Posted May 16, 2012 at 3:45 am by Lou Burruss | Comments (4)
Foolishly, I am attempting to do real journalism this week, so I am behind deadline while I wait for replies to emails I sent out at the last minute. I promise by tomorrow or Friday I’ll come through with an article about D-III, but while you’re waiting I wanted to share with you the best thing about writing for Skyd. We write most of our articles on a CMS and when we navigate through the sign-in page, there is a wallpaper photo. For six months, this was the photo:
Joel Wooten of Chain Lightning and George Stubbs of Ironside bid for a disc at the 2011 Club Championships. (Photo by Christina Schmidt)
Posted May 9, 2012 at 4:00 am by Lou Burruss | Comments (15)
…before it’s too late. Seriously.
I know I really should be talking about seeding at Nationals or how Fugue is preparing or who I think is going to win Open or how to game plan for Boulder, but instead I want to help you with something much more important. All you impulsive people probably don’t need to read this because you’ve already thrown yours and all you cautious people will likely just ignore what I have to say, but if I can convince just one cautious ultimate player to throw their Fire I’ll have made the world a better place.
Don’t even start with that: “I’m saving it for something important” business. You only get the one Fire, so whenever you choose to throw it, it is a Once In A Lifetime Experience. By definition, whatever you throw your Fire on is important just because you used your Fire on it. The other reason to throw it soon is that it has more value now than it will in ten or fifteen or twenty years. As soon as you retire from ultimate, your Fire depreciates exponentially. If you have the bad luck to marry a non-frisbee player your Fire instantly has zero value. The person who hit the timing on this one the best has to be non-frisbee playing Carleton alum Chad Boger. He threw his to make an irritating, egotistical alumni bow down to him. How much worth would his Fire have now that he is a Minneapolis dentist?
So what did I throw mine for? To get CUT alum Josh Quaas to play this golf hole instead of going to do his chemistry homework. Worth it.
Posted May 2, 2012 at 10:49 am by Lou Burruss | Comments (8)
It’s short for Double Regionals. I know Dub Regs is the most awkward name of all time and I don’t have the foggiest idea of how to pronounce it, but it was a sweet two weeks and it hints at a possible future for ultimate that is even cooler than what is happening now.
Up here in the Pacific NW we have a weird situation in the women’s division. Despite the presence of three top-shelf teams (British Columbia, Washington and Oregon) there is only one D-I Conference which has the odd effect that our Conference Championships are almost identical to Regionals. The only difference was Whitman rising up from D-III to replace Washington-B. So two weekends in a row, everyone played pretty much the same teams. And even though Western took two big swings at UW, they fell both times (9-12 and 14-15). What ended up happening was what a regular season should be: you play the teams you are most familiar with, the teams that are your biggest rivals and you play them again and again. The big three teams shared eight games over two weekends, six of which went to half 8-7 or 7-6.
- Oregon v. UBC (11-7) First game of the weekend and both teams were testing the water. Oregon’s depth was the edge.
- Oregon v. Washington (9-7) This game was a defensive bloodbath. 9 breaks in a game with only 16 points scored.
- UBC v. Washington (11-8) UBC surprised Washington with their quality and pulled away at the end with easy goals in transition.
- Oregon v. UBC (12-7) Another very intense defensive game, but a big early lead held up for Fugue.
- Washington v. UBC (15-13) I missed the end of this one, but Washington pulled out a game where UBC refused to go away.
- Oregon v. UBC (13-11) Showcase game under the lights. Play was very sloppy on both sides, with Oregon in control until suddenly UBC had the disc to tie at 12s. A huge goal-line block and a lefty backhand ended the game.
- Oregon v. Washington (15-8) With UBC 0-2, this was a warm up game for the finals. Oregon was fired up and Washington wasn’t.
- Oregon v. Washington (12-10) This game had a wholly different feel from the morning game. It was very reminiscent of the CC game in the rabid intensity of the defense on both sides.
That’s what a regular season should be. I like playing Michigan and North Carolina and Carleton, but those games feel like a preseason, whatever USAU wants to call them and whatever they are worth. I’m not making any suggestions or offering any ideas of how things could be different and better (there’s already plenty of that), but rather just saying that what the NW Women have is great and it’d be great if more of y’all could experience it.
Feature Photo of UW’s Lindsey Wilson at last year’s Bellingham Invite (Photo by Eric Zink)
Posted April 25, 2012 at 6:09 am by Lou Burruss | Comments (6)
I have been on five teams in my career: Carleton-B, CUT, Syzygy, Sockeye and Fugue, but a more honest count is 24 teams. Each season, each team is different. Certainly there are similarities year to year, but the character of the team is different every year. Teammates change, expectations change, who you play and where you play and how your team performs; all these things are different and so the identity of the team is never the same. All of this means that the team you are on right now, the team that is coming closer and closer to the end of its season, will exist only this once.
One of the great delights of ultimate is getting to know my team each year. You’d think that Sockeye 2005 would have been the same team as Sockeye 2004, but they stood on opposite sides of a gulf: one team had a ring and the other didn’t. You’d think that CUT 1994 and 1995 would be the same: 13 of 18 players returned, but those two teams couldn’t have been more different. Even when seasons are tough and the personality of a team not what you had hoped (yes, a few of those 24 years were unhappy ones) there is a satisfaction in coming to understand something.
I’m not going to give you Fugue 2012. The joys and frustrations, successes and failures, all the hard work and growth; these things are ours and you have yours. Your team is like someone you love that you only get to be with for a little while and then they’re gone. You won’t really know them until the very end of the season. Endings are so critical to what we do that the character of the team won’t necessarily reveal itself until the very, very end. So when you go out to practice this week, when you hit the fields at Regionals this weekend or the next, savor and cherish the moment: you won’t get it again.
Feature photo by Andrew Davis
