|
2010 Olympia Co-Ed Traveling Team |
It's not often the recap fairy can tell the story of a whole tournament in numbers, but O's weekend in Wenatchee boils down to this: we finished 4-4, but we were 7 total points away from going 8-0. The fairy elaborates. . .
Let's set the scene: five games on Saturday, games to 11. Bright sunshine. Wenatchee is goddamn wind tunnel.
The Evergreen State College is not a goddamn wind tunnel. This may explain why it takes us so long out of the chute against Throbot (the Seattle U team). O is looking at 0-3 when Caitlin rescues a wind-battered disc on the line and puts it out in front of Aaron for a layout score. [Count the number of times "aaron" and "layout" appear in the same sentence. It's fun!]. Andrew jacks a 3/4 fielder to a blazing Beth for score number two. R.f. notes at half: "2-6. Getting our asses kicked by young people in the wind." Old people are patient. We march upwind to make it 3-6. By the time Liam has hot D #6 of the game (setting up a Hannah put to his own little self), O has battled back to 7-8. On the next point, Chris D's the bejeezus out of Throbot, Beth adds a sideways layout grab to her stat sheet, and Aaron assists Erica with a nice little score. Eights. Then we don't score again, and the fairy sighs and circles "8-10" in her notes. Well, ****. Not worth blowing Ms. Guthrie's ankle over, for damn sure.
Things aren't looking much better against Desert Lorax (the Tri-Cities folks). After a 15-minute first point, Lorax finds itself in the endzone. The O line hauls its bedraggled butt to the sideline. Lorax pulls, and it takes Todd 2.7 seconds to hit Lisa for the score. Lorax answers, and Ian liberates a huge throw to famous deep threat Andrew K. A.K. then puts the smack down on a long back-and-forth point with a handblock, setting up Will's upwind assist to Gordon. Then Erica to Liam. Then Todd is fouled in an endzone skirmish. . . contested, so we reset it and Malcolm Erica for the score (yes, "Malcolm" is the verb in that clause). Will's upwind punt gobbles up the field and sets up a Todd-to-Will connection for the score. Liam finds Andrew in the back corner, upwind too. O wins by lots, and we've got our groove back. . .
Against Pleistocene Supernova (the supernova from the Pleistocene era), O is persistent in the upwind. Andrew coaxes the disc to Aaron upwind for 3-2, and then compels a cross-field upwind backhand to Corey for 5-3. 6-4, O at half. Pleisto comes out gunning for the upwind endzone, and it's 6-7 in the blink of an eye. Ian won't have it. He lays down a matter-of-fact D, hangs out in the back of the T stack until Kathy patiently dumps to Corey on the line, then swoops in for a layout score. It's 7-8 with the cap at 9 when Liam launches the prettiest pull Foothills Middle School has ever seen. A good 5 seconds of arching hang-time over the adjacent field, and a pinpoint landing inside the home sideline. Pleistocene still scores upwind. 7-9. Well, ****.
Moving on to Moonshine. The wind blows on. It's 3-2 O after a forty-five minute wrestling match. O finally breaks it open with an upwind point for 4’s. Corey lays out straight backwards to snag an endangered swing and moves it up to Aaron for the layout score. The next point drags on and on until Will gets things under control at the goal line and moves the disc beautifully with Erica. Beth makes a crowd-pleasing, spinning one-handed catch and sends it to Aaron for another one-hander. On the upwind again, Corey comes down with an impossible hammer-blade* in the endzone. 6-4 O at half. Jon comes out with left foot blazing for a podiatric block of a lanky Moonshiner. Andrew scoffs at his mark and hits Ian breakside, who puts a slide-worthy disc out in front of a hustling Chris. Cap is on, game point, and we’re in the red zone. It’s Todd-Liam-Todd for the score! And Rich Coker for the pick call! So we put it to Aaron, and he’s got it! But he’s out! Then the bad guys score again and it’s 7’s. Then Molly scores! But Molly’s playing for Moonshine! 7-8, and well, ****.
