Too much ultimate

This weekend was way too busy. Like my whole week, we just had too much to do!

On Friday night, we went to Kristina's house for a BBQ, which was really fun and had great food, however we couldn't do the party justice since most of us were pretty tired from our busy week! In fact, we'd even picked up the leftover keg from last Saturday's Moustache Weekend and brought it to Kristina's place. Sadly, we barely put a dent in the remnants of the beer, although we made a valiant effort to imbibe its contents. By 10:30, the tired BBQ-goers were heading home to get a good night sleep before ultimate playoffs the next time, while the die-hards continued on to the Fringe Festival beer gardens.

I woke up early on Saturday and headed to the fields for our playoff games with the Love Handlers. Unfortunately, we only had three women for the whole day - Joelle, myself and our captain, Kim K. On an aside note, our team is funny because we have two Kim's, two Matt's, two Ian's and a Garrett and Gary. Gets confusing. In any case, this is the third year I've played with Kim K, and we've both gotten in the habit of calling each other Kim K or Kim Z. On the field, we usually know which Kim is being called to, just from knowing what positions we are playing. In any case, we only had three women for the whole day, which meant we had to play all the points of every game without any subs. In ultimate lingo, this is called playing 'savage'. We had enough men for several lineups, so we were alright on that point. The Love Handlers are in the highest tier on Thursday nights, so we were lined up against some quality teams. Our first game was against a team called 'Mana mana' and was a really close match, however they won that game and went on to the top side of the tournament. Since we lost, we went into the lower side of the pool and played a team called 'Ginch', which we strongly outclassed. We beat them resoundingly, although they were fairly unspirited in the game. After the second game, the girls were feeling pretty rough from playing so much, and from playing quite hard. I was putting my 'A' game on - I've realized I have a hard time playing at half-effort. My game is either ON or it's OFF, and when I'm playing competitive teams, it's ON! So, when we found out we were playing a team we knew really well, and that they only wanted to play for 30 minutes so they could watch the first place game, we agreed in a flash. The score for this last game was 5-2 for us, so I guess we came in 5th, but it was a fun game so it didn't matter too much.

After ultimate, we headed over to Garrett's parent's house to celebrate his dad's 50th birthday. We helped his mom set up and then mingled for awhile, then eventually party-hopped over to the ultimate year-end party happening just north of his parent's place. We met up with our team members and danced for awhile before heading home, entirely pooped and up too late! Morning came all to early!

Joelle, Ian and Gabe picked me up Sunday morning to go to the playoffs for our Tuesday night team - Je Huck Bien. We were ranked 9th out of 11 in the B pool, so I figured we'd have a pretty mellow day of games. I was already sore from playing the day before, plus tired from not having enough sleep. In fact, most of our team was pretty tired from being out at the party last night, however we weren't hungover like the team we played against in our first game. The Hard Triers are a great team that are very closely matched to us (ranked 8th). They are the team that beat us a week ago by just a few points. In any case, their hangovers became our victory, because we beat them and moved on in the pool. Our next game, however, put us against a team ranked 2nd in B pool. I don't quite understand the tournament setup, however it seemed odd we'd suddenly play a very high ranked team. However, they weren't really that much better than us, except that they had had a bye for the first game and were coming in fresh against us. The game was quite close, but they ended up winning and advancing.

Our third game was against the Frisbee Killers, a team that apparently took the playoffs very seriously because they entered our game with a lot of aggression. We had played them a few weeks ago and only lost by one, however we were getting pretty tired by that point and didn't have a lot of energy left. As well, by this point we were playing to rank between 5th and 8th of B pool and figured it didn't REALLY matter where we ended up, we just wanted to get out of the playoffs without any major injuries from fatigue. The captain of the other team agreed to play an hour game, rather than an hour and a half, which saved us some effort, however we lost to them by just one point, which was a little disappointing.

Our final game wasn't really a game at all, because our team didn't really want to play anymore. We were tired and cranky and just wanted a rest - we had expected to play just three games, so having four in the end was unpleasant for our tired bodies. We challenged the other team, called the Hucking Owls, to a spirit game match-up, rather than a real game. The girls on their team didn't want to play either, but the guys wanted to play a whole game of ultimate. They kept bugging us to play a real game, and we compromised saying we'd play a game to a score of 5, but they weren't interested in that offer. Then they suggested that anyone who wants to stay and play a real game, could stay, and they would mingle the players to make two teams. We agreed, however, no one on our team actually ended up staying to play, because we all wanted to go home, so I don't think they played a real game after all. They really should have agreed to a game to 5.

On Sunday night I was just pooped. I laid on the couch and watched TV for hours, dozing and reading and playing on the internet. I needed to relax, so that's what I did. Then I went to bed early. Hopefully, this upcoming week, I will ACTUALLY be less busy, although I'm not sure if that's possible, since I already have a captain's meeting on Wed, a couple coffee rendezvous' with friends and some social drinking events to attend. Plus, there is another ultimate tournament next weekend that I'm playing in (foolish though I was to sign up for it a few weeks ago) so that will keep me busy some more!