Keith provided a quick write-up of our games last weekend in Austin, it’s included below:
Saturday Game 1 vs. Pike:So we all get out to the fields, its a little chilly, wet, and there was a strong crosswind on our field. The Pike team looks a lot like the team they brought last year, looked like they were missing one of their handles that made a number of plays for them last year, but the dozen they had looked familiar. Both teams came out very sloppy, unforced errors on both sides of the disc. Our team was a little rusty on defense getting started but after the first few points we started to put some pressure on them which gave us a lot of chances on offense. Problem was the core group we brought was a defensive squad, and if we had 3 handles on the field we tended to be very stagnant and the stack was too far away.
Pike rolled to an easy win 13-7 (maybe 12-6), the game ended at soft cap but I’m not sure if they closed it out at 13.
Saturday Game 2 vs. Johnny Bravo:Like the Pike team Bravo did not have a huge team, maybe 15 or 16 guys. They didn’t run a drill before playing us, looked like they were going to just take the game in stride, but they came out fired up. They definitely set the example for confidence and we didn’t handle that well. After a good team huddle we brought our H-stack in a lot closer to the handles, and with the help of Schmubb we put up some some nice deep shots. The score did not reflect our performance at all, they had a number of bounces that ended up going their way. We made a number of defensive plays with highlights from Daniel Bess with a nice lane poach 15 yards out of their endzone resulting in our first score. And Paul Burt with a handblock in the cup in the 2nd half. Our zone defense proved to be really effective against this team. Final score was 13-2 but the offense started to get a little more consistancy, better stack, still clogging, and still not much handler movement. This was an up-wind down-wind game and their upwind scores really sped the game up.
Saturday Game 3 vs. Doublewide (X):Doublewide was split into 2 tryout squads with about a dozen each, both teams had pick-ups from Seuss (LSU-Alum) and a had no college players. This was another crosswind game like the first. We went down by a few early, but the offense started to come together and we tied the game at 4-4. After a Doublewide run in the first half it was 7-4. We made a run to start the 2nd hald and closed the gap to 9-6. After a timeout on our goal line we had a drop in the endzone and they came back and scored to make it 10-7. After that we let the game get away from us and lost 13-7.
Saturday Game 4 vs. Doublewide (Y):The other split-squad had some stronger handlers and beat the (X) team in the 2nd round. We continued to make improvements in this game and after getting broke on the first point we took the next 2 and had an early 2-1 lead. The break was upwind and both teams managed to score their next 3 consecutive upwind points and we had a 5-4 lead. Doublewide made a run to close half 7-5 and we could have easily caved at this point. We found ourselves in the exact same position as the last game at 9-6 and scored to make it 9-7. They went on to win 12-8 in soft cap but mentally it was much better than the previous game.
Sunday Game 1 vs. GOAT:Goat showed up late and seemed to be resting a few key players. We had some fresh legs with the additions of Brindley and Rollo to our offensive line found some new life. Personally I think Saturday was great because it forced a lot of us to take on roles we aren’t used to on this team. And when we got a pair of handlers in the mix the offense cleaned up a whole lot. We ran with this team the whole game and had the game within 2 points in the 2nd half. I don’t think we had the idea we were going to win, which is something we need to work on, but we gave this team a little bit of a scare and had a number of good offensive and defensive plays. Goat won 12-8 at soft cap but a lot of players gained confidence in this game.
Sunday Game 2 vs. Pike: Bravo decided to blow the Doublewide (X) game and save their legs for semis, with the Doublewide (X) win the Pike team fell from 4th to 5th and we got the privilage of a rematch from our first game of the weekend. Thanks to Glenn Burr we can all watch this game in a couple weeks and see the improvement we made. Pike did not roll over in this game, they are a National calliber team and they wanted to end on a win. They took an early 2-0 lead and were getting fired up. We went on a huge run with consecuctive scores and breaks to take a 6-2 lead. Pike rallied to bring the game back to 6-6. Our offense was giving up unforced errors and they capitalized by alternating the under and over game. We could have rolled over but scored then broke to take half 8-6. We pulled to them in the 2nd half and broke to take a 9-6 lead, we traded the next few points and had a 13-10 lead when soft cap was called. We scored the last point on a long huck from Phil to Bethke against a zone, which closed the game out at 14-10. That was a big relief considering the 3 point lead we gave up in the soft cap a year ago to this team.
It was a great way to end the tournament. no one cramped up which means we have learned to take a little better care of ourselves. No one got too drunk to play Sunday morning. Everyone was making plays and using their heads in the last game. I hope we can take the confidence of beating a team that went to Nationals into our upcoming scrimmages and focus on WINNING Solstice. This is the biggest win for this team since beating Doublewide as JNOR in 2004, we have to keep moving forward. Our defense looks good but our offense needs a lot of work, namely the block and creating space.
-Keith
