dreamcup 2008

they say a wise man climbs mt fuji once; a fool climbs it twice. therefore i did not climb mt fuji again (and now you know what kind of mood i'm in: rambly and irrelevant). but i did get my fill of calpis and onigiri. oh combini, how i've missed you. unfortuntely, i got my fill friday night, shortly after i landed, when i ate, let's say, 5 onigiri and an egg salad sandwich in a go (an onigiri is a tightly packed ball of rice roughly the size of my left ventricle--assuming i'm not some grinch creature with a triply small heart--poor heart, always losing turf wars to my belly and bladder--and poo to you anatomy takers who say my bladder is not in my chest cavity, mom always said i was a special one).

alriiight, away from the land of the fighting organs, we venture back to our heroine, who has embarked from a 4 hour plane ride to board a 3 hour bus ride, arriving at her hotel at 3am, to rise at 6am for a 50 min 9am game. and then we had a 5 hour bye till our next and last game of saturday. sunday promised a max of 3 games provided we didn't lose any, which we didn't, but i had to leave before our last one to catch my 3 hour train ride back to narita, which means, i played something like 100 min of ulty...which is the equivalent of one savage league game. let's just say the organization of the tournament left something to be desired. going back to the numbers: there were 60 open teams, 40 women's teams, 12 mixed teams (approximately), roughly 5 portapotties, 2 spigots for water, 1 big cauldron of soup, 1 mochi pounder, and 0 second chances. i guess in that sense, it was good that our games were sparse...i don't think i could've survived a real tourney with such meager field food.

the format kinda killed us--the whole tourney was purely elim. we were an expat team of women who are more used to playing mixed. we had never played with each other before, most of us are out of shape (or so we claimed), and honestly, i thought we'd be a team of swing handlers...as in that third handler in the ho stack who rarely touches the disc b/c some godsend boy always makes the dump cut, holds, holds, waits for it...HUCKS! plus, rumors were it'd be windy at fuji...and given my performance at kaimana, i wasn't optimistic about our disc skills in the wind. needless to say, it took us that first 50 min to filter into our roles. both teams had a fair amount of drops and throwaways; we had to learn to take the initiative for that first cut. i was surprised by how physically the japanese girls played given their size disadvantage.

losing the first game dropped us into some sort of beer bracket where we won the rest of our games for the tourney (if we won that first game, we would've matched up against fury). i mostly played handler, which is actually kinda terrific b/c the j girls all used a relatively flat mark that gave me a lot of backhand hucks. towards, the end, i was bold enough to try a flick huck, which went exactly where i intended, but was misread and not caught (receiver error!). and yelena, remember how you told me i needed to get low to throw upwind? i actually remembered this time, and i came home with a massively sore right quad and a two day limp, but at least my throws didn't do that fluttery crap anymore.

i have a theory that most j teams play the same ultimate. the better teams are just faster and connect a higher percentage of throws. so, playing j teams is like playing a video game--you get to choose your level. but regardless of speed/precision, they all make their first cut breakside from the front of the stack. if that doesn't get open, their next option is the openside in cut from the back of the stack, which will come in for a bit before it turns into an away cut up the side, which will recieve a loopy outside in throw. by our second game, we figured out a good switchy man d where the first man in the stack lines up on the break side of her girl, the second person covers io-ish, the last back is last back, and the second to last back covers in cuts. it worked well, at least for the level of teams we were playing.

by the second game, i had turned into the drill sargeant, running warmups and calling lines. not sure why, but women seem much more coachable than the mixed crowd i deal with in hk. maybe this is an unfair generalization, but what really struck me is the up calls, the counting of completed passes, the general encouragement and positivity. our team was a team of small egos (except mine) and hard workers. this is what salvaged the whole experience for me. we actually played very good ultimate, making the easy pass, dumping and swinging, cutting and clearing. we did a trap-dump drill, and then we actually implemented it during the very next game! we've been doing that drill for over a year in hk, and we still don't get it right. this tourney and kaimana make me realize just how much i miss women's ultimate.

and of course, i got to hang with katie wilson and her boobs (have we named them yet? and if not, why not? suggestions are welcome in the comments. hell, comments are welcome in the comments too). katie was sober the entire time that i saw her, but we still managed to get in some quality conversations about poop and butts. my favorite occurred while i was straddling her back, digging my elbows into her butt:

k: "can you feel that huge knot in my butt?"
me: "um, i dunno, i don't generally have lots of nerves in my elbows."

haha ha ha...ok, maybe you had to be there, BUTT (HA HA, um...) we had a good time freaking out the japanese bystanders. and she introduced me to some of her star teammates, which kinda went like this:

k: "hey guys, this is my friend lily"
me (waving frantically): "hi guys! wow! you're fury! wow! i mean, i'm not impressed, i'm cool, we're cool, yeah, cool. SNORT".

i didn't even try approaching sockeye...i might've pee'd myself. apparently, my living in asia has totally up'd the star quotient of good ulty players.

and now i'll pause and take a breath...