*not something the fairy would like to meet in an alley fight. . . or in the endzone for that matter.
The day’s fifth game is not exactly an opportunity for hardscrabble redemption. Instead, we drink beer out of socks, dispense with formalized lines, and hand hosts Tractorpull an 11-1 defeat. Along the way, Gordon makes a couple of his signature sideways, eye-level, indy-hipster-superhero-photo-op catches, and we become Tractorpull’s favorite opponent of the day by “letting them throw.” Happy to oblige. Also happy to drink margaritas in an enclosed (read: windless) restaurant and hit the party. No improbable romances are initiated. Most of the O folks leave unscathed. Chris leaves his Mexican meal on the sidewalk outside the bar. It is not in a takeout box.
We drag our butts to the fields in the morning to face Dirtnap, the folks from the fairy's hometown. We craftily set ourselves up for an amazing comeback by getting down 1-5 early. Then Corey goes vertical for a D that sets up our first upwind point. He's not finished, and does the same to set up our score at 5-6. Then Erica fires it up. She's critical in the middle on an upwind point, and calls for it from Liam in the endzone. 6-8. The she meets the downwind disc for a score from Andrew. 7-8. We put together a pretty all-touch that culminates in a Todd-to-Corey score in the corner. 8-8. And Erica, not to be outdone by Corey, makes a two-handed layout rescue for a score. 9-8. A key factor in every point in the comeback is Kathy demanding the swing and gaining great yardage every time. 11-9 O in a nailbiter.
Next up is Acronym, a scary-skilled combo of Bellingham's best and Seattle former elites. O handles it well, and sticks around for 11 points before Acronym finishes it at 11-13. Aaron has a nice high grab and sends it inside-out to Chris for a score. Then Gordon pulls off the holy-fucking-shit play of the weekend. Ian's put is tipped by a defender, and Gordon, sideways spread-eagle at an altitude of about 4 feet, pins the disc on his bottom hip with one hand and drags it out of the way of his falling body. For the score. We stay patient in the upwind with big advances in the middle of the field, and Jon finishes the march off with a swinging one-handed grab in the corner. Beth collects a couple scores in a couple minutes, one by hanging on to a fast-rising Ian IO. And Lisa, with unassuming calm, makes one of her classic two-hand halo catches with Little Miss Aggressive Acronym hanging off her left forearm. Check out Hannah's facebook album for documentary evidence. (Editor's note: I raided Hannah's Facebook album for most of these pictures.)
Everybody wants to play the consolation game, and the Missoula folks are up for it. We figure it'll be a mellow one with some beer and maybe an underwear point. It's clear early that the Montanans are running at 100%. So we hit "go" and stick with them. Ian sends a classic IO to a sliding Liam. Aaron lays out again and sends it to Liam, who gives Beth a score to stretch for. Will flattens his opponent with a layout, and rights himself for a nice assist to Jon. We (every one of us on the field, including the Msla crew) are tired as hell. A floater goes up, and a hospital pile ensues, with everyone involved fouling everyone else on the way down, and predictably, Gordon ending up with the disc. Andrew comes up with a great one-handed grab on an errant field-width swing. Andrew and Todd put together a patient look at the goal, with Andrew eventually hitting Ms. Erica. Todd reels in the last score. 12-10 O, and we are consoled.
 |
We get burgers and shakes, and Kathy steals her speech from the inspirational quote on the burger joint reader board. Jon is intimidated by Kathy's sudden profundity, but manages to announce Captians' awards for Erica and Aaron, for reasons that should be obvious to the reader. Then Corey puts the smack down on the "favorite moment" share fest. Which is okay since the fairy takes a ****ing lot of notes, ****. More numbers to compare this year's THAT to last year's version. THAT 2010 had:
*the math fairy would like to say that she knows that 100% of zero is still zero. you know what she means. roll with it. On to Potlatch, yo. |
"Put your entire team in the spotlight. Thanks to them, you're able to experience a level of success that you wouldn't have been able to achieve on your own. Remember that when it's your turn to help one of them out."