UPA Club Championships - Open, Day 2By Derek Gottlieb 
10/24/02 
After three rounds of play today, teams have had a chance to prove themselves 
and prepare for the rest of the tournament. There were the exciting few upsets, 
but most teams played to seed. 
In the A pool, the Condors cruised today, crushing Florida 15-5 and handling 
Madison and Ring of Fire by the respective scores of 15-11 and 15-10. I spoke 
with Greg "Hollywood" Husak, who was not looking happy, during their win over 
Madison. "Man," he said, "we watched these guys finish against Ring, but they're 
playing the lights out against us. We're running a lot harder than we want to." 
When you're concerned about how hard you have to work to beat someone, you're in 
a pretty good position. Though they did turn the disc over more than they 
usually do, they more than made up for it and look very strong going into day 2. 
In the rest of the pool, Madison did indeed fall apart against Ring in the first 
round, in a performance described on the sidelines as "tragic," and lost 15-6. 
Florida put Madison away in the final round 15-10. The game of the day in this 
pool was Florida-Ring. Hotly contested, with a bevy of calls and many 
unprintable personal exchanges, the game came down to the wire. Florida took the 
lead for the first time in the game at 11-10, but didn't have the consistency to 
hold on. Ring finished strong at 15-13 and qualified, along with the Condors, 
for a spot in one of the two power pools for tomorrow. 
The B pool saw Pike, the fifteenth overall seed, leap at the chance to prove 
themselves better than that. Looking aggressive and unafraid in every game they 
played, they forced the top teams into tight late-game positions. Against Johnny 
Bravo, they stayed within one or two points until the very end, finally losing 
15-11. In the next round, against the vaunted DoG, they kept the game perfectly 
even until 8s. Even when DoG finally broke them, they stayed in it, succumbing 
again 15-11. Against PBR Streetgang, however, it was their game. Pike walked 
away 15-10 victors. A team that came in with nothing to lose, according to one 
of its members, they showed that they belonged here. PBR Streetgang, by 
contrast, struggled all day long. They gave up the ghost to DoG 15-6 and to 
Bravo 15-7 before falling to Pike. An inconsistent team to begin with, they 
never looked solid enough to seriously threaten any of the teams in their pool. 
In the game of the day, Bravo and DoG went down to the wire. Everyone expected 
this to be a good game, but DoG looked less dominant than usual and Bravo looked 
much more solid than they did in the regional final. The lead changed five or 
six times over the course of the game, but it didn't break open until after each 
team had eleven. And it was Bravo that pulled away. They scored two in quick 
succession, and then, leading 13-11 and having the disc in scoring position 
again, they turned it over. DoG never looked back. With the game tied at 13, 
Bravošs Matt Lipscomb overthrew Curtis Manning and DoG scored. At 14's, Lipscomb 
turfed a short throw intended for Steve Rouisse and DoG scored again. Game point 
saw three turnovers and probably half a dozen muscle cramps before DoG put the 
last score in. Bravo wasn't disheartened. Matt Lipscomb said afterward, "We're 
happy. We feel good about how we played today and we feel good about our chances 
tomorrow." And they should. 
The C pool proved the most interesting by far today, Furious George, the overall 
three seed, never looked all that strong, but they played well enough to beat 
all comers. They struggled against Boss Hogg but escaped 15-12. Machine, who was 
coming off a tough first round of its own, was a better opponent for Furious. 
The Chimps finished it quickly, 15-8. Electric Pig, meanwhile, had a much worse 
day. As they struggled against a thoroughly overmatched Machine in the first 
round, I made the comment to Pete Rank of Pig that they had a reputation for 
playing to the level of their opponent. "Only in the morning," he replied. Yet 
they played that way all day. They pulled out a 15-12 win over Machine, but 
dropped the next round to Boss Hogg 14-16. On paper, both of these were easy 
games for a team as talented as Pig. In practice, however, this was not the 
case. When I talked to Sam Rosenthal, Pig's offensive leader, he said, "Well, 
our defense wasn't scoring and our offense was turning it over, Are you going to 
quote me?" "Probably." "But we were sweet. Make sure you put that in there." And 
so I did. But they were not sweet enough, however, as the losses to Hogg and 
Condors would end up dropping them from tomorrow's power pools. As Pig figured 
out that they would have to beat Furious by at least six in the day's last round 
in order to make the power pools by point differential, Machine was in the 
process of screwing things up further. While Pig and Furious were knotted at 8s, 
Machine took over against Boss Hogg. Playing their best ultimate of the 
tournament, they pulled away and put Hogg down by the score of 15-10. Suddenly, 
instead of needing to beat Furious, Pig could lose by two and still qualify. But 
they let down at the end of the game and lost by the score of 15-12. Out of this 
point-differential mess, Machine emerged victorious, taking second place in the 
pool. 
The D pool saw a little upheaval, but it dwarfs in comparison with that of the C 
pool. Sub Zero came out slowly against a fired-up New York and found themselves 
down 3-6 early on, but came back before halftime and then rolled 15-11. Chain 
Lightning never challenged Zero and fell 15-9. Sockeye, meanwhile, beat Chain 
methodically in the first round 15-11 and then dismantled New York by the same 
score, But their focus was on the last round. Said Lou Burrus beforehand: "This 
is the game to watch, This is the game we've been focusing on." After the 
carnage was over, Sub Zero's Dave Boardman said, "Don't write anything about 
this game. Nothing happened here." If there was a tragic game today, this was 
it. Sockeye tore through the first half 8-2, after taking a 7-1 lead. Sub Zero 
just looked bad. They dropped the disc on their own goal line, threw it 
needlessly away, trailed badly on defense. After the half it looked as though 
both teams had accepted the result and they coasted to a 15-7 final score. Said 
Sub Zero's Sam O'Brien following the game: "They came out focused and we came 
out tired. All it changes is the seedings." He was optimistic about the rest of 
the tournament, but Sockeye has to be flying high. Chain Lighting beat New York 
15-12 in the same round to prove their seeding wrong. 
To wrap up, the day saw an unexpected amount of parity. Lower seeds like Pike 
played well above their ranking and some of the top teams, notably Sub Zero, 
Electric Pig and Furious George, played far below their ability. The Condors, 
Sockeye, Bravo and DoG looked stronger than the competition by quite a fair 
margin. Furious George seemed to suffer uncharacteristic bouts of inconsistency. 
They played great defense but gave the disc back many times with a combination 
of mental and physical errors. If they expect to hold seed, much less win, 
they'll have to find a higher level of confidence than they showed today. E-Pig 
faces a tough uphill battle to make quarters, and Machine may be sorry they did 
so well today as they must face DoG and Bravo immediately tomorrow.