game 8: Dartmouth vs. UVM

Dartmouth was unsure about playing this last game, so we agreed to a game to 7 against UVM with no subbing. The first point was beautiful - handler to handler to SamKap to Alho for the score. Alho caught the next score too - pretty much she was just beasting the endzone. My favorite part was when Marika stalled out UVM's primary handler (they walk shockingly alike). She also threw the score to T-ho in the endzone for the last point of the weekend. Nice work rookies! The game was finished off with a dance party with the UVM ladies - that's how we roll.

Final Score: Dartmouth 7, UVM 1

To sum up: Lots of great things happened. The improvement from game 1 to game 8 was incredible. We had a chance to work on our zone and regular offense/man defense, to experiment crosswind, up wind, down wind, whirlwind, and to practice laying out in the mud. Our handlers stepped up big time in the crazy wind, lots of great cuts, and all four of our rookies (Sarah, T-ho, Gabi, and Marika) played great this weekend.

Oh and...

2006-10-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

... Dermott booted upwards of 15 times on Saturday. The last one was during the fifth fucking round... Unbelievable.

Williams Purple Valley 2006

2006-10-26T16:17:00.000-07:00

Game 1: Dartmouth vs. Amherst

As the convoy of Dartmouth cars rolled up to Williams, we could see two things. Firstly, these fields were not long for this world – it was like playing on some type of loose, muddy ground. Almost exactly like that, in fact. Anyways, we rolled up and got into the game, somewhat. Points were traded, breaks were gotten and lost… to be honest I was still pretty blacked out during the first half. The most important moments came towards the end, when the cap was put on and an Amherst player pulled down a huck a few feet out of the endzone and tried to call a timeout. Devlin, with visions of Aaron Bell and Ego still fresh within him, immediately called them out on this violation of the rules. Do you think Chris Webber ever forgot this rule? Neither did the Dart.
So we get the disc back, marched it down and scored. Apparently this was on Universe point (it was certainly game point for us), and the fact that nobody is really sure tells a lot about how involved our sidelines were… don’t worry, it got better. But yeah, sort of bizarre to see the team start celebrating and not understand it for a second.
I should also mention that this game, while a bit sloppy on D, did feature some great help deep. Amherst was a fairly one-dimensional team, at least this early in the season, and had little interest in anything other than playing the field position game. Last back calls and drops for help were all in order.
We win, 10 – 9 according to my sources.

Game 2: Dartmouth vs. BUFO

Not. Particularly. Close. This game was fun… they have B team uniforms which are not only different from WUFO’s regular jerseys, but not even the same color. Seems like a pretty large investment. And their primary handler wears a different color uniform, almost like a goalie in soccer or that one player in volleyball, who, ya’know, wears a different color uniform. What’s the deal with that? In this particular case, the orange wearing handler had some decent chucks, but pretty weak fakes. Think about someone taking a disc, holding it in neither a backhand nor a flick grip, and making a windmill motion in front of him. Kind of like he was trying to clear out the air.
We win, a lot to a little.

Game 3: Dartmouth vs. Brown

Oh, God, so awesome. We came out firing, they came out hucking, it was a great back and forth game. We went up a break or two early, mainly traded to get to 6-5 good guys, with the disc on their endzone, almost punched it in to take half, but couldn’t quite pull that point out. They got the turn and the score, then scored again and took half.
We regrouped at half. Remember, this was still somewhat a tryout tournament for the Pain Train, and we were working in all of our new parts. But after some inspiring words, we came out firing again, layout Ding our men, shutting them down deep, challenging every reset. The Pain Train got gritty. They made it to 12 first, but we came back to tie it up and send it to Universe. They received the pull and marched it down to close to the endzone, then called a play for their new fast (kind of) receiver. Unfortunately, they did not look up long enough to realize that Rem was covering him, because I have got to believe that Vandenburg knows enough not to test him. One ridiculous layout D in the endzone later, we were marching back up the field, a run capped by Cobbles holding the disc just outside of the endzone and Ranger destroying his cover on a Valhalla call. Man, just a huge win.
13 – 12, if you believe the hype. Don’t forget that C-Mo wasn’t there for Brown, instead off practicing for some DoG team… This one was fun though.

