Ultimate: USAU Nationals 2024

Well, it's been nearly a month since USAU nationals, and my feelings towards it are still working their way towards the surface. I think of it like a coffee percolator, drip drip drip, a slow and subterranean process happening somewhere deep in my body, while on the outside life continues on. In the meantime, I wrote a little recap.

Nationals

I flew in directly to LAX on a Wednesday after work, navigated the frightening labyrinth of the LAX car rental centre, and then picked up a few stragglers and drove two hours to San Diego. I crawled into bed just after midnight and woke up at 6:30am to make my pilgrimage to the fields. Nationals has been in San Diego for maybe the past six years or so, and you get to know the area pretty well; the soccer fields, the shopping complex with the Starbucks, the walk to the beach, the one bar the party is always held at.

Our first game on Thursday was against Fury, which we lost; Flipside next, which we lost; that game was streamed, although I don't have the courage to watch it yet. I played a lot and can't really remember anything other than getting absolutely tackled on the first play during the Fury game and throwing the most garbage IO flick of my entire life on a later point. Our final game of the day against Nemesis was a must-win, which we did. After a solid eight years of playing I had finally ironed out my flick huck enough to have some consistent success that day.

On the Friday we lost in pre-quarters to Riot and then worked our way through the back door to play and beat Schwa and then set up a rematch for eighth against Riot again the next day. That felt like the story of the 2024 season: we played Riot a bunch.

Our final game on Saturday was a dismal loss. We're out of the top flight bracket for next year. We'll see how it shakes out with tournament allocations; with a competitive year for WUCC qualifications, it might be tight getting into the top tournaments, which usually go to the top eight teams. We're going to be fighting in the trenches with the rest of the local teams next year.

Party Notes

The tournament party was pretty fun. Big props to Morgan for buying me the world's most giant and tastiest drink. The stand-out moment of the night was when a creepy guy wearing a literal spider costume (!) almost got in a fight with a bunch of the Canadian men's players before getting kicked out.

My new resolution is that I, too, can try to get in fights with creepy dudes. I've had a sad realization I've been harassed by creepy dudes at the majority of tournament parties I've been to, and I've always felt there was a certain social pressure not to make a big deal about it. But my eyes have been opened. In 2025, fighting is in. We took the costume spider as a prize of war and brought it back to the hotel in the Uber.

Life After Nationals

Although I had a work trip in the books directly after Nationals, I was granted a reprieve by the most unlikely of heroes: an international curling tournament booked out all the hotels in the town, so the work trip was cancelled. I also was offered a new job, which I ended up taking. I started a few weeks ago. So, for now, my little Albertan sojourns are officially at an end.

I've also been experiencing foot pain since February last year, and just got an MRI done. The results aren't that great: there's mysterious extra bit of bone on the side of my foot (odds are that it broke a while ago and never went back where it was supposed to go), and I have partial ligament tears on my second toe that are aggravating the joint and the cartilage. The delightful MRI assessment terms are chronic degeneration of the medial and lateral collateral ligaments at the second MTPJ and severe second MTPJ chondropathy with reactive bone marrow edema at the second metatarsal head.

So now, in addition to working through my feelings about Nationals and Worlds, I am working through my feelings about finally getting an injury diagnosis. And about the fact I've potentially done severe long-term damage to my feet, which are fairly important to getting around, as it turns out. My big dreams of training for a half marathon and doing a bunch of ski touring have temporarily been kiboshed in favour of staying off my bashed-up metatarsals.

So there you have it: I played my best Nationals yet, learned about fighting creeps, got a new job, and learned I've done it all with a broken foot. Stay tuned for more exciting updates.