St Pat's Hat 2009

This past weekend was the annual St. Pat's Hat Ultimate Frisbee tournament put on by LAOUT. Of course, I signed up. This year, every team had a potatoey name as well as a color name. I was on team Pie and Mash, ie. Leprechaun's Gold. All the other teams were a shade of green, but we were yellow. Running out of green colors?

Saturday, it was grey and overcast all day. We had a fifth round bye, which meant four games in a row.

I almost quit after the first point I played that day. Why? Because I scored. As I figured, I was only good for that one score. But I had fun playing the rest of the weekend.

We won three of our four games on Saturday. The third one was hard fought. We came back from way behind to win. The fourth game was a blow out. I think the final score was 11-2.

I'd played with a couple of my teammates before, but most were new to me. It was great because we seemed to gel right away. People were harder on themselves than each other, which always makes things more pleasant as well.

Anyway, with our record, we got a first round bye on Sunday. That meant I could go to church and Sunday School (instead of just church). It was nice to be at my home church again after a couple weeks out of town. I took my ultimate clothes with me, changed in the car, and made it down in time for the kick off of our first game.

Sunday's weather wasn't as pleasant. Yes, the sun was out for a few hours (although we wound up under a dark cloud for the later part of the day). But a hard, cold wind was blowing. It made passing harder and frankly wasn't that pleasant to be outside in.

Our first game was against the first team we played on Saturday. We actually beat them by a greater margin than we did on Saturday, which moved us on to the semi-finals. And in the semi's, we played the team we had lost to on Saturday. That was a hard fought game that went back and forth for a while before we pulled ahead and won.

That's right, my team made the finals! The only other time I've been on a team that made the St. Pat's Hat finals, I wasn't able to make it on Sunday.

We had been ranked 4th after Saturday, and our opponent in the finals had been ranked below us. We took an early lead and held it the entire time. We did give up several points in a row at the end, but the final score was still 13-8.

We won!!!!!

Yes, I had a huge smile on my face for a couple hours. And I had an awesome snag in the finals, too. One of those snags I can normally only do in warm ups. And I didn't mess up too badly when I was in.

It really helped that we picked up another woman on Sunday, and a very talented woman at that. We'd been on a Summer League team together this last year, so it was good playing with her again.

I found out there's a pick up game there Saturdays at 2:30, so I am going to have to start going. That field is closer than the one I've been going to in Pasadena.

Anyway, after the game, several of us went out to Pizza. That turned out to be more expensive than I thought it would be since it was a fancier restaurant than I was picturing, but it was a splurge well worth taking. I got an individual pizza with everything on it (and I do mean just about everything). It was absolutely delicious.