Cal States 2009

Cal States is one of my favorite tournaments and provides an interesting early season glimps at the best west coast teams. I only had a chance to watch Open and Mixed this past weekend, so here's what I got.

Notes from the Open Division:
NW:
Tier 1:
Jam: Didn't get so see much of the defending champs, but I did notice a lot of roster changes. Gone: Bruss, Cissna, Gabe, Husak, Scow?, Steets, Woody?. more?
In: Julian (Kansas/CLX/Monster/BCBC), Tommy (Cal), Fast Asian Guy (MagnUM), Johnny Hester (Condors), Ian Ranahan (Revolver), Will Chen (Harvard, Stanford Coach). Maybe more?
As long as Damien is around, the team will be strong.

Revolver: This years Revolver team has the most team speed I have ever seen. An already very fast team with Chapman, Weisman, Martin, and Jit has added Ashlin (Davis), Cassidy (Santa Cruz), and BEAU (word on the street is that there might be a late addition). Damn. It didn't look like they were challenged all weekend. Oh, and Cassidy was unstopable in the finals (while being guarded by a high school tryout on Sockeye). He played every O point and had 2 goals and 2 assists with 0 turns and 1 awesome spike.

Sockeye: Looks like they should be keeping Skip and adding BJ and Kurt Gibson. I hope they take The Sultan, and we'll see if Seth chooses to play club or just focus on team USA. There were some other no shows this weekend, but I have no info on that front.

Tier 2:
Portland: Looks like Thompson High from regionals with more bodies. More skilled then Rhino, less desire // work ethic. Their fate depends on Aaron Richards.

Rhino: A fast hard working team. Didn't see any UO guys, but they do have finals next week, so Solstice might show a fastly differend Rhino team. They seem like the team most prone to runs, either for or against.

Scumbags: Looks like they had a lot of fun. This team was sharing a bid with the Slugs, so there were a ton of players, with lots of them coming and going. It will be interesting to see what the roster looks like at Solstice, and how it changes at tournaments closer to the bay.

Shark (YR): It looked like their O line rotation wasn't nearly as tight as in years past. I think having Will the Thrill captain will really help that, and I think it could change the culture of the team. Loosing 808, Joey D, Corey Lee, and Charles also changes things. They had a strong showing, but it looks like some of their stronger tryouts decisded to play elswhere (Fedi from Arizona, Kissman, and Jamison from tide).

SW:
Tier 1: Only contains Bravo until proven otherwise.

Tier 2:
Condors: AKA Black Tide alum from '06 or later with some SLOCore. Look for them to improve as the season goes on, while having the best fundimentals of any tier two team. The SB isolation will help the Tide, especially if Husak and Steets decide to come out for the later half of the season. Word on the street is that Dugan will be around to help, but will be playing masters with DoG come fall time.

LA (Strike-Slip): LA is once again full of talent, but it's all from different college programs that teach different things. The team will take time to jell, and they need to get on the same page ASAP. The team also seems short on blue-colar type players. To many people who are used to being the star. Until their downfield cutters work hard consistantly, they are going to have issues. I predict Dr. Buel will bring it all together. Also, a lot of their hopes rest on where Matt Welsh decides to play.

SD (Street Gang): The actually united Sand Diego team looked very strong, and a lot less like a Squids Only club than either PBR or SD United looked. They also emerged as the potentially dominant team in SoCal for the season. If this weekends results (and team rosters) are any indicators, I'd expect SD vs LA in the Game to Go come regianls with SD going back to Nationals for the first time since '05.

Notes from the Moxed Devision:

A lot of teams in the Mixed devision are waiting on Womans teams to anounce their rosters. Mischeif and CTR are not among those teams. Scotty Conway was playing with the home town people after playing with Flycoons last year and Family Style before that.

Personal: I played co-ed this weekend working on my recovery from ACL surgery. I felt faster than last time I played (Memorial Day), but I think I was limping a bit more. I've decided to stop climbing for the next two weeks and focus more on rehab. Hopefully I'll be able to play Open come Solstice, if not, maybe I can find a co-ed team to take me.

My Future in Ultimate

I've spent a lot of time this summer facing obstacles in the advancement of my ultimate carrier, at least, in how I saw it going while I was in college. I always thought I'd make an elite club team within the first two years I graduated from school, and that I'd be traveling around the western US playing high level disc. Well, by the time DUI ended I had been cut from both Jam and Revolver, and I had to settle on how to spend my summer.

If I was still in school at Claremont, the decision of where to play would have been easy. All I would have to do is find the best way to get better individually over the summer off season. Well, seeing as I no longer have a college team as a reason to devote myself to individual improvement, I had to reconsider my reasons for playing competitively. I thought about my personal goals in Ultimate, and decided to by into Yeager's desire to improve the UCSC program.

I agreed to co-captain a team with him, and once again became excited about the game. I wanted to help the Slugs, and have an outlet for playing quality disc with friends (of course, being in a position of leadership wasn't a downside). I also told Yeager that, seeing as I was helping to captain a Slug centric team for the summer, I'd be more than happy to help the Slugs prepare for the college series in whatever capacity I'd be useful. Even with these new reasons for playing the club season, I was unsure of my individual aspirations.

After a couple of practices with our fledgling team, Yeager and I led a rag tag bunch of 14 to solstice and wound up winning the open devision. This promising result, combined with picking up some Stanford kids and a couple more Yay Area club players started to get me reall stoked about the team's potential, and I dedicated myself to actually getting in good shape for Ultimate. Then, right as I had started to get into a grove in terms of workouts, feeling a little in shape, and even climbing reasonably strong (flashing easy 11s, redpointing some harder 11s and working on some easier 12s, still only climbing v5 though, I hadn't broken back into the 6s) I tore up my knee.

Injuring my knee brought me out of focusing on the short term success of SCUC (the Santa Cruz Ultimate Club, sort of what we settled on for a club name, we can still have different team names at tournaments), and back to thinking about my long term plans for ultimate. When I told my boy Robin I was no longer sure of why I play the game he responded "I think I get it. You've invested a lot of time in the community and you're well respected within it. You also have a lot of potential to advance your standing."

Robin is right, it's easy to know I'll continue to play ultimate for a long time just from the fun I have playing, and my involvement in the community. The real question is what are my competitive aspirations. I guess in every short term situation I play for my teammates (and therefore will remain dedicated to the SCUC guys this summer), I've just been struggling with finding a reason I play for myself.

I understand that at 22 I'm still young and have a lot of disc still ahead of me, but I'm no longer sure I'll need to play on the absolute best teams to fill my competitive aspirations. I'll still want to push myself athletically, and playing elite is one way to do that, but wanting to play elite is no longer the main reason I play competitive ultimate. I guess what I do next summer will really answer the questions I have about my competitive aspirations. Either I push myself to get in shape for the tryout season and dedicate myself to the process, or I show up in not the best shape again, and wind up playing with a second tear team for another summer (and likely many more). It seems that in the end I can't come up with the answer just sitting at my house and over-thinking it. I do know I want to make it back to open club nationals, and I would enjoy playing playing with the best. I also know that I don't have to play with the best to be satisfied, I just need teammates.

Word.

P.S. I really appreciate the concept behind Bob's WDUPU series.