Club 2009 - Monster

This year marked the first time I played in the Open division of the Club series. I had some exposure to Open Club last summer when I attended a couple of Monster's early practices, but that ended once they had their team together and I ended up playing Mixed, where we got our butts handed to us. (I had fun, but that story will come at another time.)

At any rate, this being the summer between my second and third year of Ultimate, I wanted to get involved with a good team and really get some good work in to get prepared for the upcoming college season. The season started with a hat tournament that was used as a tryout for the LA team that was being put together (named Strike Slip). The tournament was a lot of fun, as I was put on a team with a lot of people that I'd never played with before. Unfortunately, in our first game Scott Roeder put a disc that I had to awkwardly bid for, and it flared up a weird knee injury that I had incurred previously. I didn't play very well the rest of the tournament, having to sit out multiple games. If I remember correctly, our team won the tournament, or at least made it to the championship. Either way, we played really well and meeting all these new guys was one of the best things to come out of the weekend. (Half the fun I have at tournaments, in general, is hanging out with people and making new friends.)

Due to the fact I never officially signed up for the tournament, the people in charge of the team (from this point forward, the team will be referred to as SS) didn't have my contact information. No matter, I tagged along with a couple other Long Beach guys to a pickup game that SS was hosting. It was at this particular pickup that I really found out what playing Club was all about. Man, could these guys throw, and boy do they play hard. I'm thinking, Yes, this is exactly what I was hoping would happen. I held my own pretty well, though I got beat deep a couple of times because of my ignorance at the throwing ability of the other guys, and I had a couple uncharacteristic drops, but that's how things go.

The next two days were the official team tryouts, held at Cal State Long Beach. Mostly, the captains, Geoff and Bofa, talked about the offense they were planning on running, and we did a couple drills that helped us get a better understanding of it. We would drill, scrimmage a little, drill again, and scrimmage again. This is how a majority of the weekend went. On Sunday, I played possibly one of the best games of my life, just dominating all over the field. I felt really good. Really, really good. I was pretty sure I was gonna make the team, and was excited about the possibilities for the season.

The first tournament SS went to was Cal States, held in Santa Cruz, California. SS used this as a tryout tournament, as a last evaluation to see where we all stood as players and how we played in a tournament setting. Let's just say it didn't go well for me. I played pretty good defense, but I was terrible on offense. Things were way more chaotic than during the tryout scrimmage. I never had a cutting lane, hardly ever got open, it was HARD. I had a couple guys come over and tell me to just be more aggressive with my cutting and I'd get the disc more. That was encouraging and all, but I'm used to making a deep cut and the disc just being there. That's kind of how our college team works, because our guys aren't afraid of putting it deep and letting me do my thing. (It appears that that's going to change this year, much to my dismay, but that's also another story.) At any rate, I wasn't the only one not playing well, and we were playing some really good teams, so we ended up 0-5 in pool play, 1-6 (?) for the tournament.

We were told we'd be contacted during the week about our status on the team. On that Wednesday I received a phone call from Geoff. Immediately there was an awkward feeling, so I wasn't anticipating good news. The most important statement that was made was that the decision to not have me on the team was because I "wouldn't be able to contribute in the last games to go to Nationals." While I disagreed (as have a number of close friends in the Ultimate community), I could understand where they were coming from. I wasn't going to have any hard feelings about it. Plus, I just used it as motivation to work hard and get better moving forward. All the guys on the team are cool guys, and I made it a point to go out of my way to greet and chat with them whenever I saw them at other tournaments. SS eventually lost to Streetgang in the game to go to Nationals. Whether me being on the team would have made a difference or not, who knows? Maybe they don't even make it that far if I'm on the team, or maybe we go to Nationals. At any rate, I wasn't on the team and I had to figure out something else to do for the Club season. To this day I appreciate SS giving me the opportunity to play with them for the short time I did, and for taking me to the first Open Division club tournament I'd ever been to. I look forward to playing with/against all of those guys in the future.

