Andy Crews:
Here's a few things I remember about my Condor experiences.
1993 was my first year as a Condor. Most of what I remember is from Worlds. I really like 7 day tournaments. We played all sorts of foreign teams, and the Germans made us play with a Wham-O, and sometimes they didn't count in English. I learned that Jimmy Mallon and Jay Higgins thought that the best thing in Worlds was to stay up until 3 drinking every night for a week. I didn't think it was so fun, but they were fun to watch. We had our chances with 2 or 3 of the top 8 teams, and weren't really that close. 9th place wasn't so bad, particularly since it meant that the top 10 teams were all from the US. I watched NY and Double in the final. The one play I remember (or think I remember) was a called play after a time-out. As far as I could tell, it went like this: Kenny would run into the endzone as fast as he could (very fast). Cribber would then throw a hammer as far as he could (very far). Worked great.
1994-1995 I might mix up a bit, so I'll lump them together. Regionals were in Santa Fe (95 I think). There was snow on the ground, and some of the masters teams brought oxygen tanks. We made it to semis and lost to SD in a pretty close game, but we were never ahead. The other Regionals was in SD, and again we lost to SD in the semis. Back then there was only one bid from our region.
1996 I took a Condor sabbatical. It was the first time the SW got 2 spots, but we hadn't been able to beat Colorado or SD regularly for years. Still it was a great team effort--small team and they came close, beating Boulder once.
1997 I missed Worlds, so many of you probably have some memories of that. Mostly I remember fights and stuff. JD and Greg fought at practice. Higgins got his testicles in a fight with a knee from NY. We practiced every weekend. We lost the first 2 games at Nationals (did everybody arrive Wednesday night?). I felt like we worked too hard. But it layed the ground work for the future.
1998. A pivotal year. Everybody was out. "I'm playing with SD." Mario was going to run the team (which was good). He pulled both his hamstrings in the finals of the Classic. Namkung was injured for a long time, and called us when he recovered which was after cuts. I only found out later that he called us first, and then called Double when we said "sorry." We never called subs all year. We won every game we played until we met Boston in pool play. Did you ever see the movie Excalibur? The pool play game against Boston was like the scene where Arthur has Excalibur, the invincible sword, and he uses it to fight Lancelot, the knight who cannot be bested. Boston hadn't lost at Nationals in 5 years. We hadn't lost a game anywhere in the last 6 months. Something had to break. It went to 16-16. Steve threw me the winning goal, but somehow Boston won. Did we really deserve to win that year? You probably have an opinion. I'd
say, no. What the hell were we doing there? Brandon was still running around saying "Man the college ultimate season is going to ROCK!" and Blake would pick him up by his shoulders and shake him and say "Brandon, we're going to play in the CLUB finals in TWENTY MINUTES, so pull it together!"
1999. Worlds was again a great tournament. The Skogs hated us and all the teams hated the Skogs. We got our shot against Boston, but our team wasn't really enough of a team at the time. Steve broke his wrist, and I thought "man, we're not gonna win Nationals this year." Steve was pretty important. Despite having 5's during the last few practices before Nationals, we made it to the finals. We beat Furious by 1 point in pool play. We had 8 turn-overs in the finals, and we lost by 5. I think the team-D concept was missing.
2000. Well, you all remember most of this year. When Greg got hurt in the quarters, I might have had the same feeling I did when Steve got hurt, if I hadn't blocked it out immediately and focussed on the game at hand. The thing was, we played more like a team. Everybody was a part. The scoring stats are amazing! 18 people caught or threw a goal in the semis or finals! We didn't call subs.
Every year, you work out, you plan, you practice, and you think "Am I doing everything I can? Am I doing enough?" You know what? This year, it was enough. Just barely enough.
That is a strange thought: "I worked out hard enough this year." That is a new thought.
Brandon Steets:
In church this past Sunday our assignment was to think about (and possible to make a list of) all that we have to be thankful for. Remember, this holiday season has a spiritual foundation, and is more than just spending time with family and friends over a delicious tofurkey feast, but it is based upon being thankful to the Creator for what you've been blessed with. Of course, we're lucky enough to live in the most affluent society in the history of human civilization. That's a given. Of course, we've got 21 gold medals to wear. That's another easy one. But we've each also got 20 awesome buddies and one incredible team. So that's what I'm giving thanks for in my prayers on Thursday. I'm thankful for y'all. Happy Thanksgiving, bros.
Peace
-b