Entries this day: TheGloryThatIsMeek

TheGloryThatIsMeek

While my description of the games may have been more detailed, Meek's description of the games is certainly more entertaining.

Well, with my advancing age, I'm not able to recall all of the details of
recent events so readily, unless of course they directly affected me. (This
is why I tend to believe that I scored 50% of the points in every game; I
can't remember what anyone else did.) So my rendition of our Centex outing
will undoubtedly be flawed and riddled with errors. Nevertheless, here we
go.

Game 1:

We're at the UT intramural fields at Whitaker. No, wait, we're at the Pickle
Research Center. No, strike that, we're at LBJ High School. Hold on, we're
at a city park. Agh! We're lucky we didn't end up playing in Bogo's backyard
or something.

Actually, though, playing at the LBJ fields worked out pretty well for us.
Instead of regulation-size fields with firm footing and lush grass, we
played on half-pint fields chock full of gravel and debris and with endzones
that were defined by chain link fences. In other words, the Austin version
of our home field. With the shorter field, the running game became far less
important, and the generally poor turf conditions made laying out a dubious
adventure only undertaken by the foolhardy or dim of wit. So it became a
game that was centered more on good handling, quick and deep endzone
strikes, and a lot of random wandering about, punctuated by occasional
jogging.

There were a couple of interesting angles to this first game. For one thing,
our opponents, the Ides of Murch, did not run a zone defense against us, so
we were free to move around the entire field relatively unimpeded. Secondly,
we drastically reduced the number of boneheaded mistakes we typically make
at Centex. I only saw one bad throw out there, where usually we'd have 10 or
15, and we had few unexcuseable drops.

Notable plays:

--Chadwick whipping into the corner of the endzone at full speed for a quick
point.

--Myself collapsing to the ground to catch the disk on the goal line and
then not throwing it away foolishly.

--Mark Leonard executing the now rarely deployed "Leonard sideline sprint"
play, an oldie but goodie that caught Murch totally offguard. Worley flung
the disk from the 20-yard brick position and found Mark wide open for the
winning point with no defenders even aware he had made it into the endzone.

An amazing game for us, with our first-ever Saturday win at Centex!
Definitely a MAJOR breakthrough for us. Great play by all concerned, even
Vev. A clear improvement in general disk skills. A big game for James, aka
the Pink Rajah.

We should belatedly note that we had 21 players on the roster, an all-time
high even for the traditionally bloated SNS squads of the past. This year,
Worley and Vev played fulltime with us, and we also picked up Sarah, Kim,
Tall Steve (scary to think that McLeod has now been demoted to Small Steve),
James, Adam, and Ollie. The addition of this many ace-level players made
every field lineup potentially deadly and guaranteed that we would always
have two or three reliable handlers in action at any time, with plenty of
runners.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to muse of the greatness of the SNS
philosophy. (Cue patriotic music.) You know, when you look at the list of
Centex teams from Houston, you can see that there were three crews for the
Open division: the Houndz, En Fuego, and us. Basically, you only get on the
first two teams if you are truly mighty and have a good shot at being a
dominant player on at least the Regional level. Even then, you might only be
grudgingly accepted. So a lot of good Houston players had no choice but to
sit around at home this weekend for lack of a team. But SNS? Hell, we'll
take anyone! Sure, we'd like to win, but more importantly, we want to play
the game and have a good time. We realize that usually we'll be crushed like
bugs, but we're cool with that. As long as I get to see many attractive and
scantily clad women on the field, I'm happy. Actually getting a victory is
just a bonus. Thus endeth the sermon.

Game II:

After a second-round bye, we next we faced Reheat, a Dallas team of which
we'd heard nothing. We moved over to the football field at LBJ, which was
marginally more acceptable than the Field of Certain Death we'd been on
previously. Reheat seemed to be on about the same skill level as Murch,
which is to say, roughly our equivalent. In both matches, our greatest
advantage may have been our gigantic roster size, which clearly gave us an
edge since we had many more rested players than the opposition.

However, we start off with some absent players, since fanboys Cog and McLeod
have deemed it more important to go to a comic book store to buy the latest
"Knights of the Dinner Table" issues, and Kim and Mark Leonard vanished to
buy fuzzy blankets.

