Hi guys, sorry this is a little late, but since returning on Tuesday I've been pretty busy.
We started the trip to Wildwood, NJ at about 8:30 on Thursday night. I can't believe it's already been a week since we left for that trip...time flies. I've never driven through the night before so I was a little nervous, but with the help of Mr. Shane Clapsaddle we managed to survive...it probably helped that he drove through the misty mountains and the garbage pit that is Rural New Jersey. I have to say, Pennsylvania won the award for favorite state to drive through. We took I 70 rather than 80 (the way I went to NYC last semester) and it took us through some awesome mountain tunnels.
After spending ultimately waaay too much time driving through New Jersey (mapquest told us to take a bunch of 2 lane highways and the traffic getting to Wildwood sucked) we finally arrived at approximately 12:30pm on Friday. Reynolds and company weren't there yet to check us into the hotel so Shane, Ashley, Whorehouse and I threw on the beach for a while. Apparently it had rained the night before and since Wildwood's beach is basically a bunch of sand hanging out on slabs of cements the water didn't absorb, leaving the sand almost clay-like with puddles everywhere. The Sandblast snob in my was thinking "omg Montrose is so much nicer than this POS"...which it is, but it soon became obvious that I was dealing with two very different tournaments...both wonderful in their own ways.
Brenton and my CT team arrived later that night. 6ish maybe? I don't really know...I was a zombie from all of the driving and lack of sleep. Luckily I managed to snag a nap in before meeting up with Dethklok (my team) because within moments of setting my bags down in the hotel room the party began. The rest of the night was a blur of boardwalk...go karts...captains' check in party...shot gunned beers...and a variety of other things. Basically it was a great night, but I was most definitely not a champion the next morning...hell, I sucked all day.
The fields were still pretty crappy on Saturday. There were a lot of puddles and the sand was still mushy. Playing, however, was a lot of fun. There were about 100 fields on the beach and 200 teams, so you had a bye between every game. My byes were spent hanging out with the team I traveled to NJ with, eating, exploring and SWIMMING IN THE OCEAN...which is awesome, minus the salt water. Our games didn't go well the first day. It's not that my team played poorly (except for me...I was a very useless waste of space), we just got put in a ridiculously tough pool and went 0-4. boo.
After taking a nap and cleaning up I headed to the tournament party. You can't really go wrong with free beer on the beach. Sadly, the party only went until 10, so Brenton and I hit up the rides afterward, specifically the ferris wheel, where we were lucky enough to be seating in a car with three really awkward non-English-speaking hispanics. This was mainly a problem for Brenton, who was in hyper-talkative mode. It was an interesting sight. haha. After our ferris wheel/boardwalk adventure we went to Reynolds' and company's hotel where we were promptly kicked off the roof. haha, so we headed to the Bolero, the club where tournament party #2 was being held. It was awesome! I was dancing all over the place, meeting lots of East Coast ultimate players, and after bouncing off the walls for about 45 minutes I say down...and fell asleep. That's right, I fell asleep at the bar. Nice. Work. Emily. I figured this meant it was time to go, so I went back to the hotel and I was out by 1am.
The nice thing about being lame Saturday night was that I felt great Sunday! Our games didn't start until 11am so I was finally well-rested and ready to go. The sand was now fluffy and wonderful and I played about 903824 times better that day and...I usually don't like to toot my horn, but I'm going to. In one game a guy on our team, the fabulous Mazur, suggested that I try hucking to him end zone to end zone to go for the 2-pointers. We did this four times which = 8 points. Yup...I felt pretty badass. We went 3-0 that day despite two of our players going to the hospital. If there's one word that could describe how we played Sunday it would be...
METAL
This ended the most eventful parts of the weekend...all in all this tournament receives an A+. Very different from sandblast, but both are great. I definitely plan on going back again next year and continuing Dethklok's reign of terror.
-Emblebee
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Sandblast 09 - The Year of the Globetrotter
First off, sorry for the lack of posing. I ended up not going to Hoosier Hoedown. With Sandblast and Wildwood coming up I wanted to give my knee a weekend off.
