Handling!

Today's practice was at Baylands. There's one practice today and another one tomorrow, mostly to simulate tournament weekends, but also to give the team enough time to work on new concepts more effectively. Having not exercised yesterday in order to rest my ankle (well, achilles actually), I was fairly desperate to run around today, achilles be damned.

I played okay, but had stupid, intermittent problems, like overthrowing Lyndsay during the concentrated throwing at the beginning of practice, at throw 22 (of 25), causing us to start over, then following that up by turfing the disc at throw 11 of the next set. I also completely flubbed the start of the endzone play drill, until I figured out that TWO people cut for each swing. At least my throws had enough spin that the wind didn't affect them.

What I thought most interesting about practice, however, was that I was called handler a lot towards the end of practice, during the last scrimmage. I was puzzled about the call, given that I generally don't play handler and (hence) don't play it well. However, I did fine, receiving a dump a couple times, continuing the disc movement upfield appropriately, forcing only one teammate to layout. Fortunately, that teammate was Adam, and he caught it with grace.

Yeah, so why call me there in the first place? Well, eventually I realized that when I was called handler, the line consisted of two "real" handlers and five cutters. One of those cutters needed to handle. Now, recall that I'm a practice player. I'm not going to tournaments with the team (the one coming up being the exception to that statement), so, having me handle makes sense, as it allows the other four cutters to practice what they WILL be playing at tournaments.

Either that, or DanO is just my bestest friend and decided to call me handler because he knows that, even though I don't play the position well, I really enjoy playing in the handler position. Because DanO is good like that.

Oh, and I met Will's mother today. Given that she raised Will, and Will is awesome, she is, nearly by definition, awesome, too.