REGIONALS

posted Monday, 3 October 2005

So, as a club ultimate player, the season basically boils down to one weekend -- Regionals... which hopefully provides you with one more weekend to play --- Nationals... 10 teams - top 2 advance to Nationals. Basically, 3 teams in contention for those two spots (us, Bnogo/DC & Backhoe/NC).
Wicked travelled down to Fredricksburg, VA the first weekend of October. A slightly different team than initially planned, down a few vets, we showed up at the fields ready for action on Saturday. Since our pool had several college teams in it, I decided to suit up on Saturday and play a few points in our first games against: Pounce (Pittsburgh club team), Univ of VA & U Del -- no worries -- I was much better behaved than I was at Sectionals.
Our last game of the day was against Backhoe, the number 1 seed from our region. I decided that it would be wise to sit this one out and retreated to the sidelines, calling subs. We played a good game, going up 8-6 at half, but Backhoe is a much more experienced team than we & they came back and took the game 13-8 (not a bad show for us).
Saturday night at Regionals is typically non-eventful. We had a team dinner together, which was nice and then retreated to our hotel room, where Sara, Erin & I played Sudoku (a super-fun numeric crossword-puzzle-like game in the newspaper) and Tracy crashed... until we were woken by Nancy & Bonny who were spying on another teammate making out with some guy in the parking lot... good times...
Sunday was the big day... we faced off against Bnogo, a team from DC in the semifinals. We jumped to a quick lead, but managed to find ourselves tied 12-12 with one point to go... winner gets a rest and then plays in the finals, while the loser drops into the loser bracket, plays 2 more games, in hopes of making it to the "backdoor finals" (vs the loser of the finals for the #2 spot). We pulled to them, giving them the offensive and they scored. Bummer.
So then we battled Wahine (a bunch of cheaters from NC) and won... then Sweet T (Cagle's team from NC), who we jumped out to a 11-1 lead against and then tried to self-destruct, burning valuable energy before closing out the game. Bnogo took a bye and then played in the finals (losing 15-5 to Backhoe). They rested their starters when it was obvious that the game was a loss, gearing up for the last game against us. It was a well fought game, but we just didn't have the legs left... Bnogo won 15-11. It was heartbreaking. We fought with everything we had, despite the sidelines, which were overwhelmingly cheering for Bnogo (hometown crowd)... and left it all on the field.
Wicked had a few key losses among the veteran ranks (Nancy, Susan & even me... I count as a vet now!) and the youth of the team really did step up and do it up. Jenny & Julie did a great job leading a bunch of women, with relatively little drama... and I know that Wicked will be back next year... hungrier than ever.



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