This is my third year doing Sandblast and the third year I've come off the field after one point thinking..."shit, did the sand hurt my toes this much last year?!" Yeah, my toes hurt.
This year my team went as the Montrose Globetrotters. Breakmark hooked us up with some sweet jerseys and we wore the red and white striped shorts we "borrowed" from ISU. We looked pretty amazing. Despite our sweet unis, Satuday didn't go terribly well for us. Two of the teams we played ened up in the championship. The first game Brooke Etnyre and her band of Sandy V's beat us, followed by a defeat handed to us by Sun's out gun's out, then some team, and finally a team from California that ended up winning the whole thing.
Highlights:
-Eric Huber Somehow managed to keep his afro wig on all day while playing...I never saw it come off. Scratch that...Jess Kadjo put it on...and she looked almost as good it in. A quote from Pete "Eric has way too many things he can throw off his head on right now" haha. Gnomes know.
-Hey, we weren't getting as many points as we would have liked, but we didn't have some pretty stellar defense.
-After our games were done I wandered over the the spirit division and found the Wedding Party team. They gave me a drink from their open bar. Right after that Jessica's team, Mile High Club, gave me an awesome apple pie shot. It was so great. I got whipped cream all over my face. ha.
-I had my hair in some straight up corn rows all day. I received many compliments and a lot of people didn't recognize me. Props to Amanda Gregorich for hooking me up. I loved them. No hair in my face! Luckily Amanda wants to do them again...but in crazy designs. Get ready, this won't be the last tournament I wear them to.
-Doug being tall. Glad to have you back!
After a rough day of ultimate we headed to Uncle Fatty's for a rough night of drinking, and by rough I mean KUHE)*(UYI#(*HFJE AWESOME. Free drinks from 7-11...HOLLERRRR. I definitely got my dance on and had a great time. This was my first bar-hosted ultimate party I've been to and holy shiiiit it was amazing. I'm not really sure how Jessica, Lauren and I managed to navigate back to the hotel (which was the Hilton Palmer House...um glorious). By that point I had convinced myself that my phone was broken and proceeded to beat it up on the el. Yeah...the battery had run out. When we got back I had difficulties finding the light switch and just kept turning all the lights in our room on and off. I hopped into bed...but didn't stay there very long. Apparently I ended up on the floor and Pete stepped on my face. Thanks a lot, Pete. I also terrorized Doug late into the night. Sorry, man.
Sunday I woke up, felt pretty good, and proceeded to play horrendously in our first game. OH GOD, I was a very pathetic excuse for an ultimate player. Defense didn't happen...throws were terrible...yikes yikes yikes. Fortunately I sobered up for the next game and managed to start playing the way I should have been playing. k. good. We beat the first team, Just the Tip from NY. Their team featured a special appearance from Nick, the Normal/New Zealand dude who's been playing with Status Quo. He was also apparently a champion at the party, nice work Nick! We also won our second game against Loyola folk. sweet....then we rested for 2 hours, ate burritos, played in and out box (RYAN STILL OWES ME ZEBRA STRIPES), took naps, explored, and by the time we came back for our 3rd game we were hella tired. We lost and ended up taking 18th place. woooo way to break seed (20th).
All in all...I give the weekend an A+. Hooray Globetrotters!
And next weekend...WILDWOOD.
This is my third year doing Sandblast and the third year I've come off the field after one point thinking..."shit, did the sand hurt my toes this much last year?!" Yeah, my toes hurt.
This year my team went as the Montrose Globetrotters. Breakmark hooked us up with some sweet jerseys and we wore the red and white striped shorts we "borrowed" from ISU. We looked pretty amazing. Despite our sweet unis, Satuday didn't go terribly well for us. Two of the teams we played ened up in the championship. The first game Brooke Etnyre and her band of Sandy V's beat us, followed by a defeat handed to us by Sun's out gun's out, then some team, and finally a team from California that ended up winning the whole thing.
Highlights:
-Eric Huber Somehow managed to keep his afro wig on all day while playing...I never saw it come off. Scratch that...Jess Kadjo put it on...and she looked almost as good it in. A quote from Pete "Eric has way too many things he can throw off his head on right now" haha. Gnomes know.
