Poll Results

Who would win in a deathmatch:
Supposing that the death match would be set up like the NCAA tourney bracket, Wego would kill Sul (only using his left hand) for the championship bout. Tying for third would be Mark's tenacity and Hundo's ridiculous reach. Everyone else would just be killed.


Who has the most fitting nickname:
Halvsies wins. Somehow Nascar got second with Old Man River coming in third. Rounding out the others is the Prez and Lefty in a tie for fourth.

Who would make the hottest woman:
There was a four way tie for first as the team believes that Talon, Joe, Mark and Denis would all make hot females. In an incredible tie for fifth is J Ko, Joel, Kurley, Jon O, and Pavan (all outstanding choices in my book).

Dear Boomland,

I am honored that you chose me as one of your captains this year. I found this season full of challenges and excitement. I know that I learned so much and hope that all of you can come away from this season with the same feeling. You all poured your hearts out when it counted at Sectionals and I could not have asked for more out of any one of you. There is no reason to be disappointed in the way you played. This year, through the collective effort of the team, more people will respect not only our B-team but B-teams around the nation. We are part of a great program and to expect anything less greatness from even our B-team would be detrimental to the Ultimate program that Illinois players have worked so hard to create and maintain. I am proud to have played with you all and can’t wait to see everyone back out next season.

Boom,

McLain (Boring old Brian)

Sectionals Recap

Boomland knew that sectionals was going to be an uphill battle this year and that their play would need to be stepped up to the next level if they had any chance at making it to Regionals.

With those thoughts in the back of their minds, the men of Boomland faced their first opponent of the day, UIC. Boomland looked passed their #2 pool seed and came out firing from the get-go. Boomland drew first blood as UIC put a loose cup on. With an easy fake from Cozza and a toss Talon the cup was broken. This situation would continue to be seen throughout the day. After breaking the cup a few more times, UIC went to man and Boomland had a little trouble getting through it. With the help of ridiculous defense from Wego, Shaby, and Big Joe; Boomland took the game 13-11 for probably the biggest upset in sporting history.

Coming off the intense upset against UIC, Valpo waited on the next field to be defeated. Boomland once again came out of the gates very strong. However, toward the end of the game emotions seemed to fizzle as Boomland let Valpo get back into the game. With the support of the A-team on the sideline and a cool rain hitting their brows, Boomland once again stood on the field victorious 13-9 and now undefeated in pool play.

Jacked up on pure adrenaline, Boomland looked over to the opposite sideline to see their next opponent: the A-team. Boomland looked upon these giants of the Ultimate community not with fear, but with respect for they were brothers. Not brothers from the same mother, but brothers in the sense of shared blood and sweat. As the lines for each team were called and both teams stood opposite each other on the field it seemed as though the world stopped and focused its gaze upon this one single field on the Naperville Polo grounds for this would be a game to end all games. After tricking the A-team into thinking they were receiving, Boomland received the pull and effortlessly marched up the field for the first score for the game. However, this score would only be one of three for Boomland as the A-team’s A-teamness was too much for younger and better looking Boomland team. The highlight of the game came in the second half as Jon O burned Lefty deep on Beta X for a money shot in the end zone for the score. Although there was a mutual agreement to not hurt anyone on either team, the A-team decided to break that covenant: Pavan air snaked Hundo in the face and Austin decided to test to see how brittle River’s old bones actually were. At the end of the game Boomland lost 4-13, but it was much closer than that on the field.

I wish the A-team game would have been Boomland’s last game of the day because Boomland lost the concentration they had worked so hard on maintaining through the first two games of the day. To make their lives easier, Boomland needed to win their last game against Purdue to get into the Championship Bracket on Sunday. Purdue had a very athletic team and Boomland had trouble containing their longs. Boomland’s hearts and heads just seemed to not be into the game as Boomland sadly lost 13-7. This loss would mean we would be placed in the 6^th place bracket and have to win four games in row on Sunday.