At this point, there were a few Long Beach guys who were still in the area and wanted to keep getting some work in. In addition, there were some Irvine and UCLA guys who were interested in doing some practices. So, Keegan decided he'd try to make this a team all on its own. We wouldn't be great, but we'd be pretty good while developing a little more team chemistry for the college team, and building camaraderie with the guys in the surrounding areas. We were having very productive practices every Tuesday, working through a couple drills before having some competitive scrimmages. We were getting pretty excited about playing together, looking forward to going to Chico and playing at Discos Calientes.

THEN there was a new development: Ed 'Biclops' Melo decided to resurrect LA Monster. He proceeded to recruit a lot of UCLA players, in addition to the Irvine guys who were coming to our practice. And a couple of us Long Beach guys. This team was obviously going to be much more organized, with a bit more talent and WAY more people to work with. So, we jumped ship. We still held our weekly practices, but the team we were putting together was no more. My focus had now shifted to playing hard for Monster and doing the best I could to improve and be ready for the college season.

It would take entirely too much time to list every person on the team and explain how awesome they all are individually. Instead, I will say that this team was truly fun to be on, with some of the most amazing personalities and attitudes I have ever had the pleasure of playing with. Guys would play their butts off on a regular basis, whether it be in important games or remedial drills. When we went to Arizona, I was more than willing to invite them to my aunt and uncle's house in Scottsdale. Knowing the character of the team I was supremely confident that they would represent our sport, ourt team, and myself well. And they didn't disappoint.

While we would run a vertical stack occasionally, particularly when things were going crazy or when we got close to the goal line, our offense was mostly through the horizontal stack. I hate this offense. Too many things can go wrong, in my opinion. Clearing out is difficult, cutting lanes are crazy, I just don't like it. Luckily, I was placed as one of the outside cutters most of the time, so I would end up just biding my time until I could make a deep cut. I wasn't hucked to as much as I would've liked, but that's obviously going to happen. Hucks are low percentage, for the most part, and our team was designed more for quick movement and moving the disc up the field on short in cuts. Thanks to our amazing handlers, this worked pretty well. We faltered a bit here and there (multiple turfs on our own goal line in the same game multiple times hurt us in a couple big games), but were pretty effective overall. And our defense was awesome. Everybody was running hard all the time, and our tight coverage caused more than a fair share of drops and bad throws by the other teams. Very similar to how important our defense is with the Stalkers.

A few specific highlights from the season:

-Our game against Strike Slip at Chico. Multiple players on Monster had been cut from SS, and we went into that game really fired up. They had no answer for our deep game as Stig and I spent the whole game dominating in the air. I have complete confidence that we would have won that game if we had scored our last goal BEFORE hard cap went off instead of AFTER. We lost 10-9, and that was the only time we got to play them all season.

-Ed eating fruit snacks WHILE he was playing a point. In the middle of a mark, even. AND commenting on it out loud. Hilarious.

-Matt Hennessey absolutely owning players on Seduction and Johnny Bravo. 

-Free breakfast sandwiches at the fields before gametime both days at Chico.

-Previously mentioned BBQ at my aunt and uncle's house

   -Domination by Penguin and Hennessey at Cornhole at said barbecue. ~30 wins in a row.

-Bishop hucking to Tommy 3 times in a row just to score 1 goal against Streetgang because there kept being calls during the same mark.

There's probably more that will come to me later, but that'll do for now.

All in all, the best teams we played didn't impress me that much. I'd always held club teams to a pretty high standard, but Johnny Bravo didn't blow me away (sidebar: I'm no longer a fan of Jolian Dahl, as good a player as he might be. But, Hylke Sneider impressed me a great deal), and I feel we were competitive (though the score won't show it) with Streetgang. These were some of the most competitive games of Ultimate I've ever played, and they were played at a higher level than I had ever experienced. I'm excited to see how my learning and experience will carry over into the college season, along with all my Stalkers teammates who were also playing this club season. 

Special thanks go out specifically to Ed for including me on this team. 

Looking ahead to next year, I will be attempting to start my own team. A blog explaining what I want that team to look like and how it will operate will be up in the near future. For now, I will leave you with this: