Tuesday, July 6, 2010

What's winning the fields?

Winning the fields means being the last carload of people on the fields after a tournament. Since the cag is one of my three favorite things about ultimate and since winning the field often involves several hours of cagging, I love winning the fields.

I talked a little bit about Fugue winning the fields on 97430, but my all time favorite win has to be at Flowerbowl 2002. Mizu and I were freshly and madly in love. Riot beat Schwa in the first final. At that time some of Schwa's players were a bit less than friendly and not particularly well-liked in Vancouver, so the entire crowd was behind Riot the whole way. Then we (the Fish) played Furious in the second final and the crowd was against us the whole way. It didn't matter; the Vancouver crowd is one of the best in ultimate: knowledgeable, enthusiastic and partisan so it's great to have them cheer against you. We beat the Monkey. At home.

After about twenty minutes of slapping hands and visiting, I turned to Mizu and said, "What do you think about winning the fields?" She said, "Great." How can you not love someone who wants to win the fields after they've already been sitting around watching ultimate for two-and-a-half hours? We cagged around and visited with the Canadians (mostly Al Bob.) We tried to hit the storage box two fields away with oranges (Giora hit it.) We hacked, played reindeer games (Muck Around) and threw. Finally, even the tournament director was left and the sun was going down, so we decided to roll out.

Rather than go home, we went down into Vancouver and got slabs for dinner. We sat outside on the street and watched the world walk by. Then we got gelato. Then cupcakes. Then we went down to the water and watched the last of the light fade out of the day (which June 10th in Vancouver is about 10:30 PM.) When darkness had fallen and the sunset watchers had given way to bonfires and drunken dancers, we strolled back to our car and started the drive home to Seattle.

That's winning the fields.

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