Tross

shortly prior to chicago Tune-up tournament, a new player moved to minneapolis. His name was Matt Lawler, but people called him Tross. He played at the time with DoG, the best team in the nation. They were dominant, so with Tross came a lot of foreign ideas that were met with skepticism amongst mostly the older players. Turtle immediately bought into what Tross was teaching, so the team reluctantly followed. Now to say Tross was an alfa male is a slight understatement. He went about 6-3 220. He was incredibly opinionated and anyone who didn't follow his ultimate schematic was a veritable idiot and he was not above telling them this. He would show pain in his face, rub his hat on his head and tell us all "It's just so simple." He once said that in a way, he brought the team together by giving them a single purpose they could agree on. That they all hated him. He would laugh.
So, with about two weeks to go before the fall season, we switched our offense to this "Man/buddy" style offense. It was confusing to everyone and with some guys (pete imparticular) not doing it when he was on the field, it was a house of cards. We had no dump swing. It was get it to Turtle at all cost. Everyone else clear space. See, this is how we interpreted it because it was so foreign.
sectional came and we coasted to the finals as usual. There was nobody to challenge in our section(still isn't) besides Madison, so we always meet in the finals. They killed us. I think we got two or three points in a very rainy, muddy game in Milwaukee. I was standing next to Turtle and Tross when a madison guy asked us what we were doing. It was obvious that it doesn't work, why do you keep running this offense? Tross looked at him and in his normal dead pan, slightly condescending manner said confidently "We will us it next year and we will kill you with it. "
I missed regionals in Kentucky that year as I had a wedding I was in, but as usual, we lost the game to go. Not sure who all we played, but we lost another game to go against the buttholes from Pumphouse 5. Cincy team. That ended 1997, but we again were so excited about the next year and what it could bring. Rumours of Paco possibly leaving Z and joining our team were circling minneapolis ultimate.