Recently I bought a Kodak Zi6 pocket video camera. My intentions are to take it with me to Sarasota and grab a couple of action shots and maybe a few interviews.

I took it with me to Southwest Regionals in Denver a few weeks ago. During the Bravo/Condors Final I took this video of the Condors’ Danny Karlinksky throwing a I/O forehand huck which is intercepted by Bravo’s Andrew Mangan (not Clark Bishop as previously reported. Sorry Clark).

Sorry Danny, don’t mean to pick on you.

Hey everyone, Andy here.

So Nationals are less than two weeks away and I have yet to procure a place to stay over the duration of the tournament. I was wondering if there any players, spectators, or officials who are looking to share a room or add another guest to a house or condo. I am open to any arrangement (distance or money-wise).

Or if you have any ideas of good places to stay, that would also be welcome.

Hit me up at The Huddle email address at info@the-huddle.org.

Thanks, and I hope to see you in Sarasota. If you want to talk shop or have a beer in Florida, let me know. That could be cool.

UPDATE: Thanks to the guys on El Diablo. I’ll be staying with them.

The adage goes that the winners get to write the history books. With that in mind, we received this write up of Northwest Mixed Regionals from Mischief player Chris Doyle who, along with his teammates, won the ever-competitive region.

Saturday morning started out as a crisp Autumn morning in Corvallis with temperatures in the high 30s to low 40s. The layer of frost on the field quickly melted off and by the times games began, the temperature was up and the air was still. Our goal for the weekend was to play each game with intensity and focus regardless of the score.

Our first game was against Night Train, a team we know well from our Section. We came out strong, getting D’s that led to scores to start the game off 4-0 and eventually taking half 8-2. With the game well in hand, our players and sideline lost some of the focus we were striving for and the final score of 15-8 reflects that.

After a bit of stern lecture from our captains we played Montana’s Bozo’s with renewed dedication to our tournament goals and won 15-4.

Our final pool play game was against the first seed from Oregon. All we knew about them was that they’re a non-practicing team of pickups, primarily from Carleton College. Historically, the Oregon section isn’t especially strong so it was difficult to judge what the relative ease with which they cut through it meant. No one likes to have an unknown wild card in their pool, but as it turns out, while they had a number of athletes and good players, they didn’t have the experience together or the consistency to run up the score. Hunzicker settled for a bunch of good-natured heckling about how serious we all were.

Going into the tournament, we knew that the 16/4 format would put us in great position to lock up a spot to nationals on Saturday afternoon. Also, as we suspected from the start, that road would lead
us to the 2007 Mixed National Champions, Shazam Remains. While their roster has changed a bit this year, since Worlds, we had only beat them once before (this year at Spawnfest/ECC where we came from behind to win 16-14). The wind had picked up slowly throughout the day and we thought we might see a couple zone points during the game.

We started off strong scoring on defense to start the game to go up 4-2. Shazam decided to shift strategies and began a campaign of two to three passes followed by a huck to one of their women. We were slow to defend against this due to some missed bids and a couple misalignments where we ended up leaving a thrower or a receiver open. They managed to break us on offense a few times including coming out of half to take the count to 6-9.

The most contentious part of the game came when one of our cutters was fouled in the end zone before scoring on his second attempt. He proceeded to spike the disc… accidentally straight sideways into a Shazam player’s stomach. It took a couple points for both teams to settle down after that and we finally managed to iron out the defensive errors that had plagued us in the first half and began
converting on offense. We closed the game out on something like a 4-1 run to win 15-12.

We were excited to win such a tight, tense game and a few teammates commented that they’ve never been as happy winning a game at Regionals before. The celebration was short lived, however as we knew that our finals against Mental Toss Flycoons would be a challenging affair. MTF have been consistently gaining strength over the past few years so their “upset” win over D’oh was not unexpected.

The MTF game works off their quick handler movement and a favorite play of theirs is the dump, dish back to the thrower to a huck (often to one of their standout tall women receivers). Finals saw them
playing a lot of force-middle and with poaches coming off our handlers. This caused us to play quite a bit of horizontal stack and to move the disc amongst our said handlers. We started the game off
trading points but much like semis, we found ourselves down by three during the first half.

A number of long points punctuated by great defense by both teams ensued but we were able to fight back and regain a lead at 11-10. This was the first game of the tournament where we had to tighten our subbing rotation and were primarily playing our top two offensive and defensive lines. With the soft cap on and the game to 12, Flycoons was forced to put up a high stall huck that captain Mark Smith reeled in, broken right hand and all. After working it up the field, Smith then pulled down a high break-mark score to cap off the game and his first turn-over free tournament.

I watched a few other games this weekend as well. I love those guys on Brass Monkey and was hoping they could pull it together for one last run at Nationals, but they were killing themselves with drops. CTR played a great last couple of games and ended up losing to Shazam in the 4/5 game to go. They play a smart offense but don’t have the raw athletic prowess to compete with the top teams. Night Train also performed above their seed and seemed to be playing well. Psychoplastique, a team from Edmonton, was looking speedy and athletic in the couple points I saw of them in pool play.

I think the best four teams from the region are being sent to Sarasota this year and I think there’s a good chance that both strength bids will be back in the NW come ‘09. However, given our early season losses out of region and previous champs Shazam coming in as NW #4, seeding for nationals is going to be difficult. There seems to be quite a bit of parity in at least the top 8 mixed nationals teams this year and I would caution against underestimating any team there. It seems like seeding in mixed is often more difficult than for the other divisions due to a number of factors. The lack of out of region play seems to be the biggest with many teams not committing to traveling more than a couple hours outside their respective regions.

