Student Mixed Outdoor Nationals 2008
Team: Edd, Greg, Joe, Millie The Captain, Phil, Rachel, Sam, Steph,
Tom, and Trev The Driver.
Short writeup:
We came 7th, and it was awesome.
Long writeup:
The feared Absolutely Rediculous o'Clock departure became a Reasonably
Silly (But Let's Not Go Nuts) o'Clock, with the 10 of us piling into
the 15-seater minibus at 8am. Getting to Hull was easy, finding the
University fields was a shade trickier, and we drove around a girls'
school for a while wondering why there weren't more minibuses and
frisbee players around. Two phone calls to the TD later a very helpful
navigator found us and took us where we needed to go. We had
originally had around half an hour spare to warm up, but that turned
into 5 minutes. Helpfully, the games were delayed, but still.
Game 1 v Trinity College Dublin. 6-10.
They had Perfect Dave and some awesome girls who run around like
crazy. We made a bright start but were being broken all over the shop,
so all our fantasticality was equalled by their own... fantasticality.
Ah well, there's few teams I enjoy losing to more than Trinity.
They're that awesome people (and they had inflatable sofas by the
pitches, apparently they were free if you drank enough in the SU bars).
Game 2 v Kent Touch This. 11-3.
Nice and comfortable. They only scored when we got sloppy, but as they
took Fling to sudden-death later they weren't on top form against us.
Ah well; a really friendly and enthusiastic team, lots of promise there.
Game 3 v Random Fling (Uni of Nottingham). 8-9.
Aaaargh. We knew that they'd put it up a lot, Jelley's sidearm hucks
were bang on mostly every time, and they were very quick and tight on
D. Despite this, Millie got a Callahan, the most relaxed one since
Pete had the disc thrown at him at Open Outdoor Regionals 2007
(although that's a story for another time).
Lunch break, featuring a fruit salad and some Bear Cheering and some
tiny little ham & mayo wraps.
Game 4 v Positive Mojo (Uni of Aberdeen). 11-5.
Woooooo. We knew that we needed a good win to get 3rd in the pool (and
thus have a Top-8 crossover and potential glory), and we got it. They
had very solid handlers but inexperienced cutters, so lacked flow as
it was often held on to and dumped back. The very early loss of a main
handler (and girl) caused problems and we ran through playing some
totally ace frisbee. However, the game was very stoppy, with loads of
pick calls made and a bit of tension here and there. Anyway, 3rd in
the pool was ours (behind Trinity and Fling). We now had a crossover
against the second-placed team in another pool, which turned out to be
York.
Game 5 v York (XO). 11-6.
WOOOOOO. They had similarly hard-running girls as Trinity, as well as
Louie The LeedsLeedsLeeds Player breaking people for kicks and
giggles. But some very hard running and long discs downwind always
kept us pleasantly ahead.
Home time. Sam checked WAP and we found that Tom's beloved Arsenal
were 3 down to Man Utd, which was (naturally) thus very funny.
Showered, changed, went to the house of our host, a great guy called
Chris. Ordered Dominos, ate Dominos, watched Tom suck at Guitar Hero
II and Millie dominate at it. Everyone apart from Phil, Rachel and Edd
took off for the party at about 9, they stayed in and watched Friends
and Bruce Almighty, both of which combined beautifully to induce
sleep. Apparently the party was really good.
Some thoughts from that evening:
YEAH, WE'RE GUARANTEED TOP 8! This is a young, ever-so-slightly
ramshackle team who couldn't scrape together enough girls for Mixed
Indoors (let alone defend their awesome Women's Indoors performances
of 06/07), and here we are, competing with Trinity, Bears (Warwick),
Ro Sham Bo (Edinburgh) (and 4 other teams but I don't know who they
are. Pies (Newcastle) should be one) for some glory. HOW UTTERLY
AWESOME IS THAT? Tomorrow will be a great day.
Afterthought: Top 8 would earn BUSA points for the Uni of Leics at the
Open events. If Mixed were recognised by BUSA, we'd be earning the Uni
points. Just how utterly awesome is that? Because I reckon that it's a
whole lot.
We arrived at the pitched on the Sunday morning to find that since the
ground was frozen up play was being delayed by an hour and a half or
so. Sweeeeeet, that's a lot of free time to eat and stuff. Twenty
minutes before our game starts, Edd realises that he's left his boots
in Chris' house. Fantastic. If he'd realised that slightly earlier we
could easily have gone got them. Anyway, he borrows Millie's Astro
shoes for the time being, because for some reason Millie has man-sized
feet.
Game 6 v Flatball (St Andrews, QF). 2-15.
Flatball were awesome. Their handlers were awesome, their cutters were
awesome, their girls were awesome, and their zone (a variant on
Trash... I think...) was particularly awesome. That we got 2 at all is
definitely an achievement, and we could have stolen a couple more
perhaps but for some slippy hands or slight mis-reads of high discs.
But Flatball went on to the final, indicative of just how ace they were.
Game 7 v Trinity (again... SF). 11-15.
As the Flatball game had finished quite... quickly... we went to watch
Trinity/Ro Sham Bo, the loser of which would play us. Trinity put
everything into the game but Ro Sham Bo took it on sudden death, so we
were hoping that they'd be down and tired. They weren't, not in the
slightest (although Perfect Dave was hobbling quite a lot). But this
was a great game to play, and while they went a few ahead we started
to scrape points back on them, all the way to 11-13 I think, before
they got a couple extra to finish it off. We lost our own call
(Question Time, which didn't (as far as I remember) involve Trev's
penis for once. Although there was quite a lot of Your Mum, so that's
OK), the first time we'd had enough time spare to actually play a call
against a team.
In this gap Trev and Edd went to get his boots and some other
left-behind stuff from Chris' house. Edd can now cut again and mark
without being yelled at for poaching (I wasn't! I hardly ever poach on
a cutter! I was just being toasted everywhere because I couldn't
accelerate or decelerate or turn!).
Game 8 v Too Many Pies (Final placing, for 7th). 13-11.
Woooooo. They had two main handlers who did the bulk of the throwing
for them, but the rest of their team had a habit of making the right
cuts and taking good takes for them to work with. We didn't make it
comfortable for ourselves, with plenty of slightly daft discs coming
out. But we pushed it through, Trev taking the final score on his
knees at the front of the zone.
Final position: 7th. Jesters... 7th... that's novel. The last time
that happened was Iron 5 in December.
YEAH JESTERS :D
Trev and Millie shared MVP-ness.
Greg was MIP.
Particular mention to Rachel and Phil, in their first real
tournaments. You guys did an absolutely stirling job.
Edd (hurts in his back and his neck and his arms and his ankles, but
for some reason, his calves are alright).