Garden State Happened!

Not our fields, but you get the idea

Roll Call Garden State! Jive Finally Goes to a Tournament

This past weekend was a momentous occasion for the Jive Turkeys… we got to play Ultimate! Steakfest was cancelled last weekend (which upset me greatly) and Roll Call was cancelled this weekend, but we scrambled and secured a spot at Garden State.

Because winter is evil and has spring tied up in a back room somewhere, the forecast called for lots of rain and cooler temperatures. Didn’t matter! We were gonna play this weekend. Our pool consisted of SUNY-Geneseo, SUNY-Brockport, Ithaca, and Keane State. We knew nothing about any of them, and we hadn’t played outside yet, so, naturally, we were ready to go.

Saturday

A couple cars drove to Simon’s in Philly for Friday night, and early Saturday morning it was time to hike to the fields in Mercer, NJ. The weather that morning was actually pretty nice, mid-fifties with cloud coverage, but no rain. Yet. The first game was against Keane State, and we came out firing. We got an early lead based around chilly offense and the use of our new zone defense. Unlike previous years, we had really been practicing a trap zone, and Garden State was the first time we’d gotten to use it. The zone helped us take half at 7-2, and from then on we switched over to man-to-man defense. We stayed strong offensively, but our man defense was just not as good as the zone, and Keane was able to score a few points. The game finished 13-9, a pretty comfortable first win of the season, but rain had started to fall around half-time. One of the TDs headed our way after the game, and she had nothing but bad news: we had to move fields because Mercer College didn’t want us destroying them further. Fair enough. We had a bye anyway, so that gave us a near 3 hour super-bye!

We had tons of time before our next game, so of course Simon, Zard, and I went to a nearby liquor store. Simon picked up some Bandit (for the weekend!), Zard got some Chuggable Red Franzia, and I decided it was time to face my old demons and drink another fifth of Mead. We didn’t have time for these drinking adventures given that we were playing games that afternoon, so we headed back to the fields to prepare for SUNY-Brockport. They were definitely not a great team, and our zone was pretty dominant against them. The field was fucking awful; we had a softball “infield” in one of the end zones. I use quotations because it was essentially just mud and dead grass that was turning into mud. Fun times indeed. Anyway, we won that game 13-7.

We had another game against Ithaca up next, but conditions were getting even worse than previously thought possible. We bargained for a short game to 7, and got ready for Game 3. Again, we deployed zone defense and got some easy turns. At one point they were just hucking discs from the trap side into our defenders. Suffice to say, those throws were knocked down. We converted these opportunities and got a 4-0 lead. Ithaca did manage to score one point, on a nice layout grab, but that was all they would get. We’d cruise to 6-1 before they eventually said “alright, you guys win” and walked off the field. Really guys? It was just one more point…

Our last game was supposed to be against SUNY-Geneseo, a highly ranked D-III team that we were really hoping to beat. We didn’t even get to play them, however, as Brockport, and the TD, told us that Geneseo had gone home. Apparently they got their 10^th game and decided to book in out of the torrential rainstorm. Cool with us, as that meant we could go home a round early and shower. All this good news proved too good to be true, as Geneseo apparently “returned to the fields” after ever single fucking team left (we were the last team there, so we’d know) and expected to play us. This led to a lengthy email chain where neither us nor Geneseo wanted to forfeit and decided we’d play the game tomorrow morning if the tournament was still on. About that...

We got an email later that night saying that Sunday had to be cancelled because of bad weather and dangerous field conditions. This meant we would not be playing the Geneseo game, and that we could go home that night. Well, most of us were excited about going 3-0 on Saturday, so we stuck around Philly for the night and got drunk. A good time was had by all, especially those who drank the second fifth of Mead. Yes, we drank the first and bought another. Don’t ask me why.

To be perfectly honest, none of us were particularly surprised that Sunday was cancelled. It was great that we got to play three games on Saturday, but the conditions were truly miserable. Garden State represented the first chance for us to play meaningful games this spring, but we can’t qualify for rankings because we haven’t played enough games. Instead, from here we move on to Sectionals, and hopefully Regionals.

It’s been a frustrating spring season for Jive; having multiple tournament cancellations is never easy. I do think, however, that we have a good amount of Ultimate left to play, and that we’ll be ready for the postseason. Maybe we didn’t get to go to all of our planned tournaments, but the season is not over. So now we go into Sectionals ready to play at the high level we know we are capable of. I probably won’t look back on Garden State and say I had “fun” at the tournament, but at least we got to play this weekend. I'll take that moral victory.

Select Highlights

-Marshall’s NBA-inbounds style mark against Keane State

-Salad being the coldest person on Saturday and screaming “I’m an Icicle!” in Nic Cage voice

-Moller believing that Powerade made a flavor that looked and tasted exactly like Franzia Chuggable Red

-Slap getting flattened in the mud

-Simon’s layout D against Ithaca that prompted the Ithaca bro to say “Nice D! But why did you do that?” because laying out meant getting covered in mud. They quit after we scored from this turn.

-Murtha sleeping in a chair

-Bow to the Pharoah