-Hey, we weren't getting as many points as we would have liked, but we didn't have some pretty stellar defense.
-After our games were done I wandered over the the spirit division and found the Wedding Party team. They gave me a drink from their open bar. Right after that Jessica's team, Mile High Club, gave me an awesome apple pie shot. It was so great. I got whipped cream all over my face. ha.
-I had my hair in some straight up corn rows all day. I received many compliments and a lot of people didn't recognize me. Props to Amanda Gregorich for hooking me up. I loved them. No hair in my face! Luckily Amanda wants to do them again...but in crazy designs. Get ready, this won't be the last tournament I wear them to.
-Doug being tall. Glad to have you back!
After a rough day of ultimate we headed to Uncle Fatty's for a rough night of drinking, and by rough I mean KUHE)*(UYI#(*HFJE AWESOME. Free drinks from 7-11...HOLLERRRR. I definitely got my dance on and had a great time. This was my first bar-hosted ultimate party I've been to and holy shiiiit it was amazing. I'm not really sure how Jessica, Lauren and I managed to navigate back to the hotel (which was the Hilton Palmer House...um glorious). By that point I had convinced myself that my phone was broken and proceeded to beat it up on the el. Yeah...the battery had run out. When we got back I had difficulties finding the light switch and just kept turning all the lights in our room on and off. I hopped into bed...but didn't stay there very long. Apparently I ended up on the floor and Pete stepped on my face. Thanks a lot, Pete. I also terrorized Doug late into the night. Sorry, man.
Sunday I woke up, felt pretty good, and proceeded to play horrendously in our first game. OH GOD, I was a very pathetic excuse for an ultimate player. Defense didn't happen...throws were terrible...yikes yikes yikes. Fortunately I sobered up for the next game and managed to start playing the way I should have been playing. k. good. We beat the first team, Just the Tip from NY. Their team featured a special appearance from Nick, the Normal/New Zealand dude who's been playing with Status Quo. He was also apparently a champion at the party, nice work Nick! We also won our second game against Loyola folk. sweet....then we rested for 2 hours, ate burritos, played in and out box (RYAN STILL OWES ME ZEBRA STRIPES), took naps, explored, and by the time we came back for our 3rd game we were hella tired. We lost and ended up taking 18th place. woooo way to break seed (20th).
All in all...I give the weekend an A+. Hooray Globetrotters!
And next weekend...WILDWOOD.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Summer in Blo-No
Hey readers, here's an update on what I've been doing this summer.
Brooke, Michelle and I traveled up to Chicago to scrimmage with Nemesis , Chicago's elite woman's team. Brooke and I ended up trying out and making it to the invite tryouts, but we both ended up dropping out. I really don't have the time or money to play for them next fall and I think Brooke dropped for the same reasons. I'm definitely glad I went to tryouts though. I learned a lot from playing with them which will help my game as well as the way I coach and teach next fall.
I've done two tournaments so far this summer, the first of which was Midnight Dream, a tournament played under lights in Whitewater, Wisconsin. I played with a BAP-assembled team called Huck Buddies and I believe we went 5-1 for the weekend. The team was mostly comprised of corn and discers...a handful of ISU players, a couple guys from Eastern, two from Lewis, two from Loyola and a few others including Andy Stringer, the guy who introduced me to ultimate back when i was in high school. The last tournament I played with him was Cooler Classic when I was 16 years old, so it was really cool to see how much he's improved after play a couple seasons with Johnny Bravo.
The second tournament I went to was Down With the Clown in South Bend, Indiana. I played with Prion, a club team from Champaign, Illinois who is graciously letting me play with them this summer. We went 4-3 for the weekend and took 5th, braking seed for 3 places. Going into the tournament I only knew three people I played with and I really enjoyed meeting everyone on the team. They're a lot of fun and Angelo Ramos, the captain, has a lot of knowledge about the game.
Other than the State Farm league (you have to be a state farm employee to participate), there isn't really a summer league for me to play on down here, so I've been relying on pickup to satisfy my ultimate appetite. I used to organize pickup on Tuesdays, but once State Farm league started I kinda stopped. Prion also practices on Tuesdays so I've been trying to make it to those. I've also made the trek to Peoria to play with the Parrots a couple times, which is always a good time. Too bad Manny is in DC : ( .