Saturday passed and Sunday came just as winter melts into spring. Sunday was an opportunity for rebirth and a bid to Regionals. Boomland’s first game was against Earlham. With Jesus on their side Earlham took control of the first half and got at least four breaks. Boomland did not give up though and through the exquisite play of Cozza, Talon, Wego, Rivers, Prez and others Boomland was back in the game. However, the breaks given up in the first half were too much to com back from and Earlham prevailed 15-13. (Sidenote: Earlham was one of the nicest teams ever, really great guys)

After the rumors of a Sunday ending on a “one and done” type deal Boomland began preparations to play Loyola. As with the game before, we had trouble getting into the game early on and breaks in the first half would eventually come back to haunt Boomland in a 13-15 loss to Loyola.

The last game of the day for Boomland was against Northern. These guys played a very similar game to what we played and it looked to be a great game. But going along with the theme of the day of having breaks come back to bit us in the butt, Boomland regretfully lost its last game of the season. We fought hard in the second half and brought it back within two points on several occasions, but just could not seal the deal. Boomland ended its season in placing 13^th in Sectionals.

Additionally...

If we make it to regionals then the MVP as voted by his teammates will have the opportunity to shave my head. I am willing to part ways with my lovely locks for this glorious cause.

Sectionals Preview

As it stands right now there are four other teams in our pool: the A-team, UIC, Purdue, and Valpo. However, this may change as Cole thinks Valpo may not be able to make it which would move Notre Dame-B into the five seed in the pool. To be in a position to make it to regionals we will have to break seed and beat one team ranked ahead of us.

Round 1: Since Judson dropped out, we have a first round bye. This means that we can’t come out flat because other teams have had games to work out the kinks. This means that getting a good and focused flow during warm ups is imperative.

Round 2: Our first game is against UIC. We lost 13-3 to these guys at Chicago Invite. This is going to be a tough game, but this will also be the first tourney where we will have our full squad. If we are able to play the type of Ultimate that we have been discussing all season, then there is no reason why this game should be considered an automatic loss. This is one of the three teams ranked higher that we will have to beat to play Ultimate for one more weekend in April.

Round 3: We will play either Valpo or Notre Dame-B depending on Valpo’s situation. At Whitesmoke we lost 13-10 to them, but we did not have our full lineup and from what I heard our play was not at all representative of what our program is about. This game is a must win boys.

Round 4: This game might as well be the showcase game for the entire weekend. We have a tradition of playing our hearts out against the A-team fellas. This game is all about pride. When we played the A-team at club sectionals we showed that we can elevate our game to a new level. I find it rather interesting that the A-team has not asked us to scrimmage them this season (fear?).

Round 5: Cozza and I feel this is the big game on Saturday for us. We need to beat Purdue, UIC, or the A-team for a chance at regionals. I don’t know too much about Purdue and we haven’t played them this season or played many of the same teams they have. Last year we tied Purdue for 11^th. Lets just beat them.

Cozza should be emailing out some notes to everyone today on things to work on. Come to practice so we can work some things out and get our gamed honed for this weekend. Be smart this week with getting your work done, sleep, and eating right. Tourney week, boys. Tourney week.

Boom.

Whitesmoke Summary

I cannot think of a better analogy (http://youtube.com/watch?v=mZ7ZpLgkVxA&feature=related) for the weekend, nor a more appropriate one given our location about how the past tournament weekend went. I think we showed that we had plenty of heart http://youtube.com/watch?v=3JeLcP7Xa5o. There wasn’t a game in which we didn’t win a half, but we went 1-5. There were some lowlights of the weekend http://youtube.com/watch?v=IEpi6ZbM_nE, but there were also some awesome highlights http://youtube.com/watch?v=3MfLrw6NpJM. Lets take a deeper look into the weekend.

Game 1: vs Kalamazoo http://youtube.com/watch?v=fFv_PoZ2iP0

Our first game of the day against a team that was faster, stronger, and just a tad better. http://youtube.com/watch?v=oGECJP3phyY. Their pulls were always in the back of the endzone and we had a hard time jumpstarting the offense from that far back. Zone O and Zone D was good, I don’t remember much else. Lost 13-8 after 7-2 half?

Game 2 vs North Park X. It really was an X caliber team, as we easily took the first half and their players would routinely forget to stall, get broken, and just all the other stuff that goes with being a rookie. Second half, the north park vets started playing and shut us down. I think that’s all there was to it that game

Game 3 vs Valpo. We were up most of the time, at the end line calling was still a bit too loose for the situation. It was 10-10 at one point and then they ended up pulling it out (that’s what she said) http://youtube.com/watch?v=pwyznJ4U-pA. We will be them this weekend.

