Straght to Individual highlights
Well, we went to W&M a bit short handed. Notable absences (but not all inclusive) from Ryan Brown, Shane Greene, John Eyles, Bill Mark, Cliff Reinhardt, Cory Barlow, and Andrew Ross (geez, that would be a good seven to have on the line!) left us a little short on subs (11/10 on Saturday and 9 on Sunday). Who was there? Carl Erikson, Geoff Haisty, Aron Hall, Alan Hoyle, Gil Klemann, Dave Luebke, Albert Monroe, Mark Parris, Dan Parrish, Chris Rodning, and Billy Warshaw. (Not a bad squad on their own.) Being short handed was tough. Some sample scores: 15-2, 11-1. Fortunately, Darkside was on the high side of those scores. :-) To quote our favorite Elvis (Aron Hall), "We're awesome."
We were in the dreaded 6 team pool so Chris and I decided to push for 5 games and no bye (an alternative schedule had us playing 4 games with a bye) because we're masochists and sadists (towards the other members of our team). We got what we wanted. We were seeded third. Here's the pool (in order of seed): Swarthmore, Lehigh, UNC, W&M Alumni, Maryland, Drew.
In our first game against Lehigh (it seems so long ago) we had a back and forth game before we moved ahead to win 11-8? (Chris has the scores written down). We were excited to have upset the #2 seed and moved on to play the #4 seed, W&M alumni. Unfortunately, we were to learn the seeds didn't mean much. The W&M Alumni team was fairly stacked and that combined with some poor play on our part lead to a 7-3? halftime deficit. However we looked much better in the second half, (fueled by some hard running O & D from Geoff Haisty) and scored 6? in the second half but lost 13-9(?).
Fueled by our second half we moved to play Maryland, who we had faced at Ultimax in the fall. We played well, especially in the second half, and they were exhausted. I think the final score was something like 11-4? Oh, and Geoff Haisty left at this point. Sigh.
Then we moved on to our game with #1 seed, Swarthmore, who had just lost to Lehigh 11-6 I think. We had watched Swarthmore's earlier game against Maryland and noticed Maryland's zone gave them a lot of trouble. However, it was also at this point that Alan had to give Dave a ride to pick up his car from the tire store (another story). So we started the game with 8 players. I was worried. Swarthmore had good athletes with good throws. I even talked at length on the line about how important it would be for us not to give up a series of quick scores. Dave and Alan were quite disappointed when they returned and learned the score was 5-0. However, their spirits perked up when they learned we were in the lead. Aron, Albert, Billy, Dan, and Gil has been working their butts off in the cup and our offense had been precise. We had just about reached the point we needed subs though as we gave up a point to see 5-1. But that was the last one. Final score was 11-1. Yippee.
In the final game we faced a Drew Herd squad that was better against the zone (or were we running it more poorly?) as they took us to 13-4? but we ended the day 4-1 and 4-0 against the college squads. We had a grand dinner at Sal's and then hung out in the hotel rooms to watch professional wrestling (ok, so Billy and I aren't professionals - but wasn't it entertaining?) and Major League Soccer.
Sunday morning, a tired and hungry squad went to the fields to face Clemson. Mixing up the clam and man-to-man we saw Clemson lead 5-2 before we rallied to 5-5 and they took the half 6-5 and then we rallied to 8-8 before we ran out of gas and they won 11-8. This was the team that we could have beat with a full unit and maybe even if we had just had breakfast. However, after we tried to get Brian Banta (who played with us last fall) to give us some bagels we enjoyed their cheer ("Here are your damn bagels" as they pelted us with bagels.) Then we drove to the nex t field to face our Ultimax foe, UPenn. The game started out poorly as they were effective against our zoneand the score went to 6-4 them. But then we adjusted our zone to stop their strategy. That got us a point. Then Dave Luebke had a layout block as they tried to swing which led to a score. Then, miracle of miracles, Mark Parris anticipated a give and go pass and stepped in for the block and another score was produced and Darkside had taken the half 7-6. We were pumped up and clicking on all cylinders at this point. We only gave up 2 points in the second half for a 13-8 victory.
This put us into the finals of the chumps bracket where we faced La-de-da, the Norfolk squad. They were delighted to to find we only had 2 subs; they had 3. This was a club team of more experienced folks and some new folks. We wanted to start playing hard and we did, moving out to a quick 5-0 lead with some hard running, athletic catches, and tough defense as well as some fatigue induced(?) mistakes on their part. They called a T-O to regroup and we decided to try a zone (at least to bust whatever adjustments they were trying). MISTAKE. The wind had died and they showed us how short hammers work against a zone as they moved the disc downfield for a score. Oops. Then they threw a zone on us and we turned it over, several time before they finally scored. But, we recovered and took the half, 8-2. In the second half our goal was simple, 7-0. We succeeded. 15-2.
We were quite disappointed that the winner of the loser's bracket did not receive one of the lovely trophies that they were passing out. Alas, we had to be content with our 6-2 performance (5-1 against college teams.)
Our record now stands at 12-8 for the season, 11-7 against college teams.
Carl thinks the highlight of the whole tournament was when he overcame protests and inserted the third part of our cheer:
We tried to throw a zone, your hammers made us moan.
We tried to throw a clam, you cut through it like spam.
We tried to throw the claw, la-de-da-de-da.
Chris Rodning gets at least 6 point blocks a tournament it seems. We should all get as good as he is on the mark.
During one point against UPenn, Chris was in the cup and must have layed out 6 times consecutively. When one of the UPenn guys got it and Chris flew by inches from the disc, I remember the Upenn guy saying "Damn, Look at this guy!"
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