Vegas Day 1

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.