Game 4: vs St. John’s. What happened? They had 9 guys, one who happened to be 7-0 and muscular, but what does that mean? Nothing. We just didn’t show up.

Sunday

Goshen: The sole win of the weekend came in a 13 14 crossover. We won easily, but didn’t never closed the game completely. Not much to say about this game other than we were flat and should never let a team of this caliber keep with us.

Lewis: Highlight game of the weekend. They are a good athletic team and it was a good fight by both teams. We went down early. They scored 3 or 4 in a row to start and half was 8-3? We turned it on in the second half when Michael started getting pissed at how not explosive we were playing. He got a D and things went rolling from there. Everyone started getting Ds and making plays. Sidrys had a layout D, later Michael got a footblock in the endzone, disk went up in the air, and Kevin Hund was in the endzone and just snagged it out of the air. That second half showed how we can play. We just need to perform that way.

Notes for the future: Everyone learned something. Handler cuts were better, longs started cutting breakside, hucks to Chrysler never got old. It will be exciting to see how Illinois Boomland will perform this weekend in Naperthrill

Huck Finn

Boomland entered in the state of Missouri and big smiles and big dreams. Upon our arrivial in the state of Pat, Denis, and Joel we opted for the non traditional route of making awkward comments and scenes at the Hooters in the parking lot.

Saturday started with the sounds of Anthony throwing up at 5:30AM. Then after a 45 minutes drive to the fields we were ready to play Wisconsin B. Wheaton described this game as “the battle of the best B-Teams.” We tried not to disappoint and played hard up to the closely scored half. But in the end, their four man cup was too much given the wind and our growing incapability to get our offensive moving and we lost 11-5.

Next we played Judson the six seed in our pool. After losing our first game, I was happy to see Boomland did not come out cold. We struck fist and never let up. Boomland took the game 11-1.

After working the kinks out, Wheaton was up. They were the first seed in the pool so we knew we were going to have to play with more gusto than previously. The first two games were played in an up-wind/down-wind fashion, but this field was turned the other way and allowed for actual Ultimate to be played. We started off slow and it looked like we were going to have a another game like Wisconsin B on our hands. That was, until we decided to take five straight points. They decided that we might be a threat and put in Weasel who Chrysler shut down for the most part. In the end we had dug too much of a deficit and lost 11-7, but we fight really hard for that loss.

We came out strong against Missouri-X, but for some reason lost a lot of steam as the game progressed. Their team was good, but in way should we have lost. We moved back to the up-wind/down-wind fields and hucked too much. I miss we could have seen them in the finals, but we needed to beat at least one team seeded ahead of us to make the Championship Bracket. We lost 11-7.

We lost to Beloit in our last game 11-9 and I would really prefer not talking about it. I can speak for everyone in saying we want to see them again, soon.

Sunday began with a nice “not knowing where we were going” drive through St. Louis. Once we figured out that we were using directions to get to the tourney party and not the fields, we fixed the problem. We played Wash U-B first. The fields were amazingly muddy from flooding and rain the night before. Jon O and at least three others were covered in Missouri mud before warm-ups had ended. From the start of the contest we took control of the flow and speed of the game. We started working on different defenses and J Ko called mixed up lines. After it was all over we won 15-2.

We played Judson again for the next match up. We didn’t take this game as seriously as we should have and the score showed it. We ended up only winning 15-10.

To determine the who got the 17^th place crown we had to play ISU. After two rounds the fields we officially screwed and it was one big mud pit. Sharp cuts were out of the question and I cant even imagine what the handlers were doing to deal with it. We started out sloppy and did not expect the aggressiveness and intensity that ISU came out with. At half we were down at least five. We had a lot of work to do in the second half. Lead by inspiring efforts by Jonny Wego, Cooza, and Chrysler Boomland battled back as best it could. With a little time before soft cap went on ISU was up 12-6. Boomland did not want to die like that and decided to friggin’ fight through everything to get that last point. The point was scattered with turnovers from both teams. Soon hard cap went on and the point had not yet finished. After fifteen more minutes of defense and cutting Cozza found McLain for a little ten footer to end the game. We lost 12-6, but am happy at how hard we fought to get that last point.