UPAs Day 1

I better put all of these thoughts down on paper before I forget. I am a Masters player after all so my memory must be fading.

Things started out well when Eric and I arrived in Tampa. The guy we were supposed to meet was there, the line-up at the rental counter was non-existent, there was no traffic on I-75, the Under Armour outlet was easy to find and best of all, the Sea Club II happened to be located right next to the PBC on Siesta Key. Not only were our condos clean, they were half the price of the PBC. The only scare we had on the day before UPAs were the sketchy looking raw oysters at Captain Curt’s (which I avoided) and the bottom of the six pack holder giving way in the grocery store leading to the untimely demise of six bottles of beer. I got a good night of sleep too which was a nice thing to get before the big show. Maybe I’m too used to having to sleep in rooms with 7 other guys, half of whom are on the floor but it was nice to get a bed to myself in a room with one other guy who wasn’t even there yet when I went to sleep.

Thursday arrived and I was feeling great; I was well rested, well fed and… I guess I can’t really ask for more. The weather was perfect; it wasn’t too hot and it wasn’t too sunny. The fields were about a 15-20 minute drive from Siesta Key and everyone was saying that traffic would be killer on Thursday and Friday morning but that didn’t materialize and we got to the fields on time. We broke out our brand new jerseys and shorts for the first time and finally looked like an organized bunch. I started to warm up (sort of) and I must tell you the fields are amazing. The grass is so soft and well maintained. I was just really excited for the tournament to start. I was a bit worried that I wasn’t feeling nervous. I expected to have some butterflies but I was feeling quite calm. It’s good for my focus but I was a bit worried that it would mean that I would have a really low energy level during the course of the day. In the end I had nothing to worry about (maybe because I was playing against old guys).

Our first game was against Ironwood, a team from Arizona. They were not very good and we rolled them quite handily 15-6. I’m not sure if I had a turnover in that game or if credit for it would go to John Bar. I threw him a breakforce backhand up the sideline and he milked it way too far; so far that he was a yard out of bounds when he caught it. One of the nice things about the fields in Sarasota is that they are all lined and they also have a line 3 yards outside the field to mark a buffer that should be left between sideline gear/fans and the field. Well John Bar thought the buffer line was the sideline so he took a few more steps than he could afford and the end result was a turnover. It was my fault for putting him in a spot where he had zero margin for error but I felt like he should have easily caught the disc in bounds. For that reason I will happily hand the turnover to him and I remained at three turnovers in the entire fall season. Fortunately for me that was the closest I came to a turnover all weekend so I managed to end the fall season with all of three turnovers in four tournaments, one of those being UPAs. Not bad if I do say so myself.

Our next game was a tight one against Mileage from Dallas, Texas. In the end we only won 15-13 but I never felt like the game was that close. I remember two things from this game. One was being covered by some 6’4”, 250lb guy who fouled the sh*t out of me when I had the disc. At one point I called five fouls on the guy before I managed to get a pass off. How ridiculous is that; I’m not one to call a lot of the bumps that happen but he fouled me five times on the same mark. I’m fairly certain they were quite intentional but whatever. The other thing that I remember is that I started to get on track defensively in this game. I didn’t play a single O point all tournament so I figured I had to earn my keep on defense. It was just after half and it was still a close game when I had a nice little run to put the game out of reach. We put a zone on them and I was one of the deeps along with Paul Greff. We managed to get Mileage pinned on the far sideline and from my deep position I could see the handler looking for the cross field hammer. I inched closer in and was just sitting on the throw. The second the handlers arm cocked back I broke on the impending throw. It was a bit of a gamble but I was pretty sure that the hammer was going to go up and thankfully it did, otherwise I would have looked like a bit of a fool. I did find it a bit amusing that I had to run by two of my team mates to get to where the throw was going but I guess they weren’t anticipating the same thing. I got to the handler just slightly before the throw did and didn’t just get the block but somehow I caught it too. We worked the disc up the field and got the score. On the next point I did the same thing on a hammer thrown to a popper in the middle of the field and we had ourselves a comfortable lead. On the following point I tried the same thing again but was a moment too late and ended up looking like a fool as Mileage worked it up with no opposition. Well two out of three ain’t bad. At least I managed to get the turns to build up our cushion that allowed us to cruise to the win.

Our third game of the day was against Troubled Past, the number one team in the tournament. These guys were so well prepared for the tournament that they had two physios/massage therapists on their sidelines just waiting to help their players work through any knocks. They were quite good-looking so I’m pretty sure that those old guys were actually spending more time than they really should have been getting their “aches” worked on. Aside from that these guys were a bunch of complete pricks. It was a chippy game, apparently there is a lot of history between DoG and these guys (old Double Happiness). Even though we had close games with them none of the DoG guys were scared of them. One of my team mates (to remain unnamed) even said to me, “These guys want to lose because it’s easier for them to complain about not winning than it is for them to actually win.” In the end that statement proved quite prophetic as we edged them out for a 17-16 win. Considering we took half 8-5 and let them back into the game in a big way it wasn’t the greatest performance but at least we won the game. We played just well enough to barely beat them. Our offense was pretty clean (except when we let them back in the game) but our defense had some trouble capitalizing on their mistakes. I played about half the game due to a calf cramp that I got when I had to push off my left leg in a very awkward way to catch a swing pass from Zas. I managed to catch the pass but I had to take myself off. Jeff Brown, our D captain, shut me down after that. It was a bit stressful watching the rest of the game but I was surprisingly not worried about the end result. We had the disc at 14-13 to win the game but ended up letting them tie it at 14s. I got a bit more worried at that point but we managed to trade the game out to 17-16.

And so ended my first day at UPAs. I was hoping to get the full experience of UPAs, which meant a dip in the Gulf of Mexico at the end of the day but the schedule is setup now such that by the time we got home it was already dark and time for some dinner. The most I got was some stolen hot tub time over at the PBC.

Day two details to come later.

DF