I’m a known UPA loather. They are well established as consistently taking the ultimate out of ultimate, being pedants for pedantic’s sake and generally not supporting the members. I think you remember when they banned Ali and Amanda for ALL OF NATIONALS for what they agreed was a typo. They even suspended their own rule, I. C:
“Captain’s Clause: A game may be played under any variation of the rules agreed upon by the captains of the teams involved. In tournament play, variations are subject to approval by the event organizer. Such things as game length, field dimensions, number of players and stall count can easily be altered to suit the level of play. Before a game starts, each team designates one captain to represent them in disagreements and arbitration.”
The point of the captain’s clause is that our sport is THE ONLY sport where the players have all the supremacy. Not coaches, not referees or officials. Not jackasses in Boulder. Players. Calling rank with the ‘event organizer’ term about an irrational suspension served only the UPA’s need to be in control and ‘right’.
Not top be outdone, last year those jackasses made the cool kids from Bashing Piñatas play in beaters because a few of the jerseys did not have the same sponsorship on the back. Nice work UPA. You’ve got that Letter of the Law down. Now if you could ever learn the spirit of it.
I think there’s an inherent tension between the core feature of our sport being player supremacy and an overarching body making decisions. The UPA is definitely a necessary evil. It’s nice to have insurance. Someone has to organize the national qualifications. But just like politics, egomaniacs that like to be in charge are the ones who run for positions and then act exactly like you would expect.
Anyway, now I’m one of those egomaniacs, but on a local level. Look for me to wield my power with a clenched fist and a bloody disc. I’m thinking Sectionals will be single elimination, losers put to death on the field by the winning team. Might help hold registrations down to a manageable number.
Last Sunday I took an 8-hour CPR and first aid certification course recommended, but not required, for my coaching position. I am ready now, so do not give me an excuse to compress your chest. I learned a lot but here are a few things to keep in mind if you don’t have time to take a course:
1) Get help first. Someone who’s lost consciousness, isn’t breathing or doesn’t have a pulse needs to get to a hospital ASAP. If you are alone, you need to call 911 first.
2) If you know help is on the way, you can try to keep a person’s brain from dieing using rescue breathing and CPR.
3) Give two 1-second breaths into the person’s mouth (after opening the airway and sealing the nose). You’ll see the person’s chest rise.
4) Give 30 hard chest compressions right on the sternum. Pretty fast (a rate of 100 per minute). You need to push way down (2 inches) to actually compress the heart to make blood circulate, so you’ll likely tear the cartilage around the breastbone and maybe break the sternum. That is the least of this person’s problems, so don’t let that stop you.
5) Keep up the cycle of 30 compressions and 2 breaths until real help arrives or it is no longer safe to continue.
This is no alternative for taking the course, but the way I see it, if you are around someone who is not breathing and no one else is better equipped, they are going to die soon, so you might as well try to help. The outcome of trying and doing this wrong won’t be any worse than not trying.
Today we got 17 or so inches of snow. It is pretty out, but has delayed my getting into shape. I was going to try and rally folks on Saturday for a cross-training and ACL tear prevention session but something tells me that more than a foot of snow on the ground is going to put a damper on attendance.
Also a problem is that usual support structure is not in place. Dorko moved to Philadelphia after she finished laundering drug money for the Mexican drug cartels . Ali played on her plantar fasciitis too long in cleats and has been recovering FOREVER. P-Funk hurt her hammies at Kaimana. Kate has some cocktail of hamstring injury and Sciatica that threatens to sideline her for too long as well. Mara is in Rwanda. That is no fair. I cannot do this on my own. I need you there to watch me or I will slack.
All of this is to begin the long process of making excuses. I did a hill workout in deep sleet yesterday. I ran the Prospect Park hill stoplight to stoplight 6 times. It sucked and I ran slow. Though I told myself I was going to run each of them ‘all out’ I ran them all in about exactly the same time which, of course, means I was dogging it. If you run hard, your times increase. If you don’t run hard, you’ll stay the same, which is a complete waste of time.
I had the exact same time on the first 3: 60 seconds on the first part to the fire hydrant (where slacker slumlord Jesse begins his hill) and 2:40 total. All 3 exactly the same, to the second. On the fourth one I passed a guy so I had to run hard to keep that up, and finished 2:30. On the fifth one I did the universal 'next to last one let up' and ran a 2:55. On the 6th I think I have the Hawthorne effect to thank that I did the 6 reps at all, because I was all alone in that park, and if I didn’t have you to tell about it, I probably would just have run home. and final one I tried to psyche myself up as much as possible and ran, you guessed it, a 2:40.
Here we are on Day 18 of the month-off drinking. So far so good. It’s nice to be one the second half. It has mostly been annoying to hang out in bars with my friends and not drink. Saturday is Marino’s birthday and I’ll be there for a while so maybe I’ll try O’Doules.
Maybe you don’t need to know about every one, but I’ve had another Stranger post. You can see all of my posts here sorted by author.
Tonight I’ll write some kind of preview for the gold medal game. Oh Canada!
