#fly hard

 I’d like to say that this story is about Fly Hard, but I don’t think that would be fair to my team, or even remotely true. You see, my team let us down a little, and nobody was keen for this tournament… Probably because most of them haven’t been to a Sicko event before, and don’t know how fantastic they are. Alas, a beginner and I were the only ones volunteering, so I took it upon myself to find us a sufficient amount of players to pick up, so that we didn’t lose our spot. With this, we took four from Reading Knights, another from Rawhyde Winchester, and another who we have ties with from past tournaments. With this, we became Flying Knights, and took on our opponents in the Open Division. I also picked up for the Mixed Division, but I don’t have any memory of those scores or games - it’s a big mixed blur! I shan’t be writing about those games, though I may mention them. With that, here is is: The Open Sicko Story.

Much to our relief, the Open division didn’t begin until much later than Mixed - probably due to the smaller pool - so we didn’t have a game until noon. Tim grabbed the Winchester players from 9am, and after a journey made solely through villages and country roads, we got over to Burgess Hill with oodles of time to spare.  We met our Reading pick-ups, one of them called me Hitler, and then we made our way down to the pitch to play Swansea. Already aware of how good they are, I went in as pumped as possible, trying not to worry about the lack of experience of playing with my boys. We overcame that very quickly, however - it helped that we had a team of handlers - and had an even game that ended in a draw, 7 points each. No one pulled away with more than two points on the score throughout the entire game. There were a lot of unnecessary turnovers by both teams at the beginning, but once we warmed up, it was a decent standard of play with some great grabs, and some really intense D. A fantastic way to start the weekend overall.

Seeded second, I was nervous about our game against #KnifeCrime. Strong, leggy, and experienced blokes filled up their line, and seeing them made me crap myself a little bit. They rightfully beat us 14-2, using their height and strength against us, bidding for discs I wouldn’t have dreamed of catching. An impressive team - ending up in the final - and a tough game. It squandered my happy energy a little, but I did my best to keep my head up for the next one in an hour’s time.

Surrey have always had the edge on Fly Hard. Always. We’re such an even match but they always pull away from us in the end. It is a constant source of frustration, but it also means that we get a really fun and competitive game with them whenever we meet. With this, to say I was pumped for this game would be the understatement of the century. Considering we had a completely different line of players that our past games, I was so eager to see if we could take them, or if they’d work around us even better. Neither. It was as it always was, constantly coming back with point after point, getting plenty of Ds, some crazy bids in the endzone, and an even game all around. The points started pretty long while we warmed up, but we both got on it after a few minutes, and we ended 7-6… To Surrey! As gutted as I was, I kept in mind that this was the first team, thus the strongest they had. Considering our pick-up team hadn’t gelled in the way that they had by training together, I kept my head high, and was very proud of what we achieved. Besides - we could meet the second team later on!

The final game of the day was Chesham Kites, who had a line not dissimilar to #KnifeCrime, though not quite as high a standard. All-male and strong legs, comfortable with hucks, and aggressive - though spirited - on D. I’d met a couple of them earlier in the day, so I knew that they were good guys. Still wanted to smoke them, though!  Unfortunately, nobody remembered the score of this game, but they definitely won by a wide margin. We tucked in a few points, but they read our discs and intercepted them with ease, and their strikes to endzone were like lightning, and we couldn’t keep up. They trusted one another’s hands beautifully, and really played the disc into the endzone well. A deserved win by them.

Having played the four games mentioned, and then an extra three for Reading, I was beat. My calves were starting to feel solid and my shoulders were aching from practising hammers. Alas, no rest for the wicked! Straight into the showers at the venue, and to the train station. Reading remained in Brighton for the night, drinking and bonding with my Winchester folk. Ben, Mark, and I decided that an adventure to the 5 Europe event in Clapham seemed fitting, so we headed up there for the night. To be fair, we spent most of the evening walking around run-down areas of London, and eating an obscene amount of food in McDonald’s, but the event was nice enough. It was pretty packed with older Ultimate players, and the pub was really nice. We stayed for a couple of hours and just chatted. It sounds dull, but it was really lovely to spend time with them.  Back on the train to Brighton, and we arrived at our host house a little after 11pm. It was a little basement flat underneath a terrace house, where an Ultimate couple lived. We stayed in their living room, which was warm and cute and lovely. They were fantastic hosts! Anyways, we stayed up a bit longer and played some game the Mark brought (I’m sure Ben will remind me what it's called once he reads this), ate the chocolate we grabbed from a 24-hour Budgens by the station, and then crashed. Ish. Ben and I spent at least 3 hours tormenting Mark before we settled down.

