Hats Tournament

I played in the annual UCSB Ultimate Hats Tournament this last Saturday. It's put on by the UCSB ultimate teams as a fundraiser to support their season. A hats tournament is when the players all put their names in a hat to draw random teams from. In our case, there wasn't a hat but we handed them back to organizers who sorted them by skill level and made pseudo random teams. Pseudo random because there were definitely a few stacked teams, but overall they were fair. I was on the orange team which we called Caltrans. We placed sixth out of six but it was still a lot of fun. As you can see from the picture, I had some good layout bids (dives) :-)

Luckily it didn't rain and the fields weren't too muddy. It was very cold and the wind caused some long hell points and lots of turnovers. The wind in Santa Barbara is a blessing and a curse. It's not an easy way to learn to throw but it forces your throws to be very strong and accurate. With the addition of being able to play year round, this is what makes Santa Barbara Ultimate so great. All of our club and college teams have been national champions multiple years.

I hurt my shoulder a little playing but once it heals I am going to start playing pick up again. I need new cleats...

-Jesse