Home again after missing yet another Canadian Thanksgiving. Massachusetts is beautiful in October, though, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Turkey: good; kicking Yankee tail at ultimate: better.

GLUM descended upon Devens this past weekend in its annual run to the UPA Championships, and didn’t miss a beat from 2009′s dominant performance. This year’s team is about 30% different from last, but the changes have been positive and the gelling has happened fast. There’s no doubt this team is deep, and it showed at the UPA Northeast Regional tournament. Pete Knowles was a late scratch on Thursday due to a minor (we hope) back issue, and 2010 addition from Mephisto, Mark “Shaggy” Zimmerl, is also nursing an injury, so we were running a still-crazy 27 strong on Saturday. Brett Taylor cleated up for his first GLUM tournament since last year’s No Borders, but spent the first half-hour babysitting before the cold wind sent he and the kids back to the hotel, so he didn’t play Saturday either. And was careful not to remove the tags from his jerseys. BT is never one to commit easily…

Despite missing 2 of our top O weapons and our D-line motivator, Saturday’s pool play came and went without much excitement. We opened with a 13-3 win against our compatriots from Quebec, Quantum, who were making their first foray into Fall Series. I think this is the same score we played to in Lennoxville at Nationals, although both teams had markedly different rosters in August. They’re quick and energetic, but lacked the handling skill and — this was a recurring theme — depth to stay with us. We started on D, and rolled 3 different D-lines at them to start, breaking each time. We played Mt. Crushmore next, and dispatched them by the same score. Our final game of the day was against our sometime rivals from NYNY, once Above & Beyond, now WSL All-Stars. Sort of expected this one to be tighter, but with a new team (Rumble) from the NE reportedly taking some talent from both DoG and NYC, they aren’t what they used to be. They gave us a run for a short time, but we pulled away without a lot of fuss to a 13-6 win.

Seton did some math at the end of the day based on Shaggy’s points spreadsheet, and figured the average number of points available to each of the 27 of us who had played was something like 4.2/game. I think I played about 10-12 points over the course of the 3 games, and I’m certainly in the bottom 25% of this year’s roster, so I was right on par, and never felt I was being slighted or should have got more PT. Instead of it being tougher to manage a roster of 29-deep, as it’s generally assumed, maybe it will be easier with this team. As long as everyone is playing their role to the best of their ability, we will win games AND everyone should play. Very exciting, and definitely makes for some good internal competition for field time. We also seem to have a really relaxed yet confident headspace on this year’s squad, from the captains all the way down to the ‘Black Aces’ end of the lineup. There will be a need for an increased sense of urgency at some points in Florida, and hopefully that will be there when needed, but the calmness under pressure is a positive thing.

Sunday morning for us meant semis — win and we go to Florida; lose and we have a tougher road. We faced the new team, Rumble, who definitely provided the closest match for us athletically and skillwise that we’d seen so far. The game was back-and-forth to start, and even at half, was closer than we felt it should be. The second half showed again how valuable our depth will be this fall; our level of play went up a little, and theirs started to drop. At some point, they may have decided to shut it down in anticipation of their 2nd-chance game-to-go (the region got 3 bids to Nationals this year instead of 2), but whatever the case, we dropped them 15-10-ish. And with that, we were back to Sarasota. No overt celebration, no sense of accomplishment. After beating DoG 3 straight times in 2009, we weren’t here to take the #2 seed to Florida.

We had been scheduled to play the 1-2 seeding game at 3:15. Nonsense. A 10-hour drive for most of us starting at 5:30pm is crazy talk. Cooler heads prevailed, and we agreed to start ASAP vs. DoG. They look mostly the same as last year, just one year older. Jim Parinella is back after offseason neck surgery, and Alex DeFrondeville is still chucking hammers. They definitely gave us more than wanted to start the game. I think they may have been up 2 breaks at one point. But our O line was steady and we managed to take half 8-6 despite having a lot of trouble finishing on defense. Tons of turns generated, but just couldn’t seem to keep a lid on the crap long enough to get to the endzone. The second half was much better for our D, but DoG continued to stay close until the closing points, when you could see their defensive energy draining while ours stayed level as we continued to roll guys through. Final score 13-10 (first game we played that got capped). #1 seed headed to Florida. We should have a solid seeding — top-3, I would expect, behind Beyondors and Surly.

With 2.5 weeks to go until the start of the tournament, my structure needs a little work. Leading up to this week, I had just started to get over an incredibly painful left heel injury that has dogged me all summer — or it got to a point where I could run through it without wincing, more accurately — and I was beginning to enjoy the fitness work rather than dreading it. Then I got stupid. Last Tuesday, 3 days before Devens, I played pickup basketball because I’d been sick for a few days and wanted a good sweat, and I pulled something in my hamstring on a full-court breakaway. Didn’t feel too bad, so I just quit immediately, skipped Wednesday’s practice, and hoped for the best. All day Saturday was no problem; never felt it, never thought about it. First strike of our first huck drill on Sunday morning, however — it popped again. Same thing as before — not a whole lot of pain, but enough that I knew I couldn’t generate a full sprint and therefore was of no value to the team on the field. It sucks to have not played at all in the semi and final, but I’d rather play in Florida than risk it in Devens. So now, it’s 2.5 weeks of yoga and the Ottawa High Performance Centre for physio. Hopefully Jay can figure out what it is and fix it pronto. If this is to be the end of my touring career, it would really suck to spend it in flip-flops on the sideline.

It’s pretty exciting to think about our chances this year. Last year, we thought we had the makings of a finals team, and I still believe we were very close. Tough (stifling hot) weather and maybe some strategic roster management mistakes early in the tournament cost us, though, and ending up in 5th is probably where we deserved to be. This year, especially without last year’s champion, Troubled Past, in attendance, we should be right there on Saturday, making our own destiny. I’m confident that there will not be a team as deep as GLUM down south, and we’re better built for handling the Gulf winds this year for sure. As long as we take care of our bodies, and clean up some of the minor dirt that we saw this weekend on our game, we’ll be fine and should be pushing for a finals berth. Can’t wait.