Game 4: Dartmouth vs. Kraftees (WUFO Alums)

The sun quickly setting, we finally left the completely destroyed fields and headed down to meet the Kraftees. They had a wide variety of talent, from the recently great to the truly crotchety. It was cold, we remembered that this was indeed a tournament to tryout the new guys (a fact that may have escaped our notice during Universe with Brown.) Lots of hammers went up, they caught most, when we really turned it on we scored relatively easily, but after a long day the weather was limiting our athleticism, probably the main advantage we had. They pulled out the win, but this loss didn’t particularly hurt. Taking second in our pool was more than enough, and we headed towards the food and the party with heads held high.
11 – 8, Senior citizens.

The Party: Dartmouth vs. Williams Security and ID tags.

That cool band from last year was there again. Cops were inside the party. There was no Hat Game. Apparently the girls cheered La WUFA, but got drowned out by the BMo guys chanting USA, USA. Why do they do that? I am so confused. Is it because of that one guy’s hat? We must get to the bottom of this issue.
My lack of enthusiasm for the party this year most likely came from my enrollment on Team Sober for the night. Not good times.

Game 5: Dartmouth vs. UNH

They scored the first point somewhat easily, and looked to be an actual threat. They often forgot to set dumps, and played with an odd mix of fairly good spirit and a propensity for cursing wildly in situations that didn’t really require it. We beat them pretty easily, but more importantly played really solid Pain Train ultimate. It was a great way to start off the day, even if we did lose Socks (despite his best efforts to sneak into drills) on a nasty collision with Freshman Alex Kell.
This game we really got back to our almost exclusive use of the Ho Stack, which worked magnificently. They constantly tried to bracket us and every time the flooding-one-side-make-one-man-cover-both-cutters move worked to perfection. We had both good in-cuts and high percentage deep looks, a nice mix that did not allow UNH any time to focus on taking one dimension of our game away.
13 – 8, I think. Not close.

Game 6: Dartmouth vs. Middlebury Alums

Wow, that one guy on Midd is tall as shit. I mean, seriously. This game was a bit more intense than most Midd games are, we ran with them the whole time except for right after half, when we couldn’t get anything going and they went on a 4 or 5 point run. After scoring once, we regrouped and decided to start winning the games to 3. We scored once, and then sent down some quick pressure on their handlers which, combined with an amazing pull, didn’t allow them out of their own endzone. The disc would stay there, as Mackey got big and just absolutely ripped down a Callahan from Tally McTallstein. We kept up the pressure, changing our defensive sets and really leaving it all out and clawed back to 11 – 14 before they scored the winning goal. Another alumni team, another loss. Not too big a deal – it allowed us a match up against….

Game 7: Dartmouth vs. Harvard

This game started off with a sweet poach D by Chimpo on Harvard’s first or second throw, which we converted for a quick break. Tone, consider yourself set. The boys from Cambridge desperately miss Chen and Marsh, but are still a formidable team. The same dump and swing is their bread and butter, but without the miraculous play of those two it doesn’t look as easy as it used to. Their new receiving corp is also a bit thin, featuring kids who either got sick D’d by Mackey any damn time he wanted or just looked shook. One interesting development is their new Beau Jr., some tall ass kid who pulled down a ton of scores that nobody else could reach and whose pulls are fairly decent… but at least they are not crazy blades a la Chen.
We pretty much just converted on everything this game. We had jugular calls from 20 yards outside of our own endzone go for scores, we had more poach Ds (Zargham was up in that bitch) and one just unbelievable layout D by Watson on the first throw, as he sprinted the entire way down the field and seemed to change directions more than 3 times in the air as he whipped around Scared Handler X. Sick nasty, JWats. (There, are you happy? This kid has blitzed me at least 3 times since PV. “where’s the recap lamar?” “are you close to finishing it?” “don’t forget to write the recap, lamar”. But I digress.)
So that sick D from Wats put us on a run of breaks to end the game. Up 12 – 9 after two straight breaks, we went down with a clam, switching up defenses on the last point. After frustrating their handlers for a few throws, Harvard said to themselves “Hey, we run clam all the time, isn’t there some way to beat this?” and then proceeded to do exactly the right thing, bringing in the close and deep open side defenders and then sending a blade behind them. But for the second time against a regional opponent on game point, the opposing handlers forgot to look out for the fast kid wearing number 1. Rem came from roughly two football fields away (I think he was sitting in Papa Charlie’s when it went up) to fully extend and get his hand in between two Harvard receivers and break up the pass. We picked up, worked it easily and converted on the third straight break to take the game 13 – 9.

