First round is in the books in Little Rock. All of the Bama Section teams are out of contention for a Nationals’ bid, but LSU took it to some of the region’s better teams in the 2nd-place bracket:

South Regionals Score Reporter

Ole Miss and Mississippi State both picked up a win after losing in the Championship bracket this morning.

If you have a first-hand account, broadcast it to everyone via the comments below.

So it’s that time of year again … No, I am not talking about spring, or finals, or papers, or preparing for the summer, or celebrating bids to Regionals.

Nope, instead it is time to bash the Bama Section on RSD.

Happens every year. No matter how well the top team from the Bama Section performs (see ALL of LSU’s past performances at Regionals compared to their seed going into the tourney), Bama Secs gets no love. Not only that, but the section seems to be the whipping post for all of the wannabe ultimate gods and geniuses out there among the seemingly dwindling legitimate and logical ultimate minds.

For all of the non-respect the section gets, people sure do like to talk about us!

Not that the players/captains/coaches/bloggers of the Bama Section are free of blame here. Sure, we have added fuel to the fire in past years, but I always considered it self-defense. I mean, if no one else out there is going to stand up for the Bama Section’s honor than we certainly should.

Oh well, all of the chatter and Bama Section bashing will mean nothing once Regionals gets underway. Use it as bulletin board material if you like, but just make sure to break seed and beat at least one team that plans on looking past a Bama Section team at Regionals.

Oh, and one last thing …

The voting period for All Bama Teams, Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year ended last night with a flurry, as several nominations were cast just before the midnight deadline. But all of the votes have been cast and counted, and I for one am thankful that this process is over.

Why?

Well first of all, I wanted to see who was going to win the two major awards this year. LSU swept the majors last year as Chris Bankhead took home his second consecutive POY honors and Daniel “DirtyD” Vermaelen walked away with the ROY award. But this year’s race for POY was up for grabs between two strong candidates — Bankhead and Mississippi State’s Arthur Corbitt — and the winner could not be determined until near midnight.

The ROY award also became a tight race between two young players from the state of Mississippi. Tyler Olander of Ole Miss and Daniel Zabaldano battled up to the midnight deadline along with Bankhead and Corbitt in another tight race.

Finally, I was tired of counting ballots and tallying the results. But now, the moment the Bama Section has been waiting for …

Bama Section Player of the Year

Arthur Corbitt, 2009 Bama Section POY

LSU’s reign over Bama Sectionals may have been restored in 2009 thanks in large part to the heroics of Chris Bankhead, but his grip as the Section’s best player has loosened a bit.

Arthur Corbitt, the do-it-all spark plug for Mississippi State, edged Bankhead in Bama Section Player of the Year voting by the narrowest of margins, taking home the title as the Bama Section’s top player in 2009.

The race was very tight until the deadline, with Bankhead taking the lead during parts of the day yesterday. The final tally between the two came down to six total nominations, and the two teams each submitted a comparable number of ballots.

Corbitt helped lead Mississippi State to Regionals for the second year in a row, just three years after State’s program began thanks to the help of former-player-now-blog-stalker Brad Jones.

Bama Section Rookie of the Year

Daniel Zabaldano, 2009 Bama Section ROY

This year’s sweep was completed by Mississippi State, a year after LSU pulled the same stunt despite missing South Regionals.

Mississippi State’s Daniel Zabaldano earned 2009 Bama Section Rookie of the Year honors by garnering 20 nominations for the award. In addition to being named the ROY, Zabaldano also earned three nominations for All Bama Team consideration, which was good enough for him to land on the All Bama Third Team.

He did not win ROY honors without a fight, though. Ole Miss’ Tyler Olander kept it interesting by closing the gap yesterday, getting within four nominations. He would, however, get no closer than that allowing Zabaldano to claim this year’s title as the Bama Section’s best young player.

Both Corbitt and Zabaldano, along with Bankhead and Olander, should be players to keep an eye on at South Regionals in a few weeks. The rest of the All Bama awards can be seen below, and I apologize for any name-spelling errors. Please correct them in the comments.

And thanks to everyone for voting, hope y’all had a great season and good luck to those teams still in the chase!

All-Bama First Team
Arthur Corbitt [Mississippi State]
Chris Bankhead [LSU]
Ben Deneka [Ole Miss]
John Clemmer [Mississippi State]
Hayden Sewell [Ole Miss]
Michael Schulz [LSU]
John Rhodes Martin [Ole Miss]

All-Bama Second Team
Phil Martin [Auburn]
Scot Tran [Mississippi State]
Justin Miller [Vanderbilt]
Gamble Ruff [Auburn]
Joe Oaks [Alabama]
Eric Buzby [Vanderbilt]
Eliot Alexander [Vanderbilt]

All-Bama Third Team
Daniel Zabaldano [Mississippi State]
Daniel “DirtyD” Vermaelen [LSU]
Stephen Rhea [Samford]
Hunter Murray [Mississippi State]
Jacob Young [Auburn]
*Quint Northen [Mississippi State]
*Jackson Vaughn [Ole Miss]
*Matt Rushing [Ole Miss]
*June Naiki [Tulane]
*Read Founds [LSU]
*Tim Brady [Alabama]

*Northen, Vaughn, Rushing, Naiki, Founds and Brady all tied with two nominations each.

