Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Throwing Down at Midwest Mudfest 2011



All week the excitement for Scorned’s first outdoor tournament was building. Last minute emails and indoor zone D practice added to the anticipation that we were finally out of the February no-tournament slump. For the most part, the ride to St. Louis was smooth. Scorned took 4 vehicles, with the majority of the team creating mad libs and chasing SF 1.0 in a 15 passenger van named Vag Fest 3.0. The rest of the team was split up between coach K and Lana’s van, Memo’s car, and a few people from the van went in Jazz’s car to make a little more leg room for everyone. After a 6-7 hour ride the majority of the Scorned ladies arrived at Blake’s house. Things got a little wild as the night got late, but Gapstur and Hoistad settled everyone down, tucked the team in, and told an unnecessarily long, ridiculous bedtime story about Ultimate Princess Virginia and the adventures she encountered between leaving her dairy cow farm on the coast to travel to St. Louis for the Throwdown.

After a little trouble finding the fields Saturday morning, Scorned arrived to the MWT and started to warm up. The weather was a bit chilly, but we were stoked to be outside on ground that wasn’t covered in snow. Lana and Kevin warmed us up with some great drills as we geared up for our first game of the spring season.

With power pool formatting, we took the field with our first game against Bella Donna, North Central Region competition. Both teams came out hard looking to take the lead. Although both teams took made break scores upwind, Bella held the lead until the end and took the win. One memorable highlight was Britt with a great grab for the score (I know it happened, I think it was this game?).
Score: 8-10, Wisconsin.

The next game of the day was versus Colorado Kali. This was definitely the coldest game of the day as the wind picked up. Up wind forehands became nearly impossible and in combination with an effective Kali zone, Scorned was unable to make the breaks necessary to win the game. Although defense was fought hard, Kali’s outdoor experience showed through with very few incompletely passes. Although the game proved frustrating on many levels, Kali was a fun team to play with great spirit and a good attitude about the adverse weather and temperatures. Highlights all went to rookie Weino in this game with some pretty insane grabs on a few swilly hucks. In the end, Kali came away with a win.
Score: 6-10, Kali

After a much needed gathering in the vans to warm up, Scorned took the field against Kansas University’s Betty’s. Lana’s brilliant idea of warming up in the cars proved successful, and Scorned pulled off the first win of the weekend 13-2. Some of the highlights from this game included our new zone defense. While it was a bit of an experiment actually running it in a game situation with real wind, it proved to be successful and forced multiple Ds.
Score: 13-2 Woman Scorned

After games, Scorned split up into their vehicles for the afternoon. Following warm cars and hot showers, the team regained feeling in their feet and hands. Scorned headed to Applebee’s for refueling before heading to Butchers house in the 15 passenger van for a little gathering/hot tubbing with the ISUC boys. Despite the co-ed mingling fun, Woman Scorned left the ISUC house at 12:00 AM sharp, thanks to the responsible rookies, Cami and Sam.
The next morning Scorned was well rested, dressed warm, and ready to take the field against Notre Dame. It was a chilly morning, but the Scorned ladies played tough through the muddy fields. Normally teams force with the wind or to the weaker throw of a team, however in this game we chose to force mud. Since half of the field was a pure mud pit, we decided to force their throws into this perfect layout D bed of fun. For the most part, this proved successful. Notre Dame was a very fun team that was all sorts of full of strategy. They even wore camouflage to blend in with the mud/grass mix of the fields. With a hard fought game on both sides, full of absolutely great spirit, Scorned pulled out the win to start off the morning.
Score: 11-8 Woman Scorned.

