And Then "Loser Beer" Became "Winner Beer"

It's been a hectic past few weeks so I haven't been able to finish up the thoughts I've been wanting to put down on paper but I'll give it a shot here. First off, I'd like to congratulate my nephew for being a trooper and finishing up his chemotherapy and hopefully putting the leukemia behind him for good. Ben, you had a lot of people worried sh**less but you didn't let it get to you. Of course at one and a half years old he didn't realize what was going on but good for you anyway.

I think I left off my last post with DoG winning UPAs. We didn't celebrate enough in my mind but I can see how for someone like Mooney, who was attending something like his 20th UPAs and winning at least his seventh title, it can get a bit old. Well I was ecstatic; Master's or not, it was a big thing for me. I think I recall most of what happened that evening but there were some beverages going around. We got our medals and celebrated at the fields for what seemed like hours. Shaggy and Eric were there too celebrating their semi-final appearance with Goat; I think they were as excited as I was about their first UPA appearance as well. One thing is for sure, I wasn't anywhere near as drunk as they were but then again the two hours I spent playing the finals they spent in the beer garden pounding back the free "loser beer". Advantage, Eric and Shag. I absolutely loved how all weekend the old guys were refusing to touch the free beer because it’s “loser beer”. You only get to touch it once you’re done; for most people that happens once they are eliminated but for a select few “loser beer” becomes “winner beer”. Damn, “winner beer” tastes real good!

Eventually we made the move to some restaurant with the name Turtle in it for a celebratory DoG team dinner. The second to last game of the World Series was on the big screen so all the Red Sox fans on the team (everyone) was too busy watching that. We went back to the condos and half the crowd went off to the beach to party and the other half went out to the bar. The bar sounded like it was a little too crowded so I was happy with my decision to go to the beach. If I had gone to bar I would have missed Marshall getting introduced to a "dance move" called the pussy-bop by some drunk girl from Barrio. Apparently it requires Marshall to stand still with a stunned look on his face while the girl backs her rear end into him, leans over with her hands on the ground as she gyrates at about 360 bpm. Was it good for you Marshall, 'cause it sure as heck looked like it should have been? The alliterative trio of Matt, Marshal and myself spent the evening poaching beers and chatting up people on the beach. It seemed like the beach party was mostly Pike guys and Zeitgeist girls; since Matt and I didn't really feel like going around introducing ourselves to dudes we spent most of the night with the Zeitgeist girls (it's what JT would have done). The highlight of the beach party was overhearing two random guys introducing themselves to the ladies as "gold medalists from DoG". Good on you boys for using your imaginations while trying to score the ladies; I sincerely hope it worked for you whoever you are... as long as you didn't use my name.

It was quite the day/night/early morning. After a few hours of sleep I headed over to the fields and got there just in time to watch Fury put away Riot and then sat around to watch a very exciting but slightly sloppy men's final; the sloppy play almost entirely was due to the windy conditions but it was also what created a lot of the exciting plays. Case in point; the last point of the game. I can't even describe it, just go and check it out on Ultivillage.com. It was probably the craziest, most exciting point of ultimate that I've ever seen.

Eric and I headed over to the airport after that for our leisurely flight back to BTV to be followed by our drive back to Montreal. Leisurely, my ass! There were an awful lot of people sitting in the seats by our gate and sure enough the call for volunteers to skip the flight comes out. I didn't have a seat assigned and it turned out the flight was overbooked by just over 25 people! Eric of course has himself a seat but he couldn't really use it without me since it was my car that was parked at the Burlington airport. Evetually we pull one of the ladies at the gate away from some other irate passengers and rather then do like them and yell at her we asked her to see if there were any alternate flights to Burlington. Sure enough, an hour later there is a flight to DC and then to Burlington. Thank you very much, sign me up as a volunteer to skip this flight, give me my free flight voucher and put me on the later one. The best part was that we ended up getting to Burlington before our original flight.

What a weekend, going to my first UPA championship tournament, winning it and getting a free ticket to cover next years flight to UPAs (hopefully).

So beyond this being a trip of a lifetime, did I learn anything? Getting a chance to play with some of the legends of the game was great but it would have been nothing without having picked up a few pointers from those guys. Well, I learned a ton but most importantly how to win. I'm not sure it's something that you just describe to someone, I think they need to actually experience it to feel it. Winning requires a mental focus and desire above and beyond what you can normally get away with. It's deciding when you think that you are tired to push harder; it's never giving up; it's adding the extra bit of effort when you think that you have given your all and then trying to give even more. It's not just wanting to win, everyone does that well, it's realizing how hard it is going to be to win and being willing to pay the price. The human body gives you all sorts of signals to make you think that you are done, exhausted, drained, finshed. knowing how to win is being willing to put those feelings aside and push your body even harder and once you've reached that level still able to focus well enough to manage to do the simple things like throw. Like I mention before, it's a difficult feeling to describe because you need some skill to combine with the effort in order to win but I think the best example I can give is from my feeling going into the final.

We had about 30 minutes to go before game time and I was sitting on my duff thinking about how sore my arms and legs were and how heavy they felt. I didn't want to warm up, my body was telling me to lie down and fall asleep. I managed to start my warm up which was a bit of a challenge. While I was warming up my body didn't want to do certain movements and it would have been easy to shorten or modify my routine but I fought through that feeling and warmed up like I needed to. When the game started and it was time to play my legs felt heavy and sluggish. The easiest thing to do would have been to give the effort that my legs wanted to limit me to. Many players reach that level and give in to their bodies; those people are losers. I don't mean that they are losers as people but that more often than not they will be on losing teams. I didn't really understand Alex's comment that some people find it easier to lose than to win until we won the final. It's not that people choose to lose it's that they don't understand what is required to be able to give the effort that you need to give to have a chance of winning. They give into their brain all of a sudden deciding that second, third or fourth place really isn't all that bad. After the final was finished I was running all over the place and my legs felt light as a feather. In the end my legs were fine; all of the tiredness and soreness was entirely mental. It really helped that I was surrounded by phenomenal players with a history of winning but each player has to bring it or the entire team suffers. It's a feeling that I want to share with my team-mates on Mephisto because it's something very few of us have ever experienced, even if we think we have.

Aside from that there were some very game specific things, both tactical and strategic, that I learned and that I hope to begin to apply this upcoming year. I hope that DoG doesn't mind that I take their zone and teach it to Mephisto... because I'm just going to do it anyways. I also don't feel like giving away too much info that I learned from DoG through this blog since I don't want to give away too much info to my potential opponents (I am of course making an assumption that people actually read my drivel).

So that sort of summarizes my UPA experience in a brief or not so brief series of writings. What will I write about next? I think I'll go into my first tournament of 2008 and why they heck I'm stupid enough to start my season in January.

DF