First Day of Ultimate Season

Our game this morning was supposed to start at 11:30 (first games start at 10:00, and they're setting up 3 fields. Guess they had a schedule conflict with the football people). I got there about 10:45, got my shirt (our color is tan—which I don't mind too much, but drives Neal crazy; all sorts of wisecracks), and started warming up. Our team name is Cement Shoes (half a joke about speed, half a joke about almost everybody on the team being related). As expected, I know just about everyone on the team from the last couple of seasons. Mandy, our female captain, is apparently a cousin to the Randall family. I didn't know that. We have about the perfect number of people on our team—3 guy subs and 2 girl subs. So none of this not getting into a groove stuff that was going on last season. The Mark guy is pretty good. I recognize him from the league in the past. I don't know who's the better handler between us. Judging from the game, I may be a little better at long distances (or a little less hesitant to throw), but he might be a little better with the short game. Anyways, about the game. It was against Brady and Kristie's team. They really didn't have too many people who could play—at least not that I could recognize. Except for Quinn. So when we went up 4-1, I wasn't very surprised. But then they started giving us a tough time, and that surprised me. A lot of it was Brady and Quinn running a slow but steady offense. Everybody was dumping back to Brady, which meant less possibility of a non-experienced person making a bad throw, which meant less turnovers, and us getting tired. So we just barely took the half, 8-7. And by the time a hard cap was called, they were up 9-8. I guess right then we decided we had had enough, because we scored the next 3 points and won.

But a couple of observations. One, the me-to-Neal deep throw is going to one of our biggest assets throughout the season. It was unstoppable the couple of times we threw it. I think the only reason we didn't do it more often was because a lot of the time when Neal and I were out there at the same time, Mark was sitting out and so Neal handled. And also I think he didn't want to abuse the system, so he wasn't running a lot of deep routes. Two, our A-team combination of Me, Mark, Matt, Neal, and whoever kicks butt. We only put the whole A-team out twice, but it was awesome. Three, Brady is really hard to cover. And if you do try to cover him, you certainly aren't going to have enough energy to run the offense on a turnover.

After the game, I immediately drove up to Sharla's to get my PocketPC (finally, it feels good to have it back). Then I sped back down because Lori called and said some girls in the ward needed help moving at 3:00. But I didn't get back until 3:30, and nobody called asking where I was, so I decided it was time to shower and nap instead. When I woke up, it was time for the BYU football game, which strangely enough ended up being pretty good. We went down 21-0 really early and I was tempted to turn it off, but then we started clawing our way back. I got dinner from Fazoli's at half, and Mike and Nick came over about then as well. Payne had some killer FGs, one from 52 and another from 53 yards. We outplayed them from the second quarter all the way until we had about 5 minutes left in the game. Then we had some stupid turnovers again (unnecessary deep throws from our backup quarterback, and then a bad call from a ref on a fumble), and we lost it. But USC was ranked number 5. I was surprised we did so well. Maybe BYU football will be worth watching this season after all.

After that, I just watched TV for a while with Mark. Then I tried to go to sleep, only I couldn't. So I came out here to write this entry, and then started writing some other things, and it's 5:00 now, in the morning. I really should get into better sleeping habits.

Posted September 06, 2003 (11:21 PM) | Comments (1)