Hats, Hops, and Hucks: 2011

Team Prime BID

For those of you who don't know, one of my favorite ways to stay in shape for my wild adventures is to play ultimate frisbee. Frisbee tends to be much more of an addiction for me than anything else--it is so fun! This past weekend was one of the most incredibly fun tourneys of the year, the annual Hats, Hops, and Hucks (HHH). Hats; because it's a hat tournament--you tend not to know any of the players on your team and you have to wear a hat, Hops; because there's a lot of beer involved, and Hucks; because people love to throw that disc deep.

This year, 2011, was the 20th anniversary of HHH and there was a great turnout, we brought something like 30 folks from the Reno area--almost every team had a Reno-ite on it. Our team had 3 on it and another team had 6. There was only one team I knew of who didn't have anyone from Reno on it, but there could have been more.

Anyway, we got there around 7:30pm on Friday, registered and met up with other Reno folk. One great thing about this tournament is that food and camping is part of the registration fee, so once you're there you don't really have to worry about anything. Saturday morning we had a breakfast of eggs, pancakes and hash browns, then we hit the fields.

This year the theme was "Come and Get It", referring to food. There were three pools and they were aptly named breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was in the dinner pool and the name of my team was Prime BID, after Prime Rib--of course. On Saturday my team had a bit of a hard time gelling, we won 1 out of our 4 games. However, Saturday games just determine seeding positions and don't determine how you end up in the overall tournament. With our 3 loses, we ended up being seeded 12 out of 15 teams--not as high as we were hoping, but we were having a blast.

On Sunday we started out playing the 5th ranked team, INSIDE-OUT Burger and after a hard fought battle, we won!!! All while having an amazing dance party on the sidelines. We were super pumped! Our next game was against another bracket breaker, DISC-CUTS and Gravy, a team who was seeded 13th after Saturday, just beat their their highly ranked team and now the battle was between seeds 12 and 13, crazy! It was a super close game. We were down 1-7, but made an amazing run and came back. The result came down to a universe point, the score was 12-12 and whoever scored the 13th point got to move on to the semi-finals. We pulled it off and were in the semi-finals. It was a super close and fun game, although a bit nerve wracking.

Sideline dancing with FLICK'n CATCH a SCOREI

In the semi-finals there were 3 teams from the dinner pool and 1 from the lunch pool. We ended up playing a team named SWINGlini and CLAMS, a dinner team who we played on Saturday and lost to--they were actually one of our bigger losses--but Sunday we turned things around and we ended up winning. Yay, we're in the finals!!!

Over in the other semi-final game, the teams were FLICK'n CATCH a SCOREI vs. PULLed Pork, the game was really close and it came down to an universe point, which FLICK'n won. FLICK'n was in the dinner pool too, we played them on Saturday and had lost. The finals were so much fun. Both teams played really well, but in the end FLICK'n CATCH a SCOREI were able to pull it out and beat us 11-17. It was pretty close until the end, when FLICK'n went on a streak and we just couldn't catch up.

Congrats to FLICK'n CATCH a SCOREI, it was a great game!

Overall, it was a wonderful weekend of ultimate. Both us and FLICK'n CATCH a SCOREI ended up playing a total of 8 games each!!! So much frisbee, so much fun, I wish it wasn't over. But, there's always next year and I can't wait for it!

An intense game of Ninja!

Thanks Mo for all the hard work you put in to make this tournament happen!