Glory Days 2009

Valparaiso

Three Dodge caravans crept through the local corn maize in Lowell, Indiana to find a tournament. Of course they weren’t the six magnUM and reserve reserved, but we won’t get into that here. Anyways, the cool and breezy weather from Fall Brawl followed us to Lowell, IN as we kicked off Glory Days 2009 against the de facto home squad of Valparaiso.

Valpo felt it best to use the breeze to their advantage, and threw zone on every single point. A new magnUM squad featuring only two-thirds of the team struggled to work through the zone. Not because of the wind, but uncountable silly turnovers. magnUM turns outnumbered fresh leaves on the ground.

We played just enough D and scored just enough quick shots to build a suitable lead. The horn sounded and the game concluded when magnUM conceded their first Callahan of the season. Fortunately, we won 10-5.

Ball State B

“Switching to Ball State men’s tennis,” Ball State B did magnUM a big favor and played man D. The turn count improved, and the D was impregnable as Ball State managed only 1 score. Just for the record, yours truly guarded the guy who caught their only goal.

Loyola-Chicago X

After a nice little lunch break, magnUM resumed afternoon play against Loyola-Chicago’s split squad. Loyola-Chicago, meet Yoni Rafael. Yoni led a magnUM charge with a bookends punctuating 3 goals in 4 points. When Derek Towster found Tom Haynes deep for a non-spiked score, the rout was confirmed as magnUM won 13-2.

Chicago

The Chicago game is best described as follows: Derek Moen threw a disc in the river in warm-ups. Then he went swimming or nearly so to get it.

Fortunately, DMo was just getting the bad throws out of his system (or something like that). He had two goals and a nice assist. magnUM controlled this game throughout, playing far and away its best ultimate of the day. At the end, all rookie line was given the chance to secure the win. FAIL. So the seven present returners, Pape, Ollie, Beaker, PC, DMo, AVS and Dtow showed the n00bs how to do it. Final score, 13-4. A nice 4-0 start for the weekend. We wrapped up the day when PC faked out about six Chicago guys before actually giving away the final spirit disc (a nice feature of Glory Days) to the most deserving Chicago player.

Saturday night some guys got Culverized. I don’t know/understand/care what it is, but they strongly insisted I mention it.

Rookie Report

Now is as good a time as any to mention some of the rookies on magnUM, and how they’ve done the last couple of weeks. You’ve read about Yoni, who’s also annoying, enough said. Carson isn’t nearly as annoying, but again you’ve read about him. Next is Dan “the next Beaker” DeTone. Dan, we really hope you can upgrade from that unfortunate moniker. For now though you’re stuck with it. And then there’s Jason Guan. Typically for rookies, the ultimate compliment is when something is compared to you. This was not the case for Jason. Thanks to the wind and a case of rookie nerves, Jason was the inspiration for coining a new term: the guan. A guan a point with three turns (also note the double-guan: four turns). Now, we love Jason and think he’s going to be a star for magnUM for a long time. But for now he’s a rookie we like to make fun of. If you have a three turnover point, you’ve just had a guan. (In related news, my money is on Afay leading the team in guans this year.)

Illinois-Chicago

magnUM returned from the fields well-rested from the night before, even the guys in the quarantine room. Swine flu is taking its toll. We managed to bring a team, but Indiana’s two squads stayed home due to the pig bug. We opened Sunday against UIC and after conceding two early hucks for scores, controlled throughout. Once again, an all-rookie line was given the chance to finish the game. Under threat of ‘unending grief,’ the rookies did manage to pull out the win, though not without some turns. Building on our Ohio dominance from last weekend, magnUM won 15-2 and finished 3-0 against the city of Chicago this weekend.

Wheaton

Late in the UIC game the great leveler joined us. Wind. A steady breeze out of the south built up and by the time this quarterfinal started, magnUM realized they were facing a long day of upwind/downwind play. Wheaton seemed a little more prepared for the wind, and after an even game for the first 7 points, they took the first break upwind. This turned out to be all the inspiration magnUM needed. The ensuing O-line marched right down the field and answered upwind. Then magnUM took the next two breaks and the game was effectively finished. The 10-8 final was progress, in this case to the semifinals.

Purdue

Returning junior captain Ollie Honderd huddled the team together for the semifinal matchup against 6th seeded undue. In addition to some tactical moves, we inspired to learn that Ollie was honey, Tom was vinegar and PC was salad. I’m confused too. Anyways, we played Purdue in the semis. A most intriguing matchup was the Haynes versus Haynes game within the game. Tom’s little brother, aka Little Beaker, represented Purdue. Now while I was told by some Purdue players that they couldn’t appear more different, we at magnUM couldn’t help but imagine an epic Battle of The Nerds. After all, Tom talked warm-ups and strategy over the weekend in terms of step functions, coefficients of friction, sin curves and binary. Sadly, they either kept the battle to themselves or Little Beaker is actually far cooler than Beaker. We suspect the latter.

But anyway, back to the game. The wind would peak during this game, but a higher level of ultimate saw more upwind breaks. magnUM managed three to undue’s one, and that was the difference in the game. As with any rather windy day, there were quite a few hucks beyond the downwind endzone, and more turns and Ds that we care to admit. But we also managed a few nice plays including Callahans by Chris Li (vs Purdue) and PC (vs Missouri S&T).

Purdue gave us our toughest test to this point, but holding the upwind breaks we again prevailed and held to cap. Final score 10-8.

Missouri S&T

And so magnUM took a young squad of rookies into their first final. Miner threat, featuring neon yellow jerseys, figured to present a solid test, having themselves advanced through the windy day.

Unfortunately, miner threat had two factors working against them that, ahem, made them a minor threat to a magnUM championship. The first was some relief from the wind. The second was miner threat’s decision to play a fair amount of 2-3-2 zone against magnUM in both directions of play. The zone at first appeared to be a challenge, but it was the reverse. The zone forced disciplined short tosses, it was the perfect antidote to fighting the wind. Unlike the previous two games, the breaks came early and often and by halftime the conclusion was predictable, if not already decided. The first and most decisive break was courtesy of the aforementioned Derek ‘in the river’ Moen. DMo showed off his full game, catching and moving the disc several times, then roasting his mark and punctuating the score with a massive windmill spike.

The second half was a different half, but the same story. magnUM controlled throughout. Up 14-7, the rookies were given a third try to close out the game, this time under threat of playing until they actually did do so. Again they had plural turns. But again the disc found itself in the hands of a rookie wearing blue in the proper endzone. And with that magnUM became champions of Glory Days 2009.

Respect is due to the team, as winning a tournament is not an accomplishment to be ignored. But as the top seed this was expected. And anyone present will tell you there’s plenty of work to do. See you in December for the story behind CCC.

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