Glory Days

Team Z aka team zylaphones

Day 1 All started saturday at 9am.

Z vs Lake Forest
-The start of this game was rough, just like most first games when you have a split squad. Also I believe the increase in playing time from the last tournament was a surprise to most. After a slow start the pace started to pick up. Layouts started to happen and intensity showed up. Illinois Z came away with 10-7. Having the game come down to the last few points will be the trend of Z for the weekend. That being said we seemed to be ahead in all these close games.

Z vs Southern Illinois
-SIU had some decent players. They were able to move it down the field pretty effectively at times. With a smaller roster they were in the same boat as us, but one thing they had over us was a lot of height. Z step up and played hard after a slow start again. Z wins 11-7.

Z vs Zubair (take 1)
-Finally the game Z has been wanting all day. A Z vs Z matchup. Zubair, the most spirited player in college ultimate, vs Illinois. Not only did we want to beat Zubair, but we needed to find out if anyone really could contest a foul call made by him. Being only on the same team as him before, we had no clue what it was like to play against him. After Zubair took half 8-4ish Z stepped up big time and won 10-9. This game was sick. Everyone on Z was going crazy. This is why I play ultimate, games like this were everyone takes it to the next level.

Z vs Eastern Illinois
-After having the intensity at and all time high during the second half of the Zubair game, Z lost all of it. Everyone was slow and forcing throws. Turned out terrible and we lost 5-13

I'll get to day 2 later when I am not passing out while typing.

No Wisconsequences (Team Y)

This post brought to you by Keenan:

No Wisconsequences Write-Up Illinois – Y aka wYse guys

You’ll have to forgive my forgetfulness when it comes to the breakdown of scores for some of these games, my focus was on winning not the twists and turns along the way

Round 1 – Carleton College GOP

Twas a cold morning to start the day, with what was potentially the best match up of the day for a split squad Illinois team. We came out slow in the first half and GOP took the half by a healthy margin. Second half we decided we should probably play harder and stop being intimidated by their facial hair. Besides, everyone in Minnesota has a fuzzy sweater in order to survive the winter, see Austin Lien.

Final Score – GOP 13 – 8 Illinois Y

Round 2 – Wisconsin La-Crosse

The day was began warming up and still there really wasn’t that much wind involved. La-Crosse seemed to be a relatively new team that was still learning the finer points of college level ultimate and as a result we were able to use our rookies a bit more than usual because of the experience similarities. Some highlights include Neal jumping over a cluster of dudes to come down with some discs and the beginning of the rookie remodel as I would like to refer to it. It’s when we take the boys and make them men, get dirty, lay out, and go nuts

Final Score – Illinois Y 11 – 9 Wisconsin La Crosse

Round 4 – Iowa State X

The dumb game of the day, at some point in time we decided that playing a full game was a bad idea. We came out super fired up from our BYE and smacked ISUC around, but after the half they found heart and we couldn’t maintain our edge throughout. We were able to take advantage of one of the most epic mismatches of all time with Pappy J being on the field, against anyone on their team, while Sid realized that boostability was high and started throwing some major bombs.

Final Score – Iowa State X 13 – 11 Illinois Y

Round 6 – Illinois State Y

Don’t get me wrong, I heart the guys on Illinois States team, but we have prided ourselves as having a better program then them, and I haven’t ever lost to an ISU team. That said, we came fired up out of the gate. We took half 7 – 2 and never looked back through the rest of the game. I hate to toot my own horn, but a dropped Callahan layout around a dude off the pull would have ended the game if I wasn’t such a skinny white boy upon hitting the ground. Balls. Also, got to see Tom and Splash have some wicked bids and there may or may not have been a cross field scoober for a score courtesy of Mickey

Sunday saw a frost delay to start the rounds. WTF polo fields, really? I mean, really? Now that that’s off my chest, the rest of the day went swimmingly for Illinois Y

Round 2 – Lawrence University

These were a bunch of cool dudes that like to play ultimate. Once the stretching marathon was completed, the first time, we were able to pretty much have our way with Lawrence and our offense finally began to click while the defense made got some breaks that helped boost everyone’s confidence. I can’t remember much else about this one, but if anyone from Lawrence ever reads this, I’ll trade jerseys for one of those sick buddy jerseys. Believe it

Final Score – Illinois Y 13 – 6 Lawrence

Round 3 – Ohio Wesleyan

In what might have been the most intimidating game that had the least actual excitement, Illinois Y was able to beat Ohio Wesleyan. We were able to beat a team that has made regionals at least once during the time that I’ve been playing ultimate. With the exception of travel call guy, the entire team was pretty cool too, which is always a bonus.

