Ultimate: US Open

The name Aurora comes from the goddess of the dawn in ancient Rome. Aurora is also a town in Colorado near Denver where US Open is held. Similar to Odysseus, we were chased onto the fields by rosy fingered dawn. Also similar to Odysseus, our team was truly tested by the journey - we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven. I finally got the Emily Wilson translation of the Odyssey from the library, which I read on the plane, in case you're wondering where this is coming from.

Homer aside, Aurora gifted us with 35 degree temperatures and just a subtle hint of wildfire smoke. It sits at approximate 1660m above sea level, or 340m below Sigurd Peak. As a result of this I decided I was no longer affected by the elevation.

The Tournament

The team generally arrived for a Thursday training camp. Since my job would skin me alive if I took another vacation day, I arrived at 1am on the Friday morning and generously woke everyone up and snuggled onto the sofa bed with my teammate.

Our first game was at 8:30am. The game was against schwa which I was excited for since they smoked us on Traffic at PEC. We won the game 13-10. They didn’t do well in the tournament but they’re a good team; I think they’ve been playing really well and had close games. In our next game we were up on Phoenix until they decided to break twice to win. After getting yelled at by the coaches and with the wind picking up we went on to defeat Starlings, a new team to me, out of the east coast. The day was done and we went to get pasta. I learned that my young teammates don't bring credit cards and just have everything on their phones, which makes me feel extremely old and also like maybe I need a new data plan since mine is $10 a day for roaming in the US.

On Saturday, our first game was quarters against Scandal. Again they decided to break twice to win on universe. Certain patterns seem to be emerging. We then lost to Bent which sparked some interesting discussions.

On Sunday we rematched against Phoenix and pulled out a win to come in seventh. We watched a bit of the mixed team, who came in seventh with us. The open team got bronze and some cool highlight videos online; hard to say which one is more valuable.

My Thoughts

I realize these short recaps don't do much to actually capture the games, but I feel like I must draw a merciful veil over our discussions on reset plays and throwing mechanics. For me personally, I feel like I played decently, but wasn't able to be as effective on offense as I can be. Once again I'm very happy with how my training has worked out, despite my initial resistance to so much strength training; I managed two weekend tournaments in a row without being injured.

Seventh isn't ideal, but the tournament itself was a perfect tune-up for Worlds, and I feel like as a team we definitely learned a lot. Sometimes I'm surprised at how much I can still learn about the game, ten years in.

August will be quiet, with no more tournaments until the big one, with my flight to Australia just 18 days away.