Again, no zone coverage to speak of, but a bit more running because of the
larger field. Also, I don't recall that Reheat had any female players, while
Murch had one. This means that our resident womens were free to unleash
their righteous fury. They played like veritable fiends from hell, and
indeed, I admit I was a little bit fearful of their unholy power.

Also, the best game of the day for Mike Marsh, and the Battlestation That Is
McLeod began to come online. David got very involved in the plays, and Bill
was making excellent hard cuts and sneaking into the endzone.

Good stuff:

--Sarah scores! After being open in the endzone about a dozen times in one
series and after watching the disk being repeatedly snatched away in front
of her face by glory-hogging disk-hos on her own team, she hangs tough and
outbattles the coverage for a point.

--McLeod makes an amazing throw to David for big yardage under heavy fire,
indeed, a throw so unexpected that it stunned all observers. Some would
later claim that Steve had been aiming for someone else and had somehow
gotten lucky and miraculously threaded the disk through a pack of ten
people, but that's just jealousy speaking.

--James gets down near the goal line and catches, catches, catches, catches
the disk while falling down. Then, instead of dramatically celebrating his
good fortune and persistence, he springs immediately to his feet and whips
the Frisbee in to Vev for the point.

Another SNS victory! Two in a row! (Insert images of the seas turning red
and the moon reversing its orbit.)

Lots of good field work by Worley and Adam and Ollie and Tony and Sean to
advance the disk and create opportunities for those who were less fleet of
foot. Some good long bombs, some good plays from the red zone for patient
and accurate throws.

This reminds me, just adding the two or three critical people that we had on
the team for the first time this year really helped us. Because we had some
faster people with good endurance, there was always an open man or woman.
Previously, we might have only one or two playmakers on the field, so we
tended to get panicky and start forcing weak and lame throws in sheer
desperation. With the overall increase in skills and confidence in the old
guard and with the arrival of the Young Turks, we were able to show far more
patience than normal and hence committed many fewer mistakes. We were no
longer trying to fight both the other team and our own ineptitude. Remember,
fear is the mindkiller.

Game the Third:

A new game? Then a new field. Actually, two. We finished this one up at a
nearby city park. This time, we played My Bad, another Dallas team which I
believe had previously beaten us twice in 2000, once at Centex and once at
Sectionals.

A crummy first half saw us being soundly beaten 7-3, before a semi-pro
football team forced us to abandon the field like whipped curs. Then we
relocated to the park, where we found to our delight that the field would be
much shorter and that the footing was so uncertain that the running game was
derailed. The slower and smaller the field, the better it is for SNS.

We definitely rallied and at one point, the sideliners for My Bad (all two
of them) were bemoaning their fate, convinced we were gonna win. Sadly, it
was not meant to be, and we succumbed, 13-10.

News items:

--While scoring, Cog catches the disk in his own particular, um, idiom,
which apparently mandates that he must roll out the back of the endzone like
a log. Very amusing. At least it makes up for the heinous handblock executed
against him earlier, which left him weeping like a little girl.

--I get to maul one of the opposition on a busted play when I hip-check him
to the ground and pop up the disk for grabs. Adam sails in for an astounding
save and a flick for the point!

Spirited play by everyone. A good game for Ollie. A lot of handling by Mr.
Worley. We nearly lose Mascot Mattie to hypothermia.

Act Four:

Now we faced Riverside, a team which went bye-less for the day and had only
achieved a 1-3 record (they beat Murch). They had maybe four subs to our 14
and many of their players were 40+ years of age. Needless to say, they beat
us. Every year, we have a game that haunts us, the "one that got away"; this
one was it for 2001.

We started out by flogging them mercilessly. Although the halftime score was
7-4 in our favor, it didn't even feel that close, and we were clearly
cleaning their clocks. Unfortunately, a protracted debate erupted over
whether the score was really 7-4 or if it was actually 7-5, as Riverside
maintained. While McLeod advocating giving them the point in a show of
sportsmanship, the rest of us couldn't stomach the possibility that we might
somehow go on to lose by that single contested point, so we declined to
yield on the issue. Finally, in order to bring the bickering to a halt, we
were forced to resort to the SNS disk-flip method of conflict resolution.
Vev called heads and we won the toss, prompting David to reflect sadly,
"Wow, now we've managed to taint Centex, too."

