White Mountain Open

Got back yesterday from what used to be my favorite spring tournament, the White Mountain Open at Dartmouth in New Hampshire. This was the 8th edition, and I think I have made 5 or 6 of them. I put together a team for the first one that consisted of players from DoG and RoQ (the second Boston team at the time), so naturally we called ourselves DorQ. We won the tournament the first two years, and Jordan and I won the party I think the second year, at least for the 'elite' teams.

Now that I have bowed out in the semis the last two years, the tournament isn't quite as fun. It also didn't help that this year we still seem to be stuck in late winter, and the weather sucked. And finally, the party wasn't as much fun, as this time they did a barbecue at the fields with long lines, and did NOT serve any alcohol. Fortunately, we were adequately supplied with our own, and the game of awesomeball was hectic and surprisingly nobody got hurt.

I love to play and detest losing in ALL forms, at all levels, no matter the expectations in a given game (and that's not just at ultimate...). I remember being the only person on my Princeton undergrad team wanting to play Titanic at the Ultimate Affair in 1987 during a rainstorm as a cold front came down from the mountains dropping the temperatures to under 40 (Granted, the fact that I was the only person left on my team that could still throw in those conditions probably helped), a game we ultimately forfeited to my chagrin and being ripshit at my team for not wanting to play, no matter that we were going to get crushed. Why else were we there? That competitive nature is probably the only reason that I have made it to where I am right now, dragging my "47 times less athletic carcass than the Chain Guys covering me in last years pre-quarters" along the way (paraphrase taken from
this link). Well, Ted Munter cutting me from Z in 1989 also helped, but that is a topic for another post, with some interesting alternate histories if he doesn't cut me.

The reason I bring this up is that I am still enjoying the game, but as my career starts asymptotically approaching the retirement axis (got to leave myself an out after all), I am finding myself even less tolerant of losing, especially because of poor play. This weekend was very frustrating in that respect. I know that DoG needs to constantly replenish itself (we may be losing up to 7 roster players), and that the best way to really see people play is at tournaments, but losing to Twisted Metal twice? Chuck Wagon? C'mon. The bar for being the Phil Mickelson of Ultimate is dropping real low (teams to NEVER beat DoG). And by no means was this just because of the tryouts. Current DoG, new DoG, it was all pretty ugly out there (just like the weather). I guess if this is the way to make me quit, it's good thinking. But I'm still not ready.

PS The year that Jordan and I won the party was AWESOME (I am probably combining memories here), but it included the following:
* The party was at some campsite somewhere, with a roofed picnic area with a large grassy area.
* There was LOTS of beer.
* Playing team knock the cup off the posts drinking game.
* Late night having a pee-off with Jordan, where we were both boosted onto the roof of the picnic building, and climbed to the apex and then basically peed down each side of the roof to see whose pee reached the end first. One of us failed completely to pee, and I think it was me, but it was definitely a highlight. And in retrospect, it wasn't very smart, because that roof was pretty high. Jordan was used to stuff like that, being an inveterate roof climber at various parties in the past, and in varyfing degrees of sobriety, but it was still quite the event.
* Staying in a tent at the campsite.
* Waking up in my tent at 10AM, croaking over to Jordan in his tent asking what time it was, finding out it was 10AM, realizing that we had a game at 10:15, and packing up the tents and making it to the fields in time. Good times.