Wintercup 2007

Outcome: Top ranked after Day 1 (four out of four games won) Summary: Go team! Wintercup Day 1 at Kaiserslautern was an absolute blow out. Not only did we win all our games, we won them convincingly. Our worst point spread was 3 points, and our best was in the double digits. We continued the progress we had made at Haan, but this time a bit more maturity and an easier line-up of opponents gave us a high confidence level, so even the occasional mistake never got us down. Not that there were that many mistakes-- good solid disc work, precise cutting, and almost no dropped discs were certainly the defining characteristics of the day. We were feeling so good about our play and ourselves, I think we could have taken on the world.

The day got off to a bit of a rough start-- but not at the hall, just getting there. Brendan had had some trouble finishing Saturday night's drinking by 11AM Sunday morning, and yours truly got the convoy lost at the very first turn. Still, we gave ourselves plenty of time, and we wound up getting there exactly one hour early.

Kaiserslautern had an excellent hall. Nice, airy, and well lit by the sun. They even had a secondary hall where we could practice throws and drills before the first game. We took advantage of this to do a quick dump drill, which worked admirably. Not one single dump was dropped the entire day, and in fact very few passes at all were missed.

The first game against Ars Ludendi from Darmstadt started off with a bang. Not the good kind though— the foul kind. The first minutes of the game were peppered by foul calls, none of which were particularly dubious. Still, it got a bit much, so after the third or fourth foul call during just one point both teams relaxed a bit. The rest of the game was easily in our favor, and we swept on to a 14-5 victory.

The second against Porta Partisanen from Trier started relatively evenly. Trier wound up finding three pick-up players so that their 6 players wouldn't be utterly dead at the end of the game, giving them 7 men and 2 women to our 5 men and three women. They gave us a bit of heartburn over one or two particularly nice full-field throws for a point. In the end, Ultimate deLux pulled away but it was a good battle. So good and seemingly close, in fact, that for five minutes afterwards, Steve was utterly convinced that Trier had won the game. (We did, though-- 12-7.)

The third against Frau Rauscher, Frankfurt's women's team, was a blowout of sorts. We played our women as much as possible to try to even things out, but the difference in size, speed, and experience between the two teams brought a flurry of points. We wound up 15 to 3 at the end. Maybe next time we'll have enough players so we won't have to field four veteran players against a beginner's women's team.

The fourth against Main umwerfendes Frankfurt was clearly the hardest. We started off by losing the toss, and then the point. We tied the game back up, lost the third point, tied again with the fourth point, and on the fifth point forced a turnover putting us ahead 3-2. After that it was neck and neck with us ahead by one point, and just once getting ahead by two, before almost giving up the lead a few minutes later. However, around 10-9, we rallied and slowly pulled ahead to a three-point lead, finishing 14-11.

Thanks to all who played. It was a great day. Along with the eight deLuxers, we reinforced our position as Mother Tongue's little home away from home, welcoming Wayne Ziants a second time into our flock. Special thanks goes out to him-- Mother Tongue's mother, so to speak-- for picking up with us.

Outcome: 2nd place in league. Summary: Congratulations, Ultimate deLux! Wintercup Day 4 was a bruiser, but that didn't stop us. At the end of the qualification rounds, we're number 2 in the league, and are only two matches away from winning the entire Wintercup. Not bad for a new team, eh?

As for the Day 4 matches at Heilbronn, the final tally isn't telling. The team visibly improved as the day went on, especially considering that this was Hannah's first ever tournament, and only Bojan's second. We lost the first three games, but won the last, most cricital one.

Due to the rash of injuries taking out Fred, Steve, and Michael, we only had six people make the trek from Luxembourg to Heilbronn. We left at about 9AM, but wound up having to take a 10 minute detour through Trier on our way to give a ride to a Trier player because the exit we wanted to take was closed. We still got there with 30 minutes to spare, which was plenty, and set about warming up. It turns out that most of the other teams were in similar straits, having lost many of their players to the German national qualifications being held the same weekend.

Our first game was against the Dusseldorf Juniors. The Juniors are all, well, young, with the exception of their coach. We had a dramatic size advantage over them, but that wasn't enough. The Juniors knew how to run, catch, and throw, and they used it to their advantage. Many a pass was thrown to an open receiver making a great cut. It's awe-inspiring to see a 12 year-old kid catch a screaming knife throw for the point. We kept the game close, but at the end lost 10-11.

The second game was against Simple Mainz, which yesterday was basically a pick-up team. Since Mainz is home to one of the best teams in the nation, most of their players were gone and the team we played against only had one person from Mainz. (Not that we can complain, the Luxembourg team hasn't had anyone from Luxembourg yet in a tournament!) For the first 20 minutes we played a close game, but the fatigue of only having 6 players beat us down and we started making too many bad passes and bad cuts toward the end, giving up three points in a row for a final score of 7-10.

The third game was against 1st ranked Muggeseggele (say that 10 times fast!), a team of young players from Heilbronn who are just now growing into their prime. It was a very difficult game, as they had the experience of time (5 years playing together), the speed of youth, and the size of, well, adults. This team is definitely one to watch in the future. They played a zone against us all game, which had its effect since our beginners had never seen this before. With the help of some pickup players from Kaiserslautern and Trier, we managed to keep the game a lot closer, and felt much more energetic, but we still succombed to their superior style, losing 7-10.