I've had issues all summer with an injured knee. I hurt it at sectionals...don't really know how, but I couldn't run on it for about a month. I couldn't get it checked out initially because there was some sort of mix up and I didn't have health insurance for a month...yeah, that was awesome. Hopefully I'll be able to get it looked at this week. I actually went into student heath services right after it happened...and they told me it was fine. hmm...
I've pretty much got my tournaments lined up for the rest of the summer. Depending on how my knee feels and what the doctor says I may or may not go to Hoosier Hoedown with Prion. The following weekend I've got sandblast with the montrose globetrotters, Wildwood in New Jersey with Brenton and company (!), The Rock with Prion probably (I'm very excited about this tournament...it's in my hometown, Rockford, IL), Cooler Classic with Prion....maybe Heavyweights? I dunno...what can I say, I hooked.
Aight, time to smoke some hookah with Josh and Col,
Emblebee Out
Brooke, Michelle and I traveled up to Chicago to scrimmage with Nemesis , Chicago's elite woman's team. Brooke and I ended up trying out and making it to the invite tryouts, but we both ended up dropping out. I really don't have the time or money to play for them next fall and I think Brooke dropped for the same reasons. I'm definitely glad I went to tryouts though. I learned a lot from playing with them which will help my game as well as the way I coach and teach next fall.
I've done two tournaments so far this summer, the first of which was Midnight Dream, a tournament played under lights in Whitewater, Wisconsin. I played with a BAP-assembled team called Huck Buddies and I believe we went 5-1 for the weekend. The team was mostly comprised of corn and discers...a handful of ISU players, a couple guys from Eastern, two from Lewis, two from Loyola and a few others including Andy Stringer, the guy who introduced me to ultimate back when i was in high school. The last tournament I played with him was Cooler Classic when I was 16 years old, so it was really cool to see how much he's improved after play a couple seasons with Johnny Bravo.
The second tournament I went to was Down With the Clown in South Bend, Indiana. I played with Prion, a club team from Champaign, Illinois who is graciously letting me play with them this summer. We went 4-3 for the weekend and took 5th, braking seed for 3 places. Going into the tournament I only knew three people I played with and I really enjoyed meeting everyone on the team. They're a lot of fun and Angelo Ramos, the captain, has a lot of knowledge about the game.
Other than the State Farm league (you have to be a state farm employee to participate), there isn't really a summer league for me to play on down here, so I've been relying on pickup to satisfy my ultimate appetite. I used to organize pickup on Tuesdays, but once State Farm league started I kinda stopped. Prion also practices on Tuesdays so I've been trying to make it to those. I've also made the trek to Peoria to play with the Parrots a couple times, which is always a good time. Too bad Manny is in DC : ( .
I've had issues all summer with an injured knee. I hurt it at sectionals...don't really know how, but I couldn't run on it for about a month. I couldn't get it checked out initially because there was some sort of mix up and I didn't have health insurance for a month...yeah, that was awesome. Hopefully I'll be able to get it looked at this week. I actually went into student heath services right after it happened...and they told me it was fine. hmm...
I've pretty much got my tournaments lined up for the rest of the summer. Depending on how my knee feels and what the doctor says I may or may not go to Hoosier Hoedown with Prion. The following weekend I've got sandblast with the montrose globetrotters, Wildwood in New Jersey with Brenton and company (!), The Rock with Prion probably (I'm very excited about this tournament...it's in my hometown, Rockford, IL), Cooler Classic with Prion....maybe Heavyweights? I dunno...what can I say, I hooked.
Aight, time to smoke some hookah with Josh and Col,
Emblebee Out
Who Am I? What Am I Doing?!
HI HI! I'm Emily Flanders, known to many as Emblebee, known to few as Tigo, and known to no one as b-squared. I've been fortunate enough to captain Illinois State's woman's ultimate team for the past couple years and I absolutely LOVE IT. Heading into my senior year I've decided to start an ultimate blog to share my experiences and shutff...much like RSK did for the manly gnomes...because I like to copy him.
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