Wildwood

Went down to Wildwood last weekend for the first time to participate in the Wildwood Ultimate Tournament. I went down with Nikhil, Jayson, Amanda, Annie, Fran, Alan, Charlie and Sean. On Friday I drove down with Nik, Alan, Sean and Sachin in my car, which was pretty fun since they kept me from being bored while I was driving. When we got there, we had a little bit of trouble with the people at the cabin registration, who wouldn't let Annie's parents just come in and drop off her stuff. After sorting some stuff out we unpacked and tried to get a fire going outside.

Later on me and Jayson drove over to the Bolero Hotel to register our team. After seeing a bunch of other people I knew, I then noticed that there was a huge party at the hotel. I was greeted by Bill Sanborn and a slightly tipsy Thales at the entrance and then I proceded into the hotel by myself since Jayson didn't have ID with him. When I went inside there was loud music, dancing, and flashing lights everywhere. Not knowing where to go, I followed the Rutgers guys around only to realize that they had already registered and were just here to party. After figuring out where I was supposed to be, I situated myself into the line which was moving at a rate of 0. I waited on this line for about an hour and a half, and somewhere within that time the two girls in front of me started making out, which occupied me for a good 30 seconds. Jayson decided to get into the hotel somehow and joined me in the line. When we got to the registration desk, the woman told us that she had emailed us and told us that juniors could register tomorrow. There was never any goddamn email, however, so I spent the entire ride back to the cabin cursing and screaming in anger.

I slept pretty badly that night, trying not to move and disturb the girls since my bunk bed was noisy as hell, and at one point during the night, Alan started cursing off Fran in his sleep, and couldn't recall it the next. The guys kept everyone up for a good one to two hours by screaming.

The next day we woke up early to get to the registration tent, at the time we were SUPPOSED to register. We then found out that there were only 5 teams in the juniors division therefore we would not play on Sunday.

We first played Westfield, a game that was somewhat close but we had full control of the game the entire time. A lot of the points were skies or layout scores by me from Jayson's long flicks. A couple of the scores were nice floaty flicks out to space by me, Jayson, and Charlie that we just had to run down. We ended the game winning by two points. Our next game was against a Lower Merion juniors team, but at that point we were all lazy as hell and had no motivation to play. We decided to mess around and throw hammers, resulting in a huge loss. Next we played Get Your Disc Wet, who was a pretty bad team that even though we didn't take them seriously, we dominated them by at least 10 or 12 points. After that we played another juniors team that obviously hadn't played real ultimate before, so we won 18 - 0 or something like that.

We hit up the beach after that and then later on that night we went to the boardwalk. I saw Noah, Principi, Bode and a couple of the other Roots kids as well as some of the Rutgers guys there. We walked around for a bit, getting smoothies, ice cream, and fried oreos. It started raining incredibly heavy after that so we headed back to our cabin to make smores by the campfire. That night we slept a lot better since I was on the floor, therefore allowing me to sleep without worrying about the creaky bunk bed and waking anyone up.

Woke up in the morning around 8 AM, and headed over to the beach. We walked around for a bit to see if anyone wanted to play us, but NYU, Rutgers, and Stuy all had games going on. We went up to the boardwalk again and got more smoothies while Annie, Fran, Amanda, Sean, and eventually even Charlie got on some rides. We all went to the beach afterwards and Nik's jersey eventually got swallowed by the ocean. We lay on the sand for a bit while Sean tried to catch a bird with a towel. After, we went back up to the boardwalk to go to the waterpark, but it started raining really hard and therefore the rides were closed. We decided to just walk around on the boardwalk a bit more then we watched the finals and headed back to the cabin.

The drive home was a pretty peaceful one. We conversed and stopped at a certain point so I could take a rest and grab some food. Afterwards, we headed back and it started pouring like crazy again. Thankfully, we got back to Warren in one piece.

Rhythm

So its been a really long time since I've wrote in here, even though there's been a LOT going on in my Ultimate life. So, I wasn't able to do YCC's this year due to VBS, so I joined a club team called Roots of Rhythm, which is comprised of mostly Pennsbury players, and a couple of other players from different teams. I must say, playing with them is definitely one of the best experiences I've had in Ultimate. Playing competitive high level Ultimate is a lot different from playing with Watchung, where I was sort of the go-to guy. With Roots I'm most certainly not the best player so it feels really comfortable when I'm playing with players who are a lot better than me.

I've been playing MCUDL with Roots for a while and took down Illuminati twice and the CHS alum team although not many of them actually showed up. I've been learning a lot during the whole process too.

This weekend, I went to Philly Invite in Allentwon with Roots. I didn't really have a ride so I went with Kahyee, Lu, Cori, and Glenn. Kahyee, Lu, and Cori were on Zoji, and Glenn was on Philly Mob. The ride to Allentown was a lot shorter than I expected, and since Zoji had a first round bye, I arrived near the end of the Roots vs. Big Floppy Clocks game. Yeah, I don't know what was up with that team name either. Anyways, upon my arrival, Roots rolled them 13-5, and then had about an hour until our next game against Philly Love, so I went and watched the Zoji game.

Our game against Philly Love was full of bullshit calls from Love and us screaming back at them. I played mostly D, having not entirely grasped the full concept of ho-stack yet. I got a layout D on a handler going upline, and then got up and realized that there was a huge rip in my shorts. Luckily, I had an extra pair of shorts so I ripped the other pair apart and used it to tie up a wound on my knee. My highlight of the weekend was Noah telling me to take one of the handlers and to get down there as fast as possible. Noah rips a huge pull and I get the layout d on the first throw, pumping my team up. Felt really good to finally contribute something to the team. We ended up finishing Philly Love off 13-7.

Our next game was against RIO, a team from Rhode Island. I don't remember much from this game or the next against Bear Proof, but we beat them 13-5 and 13-7.

That night I stayed with the Zoji team at a really nice hotel. We chilled at the pool and the enormous hot tub, which was incredibly relaxing and did a wonder for my muscles. We had Dominoes for dinner and went to Friendly's afterwards. I got to meet a couple of the players on Zoji which was really cool. Zoji seems like a really fun team to play with. After watching Lu, Glenn, and Kahyee duke it out in the weight room, we headed back up to our room and called it a night after watching some poker on ESPN. Glenn was beat out of the bed, Cori took the couch, and Kahyee and Lu shared a bed, which was pretty funny.

Woke up at 7 even though me and Glenn had a first round bye. The breakfast at the hotel was amazing, and after a wrong turn and a missed exit, we got to the fields at around 9 in time for Kahyee, Cori, and Lu to cleat up and play against Muffin Men, and me and Glenn to watch them until our game against each other.

Our first game against Philly Mob was pretty bad. We lacked energy and ended up turning it over due to their poach defense. Our defense had trouble shutting down their cuts and I myself got roasted a couple of times upline or deep, which frustrated me pretty badly. We ended up losing that game 13-7.

Since that game was still pool play, we ended up having to play Philly Mob again right after for the finals. We came out pumped up and playing tighter defense and cleaner offense. There were some nasty plays such as Jordan layout skying the shit out of his defender, and Fred Tsai and Alex making HUGE layout D's in the endzone. I got a better grasp on handling in the endzone and had an assist to Bode who spiked the disc, pumping us up again. Bechis ended up roasting any defender on him for numerous goals, and a final flick to Mike Principi won us the tournament 15-9.

Philly Invite was one of the best experiences in Ultimate I've ever had, and it was great being a part of one of the first tournaments Roots has won. Looking forward to more MCUDL games and Wildwood with team STD.