Up at 7.45, we drank the coffee we were offered by our hosts, got dressed, gathered our stuff together, and just about made it in time for our train to Brighton station, and then got to Burgess Hill from there. After a crisis with having too many people and not enough seats in Tim’s car, and the Winchester boys not waking up two members of our team before they left, we were in a bit of a pickle. Only four of us were there, and we had a game in 10 minutes… So for one game, we were Flying Surrey Knights! (Thanks again to those pick-ups). 

Once again, we started the day by playing Swansea. To say they were hanging wouldn’t even scratch the surface - we could jump ahead to the call and quickly mention here that their captain fell asleep during the speeches. Anyway! I wanted to take advantage of their ill states, but it didn’t quite work out the way I hoped. It turns out we were just as tired as they were hungover, and were sluggish about our play. The first 8 minutes or so of the game were a bit of a write-off: Dropping every disc, throwing into empty space, and pointless attempts at scoring points. It was almost comical. They eventually pulled it together a little faster than us, and won the game 7-5. A few more minutes and we might have turned that score around, but never mind. Time for the 3 hour wait for the next game!

I kept on my toes by throwing about on empty pitches during the Spikeball games - practising hucks and overheads mainly - and playing with Knights for their first games of the day. Eager to get going with Fly Hard’s long-awaited game, it did not go over my head that we weren’t playing Surrey 2 - we were back against our original opposition. Something changed in this game, though. We suddenly pulled together and absolutely rocked it! We started using Wisby in the endzone more, utilising his height, and being a bit more confident with overheads. We also made more progress with our three-handler set-up, and relied on our ability to swing it a bit more than we had been. With these improvements, and their surprise at our changed style of play, we beat them 7-4. It felt a lot more even than the scoreline reflects, and we paid them their dues. It was a win we deserved, though!

On to the next one against Scuba Divers (they had a girl!?!?!?), who had been awesome around the venue for the entire weekend. They were really friendly guys, and were liberal about handing out their Hobnobs. Seeing them on pitch upped my spirit immediately, and I had a feeling that this would be a really intense, but wonderfully fun game. They came out with stronger play than expected, however, and we had to change up our O quite a lot to work through their men. They had us running ourselves into the ground, trying to keep the pressure on in their strikes to the endzone. I managed to cut out my men - and girl (!?!?!?!? :D) - a reasonable amount, but they were too quick for us in the end. Unfortunately this is another score that I don’t remember, but I’m sure we had a handful of points on the board - they just had two handfuls! A fun game, though, and a good call. I hope to come across these guys again.

Straight back to a game with Knights after the call, and then back again for Fly Hard to take on Chesham Kites. The game began how the last one had remained throughout… Only worse. Like, it was as if we’d all forgotten we had legs and hands and that we didn't know we were supposed to catch the disc. For 5 minutes, we fumbled about while the racked up some points, and I started to wonder if we were actually dying. We snapped out of it, though, and by that point the opposition had already relaxed a bit and stopped pushing themselves so hard. With this, we got back into the swing of things, using the same play we had against Surrey, and suddenly pulled back a fair amount of points. They got in a bit of a panic for a bit, but returned our hard play evenly, and we remained intense and on point until the buzzer went, and the scored showed that they beat us with 6 points to our 5. Another two minutes on the pitch, and that could have been ours. We were gutted, they were relieved, I was emotionally exhausted.

The final game of the tournament was against Surrey 2, the team we had expected to meet earlier. Aware that the score was so close with Surrey 1, and that we had nothing else to do after this game, this was it: Leave it all on the pitch! Ben took this a little too far and left his blood on the pitch, but that’s by the by. Our game was on point here: The flow was impeccable, the overheads went straight on target, and the D was as intense as I’d seen it yet. Surrey were fumbling the disc a little, putting out shaky throws and making silly drops. We used their turns well, and racked up the points quickly. They didn’t make the job easy in the slightest, but we just remained a little tighter throughout, and finished with a score of 9-3, giving us a seed of 7th for the whole weekend.

Overall, Sicko was an incredible weekend. Although I definitely didn’t play my best - particularly on the second day - both Fly Hard and Knights put up a strong fight against their oppositions, and came away with some moments to remember. Loads of bids and Ds, and some gorgeous flow from all involved! Thanks again to the pick-ups who joined us for the weekend: You made Fly Hard look good! Come back and join us whenever you’d like. Also thank you to Reading for letting me join them. You guys are absolutely fantastic players and people, and I’d be thrilled to join you any time you need me. Final thanks to Mohawks and Panthers for hosting, and to Becca and John for letting us sleep in their house!

High Octane 2012: Ultimate Frisbee indoor tournament. 

Team: Fly Hard

Each Photo has a caption if you want more explanation.