An awesome game of ultimate, Seabiscuit

I woke up early this morning to take care of my car battery (I joked with Laura that it was to sympathize with her, since she had to be up at 4:45 for the marathon). It died Thursday morning, and then again this morning. So Mark, who needed a new starter, and I went to AutoZone right as they opened at 8:00. My battery only cost $65, so that was a relief. I was thinking closer to $100. I had it in the car by 9:00, and man it makes a world of difference—the car starts faster and seems to have a little more power.

As soon as I got the battery in I took off for the city league fields and warmed up. I figure I need to get more warming up in because last game it took me forever to get my second wind. By game time we only had five guys—me, Neil, Seth, Matt, and Jeff. So basically I was the only handler, and we had no subs to give us any breathers. At first, this didn't look like too much of a problem. We were playing Beehoompus (Tyler and Jamie's team). They had won both of their games so far, which was cause for a little concern, but we went up 4-1, so we were thinking no problem. Then we started to get tired (and they started to make fewer mistakes). We just barely managed to win the half, 8-7. The half had gone by so slowly, that they called a hard cap of 12. So here we were, all rested again, thinking we just need to duplicate how we started the first half. But no luck. They came out blitzing and wore us down, and pretty soon they were up 10-8. Things were looking pretty bad. But that's when I decided I had had enough. On the next point, Neil threw a pass to me that was a little high. I went up and managed to tip it, so as to stop the forward motion, and then as I and the Frisbee came down I lunged for it with my left hand and managed to catch it, while lying on the ground, with my outstretched left hand. It was awesome. And it caught everybody totally off guard because they were expecting a turnover for sure. Matt was quick to react and started streaking for the end zone. As I stood up I saw the route, and within half a second threw a perfect forehand to him. It was just an amazing play and it pumped us all up. So then we started playing some killer defense to make up for a less than stellar offense (I'll be the first to admit I had a bad day handling)—lot's of blocks all over the place. The next point was also pretty cool. I hucked it out to Matt from our end zone, and it was way short, but Matt was able to fool his defender and get around him for a play on it. Everyone else but Seth and I (we were the farthest back) stormed the goal, and I thought I don't need to run, it'll be over before I get there. But Neil got the disk on the right corner and as the count got high on him we realized he didn't have any plays, so much to the chagrin of our half-step behind defenders, Seth and I sprinted the full-field to give him a dump (credit Neil on patience there). Seth got there first, so he got the dump, and I was running down the center of the field, so Seth immediately dumped it to me, and I had been checking out the stack on the approach, so I knew I immediately had Matt and Jeff open on routes to the left corner, since they were forcing the right side of the field and hadn't had time to adjust their defense to our quick swings. So it was just another one of those quick catch, backhand releases that curved perfectly into Matt's hands. A great, fist-pumping play. And the next play was also pretty good. I got stuck on a high count on the right side of the field and really had no one open down the line. Then I caught Matt cross-field out of the corner of the eye and threw a perfect hammer to him—leading him back towards me just enough so that there was no way his defender could get it. Then I sprinted to the left side of the goal line, and I had just enough of a lead on my defender that Matt was able to throw me a great backhand that I followed right into the goal. As I emphatically pancaked the disk (it was loud), we went up 11-10. The next point, we again showed how tired we were. They scored pretty quickly on a dominator play, taking advantage of my lack of hustle on defense. So that left us all tied at 11. Game point. We marched down the field, but turned it over right on the goal line. Luckily, they turned it over to us immediately and Seth picked it up before anyone could get down there and threw it to Mandy for the win. So we got a break at the end, but it was an exciting game. And we did it without any subs. I was so tired at the end though. Luckily, our intramural game at noon was a non-game. I played a total of 5 points I think, all left-handed (didn't make a single throwing error). We won 10-1. Our intramural team could be really good, but we really need a challenge. So I'm thinking I should arrange a scrimmage with some of the better intramural teams.

After that I grabbed a drink from Jamba Juice. Then I went home and made me a tuna sandwich, and did some cleaning up around the house and yard. Then I took a brief nap. I had a slight headache I think from either too much sun or dehydration or maybe even over-exertion. But I woke up when Mike brought his mother's vacuum cleaner over, and we cleaned a little more for the BYU game party that was supposed to start at 4:30. Only no one came. Eventually Candace came, but it was at half-time and Mike had left to pick up Heidi and I think I was boring her trying to figure out what to do with Laura tonight. So she left for a while. Laura and I settled on seeing "Seabiscuit" at 10:00 (and having root beer floats at her house before). Meanwhile, Mike brought Heidi over and Candace returned, and around the fourth quarter Heather showed up. But that was it. No guys at all. Either we've become unpopular, or all the people who would have come were already at the game. It was a lame game anyways. We had a first and goal on the eight that could have won it, but got sacked twice.

After the game, I went over to Laura's. The root beer floats were good. Her marathon, by the way, went well. She finished in just over 4 hours. I'm amazed that she can do that. The movie was also surprisingly good. I won't go into to it much now, but I like the moral it espoused at the end—"we fixed each other." And you don't throw people's lives away. It's just beautiful—people whose lives are in complete disarray crossing each other's paths and somehow making each other whole again.

Posted September 20, 2003 (11:35 PM) | Comments (1)