San Rafael One Day

After taking all of July off, Mischief came back together to play in a one day tournament set up so that the Australian National Coed team could get a tuneup before going on to Worlds. The schedule changed a few times and we actually got a new schedule the day of. We ended up having Night Train, bye, Australia, Brown Chicken (a new LA team), and AIR.

Coming out of the gates, we were uncharacteristically strong. Lyndsay and Doyle both reminded the team to keep their heads up for high stall count hucks and to keep our sideline strong. I believe we traded to 1-1 before going on a 4 point run to be up 5-1. We kept up strong pressure the rest of the half to take the first half 8-2 or so.Unfortunately in the 2nd half, we started to lose some focus. We took a lot of silly shots and tried to win the points with our throws rather than our legs. I believe at 11-4 or so we called a time out to settle down and close this game out. We managed to refocus somewhat and finish at 15-6 or so.

We then had a bye and folks went out to get food and amuse themselves by dominating the aussies at flutterguts.

I have chosen to forget the Australia game. They had a 4 man cup and we didn't play particularly well against it. If someone else wants to post more on this feel free.

Our next game was against Alice's Brown Chicken Brown Cow. This team had a few of the Pleasuretown folks and also has a few traitors from Mischief. We knew they'd be athletic and would work hard. Unfortunately, the wind was still up and might have even been stronger than the previous game.

This game became an upwind/downwind game. Both teams would huck it downwind and set up a zone to force the other team to beat it upwind. Neither team was having much success until at Brown Cow pushed the disc up to the goal line and scored upwind. They quickly pulled and forced a turn and got a quick score to jump up 2 breaks. We then both traded downwinds until they didn't get a huck off and with a short field, we finally worked the zone with a lot of swings to score up wind. We quickly capitalized on the downwind and scored a quick downwind goal to even it up. We traded points to take it to 7-7 and were serving upwind to Brown Cow with the soft cap on. They ended up scoring and we got our downwind to make it 8-8 and us serving to them again upwind.

This turned out to be a nightmare point with various turns. We got some good poaching from Sunya and Danielle to force turns close to the upwind goal, but couldn't punch it in. At one point we were a few yards from the line but we tried to jam it into the endzone without swinging it and gave up the disc. While the point was going the hard cap came on, so it was double game point. We moved the disc close to the goal line a few times but weren't able to get it in. They had the disc on the downwind goal line, but our D stayed strong and managed to push them back. Finally we got a few good passes through the cup to Snaggles who put up a 40 yard floaty huck up wind. Mark came sprinting in from behind the disc and pulled it down from a group of defenders. Without wasting any time, he hucked a blady outside in to Kyle in the endzone who skied his defender for the double game point win. Turns out we were one of many teams to beat Brown Cow.

Exhausted from the game, we moved on to AIR. At the start of the game we kept up our huck and Z game but the wind was dying a little and there was some dissension about what tactic we should take. When we were up 4-3, Mark called a timeout to bring us back together and get us all on the same page. He pointed out that our energy was low and it was time for all of us to reach in ourselves and find whatever it took to get intense. He was going to play like finals of Nationals and he wanted us all to do the same. Soon after the talk, we got our first upwind break. We scored the easy downwind and then worked it up again for another upwind break. With our offense moving well and our defense getting turns we started on a roll that gave us 6 straight points and took the game to 14-6? (I believe) We lost intensity a little and gave up a few scores, but then closed it out quickly to end the day 3-1.

All in all a good tournament. We took from it some good things to focus on in practice the next months and also saw some of the new folks step up. Sadly I have no pictures to post for this. Maybe someone who had a camera with them will put some of their photos up.