All-Bama Rookie Team
Daniel Zabaldano [Mississippi State]
Tyler Olander [Ole Miss]
John “Pingy” Nguyen [LSU]
Dylan Shannon [LSU]
Sam Linton [Vanderbilt]
Daniel Rhea [Mississippi State]
Jeremy Kharrazi [Vanderbilt]

All of the action at the blog lately has been really, really fun. I love reading all the comments and keeping up with all the smack talk through the comments, and I hope y’all get some enjoyment out of it as well.

I figure if you did not, you would not read. But that has not been the case at all this week.

Since Monday, the blog has seen near-record setting days each and every day.

Badass

So to show my appreciation for everything that you guys have brought to the blog, I want to give something back. Not sure what to give yet, but determining the winner should be fun and worth everyone’s time: A Bama Secs haiku contest!

Winner gets something fun, discuss ideas in the comments. And start coming up with your best haikus. They can be ultimate-related, Vandy-bashing or Player-of-the-Year pimping, it is up to y’all! May the best hiaku win!

Submit your official haiku via email. I will compile the best-of-the-best and submit for all of the Bama Secs community to view and vote. Get ‘em in ASAP!

Ooooh, to kick things off:

Everyone loves haiku
Playing ultimate frisbee
John Clemmer’s sick pull

The voting process for All Bama Section Teams, Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year is four days in and going strong. Results will be posted tomorrow for all of the awards, so make sure to keep coming back to the blog for all the hearty discussion and reaction from the masses.

Just wanted to send this as a friendly reminded that nominations for these awards are due by midnight tonight. No nominations will be accepted after midnight, mostly because I am tired of tallying all of these darn emails. Nah just kidding, but I really do want to see the results of all this voting and I am sure most of you are eager to as well!

So I have spent the better part of the last three days compiling the nominations for the All Bama Section teams and making sure not to count the votes of those who voted more than once (I can figure it out, so why bother?). Anyway, I wanted to pass along a little update.

As I am sure most of you know, two players are running away with the nominations. And here is the real kicker: Right now, they only are separated by TWO NOMINATIONS. Unfortunately for you, I am not going to say who is in the lead, but I will say that one of these players had a double-digit lead heading into today and the other has made up significant ground.

Whoever gets the most noms is the Bama Section POY, so this is getting real interesting and fun for me to tally. So keep those votes coming — those of you who have not voted already, that is!

If you have any media — pictures, videos, Photoshopped goodness — from Bama Sectionals 2009 that you would like to share with all of us, please shoot it over to me via email.

As you can see below, pictures make the blog a better place. And videos even more so than that. And Photoshopped goodness is the stuff of legends. Just ask John “I can beat Vandy by myself, thank you” Clemmer.

So, much has been made of this mythical pull by the now-legendary John Clemmer. It started as a tall tale, became folk lore and now has blow up into a myth of gargantuant proportions.

I heard from a guy at work today — in Ohio, mind you — that Clemmer’s pull was so strong that it threw the Earth off its axis for but a moment on Sunday, causing a split second of lost time in a second universe governed by the Great UnderLord.

I dismissed this tale as fiction, because we all know the second universe is governed by none other than Brad Jones.

But then my grandmother called and told me that she heard Clemmer’s pull was so sick that it made all the little old grandmothers cry at her nursing home. And then all the old, wrinkly grandfathers started to cry because they realized they would never be as sick as Clemmer’s pull.

But again, I dismissed this senile old woman’s claims due to her … well … senileness. And then it came, like a beacon in the night — photographic evidence of Big Foot Clemmer’s mythical pull.

Let the legend grow.

Siiiiiick. By the way, whose head is that?!?

DZ
Andrew Austermann
Dylan Shannon

I have my idea, but want to make sure with you guys. Leave a comment.

Just to clarify the All Bama Section Team(s) nomination procedures …

1. Nominations count as votes toward the different teams. So the more nominations a player receives, the better his/her chance of being named to the 1st Team.

2. You can only nominate three (3) players from your own team, and you must nominate seven (7) total players. Last year a bunch of teams just nominated people from their own team — even if it was less than seven — and so the voting was a little skewed. Let’s try to clean that up a little bit this year.

That is all, continue sending your nominations and I will contact those with invalid nominations to date.