Monkey Bowl 2011

Last weekend, Zack had his first Ultimate Frisbee tournament of the year.

We headed up to Nashville for the weekend. The weather was ...unexpected...it is May...and it was FREEZING. We had looked at a weather forcast before leaving home and I had packed according to it. Thankfully, I had thrown in a pair of jeans, a long sleeve tshirt, and a sweatshirt...or I would have been a Paulasicle! As it was I was still cold!

Saturday, the sky was overcast and it was misting and spitting rain most of the day. The guys however, did not let the weather affect their playing. I think that this weekend is the best that I have ever seen their team play. They went 4-0 on Saturday dominating their competition and easily winning their bracket of the open division, which meant that our team got to move up to the Elite brackets on Sunday. This was really exciting for our team as we were dealt a bad hand at this tournament last year. Last year, our guys had tied with another team for moving up to the elite brackets, but the other team was chosen over ours...possibly because our team was the less known of the two. So, dominating the competition this year was exciting for our team.

"Roma!"

This is one of the guys daughters...Isn't she precious?!

We went to a burrito place for dinner. They had a burrito challenge where you tried to eat a 4 lb burrito that was 36 inches long... Trenton took the challenge on a dare. He finished it. It earned him a picture on the wall and a free dinner.


Sunday, we started our day off playing a team called LouEvil. As we watched them warm up, I could tell that these guys were much better than any of the teams we had faced the day before. Our guys held there own and battled closely with LouEvil. They eventually pulled off a well deserved win.

Our second game of the day was against Chain lightning (AKA Chain). Chain is a VERY good team from Atlanta. These guys take frisbee seriously. They are tall and fast....and by far the best team that we have ever plays. These guys were forth in worlds last year....nuf said! Our guys were excited to play them.

The guy in black actually caught this!!

Chain dominated the game, but our guys were able to score on them. The final score was 13 - 1, but for seeing Chain for the first time, I thought that they did really well. Some of the guys were talking about how they went into the game expecting to loose and mind set is important. At least next time they will be able to go into playing them knowing that they are in fact human! :)

Our last game was against a team out of Columbus Ohio called MadCow. They also played at nationals last year. Our guys held their own through the half and then MadCow started to pull away. I think that our final score was 15-9, but I think that this tournament was really good for our team for a lot of reasons. Roma is getting its name out there and people are starting to take notice. There was at least one guy that came over to the team to talk about possibly playing with Roma. The guys also gained experience and confidence. It's gonna be fun watching the team continue to improve over the season.