For some reason, the weather this past weekend reminded me very much of playing Ultimate in my early years in Ithaca and Amherst. It was pretty much a perfect NE fall weekend with the changing leaves, picture book blue sky, and just a hint of coolness in the air. Almost made we want to play again..........
Well, not really, but I did have plenty of time to reminisce about what it felt like to play in the fall in the old days. I do love Regionals, and I could just enjoy the experience without the stress of worrying about whether my season was going to end prematurely. I was never on a team that would have caused me to consider that qualifying for Nationals was an afterthought, so I was always much more nervous at this tournament than any other.
I am quite touched by Jim's little compliment that the Mixed Div is exciting due to the upsets. In general, I thought Jim's post on Regionals was excellent. Funny and a bit of the old TM thrown in on the side. I do think that Jim's compliment was probably just a momentary lapse due to bathing in the afterglow of Dog's domination of the event. Dog did look great this weekend, and I think his summary of the improvement of the D's O is very insightful.
On the women's side, I got to hang out for moments with the Lady Godiva folks and it was great to see Lori Parham, Shana and Sarah Cook, Molly Brown, Amy D, Chris C all back on the field together. I think they will have a great time at Nationals.
The Mixed Div was topsy-turvey on Sat, and it played out much like the MA Regional in that the 3 and 4 seeds ended up playing in an elimination game in the 3rd round. It was sad for me to see 6TM not make it to Sunday and not give themselves a chance to play for Sarasota. I thought the 6TM-Tandem game was quite intense. Exciting, but difficult to watch. Of course, a few folks came up to me and joked that my stock really went up this weekend. I was able to get a laugh in as the humor is based on the ridiculous nature of the premise (any serious assertion that I could be the difference maker on a team like 6TM would frankly be an admission that the team was in deep shit). 6TM had massive turnover on the women's side this year, but as far as the men go....the real loss there is Olen. He was a sparkplug for that team and any real self-analysis will say that there is a hole needs to be filled.
I thought that Slow White looked very good this weekend as they got all their new Patagonia stuff. They also played very well. They ran a patient offense and their long looks were high percentage. I think they are approaching the season with a correct build and they look to be peaking in a few weeks. It is fun to watch them as it is clear that they are enjoying themselves without being cocky.
So, our attention turns south now. I look forward to seeing the NE teams down in Sarasota.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Quick thoughts about NE Regionals
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3 comments:
Sorry, I was a little bit drunk when I was writing that. Everything is back to normal now.
Wm,
Great question. I will take a stab at it....from some different points of view.
I think what is at issue here is communication, and I, as an organizer, need to take some responsibility for the way that this played out.
After 6TM was eliminated, I spent some time watching the Mixed Semis with Jay and Marshall. It seemed to me pretty clear that there was little desire for showing up on Sunday. However, as the context was informal in the sense that it was three friends hanging out, I did not take our conversation as a confimation that 6TM was bailing on Sunday. At the end of Sat, I was going over the results and schedule with Shiellah and I mentioned to her that I thought it was likely that 6TM was not going to show up. At that point, we did not make a plan to follow up on that hunch, which we should have, so that we could let Dis'Chords know that they did not have a 1st round game in the morning. This was a mistake on my part. Late in the evening, I did receive a text from 6TM saying that they would not be attending Sun, but it was too late to pass that info along. I did have a chance to apologize to Dis'Chords in the morning, and my sense is that they were not that ruffled, but perhaps they were just being polite.
So, 6TM did attempt to communicate their intentions, but there were some breakdowns when it came to passing that info along. In that sense, I don't see 6TM bailing as being disrespectful.
Now, Puppet Regime can attest to the fact that I can get very pissy when teams bail on games without notifying the organizers, as I was quite upset when, again, due to a communication breakdown, they bailed on a consolation game at the Boston Invite (alas, against another Canadian team). So, while I do like teams to play out their consolation games, I am also informed by my experience as a player in which I think it is fair to say that it was "ok" to blow off the losers of semis game (which is rarely scheduled), and just "kind of OK" (depending upon the circumstances) to blow off consolation games for the losers of qtrs. Again, this is just acknowledging generally accepted norms....I don't feel I am condoning any course of behavior
Having said all that......if I had been on 6TM this year........not a chance you would have seen me there on Sunday morning.
-g
I can't really comment on all the communication that occured, nor can I speak for 6TM in its entirety, even though I am on that team... However, I will say that the second we lost, it was clear that we were not continuing to play, and I certainly thought it was clear to the organizers, but it may not have been. In no way was this intended to be disrespectful to the other teams. To be honest, I really thought the next consolation game for us was on Saturday, so I pretty much figured it was clear immediately. Woops.
-a
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