Frisbee: Tour 1, Summer League and Wingfest write ups

Well, off to a cracking start and then near instant tardiness with the posts. Loyal readers, I'm sorry.

Burro at Tour 1
As mentioned I was only there on Sunday. We only played one Euro team and they were irish. Their presence did lend an air of excitement and unpredictability to the tournament and I saw some cracking games in the top 10. In the end though, the usual contenders were at the top, Clapham over Chevy in what was by all accounts an embarrassingly large win, followed by Fire at 3rd.

We finished 20th which I think puts us at the top of B-tour next time. The team won2/3 games on Saturday; Beej and I turned up and we lost every game.

First up were Dublin, they played man and a split stack. They ran us hard and our sloppy offense gave away turns and failed to capitalise. D from both lines was pretty good although we stuggled to shut down their iso/handler cut combination in the endzone. Fun game.

Fully Charged
Not a fun game. They played zone and absolutely dicked on us. Not sure why we struggled so hard, but struggle we did - I think we scored less than 5 points. Our zone D wasn't great but our man was at times effective. For some reason one of their players got shirty about a pick call and pushed one of our guys over. They had at least an 8 point lead at this point which made it very odd. He grudgingly apologised at the time and then much more fully during the post-game talk.

Devon
Nice buch of guys with some very good players - Izzy not least amongst them. She skyed two of our guys (although she is taller than them) and generally ripped anything near her. This game was reasonably close for a while, both teams playing a lot of zone. Out weak offense eventually lost it for us but it was a much better performance all round. We played Zone D too, Junk. Everyone knows this zone but having not trained it together even once (windless winter) we didn't realise how many different individual tweaks each player was used too - chaos. We sorted it out during a TO and did get some decent blocks with it in the end

My goals
Get a layout block. Sounds basic, but if you've played with me you know I don't really do the whole D thing, especially not the diving around bit. Well, that's changing hopefully.
No. I felt I had one in me but it was too windy and there was too much zone

Flatter backhand hucks. Mine have got too much roll edge - easier for me to get them out, harder for the receiver to catch
Again, a bit too much wind to measure progress here. I did pull out a very nice break force i/o backhand huck for Beej to score

More aggressive handler movement. As asked for by the captain. I'm generally happy to get the disc out to a cutter and let the team take it from there, moving into a dump position for if I'm needed. He'd rather I pushed upfield harder and faster so I'll give that a go...
Wow - wind really ruined all my goals - again, couldn't do too much of this (at least in the way I/he wanted me to) against zones.

Summer League
I threw together a Summer League team of mostly ex-Durham players and a few friends, teammates and similar but to the 2nd degree. It's a right laugh - chilled out games, blindingly low sun and someone brings a different drink each week. We're in Div 2 which we stand a good chance of winning and might manage to make a run to cup semis if we're lucky. I'll try to keep you updated - if you're fascinated results are available here - we're called Pastafarians (last time I put a team name to the vote)

Wingfest
So one of the girls from Pastafarians asked me (and others) to help out her uni beginners team at their first ever tournament. This was a great laugh, a fun bunch of guys all still throwing a backhand to the forehand side. Their learning curve was incredibly steep and by Sunday afternoon they were regularly stringing 4 passes together by themselves. I had lots of fun breaking forces and occasionally skying people. I only took 2 points off over the weekend and I really noticed a drop in my decisions and throwing quality in the last games of the day. Knee played up, got my IT band stripped by Beej and cried like a baby. Seemed to help though. Great weekend.

Next up
Summer league against a possible contender, Curve, this thursday, then Durham Hat - looking forward to seeing a lot of familiar faces. I don't really know anyone on my team which means plenty of new friends. No costume sorted yet and, tbh, no real plans to. Moneys on Pink 1 or Green for the win.