Centex Synopsis by Ricky

this weekend we played at Centex, which is arguably the most competitive college tournament in the world.

MagnUM went 4 and 4 and fell short of winning the 9th place game, by one really awesome pink hatted thrower. this guy was happy to throw every throw in the book and hit alot of them. in an upwind downwind game, he was an unfair advantage and we needed to put the wookie on him.

anyway, MagnUM played some tight games with Stanford/UCSD/Wisc. each game had a huge comeback by MagnUM fueled by sick, primarily zone, defense. MagnUM nearly pulled off the comeback of the weekend, being down 11-7 to UCSD, tying it at 12s, but falling short.

in much happier news, we soundly beat Brown, Carleton, and Harvard proving high Wunderlich scores do not mean ultimate greatness. we also handled western washinton, who was one of the surprises of the tournament, IMO.

regionally speaking:

MSU played well, beating Stanford, UBC, and UCSB and barely losing to Oregon. They lost to UGA in the 7/8 game after losing in quarters to Colorado.

Indiana, lost everything. they lost their boarding passes. they lost the keys to their john deere's. the lost their velcro, camo-wallets (with the confederate flag on the back). they also lost nearly every game they played. with any luck, they will also lose there way to 3rd or 4th at regionals as well.

i think sectionals is going to be fun (be there.) regionals is going to be awesome (be there too.) nationals is going to make me puke all over the stat sheet (i'll just write a summary.)

Swigs' post which he intended to write to this blog

fundraising idea...

just throwin it out there:

i just played in a hat tournament here in melbourne. aside from being a whole lot of fun, it seems like a sweet way to make a lot of money. i payed 70 for entry, which included the usual plus a jersey, breakfast and dinner. there were 12 people on my team. thats 840 dollars from each team. get 12 teams and youve got over 10 grand. thats a lot of money. it seems like a lot more work than a normal tourney, because you have to get people to register and come individually, so you are communicating with like 200 players instead of 12 captains, and you have to deal with no shows and stuff on saturday morning, but it might be worth it.

there is a large pool of players close enough that would participate, depending on the timing. you could try it in the fall, perhaps the weekend before cooler? i dont think it would fit in well later in the fall, unless you do it as an alternative for those who dont make club natties (weather gets in the way, as does too many tourneys for magnum guys, as does people not knowing if they are coming till post regionals) or in the spring perhaps as a good excuse for an alumni reunion (but playing mixed before college natties isnt great for all sorts of reasons)

anyway, hat tourneys are fun,

swigs

Crash — A Personal Experience

No, this post will not document the most famous car crash in MagnUM history. It is the story of me at CCC last year. I invite anyone and everyone to post stories similar to the one I'm about to post in order to add some life to the MagnUM blog.

2005 CCC was a crazy one for me. It all started on the Thursday night before the tourney. I was supposed to fly out to New York City for a medical school interview that night. Unfortunately, I misread the departure time of my flight and missed it. I was forced to buy a cheap one-way out to NYC for early Friday morning. It left at 6AM, so I had to get out of bed around 4:30 and have Ian drive me to the airport (thanks Ian). Oh, there was a big controversy about Swigs driving me to the airport because Ian didn't really want to drive me, and Swigs said he would — but Swigs was going out drinking that night, and we all know Swigs' track record of being able to get out of bed in the morning, so I decided to convince Ian to take me. Anyhoo, Friday was a very long and stressful day for me. I eventually flew out of JFK to Atlanta to meet up with the team for the tourney. I didn't sleep very well on Friday night, so Saturday was a real struggle for me. As I recall, we dropped a couple of games — I think we lost a game to Georgia Tech which we really should have won.

Sunday was more of the same. Shit — what happened on Sunday? I think we beat Ohio State, but I'm not even sure about that. Yeah, I think we beat them, and then played Michigan State in the next game. We lost this one. I certainly played shitty, as I know some other guys on our team did. Not such a great tourney, though I think that's where we really started to turn the season around and make a strong push toward regionals.

Oh yeah, and I was on this medication which made my skin extra sensitive to the sun. So, even though I applied sunscreen at least seven times during the course of the tournament, I came back to Ann Arbor with a ridiculous sunburn, especially on my nose. My nose looked like a collection of physical landforms with peeling skin mixed with redness and irritation mixed with freckles. Good times.

I also crashed a van on the way home from the tournament on Saturday night. I took a turn too fast and lost control. The van came close to veering way off the road, but it ended up only half-off the road. The van came to a stop in a ditch in front on top of some rocks. There was some minor damage to the car, but nothing to write home about — certainly nothing to write to the university or my insurance company about. What upset me the most was that I had given Batey a scare because he'd already had enough scares to last a lifetime in the past year.

So that's my story. 2005 CCC was not the most fun ultimate tournament of my life, but certainly an eventful and memorable experience.

Like I said before, if you have a personal tournament experience that you would like to blog about, I encourage you to post it. Also, I'm sure I'm not the only almunus who'd like to hear about how Sprink Break 2K6 went. If anyone's having trouble posting or would like to become a contributing member, please contact me.