Final Score – Illinois Y 13 – 10(ish) Ohio Wesleyan

Round 4 – Northern Iowa

This is probably the most excited game for me the entire weekend, except my buddy who plays from high school wasn’t at the tournament to heckle. This is another team that made regionals the past year, and I felt that we were able to compete with them very well. There were a couple instances of miscues on the field, but on the whole it went well and I was pleased with the outcome.

Final Score – Illinois Y 13 – 7 Northern Iowa

I want to say great job to all the rookies who went, for both teams, and those of us who served as the surrogate captains were very impressed with the way you guys improved over the tournament.

Rookie MVP – Neal Phelps / Mark de Chadenedes. Both these guys got on the field and were able to do a great job, whether it was playing tough D or tooling fools on O, they both were able to execute throughout the weekend.

"Western Day 2"

So I may have set the bar too high on posts about Western... We (Y) got fifth, and X got seventh. I'd go into detail, but I waited waaaay too long thinking I'd have time to write something significant at some point.

In other news:

Despite feeling like a sure thing, my mixed club team (Drag'n Thrust) did not advance to nationals. I'm not complaining - we lost our spot fair and square. Twice in fact. I do wish our region would have had another bid though. We would have definitely done some work at the show.

Machine, along with Walden, Stupca, Joel, and Pat, take the number 2 spot out of the region on the open side. Congrats to them. Sub Zero gets bumped off for the first time in a looong time. I have to sympathize with them, seeing as it's my home team, but they probably had a feeling this might come along with the rise of Madison Club (and Madcow).

Next on the Illinois agenda is No Wisconsequences. We're choosing to attend the tournament split squad this year. Hopefully this decision turns out to be a good one, letting the rookies see lots of playing time in a decidedly more competitive tournament than Western. The team list went out in email form, but I won't post it here until it's finalized. Hopefully I'll have some time to post at least a Saturday recap while I'm there. No promises on information about Sunday.

Till then...

Austin

Western Classic '09 Day 1

Greetings from beautiful Macomb, IL

The cars made the trip down mostly with out incident. I say mostly, because a rookie may have been left behind due to lack of contact info. Also, Helen (my Magellan GPS) decided to take my car to Bardolph, IL instead of Macomb. The Macomb Econolodge is solid, and the manager is one of the nicest people I've ever met.

Anyway, Saturday:
Early in the morning, Team X (Papa Bear) got whiny and demanded that we (Team Y) relinquish control of Andy Kilinskis on the grounds that Brad was nowhere to be found. Since Team Y had a first round bye, Andy got woken up at the last minute to head to the fields.

Updated roster:
Team X

Ryan Kurnik

Steve Haake

Dave Janociak

Brandon Smith

Kevin Bruns

Neal Phelps

David Zillner

Matt Glazier

David Kohn

Mike Ponte

Antanas Tricou
Brad DeBlauw
Andy Kilinskis

Team Y

Austin Lien

Jacob Nelson

Brian Pierce

Kai Kosog

Colin Reid

Greg Atherton

Jake Antoniello

Mark de Chadenedes

Ryan Kent

Patrick Knapnik

David Mainzinger

Jake Midden

Teddy Yeh

I watched some of the first game before heading back to the hotel to pick up some Y-teamers. X was admittedly shaky, and lost the game to Western by a decent amount, but the game never seemed totally out of reach.
Team Y's first game against the Western Alum didn't go any better. We were still figuring out how to play with each other, and to some extent catch and throw the disc. We lost by a ton.

Fast forward through the day
Team Y goes 2-1 with a great final game against Southern Illinois Edwardsville that went to 13-11. FC Champaign member Paul Holze did some work against us in this game.
Team X goes 2-2 (also losing to ISU-Y by 1) with a huuuuge comeback win against Augustana in the last round going from something like 7-9 to 13-9.

Highlights
The Austin - Pappy connection on a layout backhand greatest. Probably the coolest thing I'll ever do in ultimate, and then Pappy decides to sky everyone in the pile up.
A pass from Andy getting D'd (macked) waaaaay up in the air for Brandon to come down with in the endzone for a goal.
Rookies laying out! They were doing it like crazy! The future is bright.

Lowlights
Some guy swerved into my front bumper while we were driving from BWWs back to the hotel. Maybe this is why I don't drive to tournaments... Looks like I'll be driving home with a brokus front left turn signal.

More to come after tomorrow

Austin