Hat Tournament

Friday afternoon I rolled back into Bangkok and met up with the Beijing crew and went to the Bangkok Hat tournament registration party. I hydrated like mad and ate a lot of fruit and stuff to get me ready for the heat the next day. At the party I met some people and I met a guy that was about my dad's age and seemed to remember playing against him (ultimate frisbee) back in the day. So I talked to him for a while. I had to explain why I was so young to everyone so that involved explaining what I was doing in Asia and how long I had been playing ultimate etc. So the next day we met our teams, I was really excited, there were 6 fields, stereo speakers playing music to all the fields, lots of tents and drinks etc. My teams captain was the guy I met the night before, Dan, who knew my dad. So my team went 2-2 on Saturday. We had a lot of good players with experience, but they all just handled and didn't play as many points as they should have. Also our inexperienced players made a lot of bad decisions. But oh well. I had some nice grabs and sky'd a few people and earned the respect of my team. I was fairly sore at the end of the day with some cramping so I got a massage at the field, it felt good, so I went back to the guesthouse, showered, and got another foot massage. The party that night was fairly wild, the food was great, but I didn't stay long.

 

The next morning, we had to play the early games since we didn't do well enough on Saturday for a first round bye. So as we were warming up I saw the other team and got a little intimidated, thinking it would take all we had to beat them. I questioned the willingness to win of my team and didn't know if they would have the energy to pull it out. The other team scored first and I was like hmmm. Then we said no and proceeded to score point after point, winning the game 13-6. I had some nasty d's in that game. I'm doing a better job of jumping earlier than before so I get up to the disc before the other guy. So that win was motivating, our team stepped it up and got excited. The next game was against a team that had a bye, so they were fresh for that morning. They went up early on us, we managed to hang on to keep it 7-11 when it looked grim. (Games to 13). But then U2 started playing over the stereo system and I said ok, lets do this. So I scored like 2 or 3 crucial and motivating points off of deep grabs or whatever. However we couldn't hold on D when they had game point and a tall guy scored on me when I tried to cut off his in cut near the endzone and they threw it up the line to the corner and I had no play. Oh well. We went out with a bang which was good, especially after some of the lackadaisical play from the day before.

 

Unfortunately a guy on my team ran into me from behind when I tried to poach in the lane and I think his knee hit my calf muscle. I got a charlie horse that I managed to play with for the rest of the game but afterwards when I wasn't moving it got really tight. So I said, lets get another massage while we watch the finals. So the massage lady proceeded to assault my calf muscle causing me to grimace and squirm. It didn't help, it made it infinitely worse and it hurt me continuously for the rest of the night. The next day it was still tight but it didn't hurt.

My hard play that weekend earned me an award, I think it was either team MVP or one of the "7 Dawgz" which might be a team of tournament MVP's. The Bangkok team calls themselves the "Soi Dawgz" after all the stray dogs that are all over the city.