Congratulations to all the NW qualifiers and thanks to Jon Ladd for putting on a great tournament. I’d also like to say thanks to my teammate Wes Chao whose writeup of the tournament I used to refresh my memory and plagiarize my structure.

Great stuff from Chris. The Mixed Division in Sarasota is going to be as strong as ever; it will be interesting to see where all of the Northwest teams land in the final standings. Is all in the top four possible?

This past weekend the final round of Regionals took place, finishing off the qualifying for Club Nationals in Sarasota. Below are the lists:

OPEN
- Sub Zero
- Machine
- Ring of Fire
- Truck Stop
- Ironside
- GOAT
- Bodhi
- PoNY
- Sockeye
- Revolver
- Jam
- Doublewide
- Chain Lightning
- El Diablo
- Johnny Bravo
- Condors

WOMENS
- Pop
- Nemesis
- Backhoe
- Loose Cannon
- Lady Godiva
- Brute Squad
- Captials
- Ambush
- Fury
- Riot
- Traffic
- Ozone
- Showdown
- LaYuma
- Rare Air
- Box

MIXED
- Alpha Cobra Squadron
- Peppermint Bon Bon
- Hooray
- AMP
- Quiet Coyote
- Slow White
- Puppet Regime
- Mischief
- Flycoons
- D’Oh
- Shazam Remains
- Chewbacca Defense
- Bucket
- Guillermo Y Compania
- Barrio
- Cougars

MASTERS
- Surly
- Old Style
- O.L.D. S.A.G.
- Chesapeaked
- DoG
- Glum
- Troubled Past
- Throwback
- Mileage
- Anejo
- Old And In The Way
- Double Black

Let the seeding speculation begin.

The other big surprise coming out of South Open Regionals this past weekend was El Diablo, out of Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah and Atlanta, Georgia. Many spectators expected Ronin out of Florida to capture the third bid to Nationals. In the end, El Diablo came out on top.

We caught up with Mike Nash of El Diablo to hear more about their weekend and find out more about his relatively unknown team.

Last weekend in Austin, TX, El Diablo was able to scratch and claw their way through the backdoor in the tough 3-bid, 16-team format. After a fairly quick opening game against Turbodog, Diablo faced the 5th seed, Ludicrous Speed, in quarters. Ludicrous Speed is a club team formed by players in and around the University of Arkansas program, and a team which we had never seen before. Knowing that the losers of quarters had two more backdoor games on Saturday (lasting until 9:30pm), we knew the game was a must-win if we wanted to advance to Nationals on Sunday. As such, we treated the game like the finals—bringing our full array of defensive and offensive looks. In a slight upwind/downwind game, we were able to go up comfortably 13-7 before finally closing out the game 15-11.

Our next game was against Chain Lightning, who no doubt wanted to exact some punishment for their near-loss against us at Sectionals. Chain came out fast and took advantage of offensive miscues with quick deep strikes to take the lead 4-0. After the slow start, we traded the next 4 points to half, down 8-4. At halftime, we decided to conserve our offense a bit to prepare for the potential 4-game day on Sunday. Chain was very hungry and continued to take advantage of mistakes until the game ended 15-6.

Sunday began with a 5:45am wake-up call, as warm-ups began in the dark Texas morning at 6:45 for a 7:30 game with Grit. We have never faced the Dallas opponent, but we were able to take them out of their comfort zone by denying their swings and playing a flat-mark until mid-field to prevent their hucks. We took the game 15-10 and headed over to see the end of the Ludicrous Speed/Ronin game two fields away. In a very exciting game with lots of deep throws, Ludicrous Speed brought a zone defense at double-game point that forced a dropped hammer 20 yards away from the end zone. One incredible catch later, the boys from Arkansas had secured a major upset.

While Chain played Doublewide in the finals, the four remaining teams battled in the backdoor. We dispatched Ludicrous Speed easily 15-6, while Ronin was entrenched in another tight game – this time with Grit. Dallas held the lead most of the game, but was broken near the end to bring it to double-game point. After two turns by both teams, Grit proved to be the more patient team and punched the disc into the endzone. Meanwhile, Doublewide had defeated Chain in a 17-16 affair; that set up a rematch between us and Chain for second place while Grit and Ludicrous Speed fought to advance to the final game-to-go.

We decided to attack early in the Chain game and hoped that they would be caught off guard after a tough finals loss. Quickly, the game was tied 5-5; however, Chain awoke and amped up the defensive pressure to take half 8-6. Again, at halftime our captains convened and decided our best shot to advance to Nationals would be in the 3rd place game, so we decided to rest our offense and allow our defense to take some upwind reps. It would not have mattered, however, as Chain was not to be denied and played with some furious defensive passion to close the game out easily in the second half.

Finally, we had arrived to the final game-to-go, the game which we planned to be in all year, except with a different opponent. We would face Ludicrous Speed for a third time, and despite my comments otherwise, the outcome of the game was not in doubt. Ludicrous Speed relied on a short rotation and could not handle our defensive pressure in their 4th game of the day. Even with some sloppy play towards the end, we were able to close out the weekend with a 15-8 victory and a mob scene in the middle of the field complex.

Our team runs primarily horizontal stack offense, with occasional side-stack looks. Eric Olivier and Stephen Salley are the primary cutters, with Michael Spear providing the truest deep shots. On defense, expect Ryan Archibald and Wes Hall lined up against opponent’s main cutters, with Ben Slade providing explosive offense after turns. We are young, with an average age of 24 and 7 players involved in the college series next spring. However, we are continuing to improve at every tournament, and the trip to Nationals will be extremely valuable for future recruiting.

El Diablo’s victory is a breath of fresh air in a club scene dominated by a handful of entrenched elite teams. We’ll see if they continue to shake things up in Sarasota.