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All Sorts of Sandy: Wildwood 2011
Except for the following bits which I learned in the last few hours about the competitive 2-2 division, parties and USA vs PoNY showcase game.
Party Q&A Number 1: Friday
Was there beer served for the 400+ captains who had to wait hours in line to register? Apparently not. Fail.
Was there a lotta dancing at the Bolero and fun n games on the Boardwalk? Yes.
Party Q&A Number 2: Saturday
Was the tournament video shot on Saturday and edited that night kinda cool? Yep
Did the beer at the beer tent on the sand run out with 400 people waiting? Yep. And one has to wonder: for a tournament gathering in which a staggering $143,000 is generated just by team registration (and an equally unsightly low number representing expenditures is conjoined) how is it humanly possible to run out of beer? There should be 150 kegs just on standby. There is simply no excuse for that. This tournament used to have free and very tasty food after the games and that's gone and the expense is the same. I would wager tournament organizers are pocketing 10-15K easily from this tournament. Turns out that capitalism and ultimate DO go together, who knew?
USA vs PoNY Showcase Game
During the aforementioned beer freeze and, I guess, some of the beer consuming too, the tournament set up a showcase match between USA and a gathering of New York PoNY players who were down for the weekend competing on various different teams. This would be USA's first and only real 5-on-5 open game before Italy as sand events preceding had either been coed (Sandblast, Wildwood), scrimmages (versus us, Team USA Masters) or 4-on-4 (Wildwood again). but in this game they extended the field to BULA 5-on-5 and brought out the big guns and wow -- what a difference. The conservative give and go offense that looked, at times, ineffective for USA at Sandblast and WW was nowhere to be seen. Instead nothing but streaking deeps, massive under cuts and huge field length bombs for scores by both teams but far more effectively by Team USA. Their defensive speed and pressure was also highlighted as they put a thorough beatdown on PoNY and impressed all watching and the video crew filming it [full discretion: i was a commentator for the action and if it ever sees the light of day you can heckle me for my miscues].
Except for those at the beer tent because they were blocked from watching the game by ugly plastic neon orange terrorist fence material used at Guantanamo Bay. So you either had the choice of drinking beer (at least it was good beer -- Magic Hat came from one of the taps) or watching the showcase game but you couldn't do both. Or if you were wise you waited until the $143,000 worth of beer ran out and ran over to watch the action.
Competitive (called the Open division) 2-2
Here's what I got from Kim Tischler and Drew Jones who played in this division on the team People I Like (Plus Drew Jones)
Drew: "We lost in semis to Hennessy [at Halftime] 13-16. Stout, Teddy and Cal were tough to overcome."
Kim: "We lost in the semis to Hennessey. Great game. Mostly everything we did ran through our women. They mainly used their men namely Stout and Calvin. O-Pig bested them [Hennessey] in the finals in a big way. Fans were denied a third game."
Don't remember how I stumbled on this so much after the fact, but I must tell you I absolutely love that you freely express how you feel about ultimate events. When I do that, I seem to be shunned - as if I must maintain the exact same opinions about ultimate [or specifically, women's ultimate] because I am a women's player. Kudos to calling it like you see it.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot wrong with this sport. Glad there is a growing number of people who recognize it.