Through a friend of a friend, we found out about a tournament taking place in Portland the weekend of Aug 3-4 called Kleinman Eruption. While looking at the tournament website, we noticed that one of the team’s was named Breakers Mark. It seemed fitting to play with a team whose name was similar to The Break Side.

Breakers Mark captains Matt and Kerrin were open to the idea of letting us play with them, but they wanted to put it to a team vote first. They nominated Ashish, a veteran cutter, to become the expert on our site and make a recommendation to the team. Thankfully, his recommendation was to let us play with them, and the rest of the team agreed. Or at least, no one voiced their disagreement to our faces….

Playing with Breakers Mark ended up being both fun and competitive for Chris and I. Breakers Mark went 5-1 on the weekend, running mostly junk zone defenses that forced opponents into bad decisions that turned into cool D’s. We took second in the B bracket, losing only in the championship to a team that liked to huck back and forth between MLU players. Turns out, those guys are ok.

We also saw a lot of great spirit at the tourney. Our team, obviously a pun off of Makers Mark (I shouldn’t even have to make that comment, but my road trip partner missed it, so others might too) would give out small_bottles_of_Makers to the opposing team’s most spirited players. One of our opponents, Natural Twenties (Dungeons and Dragons themed) preferred to roll a 20-sided_die instead of flipping a disc to decide who pulls. Another team, Robot , had a life size robot with a hidden prize inside for the spirit winners.

We also got to see some pretty high level Ultimate at Kleinman. The Saturday night showcase game featured Portland Rhino hosting regional rivals Seattle Voodoo. The game was filled with some pretty sick plays and plenty of chats of, “You let the whole team down…” from the crowd every time a disc was dropped. In the end, Rhino edged out Voodoo, but it was a Voodoo player that came up with the catch of the day.

More high level Ultimate awaits us in the Seattle area, including the Emerald City Classic next weekend. Can’t wait to watch our MSP friends do work. Off we go!