Well I've had "BLOG!!" on my to-do list for weeks now, I finally realized it's been over 3 weeks since my last entry. Good job Neil. Given the last one was in the early portion of my spring break I'll just recap the break really quick.
I played some local pick-up ultimate, that was nice addition to the break. Went to the Exploratorium with my friend Phil who worked there last summer. Such a flashback for me, I haddn't been there in easily 8 years if not more. I pocked up a plush microbe, sooo cute! Never went clubbing, ah well. Met up with my friend John from high school (see previous entry) and we had lunch. It was good to catch up and chat, something we never did in high school. And lastly had fun in Concord at Stacy's birthday partay.
Alrighto, that's the recap, there done. Those recaps tend to be overly long and booooring. Anyway so this quarter so far, great. I've got one class, which honestly I'm not doing too well in. I'm not reading for it, not taking notes, and kinda sleeping in it as usual. Good job. Pop quiz today, got one question right on it. As for other stuff, doing show stuff as usual. Keeping some stuff on the calendar, and hopefully not packing it too busy. Language of Angels is the firs show coming up which I'm master electrician-ing for.
I've also stepped up the dance stuff this quarter. My friend Rachelle kinda twisted my arm into auditioning for the jazz repertory dance thingie going on. Casual show, student choreographed. It was a real deal audition stuff, I really felt like the oddball out. First off, maybe 3 guys there (including me) and I'm being out-danced by the other two. Granted they're all doing this classic jazzy stuff. Whatever I feel I've got a way better edge on hip-hop than a deal of these folks do. After all, it's all I've really done. Rehearsals are really getting going this week, so we'll see. I'm also putting forth more effort with stuff downtown at Motion Pacific, I actually stuck to my dance class rather than work a small paying show jobie offer. Yeah! As I see it, I'm probably not going to be doing anywhere nearly as much dance especially performance opportunities outside of college, versus that was "just another show" and there will be plenty of those. Anyway more dance, lots fun, yay!
However the biggest thing for me this quarter, and maybe even this year has been Ultimate. This past weekend was sectionals, which was the major tournament for our section. From this it determines who goes on to the regional tournament and so on. I started playing ultimate seriously at the beginning of the school year, as something to do and get in shape. And like other sports I've done getting thru that initial "this kinda sucks" period is the hardest. For a large deal of time I would think about not going to practice, but I always pushed myself to go. Even when I was still in bed at 2:15pm I'd get my ass out of bed and go. And damn the payoff was worth it. This past weekend really brought the whole thing full-circle. This is where everything we had done and worked for in this past school year came down to. The past month and a half or so was leading up to this tournament, everything "balls to the walls," giving it your all, all the time. And for a change we felt more like a team than we ever had, that we were a team and that we had a chance at something remarkable.
Only the top 5 teams from the tournament go on to regionals, and we had as small as it was a chance at it. Now granted we didn't make regionals we still did really well. We were seeded 9th in this tournament, and at the end we came out 8th in that tournament. Santa Cruz is a school recognized for it's ultimate team, yet in the bast its B team has been nothing really worth of a threat (assuming they even had one for that season.) That given, we are the best B team UC Santa Cruz has ever had. Nat, our coach, has been coaching here 3 years and also an Alumni of UCSC, his perspective on it is pretty good. Hearing that was really amazing. Coming into this tournament knowing that other teams knew of us, that we are a team to be reckoned with, was kinda cool, especially as the B squad.
Anyway, so gotta give some details about this tournament. It was a gloomy morning when we set out to drive over to Livermore, and well like it did around the bay area, it rained. Fortunately the rain started at the end of round one and continued thru round two, which we didn't have a game to play. However it was still quite wed and cold, ugggh. Saturday ended not too bad. We didn't do as well as we'd have hoped, but still every game we came out of it having played hard, and feeling good. Granted some games we lost by a deal, but in all cases we made the other team work for their points.
Sunday was a marvelous day: The sun was out the weather was nice, couldn't have asked for better. Now here was the interesting part of that day, we actually had a shot, if we won every game, to make it to 5th in the tournament and thus make it to regionals. Huge, absolutely huge. You already know we ranked 8th, so clearly that didn't happen. We won the first game against Cal-B and went on to play Los Positas which we lost to. We had played them in past tournaments and also the day before, we knew we had to work hard to beat them.
That game was epic for me. One of my biggest, hell, THE goal for this season was to catch a layout goal for a point in a tournament. And dammitall, the first point scored in that game, was me catching a layout goal. Absolutely epic. We went nuts, it was awesome, the whole team rushing towards the endzone, surrounding me... the high-fives, the energy, everything. I can only wishfully think that someone had a photo of that... I doubt it, but hey could have happened.
Oh if don't know what "laying out" is see this pic on wikipedia.
Our last game was playing for 7th/8th place against Santa Clara. That was a good fun game. Granted we could've actually played harder and actually won it (7th would've been nice), it was a great way to end the tournament. The loss at the second round (against LPC) marked our end towards heading up to sectionals. We had a little post game team huddle, inspirational chat and whatnot. Nat (coach) gave a little speech which was awesome and motivating. We all went around and said a little bit, about the season etc. And for me as I said, sticking to the team and everything about it really made my senior year here at UC Santa Cruz really, well, awesome. (I don't remember exactly what I said, jeeze. Heh.)
Post game Shawn's mom hosted a party at their place in Santa Cruz. Awesome stuff, so much good food. Filet mignon and such... yum. It was a really great cap to the weekend, hanging out with the team and chatting over good food and great company. *sigh* :)
And looking back on it all, I'm actually disappointed I'm not going to be here for another year to play ultimate on the B team again. If you'd asked me in the middle of this year "would you play ultimate next year" (assuming I'd be around), I'd probably have answered "maybe" at best or "not really." But coming out of this tournament, how much closer we have all come as a team and everything has made me really love the sport. I will miss playing here, but it makes me so fucking proud to be able to say that I played Ultimate for UC Santa Cruz.
Anyway I don't know what else to blabber on about. That post was half ultimate, which it should be. Epic, fucking epic. Ah well, that's that. I'm going to see about getting some photos of the tournament, I'll have them up here and such once that happens. Lastly I will state my goal to blog more often, we'll see.