End of Summer League

Fortunately, just for this year.

I am so far behind I think I'll take several posts to catch up. And the first of these will be devoted to the end of summer league for the year. Unfortunately, it wasn't pretty for team Tan.

We actually did win our game on the 7th. I don't remember the score, but I do remember it was close.

Our game the 13th was at a different park. This one was in Santa Monica, so it was a little further away. Unfortunately, we only had lights on half the field and a corner of one goal was in a baseball diamond.

The other team only had two women show up. According to league rules, that means they could only have six players on the field as opposed to our seven. Easy win, right? Wrong!

They played zone defense on us most of the night, so that advantage was pretty much squashed. We started out behind and never really caught up. Finaly score was 11-15.

On the plus side, I did score a goal, which was something I wanted to do this year.

On the down side, I learned just how much I hate the new pick rule. See, in ultimate, if a defender is blocked from keeping up with their man, they call "pick" and play is supposed to stop so they can catch up. However, they've changed the rules so that, if the disc is thrown, play stops where disc is caught instead of going back to the thrower. Guess who was picked right before a score? Yep. Even though it wasn't my guy who scored, when the thrower said "I heard him call pick before I threw it" that kinda means who violated the spirit of the new rule, you know?

Last Saturday was the tournament. Because of our loss Monday, we had to show up for a 9 AM game. The tourney was down in San Pedro, about an hour south. And near the coast by Long Beach. I had hopes it would be cooler then the tournament usually is. It wasn't. In fact, it was just as hot as normal.

Our first game was against team black, the team that hadn't won a thing all year. We barely beat them.

Then game a fight against team purple. We made them work for it, but we got elemenated when they beat us. The upside of that game? I got a solid D. Not the wimpy thing like early in the season. They threw it long to the man I was guarding. I was close enough that I had time to get into position and swat it down before it got to him. I was so happy with that. Of course, I threw it away twice later in the game, but still.

We then fought Team Yellow again in the consolation round. Since we lost to them Monday night, we were out for blood. Or some of us were. Most of the team really didn't seem to care. I played hard, but we lost big time to them.

I debated leaving at this point. It was mid afternoon. But I decided to stay and watch the finals and go to the party. The finals was actually rather boring. Team Green beat Team Brown without much effort. I think it was 15-5 or something like that.

But the party was nice. It was at an Acapulco restaurant at the harbor. We were on the patio right on the water. Granted, it's a shipping harbor, so the view wasn't spectacular, but it was still nice. And the food was delicious. Better then we've had the last few years.

I stayed later then I planned. Not that I let that stop me from a little detour to Downtown Disney to buy more pins. I've got to stop this. Maybe after next month's releases....

I got home around midnight completely exhausted and sunburned. But it was a great day. I was just glad the Dodger's game went into overtime since I would have been driving right by Dodger Statum about the time it got out otherwise. And yes, I listened to the game on the radio. Shocking, isn't it?