The first term really sped through, so fast that I couldn’t keep you dearest hawks updated and for that I apologize, I can only try and do better this term.

There was not a whole lot of exciting frisbee related things happening last term, it was the off season (no indoor) so just a couple of relaxed, fun tournaments, which the captains used for scouting out A-team players. Some pretty decent people got cut when the final

squad was announced but I was lucky enough to sneak through. In the last couple of weeks before the holidays we got properly introduced to our coach Kevin Cissna. He is a Davis alumnus, and made it right to the top of the sport, playing a number of years with Revolver. He is a no nonsense kinda guy, that is certain to get you running your hardest.  He really knows how to get the most out of trainings and makes every drill as efficient as possible.

Over the winter break I was lucky enough to do a bit of travelling and got a double dose of mohawks. I recuperated my senses and money after a blurry stay in Las Vegas by visiting Kyle “Thor” Shurtz’s for 4 days in Boulder, Colorado. We got out on the local disc golf course, but I really couldn’t get to grips with proper disc golfing discs, and just about held my own with an ultra-star. Putting into the chain net baskets things was really difficult since the actual putters that disc golfers use are smaller and fit inside it a lot easier. All in all I preferred the wonky fence post or skinny tree targets I’m more familiar with.

I flew from Denver to Oakland on Christmas Eve, and was met at the airport by non-other than your fine women’s captain Sarah McCann. I had a really enjoyable stay with her family and we got to throw around a bit on the beach in her home town San Luis Opisbo. It was all fun and games until Sarah got a bit over enthusiastic chasing down a dodgy wayward throw of mine, and ended up lying on the shoreline, fully clothed and being lapped by waves which she couldn’t avoid due to a twisted ankle :(. You’ll have to ask her about the ensuing heroism but really I was just trying to make up for initiating it with a rubbish throw.

I made it back to Davis just after new year’s and straight away had the Davis Hat tournament to go to. This was really fun, I was on a team with very few people that I’d ever met before let alone played frisbee with. I found it really challenging to cut and throw accordingly for people when you have no idea of their abilities or tendencies. I enjoyed it a lot and really recommend hat tournaments to anyone that’s never been to one, you learn so much! It also opens up a lot of ultimate doors for you, since it was here I booked my spot on a team at the upcoming beach tournament, Lei Out.

They sold it to me as claiming Lei Out to be the closest thing California has to Paganello. There are a lot of similarities, they are both played on sand, use the same rules, and involve an unhealthy amount of pitch side drinking. However Lei Out this year had 184 teams alongside the Pacific Ocean, basking in Santa Monica’s gorgeous L.A sunshine. It definitely fulfilled my beach ultimate fix for the year but I’ll still be extremely jealous of anyone heading to Rimini this easter. It wasn’t fancy dress sadly, but the party was still epic. They had hired a huge warehouse on the top floor of the mall which had a couple of hundred people in and space for a couple hundred more. We ended up doing pretty well since we won all our games on Saturday but this moved us up to a slightly higher bracket which we then got knocked out of at the quarter-final stage. By this time we were having so much fun that placing didn’t matter. Our call involved a wine tasting challenge (the name “2 buck huck” was a pun on “2 buck chuck” the equivalent of supermarket own brand red wine). We also had a shot belt with 18 shots of skittles vodka strapped to it and that got refilled a number of times. It was a very sleepy 6 hour drive back up the west coast to Davis but so totally worth it.

Back in Davis Trainings have really started to get ramped up in intensity now, just 2 days off a week. This includes track workouts, (8 laps of sprinting the straights and jogging the bends) and gym workouts. We had a squad of 24 but due to some unlucky circumstances we are now down to just 19. Compared to the other colleges this will be smaller but we are hoping being a close nit group can work to our advantage. I’m so excited about the season kicking off this weekend, the first officially USAU college sanctioned event is the Santa Barbara invite. Seeing the Dogs creep onto Skyd magazine’s preseason power rankings is really spurring us on and we hope to cause some upsets. Be sure to check up to see how we do, results/ write up will probably go up on Skyd early next week.
I’ll leave it there for now and I hope you are all wrapping up warm with that nasty white frosty stuff about. All the best for the new season!

Peace and love,

Joe

“Once a dog, always a Mohawk”