reflection on the Teams first two years so far

This is my first blog so dont expect much out of me. I would like to talk about the progression that the team has taken over the course of these two years. First the team itself.

Last year we had huge crowd join the team (including me) that were new to the sport and yet willing to sacrifice almost everything to get better and get to the point where we are now. Our captain Bridget Conrad, started the team three years ago with no success. Last year was the frst year that she actually had enough interest in the team by freshman who wanted to join and play. The problem with starting this team is that not everyone knew how to play or throw or catch. In fact some of us were literally the worst players that the captains have ever seen. At one point we had 24 members on the team and 18 of them were freshman. I was one of them. I didnt know anything about the sport, except that it was fun and that i wanted to be great at it. Well the semester started off with 3 hour practices learning the basics, flick, stack, backhand, zone and marking. We werent the greatest at it but we did have alot of good players that could teach us. It took me 3 months to get a working flick that i could use in a game, my marks werent bad and i was tall. We had a few "shining stars" on the team that have p[layed before and knew what they were doing, while the rest of us didnt. We played in two scrimmages, one against Vassar b team were we long 15-13, in a great game. The other scrimmage was against "the elders" (pick up group around this area) We lost that game as well but not as close of a margin. Well that didnt stop us, we worked hard and did our best all through fall semester to get to our first tournament.

The tournament was "Funky Mountain III", it was in east Strasbourg Pennsylvania and the weather was horrible. When i say the weather was horrible i mean the weather was really fucking bad. There was a monsoon. The ground was frozen and muddy at the same time with a huge 20 yard long puddle in the middle of the end zone. Well we started out strong against a team that i dont remember and we beat them with a decent margin enough to declare us the victors. That was our first win as a team, although it wasnt against a college it was against a club team. After wining that game we had an hour long bye to wait for our next game. During this time the storm picked up and it got worse, we ended up huddling close together in a little out cove and we were singing songs and having a jolly old time. Our next game was was against "Big Red Death Machine",on the worlds worst field. The field was horrible if you stood for 1 second u were a foot underground. They were scary and old but we knew we could do some damage. We started off strong taking a 2-0 lead, breaking their zone in half. Once they realized this they threw man at us and we fucked up. We lost that game 15-2. Mitch and Dave got hypothermia and almost died, so we decided to skip out next game and go warm up and get some food. So we drove back and dave doobs and ben took a shower together and had a shit load of fun. We all eventually passed out and i fell asleep in between a wall and a bed. Day two started a little better and we had two games. Game one we lost because of something that has happened to our team. Game two was alot closer, we came back in that game to lose 15-13, but it wasnt our fault their team had a guy who had a full field everything. That was our first tournament ever. We practiced a little more and we had a few scrimmages here and there and a hat tournament, we picked up a new important player but lost a few but nothing else for our first year as a team.

Over the summer we all played as much as we could, i started up a pick up group on Staten island and went to 3 tournaments. I went to Coney Island, Wildwood, and Ow My Knee. I wanted to become the best player i could possibly be. At the end of the summer we couldnt wait to get back and play and have fun, we had lost a few players over the course of the summer but its fine we could survive. We had a large pick up day with three fields and nearly 50 people who showed up and wanted to play. We explained to the freshman and whoever else showed up about the team and what we wold liek to do. We had our first practice and we had literally 30 kids show up. These kids were on the team already or wanted to join. The number of people showing up would dwindle down to the number we have now which is roughly 23 kids on the team. We almost had to start from scratch but we didnt and we taught these "freshies" the basics and they caught on faster then we did. They caught on so fast that we could actually go to some tournaments in our first semester. We went to three tournament spread out between two states. Although we didnt win any games from my memory, we did have strong flow and we all got along very well.

Spring semester started out decently Strong and the freshman and grown to where we are and what not. We were one as a whole and we played like it. We went to alot of tournament and there was a stretch of weeks where we had a tournament every week. That stretch is still going right now. We had about 6 tournaments/ round robins/ scrimmages in the past 6 weeks. In my opinion we always play strong but not as strong as we could when we are playing our best. Our flow is impeccable when it is on. We were working our asses off for one tournament in particular where we went 1-3. This tournament was college sectionals for our section. We play strong but we somehow always lose our first game. This should not be. I mean What The Fuck we should have beat these teams. O well the past is the past. We just need to work on the now and improve improve improve.

As our semester in coming to a close and people are hitting their end point, i would just like to say that i am extremely proud of the team and how far we have come. I know that we can do better. I believe in all of us. Lets prove it to ourselves that we can kick ass.