Glory, White Horses, and Warm Weather: an Insider View of Florida Warm-up

Cold, mud, wet, snow, perma-frost, hypothermia, shivering, miserable......these are a few of the words I would use to describe the cursed Tournament known as Arctic Vogue. Needless to say this blogger and Ghetto Forcer was beyond excited to head south of the Mason-Dixon once again.

Off to Tampa! To Warm up: A Florida Affair a pleasantly titled tournament hosted on USF's campus. Another blogger gave us all a brilliant, magical, and insightful look of what went down from the outside view but I'm here to tell the tale as someone who lived and breathed that humid Tampa air.

A good many (15) of the A team traveled in whichever way they could find down to Florida for possibly the most exiciting tournament of the year this past weekend. So, here we go day 1 found Ghetto full of spirit, this was due to the scent of competition and beautiful weather. In historic Ghetto fashion we played a terrible first half against the University of Florida, however we rallied and made it a close game in the second half trading points but eventually falling by 5. Let's not speak of our game against Wisconsin or that of Florida State for the odds were staked against us in both games. In the last game of the day however Ghetto competed against Massachusetts and played one of their better games of the day but still ended up with a loss.

0-4 on day one was not the best start to the Florida Affair. Fear not, because a day may come when Ghetto Force goes 0-7 but it was not Saturday. Ghetto came out hot against Cornell and our zone D made their offense look pitifull and weak. The marks and mids did and excellent job of point blocking and the wings contained any up-field throws. More importantly a shout out to Captain Mark Fedorenko for running the air as deep-deep. I mean literally not one member of Cornell touched the disc when contested by Mark. He ran the air similar to Tom Cruise in Ghetto Force's favorite movie: TOP GUN

Cornell thought that their extensive knowledge of economics could help them defeat us, but Nate Jones quickly informed them that "we have seen boobs" and to an insult to injury we defeated Cornell and that began our win streak. Next we made a mockery of host team USF, easily vanquishing them. Chanting "we aren't even supposed to be here" "where the hell is Dayton" we were a force to be reckoned with.

Next Dayton faced the other and better Georgia, Georgia Tech. This was Ghetto Force's best game of the tournament. Shouts to Jordan "the Stallion" Manke for going blind with rage and intensity flying through the air racking up layout D after layout D. It looked somewhat similar to this......

Coming back late, and breaking GT for a win this was Ghetto's triumphant moment!

After going 3-0 day 2 people started to turn their heads and wonder what this mystery team from the Mid-West was all about. We had a huge test in front us though. Day 3 we faced the legendary Carelton. Little did they know we had someone of legend as well Patrick "The Peach" Kaufmann. Ghetto fought hard with great play coming on both defense and offense. But, alas Ghetto was defeated 14-13 in a hard cap time limit that had we been able to play it out, we believe we could have won. This was huge for Ghetto!!!

This weekend not only did we prove to Cornell that boobs>economics, nobody can beat the Stallion, Peaches is still awesome, Mark and Sammy Van have fully torqued hucks, but that Dayton Ultimate can win big games and has huge potential. We put ourselves on the ultimate radar boys!!!!!

WE WEREN'T EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE THERE!

A New Sheriff is in Town/#WINNING

After receiving threats against my life from one Ghetto Force team president I have "decided" that it is time for yet another riveting Ghetto Force Blog Post.

I'm a big fan of lists so I'm just going to throw down a few reasons this has taken several months to happen:

1. The view that deadlines are arbitrary
2. A vile mouse (moose) infestation in my house that has consumed my attention (Think the gopher and Bill Murry in Caddy Shack)
3. School Work (video games)

Ok, ok maybe I've been a bit lazy.

However, events of this past weekend demand immediate attention and have stirred up my creative spirits quite vigorously. The Ghetto Force A team traveled by land, air, and sea to the mystical land of "Tampa, Florida" where it is supposedly not cloudy and terrible everyday in the winter. There some of the greatest teams in all of the land had gathered for a 3 day tournament of strength and skill.

This tournament is known as Warm Up: A Florida Affair and it is one of the best tournaments in the nation. Top ranking teams were there to battle it out for glory and seeding in the yet young tournament. Due to the diligence and hard work of Ghetto Forcers past, we were granted a bid this year to this awesome tournament. Thus 15 of our best and brightest traveled south to cross swords with some other incredibly talented players and teams. This tournament gets a lot of attention in Ultimate media via Ultiworld and Skydmagazine so I will let them tell how epic this weekend really was for UD.

Here is the Ultiworld preview - Seeded second to last with little hope:

They were so wrong, check out this intelligent comment found on this very post:

I don't know who/what a Trapwizard is but he must be clairvoyant or something. The first day for Ghetto Force was rough - They lost all 4 games against great teams. The writers at Ultiworld probably felt pretty good about themselves at this point.

Then this happened:

I don't know who this "Trapwizard" fella is, but he doesn't seem like a liar. Just a really smart, unbiased guy who did his research. I mean, come on - that's just good journalism. Regardless of the jilted wizard:

THAT'S RIGHT - DAYTON GHETTO FORCE KICKED ASS ON SATURDAY

Lose 4 straight games? Pfft, more life rested to show people how it's done Saturday. Unfortunately, I was not there so I don't know the greater details of what went down - I will leave that to the other bloggers - but I imagine it involved supernatural feats of strength and high release forehands. Thus, Dayton was to play Carleton Sunday morning. Literally, the #4 team in the nation.

Sounds daunting right? I would agree with you. However, much like the 300 Spartans, the 15 Ghettomen laughed in the faces of adversity.

They played point for point, ultimately getting handled a loss due to hard cap 14-13. That's right, 15 of the 27 man roster - on the THIRD DAY OF THIS TOURNAMENT - gave Carleton a huge scare.

People are taking notice of Ghetto Force but don't take my word for it:


But wait, there's more!



If that doesn't make you proud to be a part of the Ghetto Force Family I don't know what will. None of this was possible without the hard work of the Ghetto Forcers of yore who built this team to what it is today.

As one last note, the B-Team, now known as Bernardo Morales Brawl Squad will travel to Kentucky to play in a tournament this coming weekend with a lot of talented A-Teams. They look to bring the pain and utilize some new skills. One wonders how vomiting on an opponent fits in the rule book. It just sounds like a really good/distracting fake to me.

Also, there was tournament 2 weekends ago called Arctic Vogue. However, it was cold, the fields were really bad, and the whole experience kind of sucked for all involved so I'm just going to kind of pass over it at this juncture. It's kinda like in the movie Hot Tub Time Machine where they all get upset when they talk about what happened in Cincinnati. One doesn't talk about Arctic Vogue.

One more note - Our former beloved leader has been playing valiantly out West for Stanford. I'm going to leave this here and allow you to interpret it as you will ;)