The last game was against Heidees from Heidelberg. We had help again from some pickup players, and managed to take this one home. It was still a tough battle, with the lead swinging from team to team. At one heart-stopping moment, right after we tied up the game, the Heidees dropped the huckoff, giving us the disc right on their zone! Unfortunately, we lost the disc several seconds later, and the Heidees managed to get back the lead. However, we didn't let that get us down, and this time we wanted the win and went for it. We tied the game back up and in the end we managed to take a decent lead and hold onto it. We won 10-7, securing our place in the top bracket at the Frankfurt playoffs in two weeks.

Outcome: 2nd place after Day 3 (six out of seven games won, one tied) Summary: (Wait, what happened to Day 2? Well, each team in Wintercup only plays 4 out of the 5 days, so we didn't play Day 2.)

The lesson for this tournament is never to turn down a player no matter how sure you are you have enough. Something always happens, and this time it did. In spades. We played through it all, and had an excellent time playing, so the day wasn't a bust-- far from it in fact. Still, we learned some valuable lessons about underestimating one's opponents.

We started off by losing Hannah to sickness. Then after a harrowing early morning drive to Darmstadt-- Brendan must have gotten us there in just about 2 hours-- we settled down to play the fourth ranked team, Lauter Kleine Hechte from Kaiserslautern. The enthusiasm and energy we had arriving in Darmstadt might have been a bit much, as in one of the very first plays Laura was knocked down and out of the match. Things didn't improve much later on, as Michael went down a few minutes later to the exact same injury he had a month back. Fortunately, we managed to soldier on with the sterling help of Christian, a relatively new player from Mainz. The game was fairly well dominated by us, finishing up at 9 to 5.

The second game, against 11th ranked Mainzelmädchen, Mainz's women's team, started off okay, with us forcing a turnover and converting on the very first point. I'm not sure if it was arrogance, or fatigue, or inexperience, or what, but we had a bit of a rough time in the beginning. We couldn't manage to get a significant lead. The women just played too smart for us, using experience and wisdom to match our advantage in height, speed, and numbers. We went to 1-1, than scored to go to 2-1, then they tied it up at 2-2, and then we scored again for 3-2, and so on and so forth until about 6-5, when we stalled out and started giving up lots of discs. This might have had something to do with losing another player, Steve this time. At least he was original, getting himself sandwiched between Martin and a tall woman from Mainzelmädchen on a high jump, twisting his ankle for the first time this season.

At 6-5, the women scored, and turned around and scored again. We were now down 6-7. Whoops. While Martin's back was turned as he was coaching us on for the next point to retie the game, I noticed that the clock had just a few seconds on it. I tried to speak up, but I was too late-- the buzzer sounded. That meant we had exactly three passes after the huckoff before the game was over. And we were down by one point. The pressure on, Martin received and I went long as fast as I could to catch... nothing. I turned around and the disc was still stuck down on the other end. I tried running back out of the zone to clear some space for the next cutter, but before I had a chance, Martin snapped off a flick to Brendan, who then threw a sick continuation flick into the zone. Cursing him for what I thought was a sure miss, I went for it anyway. Fortunately, I didn't curse out loud, as I completely misread the disc and it floated into my hands for the game-tying point. 7-7. Whew.

The last game was against Ooups from neighboring Saarbrucken. Ooups is a young team with lots of potential, and was perfectly fresh, playing its first game of the day against us. We managed to not let that get to our heads, though, and with the extra help of one of Mainzelmädchen's mädchen, Barbara, managed to pull ahead early. Toward the end of the game, Brendan and Christian explained to the rest of the team that they weren't needed anymore, making a three point run with subtle variations on the theme of Brendan blocking the disc and then promptly throwing it to a masterfully cutting Christian for the point. Right at the end after the buzzer, we managed to score the point on the third and final throw, finishing the game 11-5.

Outcome: 2nd place Summary: Second ain't so bad! We aimed for first, but we managed a tie for second with Heilbronn, so any way you look at it, we did well.

The first game against Dusseldorf went by rather easily, winning 13-9. They played the same game as before, but this time we had a few more players and didn't run out of steam quite so quickly. We had a brief spell where they climbed back up to within one point, but then the (flat)ball started rolling the other direction and we kept our lead. This is definitely a team to watch, as in five years they're going to be excellent.

The second game was against Kaiserslautern, the eventual tournament winners. Kaiserslautern this time was a changed team. Same players as before, but this time they went for the gold. They had already trounced Heilbronn, so we knew it was going to be tough, but we didn't know they would make it that hard on us. This time the giants weren't so gentle with us. We wound up with a great start, but then petered off midway into the game when it was 5-5, losing at the end 6-10.

The last game was against Heilbronn, a team we had lost to earlier in the league, but we felt pretty confident that we would do better this time. And better we did. All the way to the very end, we managed a lead, but in the last seconds before the whistle, Heilbronn scored. The whistle then blew, meaning that the next point was the last one. Being only one point behind us Heilbronn tried putting up a great defensive screen, but we penetrated it anyway, throwing a short pass into the endzone for the point. The point that we didn't score because one of the receiver's feet was firmly planted on the sideline. The point having turned into a turn-over, we were then on the defensive, and couldn't manage another D, giving up the last point for a second-place tie with Heilbronn. We could have played another point to avoid the 10-10 tie, but both teams voted to call it a day and a second-place tie.