The Cup

I have never played Ultimate Frisbee before so when Mallory asked me to play on her co-ed team this summer I almost turned her down but then I figured "its frisbee, how hard can it be?" Oh man... I had no idea. The first couple games we just went out and messed around, sweated alot and won. Everyone on our team is pretty athletic so that was more because we were out-running the other teams than because we were out-playing them. Then two weeks ago we went up against a team that had a strategy, they were calling plays and yelling things like 'they have no flick!' - we got killed and realized that we needed a plan. So last week we had a bye (before playoffs began) and Mallory went online and downloaded a team strategy for us. It seemed simple enough and it even came with a diagram (which I have uploaded for your viewing pleasure). We chose a zone defense called 'The Cup'. This strategy revolves around a group of defenders that will follow the disk to every thrower (known collectively as 'The Cup'). The website described it as "These need to be people who can run hard and are in good shape" guess who got stuck in the cup... Anyways the general idea seemed easy enough but we were not holding out any hope of added success in our next game seeing as we got paired with the top seed in the first round. The other team (the top seed) showed up with about 30 people (you only have 7 people on the field at a time) and three team coolers one of which said "NO MERCY" across the front - not a good sign. They won the toss so they got to receive first meaning that we would be defending first - it was time for The Cup. Not less than 30 seconds into the game (about the time it took for us to get to their end of the field and start defending) their handler (the guy with the frisbee) yelled out "Oh shit, it is The Cup!" Are you kidding me? I can't explain it but The Cup was magic. We won in overtime 11-8 and advanced to the next round (which was an hour later), those two back-to-back games required more physical effort than I have used in the past six months combined. We were basically running flat-out for an hour at a time (remember we also played overtime in the first game), but the Cup prevailed again and we are heading into the playoff game tonight at 9pm. Here is a picture of one of my battle wounds that I received while making a diving catch in the endzone - I landed on the line and now I have a blue-tinged scab (from the blue line paint). Yes I am wearing my Gator helmet because it is awesome.