Chasing Discs

5/12/12 - Gnarly Gnines Frisbee Tournament

Gnarly Gnines is a one day tournament in Burlington WA.  There are 9 games, played to 9 points, and it all starts at 9AM.  Oh and you can only have 9 people on a team, giving each team one male and one female sub.

Initially I didn’t sign up to play, but earlier this week some Boom teammates Patrick and Sarah, said they might need an extra girl would I be interested.  The weather forecast was gorgeous, and after missing games last week from being sick, I felt I definitely needed some more Ultimate in my life.

So Saturday morning, found me driving up to Burlington where I met up with the Ghengis Khan Wild Team, WWGKWD?.  Patrick and Sarah had picked up with them, and then I did too.  But as the time for the first game drew near, the 4th woman, Shana, was no where to be found, and not answering her phone.  

So Sarah, Mckenzie, and I took the field for the first game Savage.  Our first few games were against top seeded teams; Rainmakers, Grief Bacon, and Ghetto Birds.  We lost to Rainmakers and Grief Bacon 9 to 2, and then gave Ghetto Birds a bit of a run for their money.  Ghetto Birds has really outstanding men, and ok women, so we had 3 male handlers stacking our cutting line with Mckenzie, Sarah, and myself.  This generated a ton of offense for us.  

On one point I got trapped near the sideline, and no one up field and my dumps weren’t getting open.  On stall 9 I saw Sarah standing in the end-zone with a bit of separation from her defender, so I put up a blade straight to her, and she caught it!  I was so ecstatic!  We hugged after that.  It was awesome!  

I believe we lost the game 9 to 6, stopping their men from playing the deep game was our downfall.

Our 4th game we came out hard, taking the first few points, and we took our first half time!  We then went on to win the game!  

Game 5, I started to feel it a bit.  I was mostly handling, which did help save my legs, but it would have been nice to have a sub.  In game 5 we played space invaders, and it was so close.  They won 8 to 7 on Universe point.  We had a few chances and just made a few mistakes.

Game 6 & 7 we also won.  I continued to handle, Sarah and Mckenzie continued to be cutting machines.  And we all just continued to have a great time.  I really enjoyed playing with this team.  Everyone was super chill, fun and good spirited.  

During game 6 I took off upfield from handling, and kept going.  Patrick got the disc under and put one up in the endzone for me to grab.  It was coming in fast and a bit bladey, but I turned around and reached over my much shorter defender to pull it in!  It was awesome.

After 7 we had a break where they reseeded the teams and put us into brackets of 4.  WWGKWD?  was seeded 8th.  We went up against the 5th seed Jumanji, and fell apart a bit.  Jumanji was another strong team made up of a lot of club and ex-club players.  They threw a junkie zone which it took us a while to figure out.  We eventually did and scored a few times, but Jumanji easily took the game.  

Our 9th and final game of the day was against a team we’d already played, Snails.  We had won fairly hand-idly, and none of us were super psyched to play again.  I was really hurting in game 9.  We scored the first 2 points, then let Snails score 5 unanswered.  We were just tired and making mistakes.  At half time we all decided that we wanted to win it, and that we were willing to make it happen.  We came out guns blazing in the second half, and eventually took the game 8 to 7 on a hard cap.  I was so happy that on the last point Sarah, Mckenzie, and myself were integral to working the disc up the field!  Savage ladies rock!.

Overall I felt good about my play.  I had a few bad throws, but over the course of handling for 9 hours that is going to happen.  I also had some great throws, and some sticky hands today.  I was catching lots of crazy things. 

We finished the day 7th out of 14 teams.  Overally it was an amazingly fun day.  I had a blast, and even though I was completely exhausted there is nothing I’d rather do than spend 9 hours playing Ultimate!