Of Wind

Today was the first time playing collegiate ultimate against a school other than ourselves since 15 February 2020. We lost that game over a year ago on universe point to then number one ranked Brown University (we passed them that week to become number one before COVID ended our season). After such a long hiatus we were ready for some competition.

We arrived at the fields in South Jordan today to super gusty winds which, as you can imagine, really make things interesting with a 175 gram plastic plate. Almost every tournament in high school was played in gusty winds, and the wind can either level the playing field or really widen the gap between the two teams. Nobody likes playing in the wind, especially when it's 40 degrees outside. Adding to the wind was the fact that we were playing without several of our veteran players and key contributors and we knew our competition was not going to be at the elite level we are used to playing against.  

Considering the wind, personnel, and competition factors, I was worried we were not going to show up mentally to play. A tendency of our team (and honestly probably any team) is to play to the level of an opponent. If we know we are a far better team than the other squad it's easy to not play our hardest and instead mess around and play sloppy. Today we were crisp and dominant and won both games 10-2 (over BYU Idaho and BYU b-team). We played hard, didn't have many turnovers, and controlled the tempo of every game from the first pull. Even though those teams are no Brown, Pitt, or UNC, it was great being able to go at it against some other teams than ourselves. Tomorrow should be another good day of dominant ultimate. 

To Jacob Miller (if he still reads this), we ran 3-3-1 and 2-4-1 zones force backhand (going upwind and crosswind) to trap them on the downwind side and force lower percentage looks. We had the wing mid play really shallow to stop the chisels and handler movement and that shut them down. Lots of long points but zero breaks by the o line on Friday and only one Saturday against Timpview (who we beat 13-3).

Update: Saturday we went 4-0 over Timpview (high school), BYU Idaho again, Lone Peak (high school), and a group of players from the Logan area. Feels good to be sunburned again.