We were out in field 3 for both our games this week and the sun was beating down on us hard. I have reached my one-year anniversary in GNV and have learnt that Florida actually has 5 seasons, Summer, Hurricane, Summer junior, two weeks of Fall in January, and Summer. Despite Shea’s great advice to the group to stay hydrated and to bring sunscreen, my pasty skin still isn’t used to the Florida sun and like most of the team, ended the day with an amazing farmers burn. Anyway, let’s get down to the Frisbee report! This week we played Absentia, who despite their new name, came out with an actual SQUAD! It was a great feeling having KJ and Jared back on the line after missing them last week, and knowing we had the speed of Matt and Chris Bailey in the middle of the field, the cutting power of Dawn, and the ever improving frisbee athleticism of Lars and Paul, I was excited! Unfortunately, our more experienced handlers kept over estimating the speed of our cutters, wind assisted over throwing in the end zone, combined with some unfortunate drops from Dawn, Bailey, and my inability to run down the disc caused a few turns that Absentia was able to capitalize on. But big props to Jacques for stepping up as handler when he was on the field playing O and making all his passes in this game connect! On that note, I am calling it now, give KJ a few more years of experience and his flick huck is going to be fire, what this guy lacks in experience at this point in his Frisbee career, he makes up for in spirit! Absentia’s Tommy and Raul were able to control the game from the handler space when they had possession, with great energetic cuts from Abbie and a FMP floater, Jules, and Jake Todd being consistently open – they were hard to defend. A travel call made on Lars set off a chain of petty calls in the middle of the game from both teams, before a chippy travel call was made on Max which gave this fired up player 2 extra gears of speed and made him un-defendable for a point or two. After this, both teams settled and regained their spirit for the last few plays of the game where the teams were able to prevent breaks from happening, but the damage was already done from the first half for Shaaron and we were unable to come back leaving the final score 5-8 to Absentia.
Our second game was against The Marsh Mermaids who came out on the field looking strong! We knew our team did not have the ponies to keep up with the dynamic duo of Coop and Billy, so we worked on our zone defense. Boy, did it pay off! After Dawn leaving for the second game and my first half collision with Matt left me half a player, we were able to pick up floater Jules, and she was easily our MVP today! She and KJ ran the cup with Paul and it forced Billy to play more up to help Cooper move the disc down field – we knew Coop loves hucking deep to Billy so making Billy work in the middle of the field left the deep throw unavailable for a lot of the game. However, when that throw was available, the connection between the two was magic and our deep defender, Jared, had his work cut out for him covering the speed of Billy when he was able to make it into the end zone. Mohammed, Reagan and Asa were popping in and out and Nathan and Ethan were able to draw out the wing. Dr. Anton seemed to be both in the handler space and in the end zone simultaneously, so I am guessing self-cloning is on his actual research agenda. Unlike the first game, we realized deep hucks weren’t going to happen, so we were much more patient on the offense giving multiple players opportunity to touch the disc, start making space, hit those big swings and resets, and giving our cutters time to come to the disc. Multiple great D’s on the wing from Matt and Shea and a few drops on our behalf including a very spirited down call from Bailey on his own team mate Matt in the end zone, kept the game very close. Hard cap was called after we had just scored to keep us in this game and NO ONE likes going to universe on defense. Nevertheless, just like the previous weeks and something that I am always going to applaud this team for, is that they do not quit and they push through with max effort until the game is done! The first turn came with an impeccable end zone D from Jared that gave us offensive possession. However, the Marsh Mermaids were able to turn it again with Cooper wanting to huck it, but an incredible hand block from KJ gave us another chance on O. A huge swing to Matt created space and left Bailey open for the easy throw into the end zone! Final score 9-8 to Shaaron!