So that’s where we are at now. Way happier leaving this tourney than we were a few weeks ago after Yale, with two big wins against Regional opponents under our belts, as well as three less important in-Region wins and two losses to Alumni teams (one of which, Midd, went on to win the whole thing). We have still got a lot to work on, and no teams are peaking yet, but PV was exactly what we needed to get back on track mentally. Get at me, Dartmouth.

Yale Coffee Cup 2006

2006-10-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

Sept 30 – Oct 1

The first installation of Dartmouth Ultimate for the 2006-2007 season met on the steps of Rauner Library at 7 o’clock on Saturday morning. Most of those expected to show up did, which is really all you can ask for in the fall (Where were you, Coenstein?). With a grand total of 4 practices under our belts, we felt ready to represent down in CT, and piled into the Tumbler, the Lil Blue Pill, the Carr’s Carr, the Nate Raines mobile (I’m still working on one for that) and the Terrorists-Have-Won (aka the Church, apparently. A DoG reference from Billy McCarthy, perhaps?)

Game 1: Dartmouth vs. Columbia

In Dartmouth’s first game, we took on New York’s Columbia University team. This year’s Yale Coffee Cup was split into 4 pools of 4 each, with two of the pools composed solely of Ivy League teams, because the TDs get off on snobbery, apparently. The ‘Fall 2006 Ivy League Ultimate Champion’ (which is sort of like winning a Regional Emmy, I think. Or maybe being the Ivy League Football Champ.) would then go on to face the winning peasants from such mediocre institutions as Williams, MIT and Brandeis for the championship.
Anywho, Dartmouth took it to Columbia fairly solidly. The game featured an early opening of our deep games, with David ‘Schmidty Dave’ Schmidt, Watson ‘JWats’ Sallay and Matt ‘Mackey’ Mackey hauling down a fair share of contested bombs in or around the endzone. Handling came courtesy of Ariel ‘Burial’ Eckstein, Sam ‘Cobbles’ Haynor and some idiot ’09. Dartmouth’s defense struggled a bit downfield, as almost all of their scores came from points without break throws, where receivers just beat their men to the open side. However, good pressure on the marks and dumps cut off a lot of Columbia’s options, and the Dartmouth offense mostly clicked for the win.

Game 2: Dartmouth vs. Princeton

Princeton is not often considered a powerhouse in the realm of competitive ultimate. However, Dartmouth came into this game knowing that they had just upset the topseed in our pool, Harvard, fresh off a trip to Nationals last spring. The game plan for Princeton became immediately obvious – quick handlers throw up field, catch the horizontal pass as they streak past the receiver and hit a bomb. Easier explained than guarded against. This game went back and forth, with neither team getting ahead by as many as two breaks, mainly due to solid man-to-man D by the Pain Train and decisive cutting on offense that allowed us to get open underneath for big gainers.
After agreeing that games should be played to 13, Dartmouth gave away a few chances to seal the door towards the end. Instead, Clockwork Orange (Princeton’s nickname) stuck around, answering back every time we scored until the score got to 16-16 and, after some discussion, both teams agreed that the following point would be Universe (aka Next Point Wins). Clockwork pulled the Pain Train, who made quick, if needlessly exciting, work of the last point. As both Charlie ‘umm, Cookie, I think?’ Guthrie and Chris ‘Chimpo’ Cahill streaked deep, Dermott ‘Dermo’ McHugh put a big huck under the laid out body of the Princeton star, known only as ‘Pink Hat.’ Well, the throw, later revealed to be intended for Chimpo, was hauled down by a twisting Chuckie, who then let a floaty backhand off into the endzone for the Captain, who was making a textbook S cut. As his man boxed him out and Charlie’s tried to climb up his back, Widdle Wimpo climbed the ladder, got HUGE and ripped down the winning score. 17 – 16 Dartmouth.

