I need to focus on the girls we gettin' currently

Sienna game went pretty well. We won by like 12-7, ish. Was up 7-1 at one point.

I played alright. My hamstring is kind of tweaked, so it was tough for me to get warmed up, and I played like it, especially in the fist half. My defense was OK -- they have a lot of inexperienced players, so I had to poach deep a lot to help out, most often right after a turnover. Once I settled in on D, I took away my offenders first option, but rarely got their second option. I had a few points where I played on a cutter and they did not do much, but, for the most part, I did not play strong defense.

My under throws were pretty tight once I warmed up. I had 3 turnovers I believe:

 One on bad throw early in the game. Too high, was not warmed up, and the cutter could not get it.

The next was a poor decision, both in throwing it at all and where I threw it. Basically, a girl was open underneath, so I put a nice pass to her instead of whipping it in, and someone came off the stack and layout-d it. I think it was a bad decision in terms of where I put it -- I should have thrown it much further from the stack, letting the girl run onto it and eliminating the chance of the stack getting a D. It was very early in the stall count, like at 2, so I am pretty sure it was a risk not worth taking. I think I just got frustrated by how people don't throw to girls in mixed, so I saw her open, and just threw it, instead of looking her off.

The third one was a miscommunication/bad decision/bad throw. The trifecta! Basically, it was right off a turn, and Brown was in front of the disc upfield and I picked up the disc with most of the team behind me. Since it was off a turn, their whole defense was running back to prevent the quick deep shot. I yelled Brown's name, thought he made eye contact with me, and I threw a kinda breakmark IO flick. It was a bad pass, too much IO and not enough to the break side. I thought Brown was aware, but he wasn't even looking, and was surrounded by 4 Sienna players. I had a small window to hit him, and he wasn't really ready for it. I had no stall count. While I can usually make that throw, there is no real reason to. Additionally, I should have ran through or slowrolled it to let the offense get upfield.

There was one point that for some reason Brown decided to dump it to me, and I literally got every other touch until the person I threw it to got the assist. I would throw upfield to Dr. Gray, he'd dump it, I'd throw to Brown, he'd dump it. I would swing the disc to Buzzi, who would give it back, and did it over and over. I think I had 8 touches on the point. It was pretty awesome.

I think in order to fit into their offense I have to do two main things:

One is to get their players to trust me. On the surface, I am not a very good player. I am short, pretty slow, have pretty low stamina, and do not have very good hucks. People won't dump it to me because they don't see me doing anything strong with the disc. However, my strengths come in shallow break throws, never turning the disc over, and getting open for dumps, which keeps the offense chugging.

 The second thing is to get their handlers working together. Right now it seems like they just get the disc to Brown, who is 75% to either turn it or score on any given possession, which results in their handlers having no idea where to go. They like to chill out behind the disc, dance around, etc. If I can teach them proper spacing and how/when/where to cut, it'll help the offense hold onto the disc more.

I also think they are not used to having another handler that can just straight run the ball. Brown obviously can if he wants, but he just hucks it. I think with me on the team they can afford to let Brown cut, which is awesome. I am not quite in the position yet to suggest major changes to their offense, but I think that once they see my high Frisbee IQ, they'll listen to me a bit more.

I am pretty excited to get to teach a bunch of new players what I know, and it is obviously awesome to get to learn from Brown, but playing on a new team is weird. It was so easy for me to get motivated to run that extra mile for GUNX, but it is so hard to even want to go to practice for SCAM. I have decided that if I want to actually enjoy playing with SCAM, I need to play with them a lot, so I am making myself go to every practice no matter what, but it sure is rough. Hopefully, between this tournament and practice, I start to feel like I belong to the family.

My forehand bombs are gone. This is almost definitely because I hurt my shoulder and stopped lifting. I started up Abs and pushups this week. I couldn't even finish the pushup one -- on Tuesday I failed at the 2nd set of the 3rd exercise, and today I failed at the 2nd set of the 2nd exercise. But, I feel stronger, and sore, and I'm confident I'll get it back quickly. I have had no problems with abs, perfect runs both times. I'll go back to level 2 in a week or two.

I was pretty lazy with my aerobic conditioning. Like I said, it is so much harder to work for a team that I have so little emotional investment in. But, I have lot of emotional investment in myself, so I picked it up this week. Gotta keep it going.

Long post is long. No conclusion.