President's Day 2005:

We set out early Thursday morning (6:40 am flight, yikes) for San Diego
with hopes of a nice long weekend of sun, fun, and ultimate.

We arrive at the Long Beach airport at like 10 am west coast time and
after a big hastle with the rental car company, finally get our three vans
and get out of there.  First stop (of course): In N Out.  We polish off a
ton of double doubles and hit the beach.  Pick-up ultimate on the beach
(10 on 10 or something ridiculous like that) for about an hour, but
eventually the drizzle turned into rain and the ultimate stopped.  We hop
in the vans and take the drive down to the Days Inn in San Diego.  We get
settled in, grab dinner (some at Pat and Oscars which has pasta and great
breadsticks and some at this terrible Mexican place next to P&Os), and
just make it back for the OC.  Somewhat disappointed that Alex and Marissa
don't really kiss, we drown our sorrows in a 30 of Bud Lite and Margaritas
made from Tres Diablos tequila and head south of the border.  Breaking a
two year (at least) tradition, we go to Las Divas instead of Lord Blacks,
which proved to be a great decision.  Let's just say 2L Mike MacKenzie
will never be the same again.

Friday involved more In n Out and Pat and Oscars, decent weather, and much
Double Disc Court on the beach (junior duo Jack Marsh and Chuck Lei
reigned on the DDC court for the second straight year).  At night, a game
of mafia and early to sleep to get ready for day 1 of the tournament the
following day.

It rained friday night, but we were hopeful about our chances of playing
on Saturday.  But we got to the fields Saturday morning only to learn at
the captains meeting that there would be no tournament games that day.
Some teams headed to the beach, others to find other fields to scrimmage
on.  We eventually tracked down a UCSD IM field and went with Carleton,
Cornell, and Cal Poly-SLO to play a round-robin there.

First game was Harvard/Carleton, our first game against another team in
the calendar year, and our first game outdoors since the Harvard/Yale
alumni game.  We came out pretty rusty and didn't look very strong against
Carleton.  The game was close early, and we twice had the disc to tie it
at 7-7 but we failed to score and CUT rolled over our stalling offense to
take the game 11-6.

We lost a 7 on 7 rosham against Carleton to play after the Cornell/Cal
Poly game, so we had two byes to heckle, stand around in the rain, and
play Awesome Bagel (Awesome Ball with a bagel).  We watched Cornell take
Cal Poly in double-game point, and then Carleton beat up on Cornell.  The
rain and the ultimate left the field in terrible shape for our game
against Cal Poly, which ended up being the last game of the day when a
UCSD official realized how much we were destroying the field.  In the mud,
Cal Poly came out stronger than we expected (given their ugly game against
Cornell) and made a good run to take the first half 6-5.  We buckled down
in the second half, and our deep 20-man roster out-manned theirs.  We
played the game to 15, and won it 15-11.  Muddy and hungry (especially
those that went for a post-game layout drill in the mud), we found an In n
Out and made our way back to the hotel.

Sunday we arrived at the captains meeting to find out that again there
would be no games on the UCSD fields, but that they had found other fields
around the city that could be played on.  We went with the rest of our
pool (Oregon, UCSD, Harvard, Cornell, Northwestern) to a nearby elementary
school with public fields.

First up was Northwestern.  We underestimated them, I think, and they
jumped out to a lead on us, taking half by a couple and capitalizing on
all of our early-morning and early-season jitters.  We played stronger
coming out of the second half, and our sideline picked up.  We traded for
a few points, and before we knew it we were down 10-7, game to 12.  They
score one of the next two points and we are on the ropes, but our
late-game defensive line steps up and starts creating turns.  Our D-line
offense looks good and as the rain is coming down we step up our
intensity.  Grant D'Arcy '06 makes a sweet grab on a hammer to tie it at
11s, double-game point.  We pull and get the turn as it starts to really
come down.  I throw bladey forehand across the field to a cutting Willie
Evarts '07 for the goal, but it gets called back on a pick.  Smarter on
our second try, I dump it and we work it up for the easy goal and the
ballgame, a solid comeback.

Next game was UCSD.  Both teams come out strong, and we do well against
their zone, tying it at 4s.  From there, we made a number of offensive
miscues and they go on a 5 point run, and roll from there 13-7(ish).

We move back to the other field, which has become a huge mud pit, to play
Oregon.  We come out looking timid and Oregon jumps on that to go on a 4-0
run to start the game.  From there, our offense picks up and our D gets a
couple breaks to pull within 2 or 3 at the half.  We trade coming out of
half, then get another break and bring it to 11-9, game to 13.  Oregon's
offense scores, and then we answer to make it 12-10.  Our D comes onto the
field, quickly gets a turn, and completes the break to bring it to 12-11,
and get us feeling like we are on our way to another big late-game
comeback.  Before we can pull to get the tie, however, we are told that
the hard cap had gone off and that since Oregon was up, the game was over.
This was frustrating, but we still felt good about our late-game play.  If
only we could start a game with as much intensity as we were ending them.

After a bye, we came out gunning against Cornell and didn't stop until we
had 13.  Our offense was on fire, scoring every point they received, and
only turning it over a couple of times.  Most of the offense's goals were
a well-executed 4-5 person string into the endzone.  The defense stepped
up as well, giving us an early cushion.  We took the game 13-8(ish) with
plenty of time to watch the UCSD/Oregon game, which Oregon won handily.
This made us even more bitter that our Oregon game got hard-capped just
when we made it 12-11.  Cars split up from here, some going to Dragon
House to Feed the Dragon, hoping that it would appease the gods and San
Diego would stay sunny for Monday's bracket play. Freshman Dave Lipson
made the mistake of admitting he makes a mean guacamole, and was put to
work making an enormous batch on Sunday night.  It was tasty.

Sadly, feeding the dragon did not help, and it stormed all of Sunday
night and into Monday morning.  The tournament was cancelled and we didn't
get to play more than those six games.  The team went to see Constantine.
 Only Adi liked it, and that was because he was five beers
deep by the end.  We drove back to LA for a dinner at Manoah's
which was easily the highlite of Monday.  From there we hobbed on the
red-eye back to Boston, and some of us sleepily made it to Tuesday class.

It was a huge bummer that 2/3 days of the tournament got cancelled, but it
was good to get in the few games that we did.  We saw flashes of greatness
on those games, but we clearly still have a lot of work to do before the
college series.  Our next major tournaments aren't until Spring Break (end
of March), where we'll play in North Carolina at Ultimax and Easterns
against top east-coast competition.  Until then, we're back on Gordon
track and out in the snow dreaming of eventually playing a full outdoor
tournament.  Soon enough.

-Jack