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