With little time to waste, Scorned then headed over a few fields to play University of Iowa Saucy Nancy. Scorned has traded wins with Saucy all fall but in this game Saucy brought everything they had. With great breaks and a zone that gave us too much trouble breaking, Saucy took hold of the game from the beginning and never let up. Despite our troubles making the scores, Scorned still threw down some great highlights. Cami, Becca, and Jessy all had great grabs, while Pesch and Jazz found holes through the Iowa cup on several occasions.
Score: 4-13 Saucy Nancy

After a loss to Iowa, Scorned headed across the parking lot to play Colorado College. This is a team that Scorned has not had very much (if any?) experience playing. The game was played with high intensity on both sides. The defense was really the main spectacle in this game. Both teams sacrificed our bodies for the disc and had the muddy clothes to prove it. Jazz had the most insanezo layout D on a huck in this game, while Oliver and Kaira layed it out big in the end zone for scores. Love, Hoistad, Top Model, and Pesch had mad defense on the field, doing a great job of shutting down handler movement in the mud. In the end, Scorned suffered a tough loss on universe point.
Score: 6-7 Lystra’s Tools

The final game of the weekend started off with a dance off to set the tone of the game. Both teams brought it, all enjoyed it, and in the end it was impossible to walk away with your head hung, no matter the outcome. Ohio State was our final opponent, and yet another team that we little to no history of playing. This game was fought with both pain and pride, as every single player on Scorned stepped up. The sidelines worked it hard in an attempt to transmit energy to the tired players on the field. Endurance wasn’t as much an issue as weighing injuries and the pure body beating the mud had administered. Both teams worked hard, but had exceedingly too many turn overs with solid defense being played by both teams. The biggest highlight of the game (and probably weekend) was THE MOST RIDICULOUS layout grab I have ever seen in my life, by Cami. In a swilly huck, the disc bladed over Cami’s head to the other side of her defender. Even her defender didn’t see the need to look for the D as it was clearly out of range...except that Cami made a bid for the disc, resulting in a two fingered grab no more than an inch above the ground. Unfortunately for everyone involved, a quiet injury had been called a few throws before which resulted in the disc going back. There were several more great grabs and Ds from a number of people on Scorned. Jessy, Gapstur, Love, and Becca were consistently frolicking in the mud, while Cassie, Sam, Hoistad, and Jiear played with straight consistency, maintaining our possession for the scores. The game was definitely a fun one, and although Fever took the game on universe point, Scorned gladly shook their hands for playing a great game of ultimate with us.
Score: 8-9 Ohio State (Beiber) Fever


Although injured, we had great help on the sideline from Anne all weekend with stat keeping (which we clearly didn’t get a hold of to help me write this) and sideline cheering/support. Although unable to play, Anne proved herself as a teammate. In the Fever game, Gapstur took off her red sweatshirt to reveal a clean white jersey, but after a few points, was asked to change to a red by the other team. Anne graciously lent Gap her brand new red jersey, which became almost completely covered in mud and wetness only minutes later with a layout D.

We would like to throw a huge thank you out there to our coaches for their help this weekend, and also to WUWU and Without Limits for running a great tournament, as always. Thank you!

After games, Scorned took no time to strip off all of our muddy clothes, crawl into our cars and make the trip back to Ames to gear up for a week of exams before the big Spring Break Oh One One. This weekend we will be attending Easterns in Wilmington, NC. Excitement is probably the biggest understatement of the year, but we are EXCITED. Not only are we looking forward to some more outdoor ultimate, but we are also excited for warm weather and the beach!! There has been a lot of tweets./emails/RSD posts flying around about surfing lessons, and Scorned plans to take full advantage shall the opportunity arise. The big talk around Ames is about Sarah “Blue Crush” Hoistad and her mad board skills, but realistically, I think most people are putting their money on the Magical “New Zealander” Lui.

ISUC and Woman Scorned plan to spend the following days in Georgia celebrating life before heading down to Austin, TX for Men’s Centex.

-Written by Lindsey Gapstur & Cami Nelson

2 comments:

  1. No personal shout-out to your #1 fan?!?? I'm no longer following this blog...

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  2. And a HUUUGE thanks to our #1 fan and the love of our lives, Ms. Michelle Johnson. We miss you, we love you, and we want you back :(

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