#6 Bart’s Takes

10/29/2017

Note: Tiina, three current Zoodisc players (Chris Bartoli, Pat Barron, and Tannor Johnson), and many Zoodisc alumni were in Sarasota, FL for the USAU Club National Championships 10/19–10/22. This post and #5 are reflections on their experiences there.

Note 2: Chris is far too humble to put any pictures in his post, so I (Russell) did. Sorry Chris!

By Chris Bartoli (our first player-contributor!)

I’m sitting on my flight home out of Tampa and it’s time to decide how I’ll spend the next few hours. I should probably sleep or start studying for my upcoming exam, but instead I choose to indulge my post-tournament blues by reflecting on my weekend in Sarasota, FL.

5 Takeaways from Club Nationals

‘There’s no way they blow this lead’

This sarcastic cheer, popularized by PoNY, became a DiG favorite this weekend after we ended each of our pool play rounds with a five break run to steal the game. And it wasn’t just DiG: Doublewide scored eight straight for their comeback to win over Truck Stop in the semifinals, and similar runs were threatened and achieved all weekend. It’s clear to me now more than ever that every point needs to be taken as a game to one; whether you’re up by a lot or down by a lot, no lead is safe. You can say that these teams let up too early or that some teams perform under pressure, but this much is clear: ultimate is a game of runs and the only point that matters is the one you’re playing right now.

Team culture

Chris (center), along with Tannor (left) and Brett (right) are captaining Zoodisc 2018

O-line gets broken again and the opposing sideline erupts with cheers. Our offense has a long jog to the far end zone to think about what mistakes they’re making. It’s easy to blame them, easy to criticize. But they don’t make that jog alone, our sideline joins them. Instead of criticism there’s encouragement, high fives, “d-line’s got you, put this one in and then d-line’s got your back.” There’s an unquestionable trust where we always know o-line is going to score, we always know d-line is going to punch. And on every point there’s nobody else you’d rather have on the field than the exact seven who are out there, no matter who they are.

At the end of it all I was talking with some of the guys about new players we might acquire next year, but no matter how talented the player in question was we couldn’t name a single person we’d want them to replace. We couldn’t trade any one of our teammates for the best players in the country, not even hypothetically, and that’s the key: we love this team for the personalities and dynamics, not just the talent. There’s never a point where anybody is thinking “I wish we had player A instead of B” or “why is X playing this point instead of me,” and that makes it easy to be on the field and easy to be a good sideline because you know that your teammates always have your back and that you always have theirs.

Nobody is that good

Before I left Amherst last week, Russell gave me a piece of advice that I will hold with me for the rest of my career: “nobody is that good.” It’s easy to be intimidated by the star players in attendance at a tournament like this, but this weekend I matched up against and watched many of the biggest names in ultimate and I found out that, as usual, Russell was right.

Bartoli is that good.

All of these superstars still make mistakes, they make poor decisions, they throw away the disc, they play lazy defense. They’re all just ultimate players. If you let yourself be intimidated, you’re going to play worse. You’ll bite and overcommit on defense, you’ll be afraid to get the disc on o. I’ve felt this feeling before, and I know I’ll see teammates confront it this season with Zoo. But this season we’ll be armed with the knowledge that every matchup is just another frisbee player and that no frisbee player is perfect, nobody is that good.

Every team is a competitor

Before a tournament, everybody knows which few teams are in competition to win it all. Ultiworld will do a write-up about who will take the trophy and how. Everybody thinks they know which games will be blowouts and which will be close, but nobody can predict the future. It’s easy to go into a matchup with a lower seeded team and think the game is locked up. We were supposed to lose to Truck Stop, but we didn’t. We were supposed to beat the Condors and they almost blew us out. Sockeye had an all star cast and they were out of the tournament on day one. The biggest mistake you can make is to count a team out before they play, especially at a tournament like this. Every team in attendance is a nationals level team and, after the pools are selected, rankings don’t matter. Anybody can beat anybody, any team can win the championship.

Every team happens only once

At this point, I’ve landed in NY at JFK and I’m waiting for my connecting flight to Boston. I send my first draft out for peer review, and begin writing something else: a long message to the DiG GroupMe about how next year’s team may be different, but how DiG 2017 will always hold a very special place in my heart. Players retire, move, change divisions, etc, and it kills me to think that I won’t ever get to play with this exact roster again. This feeling is the core of my post-tournament blues. It serves as a reminder to me of the finite time I have left with ZooDisc and specifically with the 2018 team. It reminds me to cherish every moment of the season: every practice, every tournament, every long drive, all the GroupMe shenanigans. I know I won’t be ready to let go of Zoo2018 when the season ends, but I’m going to make the most of our year together.

Last year’s team was the best iteration of UMass Ultimate that I’ve been a part of, not just in success but in brotherhood. I remember the feeling of wanting to win just to play one more game with my Zoo brothers, and I felt that again this weekend with DiG. The class of 2017, my mentors and friends for the past three years, have graduated (or returned to Germany @Nico Mueller). Their familiar faces are missing but I’m greeted at every practice by those of eager rookies. I still miss our Zoo grads, and already miss my Biscuit Boys on DiG, but I’m ready and more psyched than ever to return to Amherst with the lessons I learned this weekend and get back to work with my brothers on building the greatest ZooDisc yet.

Chris getting wayyy up there as a sophomore at 2016 Northeast Regionals. His evolution over the past four years exemplifies how much a player can develop over their college career.

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