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Two, 2, two, II. As in 2-2, as in lose by 2, as in 2 byes (first and last round - very cool), as in 2nd place in the tournament.
The cast of characters: Alan, Albert, Aron, Billy, Carl, Cory, Dan, Dave, Dutch, Justin, Mark, Quasi, Shane, and Tiger. We started in pool play against Columbia (Bad Tequila) followed by Asheville. This was followed by pools made up of the teams who finished first, second, and third, respectively in the original pools. We started out on defense and we were rocking, getting ahead 4-0. Then there was a flurry. Oh, yeah, this is around the time that Mark and Shane lost the ability to complete a pass (so, of course, we were the ones throwing the first passes, er, incompletions). Suddenly it was 9-9. Then, it was 10-9, game over (games straight to 10). So, at this point we knew that Asheville had beaten Tequilla by 1 and we had lost by 1 so if we could beat Asheville by 2 (there's that number again) we would be first in our pool, if we lost we were 3rd. However, we knew we had a secret weapon. Asheville had never seen THE CLAM until we used it against Bad Tequilla, at which point they were heard muttering, "what the hell is that?"
So, we used it. Their first pass was to Dave Hall (at least, that's how it looked). Things were really clicking while they puzzled it out. One run of 3 or 4 points was exceptionally strong. Intensity and execution were there. It felt great. And we went ahead by 7-2. Then Asheville started coming back. But, we held them off to win 10-5(?), giving us the point margin to put us into the pool of first place teams. Strangely, on the other field, Flatball was losing to Charlotte Latin to give Latin the 1st place out of that pool and Duke was winning its pool as well.
Our next game was against Latin, another "clam-ignorant" team. While JJ was there BETRAYING HIS TEAMMATES ;-) by giving away the secrets of the clam, all was well, since he was telling them about last year's clam. ;-) It, mixed with some man and normal zone, worked well again and we went up 6-2 before Latin started to rally. There was some tension as Latin closed to 9-7 but these Alpha-males had decided that we weren't going to lose to kids half our age this time. Dave Hall cut across the back of the endzone and brought down the disc as he was pushed out of bounds. It was a score (since he was pushed out) and we had beat Latin. Ahhhhhhhhh!
So, we faced DOOK. If we won, we were champions. If we lost, we had to see who won the the final round and by how much... Well, we shot out to an early lead 4-0 as Duke puzzled out the clam and we hit quick on transition. But, once again, the tide turned. Suddenly it was 7-7. There were some "debatable" calls with one particular member of the Duke crew and then a rash of calls, but all respected, and quickly settled. We suddenly were looking at 9-7. We rallied to score to make it 9-8. But then, it was over. Just as I was finding out a certain "rules-aware" Duke player wasn't college-eligible, Duke scored and won, 10-8. If Latin won by 2(!), but less than 4 (2x2) we would still "win" the tounament (in an admittedly cheesy way). We left when Duke had 9 (so the couldn't lose by more than 1). But, we still got 2nd.
And, more importantly, we played some hot ultimate as 2 teams became one again. It was an awesome day. Everyone played great and with some great intensity. We won 2 games and lost the other 2 by a combined 3 points. I feel really good about where we're going Darkside.
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