However, ours was to be a Pyrrhic victory.

I am reminded of a Far Side cartoon where this guy is walking past an alley
and finds an elephant lurking in the shadows. The elephant says, "Remember
me, Mr. Thompson? Kenya, safari, 1967. When you shoot at an elephant, Mr.
Thompson, you'd better be ready to finish the job." Well...we made the
elephant pretty damn angry and consequently we got smashed into a fine red
paste. Or, to wax more biblical, we sowed the wind and we reaped the
whirlwind.

In the second half, we got our rear ends firmly spanked, which, while
normally an enjoyable experience with a suitable partner, turned out to be
rather less arousing. Riverside played as a team possessed, while we played
like a team sedated. Point after point was rammed down our throats, and we
seemed helpless before their onslaught. Eventually, we toppled into an
ignominous 13-11 loss. For those of you running the numbers at home, that's
a second-half performance of 4 points to their 9. Ugh.

Alleged highlights:

--Yeah, one of their guys "scored" when he landed two feet beyond the back
line. Sean gave him a chance to retract his egregious error, so his buddy
came over and confirmed that the local space-time continuum had temporarily
extended the line outwards just for that one jump. Well, they got their
contested point back.

--Kat tries to rack up more points but James powers in and denies her a shot
at fame and grabs the score himself.

--Tony gets a long throw sent his direction and goes back, back, back,
milking it for every last inch before tucking the disk in and hitting the
ground like a bouncing ball at...just outside the goal line. Oh, well, he
gets the assist.

--McLeod's handblock and subsequent throw sets up a scoring play.

Good effort by most everyone. I believe this is the game where Tall Steve
blocked the thrower twice. A couple of heartbreaking turnovers when throws
went awry and not even magnificent dives by Ollie and Kat could save the
disk.

Ah, well...sometimes you're the bug, and sometimes you're the windshield.

Seething with barely suppressed rage, I storm back to my tragically empty
hotel room and shun the group. I then drink myself into a stupor and wake up
in a pool of someone else's vomit. Well, not really...I step next door to
have an All-American Slam (tm) at Denny's, which doesn't sound nearly as
exciting. Then I watch "Unbreakable" on TV...good movie.

Game Cinco:

Yeah, we wish. Total pandemonium ensues when we reach LBJ on the morning of
Day 2 and find that we have been evicted by a soccer league. There is a
great deal of milling about. Some teams have already gone home. And some of
our teammates have fled the scene for good, although no one is quite certain
who all of the excused absentees might be.

Finally, it's agreed that we should go to Patterson Park across town, where
we will match up against Riverside again, in place of the perpetually
vanishing Sauza. So we all caravan through the midst of Austin as a
torrential downpour begins to assault all and sundry. At the new field, more
aimless wandering takes place. Vev and Mark Leonard take naps. Belinda mocks
Sean for his crappy wardrobe. Kim eventually wanders by, just in time for us
to realize that we can't play on this field either. Everyone packs up and
heads off for yet another field, this one near Far West Drive off of Mopac.

I stay behind to round up stragglers and get to talk to the police, who had
been sent by neighbors who claimed "two hundred" Ultimate thugs were
trashing the park. (There were only 60 or 70 of us, tops.) Yeah, you know
those crazy Ultimate players have a bad rep for mayhem and carnage wherever
they go. Cripes, even soccer hooligans fear us.

Now simmering with sullen resentment, I drove over to the newest scene of
the crime, where monsoon season had set in with undue zeal. By now, we were
more than two hours past the scheduled start of the day's first game, and
Riverside had scraped up all of six players. Andy angrily demanded that we
take to the field and face off against our newest arch-rivals, but everyone
stared at him as if he had gone mad, since no one could quite tell where the
field was, what with the small river now flowing through it.

Finally, everyone agreed that it was hopeless to persist and that the whole
day's schedule was doomed, so the remaining teams scattered to their various
homes. I guess the SNS crew went off and had lunch, but by then I had worked
myself up into a volcanic fury of indignant loathing and outrage, so I flung
myself into my truck and left. My only regret was that I forgot to retrieve
my box of HEB Pantry donuts from Bill's car. Mmm...donuts.

Now my tale ends abrupt