Game 3: Dartmouth vs. Harvard

After the win against Princeton, Dartmouth approached the Harvard game with confidence. Despite several close games (read: one) last Spring, Red Line had derailed the Pain Train every time the two met since the final Fall Tournament last year. Without super-duper stars Jack Marsh and Will Chen, Harvard was adjusting to a new style of play. Apparently, this style was ‘Find a way to injure the other team without actually doing anything malicious to them,’ because by the end of the game, vital components like Dermo, Mackey, Socks and (temporarily) Watson were all sidelined with injuries.
The Silver Lining to such unfortunate accidents was an opportunity for newer players to start discovering their place on Dartmouth Ultimate. Adam Gardner ’10 handled for much of this game, as did Kevin Pfeiffer ’09. Jack Sisson ’09, our very own ‘Red Shirt,’ also stepped up his game on the cutting side, and Billy McCarthy was always ready to sprint around on the points we threw Zone defense.
Anywho, in the second half Harvard simply executed better than Dartmouth did, and came away with the win 13 – 10. Now, things get frustrating. Because Princeton beat Harvard beat Dartmouth beat Princeton, there was a three way tie for 1st in the pool. So, per tournament rules, it came down to score differential. Harvard lost to Princeton by 4, and beat us by 3, resulting in a net of negative one. Princeton beat Harvard by 4 and lost to us by 1, so they ended plus 3. We ended negative two… so if we scored one more point against Harvard, or shut down Princeton a bit earlier, we get second in the pool. Instead, we finished 3rd.

Game 4: Dartmouth vs. Yale

Frustrated by the mysteries of mathematics, Dartmouth entered the quarterfinals of the Chumpionship with every intention of making the host team pay for what we had just barely missed out on. Instead, we came out flat. Superfly (I could probably figure out how to make an umlaut, but that’s not worth the effort) took the first 3 points and instead of firing it up and responding in kind, Dartmouth seemed content to just hang around, letting Yale and their mediocre cheering section take half 8 – 5.
This would not stand. The second half saw more aggressive line calling by the two captains, and Dartmouth clawed back into it, piecing together the Yale strategy and confounding them with a 1-3 zone, hallmarked by the return of Pete ‘Socks’ Bonano as the puke. Several new Pain Trainers played critical roles in these zones, with front walls featuring Schmidty, Billy and Ariel quite often, as well as Kevin Pfeiffer who laid all of his energy out on a first half zone point.
By the second half of the second half (some would even call it the fourth quarter, but those people are idiots and should not be trusted), Dartmouth was in shape. We broke Yale several times in a row towards the end, including one point where a Mike Zargham huck that was somehow both too floaty and too bladey was ripped down by Jack Sisson for a score. Dartmouth won 15 – 12.

That Night:

Ms. Guthrie very graciously put up with an invasion from Hanover for the night, stuffing us with amazing chili for dinner and what must have been two or three pigs worth of bacon the next morning. Could not have dreamed of more, including a TV screen actually bigger than the one in the Terrorists-Have-Won, three air mattresses and adorable dogs. We are, collectively, suckers for pets. Although Cobbles may have given one of them Mono.

Game 5: Dartmouth vs. Penn

We approached the semifinals of the Chumpionship with a good mindset. We warmed up well, drilled, got touches, everything you hope to do before a game. It didn’t matter. We just had a ton of problems with Penn’s deep game and mis-executed often on offense. Adam Gardner’s cutting and man-to-man D both shone through, as did Watson’s infamous D, which culminated with a layout boxout out of bounds onto a poorly placed gravel path. One way or another, we got smoked.

We’ve got a long way to go. However, we also have a long time to get there. The team that represented Dartmouth Ultimate at Yale Coffee Cup has had a total of 4 practices and featured who have either never played together or not done so in months. Factoring in the temporary losses of Dermott, Devlin, Mackey and Socks as well as the absence of Captain Sam Routhier, Dan Yi and Rembert Browne, and the 3-2 record leaves us little to be worried about. We know what we have to work on, and we will.