so today is the big day i've been waiting for all week. the tournament is so much on my mind that i haven't even been thinking about europe much. whoa.

i put on tighty-whities for the first time in years, and my old coe uniform shorts and socks just for good luck.

adam and i went to furrs to get some fruit and suntan lotion.

arriving at overlook park in white rock, we saw that most of the tournament-goers were already there. tents were strewn about the field, suggesting that many of the teams had shown up early.

i had an apple for breakfast while warming up with the team. everyone had on our icky green shirts.

one team didn't show up (vale/brekinridge), so they split the roster into pools of 5. our pool contained two teams from albequerqe, one from flagstaff, one from denver, and ourselves.

the other pool was the santa fe team, chris's atomic fish team (mostly from california), telluride, lubbock, and salt lake city.

because chris had made the game schedule and field allotment, he made our field assignemnt really easy: we were on the same field for every game, and field was one of the better ones.

our first round was the by, so we watched jamal's team "salsa" from albequerqe, which we would play in round 2.

our game against salsa was quick and ugly. we lost 2-13. we played hard, but too many of our players were throwing the disc away. they played the zone on us, and we're not very good against the zone.

we'd pop the disc to someone, and instead of returning it to the handlers for a reset, they'd try to continue it up the field and throw it away. this was almost guarenteed because all our handlers were back behind the cup, so any poppers were shitty throws.

patience was our big problem. i can convienently separate myself form this criticism, because i played deep without exception and never got the disc.

we scored the first point, but it went rapidly downhill from there.

our next game was against flagstaff ("the munkens"). they were even tougher. we lost 3-13. interestingly, all three of our points were scored by ginger, our best woman. the reason we scored any at all is because the woman guarding ginger was weak in the legs, and ginger is a sprinter.

the third game was against denver's "big sexy." for the first time, we didn't score the first point. in fact, we didn't score any points for a long time. tim, who practices with los alamos, but was playing with santa fe, came over on his by and played with us for a few points. he scored our two points. 2-13, another loss.

the last team we played was the savage seven, also from albequerqe. this was by far our best performance of the day due mostly to an inspiring pep-talk by paul. we lost 13-6.

we were just happy to have scored a full 13 on the day.

[note: our highest scoring game was against the team that would end up winning the tournament]

my entire food intake for the day: 4 apples, 2 power bars, a cookie, and a bagel. plus, 2 gallons of water. - and i didn't need to go to the bathroom.

i was so exhasted from the 4 consequtive games that i fell asleep in the car on the way home.

adam said he'd give me a ride to the party up on the ski hill after he ate dinner, but after two hours of waiting, i left without him.

carolyn and i went to the exceptionally weak party for about 15 minutes. i introduced her to some of the team, and we talked with jude while he dropped chips into his beer.