Oh the glory…

This past weekend concludes my Canadian summer touring season for the year and I suspect that for most it was a rather exciting season.

Over the last few seasons I’ve started playing with Hamilton players (Mayhem in particular) quite a bit more and have expanded my core group of Ultimate friends.  More often than not I find people don’t pickup enough on other teams and try to stay in their “safe zone” by playing almost exclusively with the same groups of people year after year.

Playing with new groups tends to open one up to exciting playing styles, different zones, and causes one to become extremely proficient at adapting to new challenges.  Playing with different groups tends to reveal the lens that your competitors view your teammates with is flawed.  It’s amazing how much a change in perspective can break old allegiances and help one become more understanding of others.

This past weekend was, put simply, quite a bit of fun.  I picked up with a team from Hamilton and we called ourselves BLeD after an incident at CUC involving a Mayhem player and a certain sanitary Dollarstore item.  Our playing style is interesting in that we always seemed to have closely matched games and we would intentionally fool around at the start of each one (except the finals).

Our ability to focus at just the right time brought us back from deficits on Sunday in our pre-semis and our post-quarters games.  I’m glad to play with a team that knows when to focus and has the confidence to know that the win is ours.

A few players on our team also play on McMaster’s Ultimate teams and they will be strong players that will make waves in the regional circuit.  I hope that they decide to play the UPA series for the experience as well as seeing where their game can go.

Personally the weekend was decent, while I didn’t prep for the tournament with the right nutrition I had a few games where I was aggressive and laid out often.  I’ve had a mental block with laying out that requires just the right mix of adrenaline coursing through me.

Bring on the UPAs.

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