china nationals ruminations

we killed shanghai, i think final score was 13-2 or something. they didn't have their full roster (missing kevin choo, shirley, and mr. shirley)--still, pretty exciting. alicia got at least 2 or 3 run thru d's on their girls. f'ing hot. she also managed to sky a boy (a good boy--not a fat one) in the endzone for a score in the beijing sexy game (i think...anyways, beijing split their squad into beijing sexy and beijing ugly. we lost to ugly). two very memorable points in the finals (for me): when zahlen poached on paul bartels twice, and handlers managed to throw to paul twice for the score. i love it when poaches get punished. amanda is an amazing handler. i love having her on in zone. she's completely unfazed, neither by wind nor cup. that kind of confidence is so rare. i think she played a perfect game on O (she's a little bit of a defensive liability, mostly cuz she's even worse than i am at reading deep throws and doesn't challenge them well). another exciting point: the first day, we couldn't get a single endzone play to run, and the second day, we pulled off 3 in one game flawlessly (even moses! which i think takes the most coordination). at points, we were terrifically conservative in the red zone, dumping and swinging until we found an open player (like super super open). we hit the open man very well.

we lost the finals b/c of errors near the other team's endzone. at least two first pass drops (the last two points we played, incidentally--one from amanda to gui, it was chest level, gui wasn't paying attention--the other from tim to gui--he threw an upwind hammer around the cup). other 2nd half turns that i remember: tim O throwing behind tim E while tim E was making an up the line dump cut, jon missing a catch on an in cut, jon's throw to amanda floating above her, gui had a second chance at it, but wasn't aggressive enough so the D got to it first (incidentally, more mistakes from gui than i expected, but only b/c he's normally so consistent). i think there was also a point where we hucked a lot...one was almost catchable (jon laid out), another was to no one (but i think we should've taken more of these deep shots). this paragraph isn't meant to be super negative, its just more important to remember what went wrong sometimes. they scored 6 in a row to win at hardcap. we didn't score at all in the second half. we never got a chance to set our zone that was working really well in the first half (we played box and 1, with jin playing man D on nick--their quick little handler dude). ]

team things to work on: stacking more quickly (both ho and vert), taking a look back before making a cut to make sure you're not cutting anyone off. being less greedy with the open lanes (make one cut and clear, don't juke 2-3 times if you don't get open).

anyways, i really enjoyed this tournament cuz it made me believe so much more in junk. i didn't think we could play such good clean ultimate. now we just need to work on playing it consistently. Wilkie showed on day 2 that he can be a star if he concentrates. he played much more conservatively (day 1 saw tons of trigger-happy forehands that floated/turned over--i think he throws these from his hip b/c he doesn't have time to set them up properly so they're angled up). bay's throwing is less and less of a liability. he's dangerous on the field--i never once saw him overthrown. paulie is a terrific mid, but sometimes he takes his cuts too close to the handlers. paulie also only ever cuts in. his "out cuts" are unconvincing jogs...eventually, he'll make a sharp turn and sprint inwards, beating his defender, but not enough room/time for him to get super open/gain lots of yards. everyone--tim O, nicole--everyone was surprisingly steady with the disc, catchign and throwing well in wind (except for me on the first day--i had 3 or 4 drops in 2 games). i think this is b/c everyone played within their limits.

i need to figure out a way to be more effective deep. i can beat almost every girl i've seen. half of this is timing...the other half is figuring out a way to beat the guy poach. i feel like alicia doesn't have as much of a problem with this (how do you do it, alicia?).

incidentally, this is the first non-hat tourney that i've played where i'm not on manoah's team. interesting, huh?