Our expectations for this tournament can be summed up in one word.  Win. 

 

As the team gathered Saturday morning, we could tell that the energy was high.  The team was ready to showcase our 2009 talent.  Our goal was singular, play defense, score points, and win games. 

 

We knew it wouldn't be easy.  Saturday we had three difficult games ahead of us, Mileage, Cottonmouth (Arkansas), and Dr. Suess.  Mileage had brought in several players as they prepare for their run in the series to qualify for worlds in 2010.  Cottonmouth is effectively the remake of Ludicrus Speed who gave us the boot at regionals in 2008.  Suess eliminated us from competition at Two Finger in 2008, and they had picked up several TUFF players who didn't get picked up by DW. 

 

Saturday competition started with Mileage.  In 2008, Mileage had always been able to give us fits.  This year was a different story.  We new exactly how to match up in order to shut down their biggest threats.  They had nothing to respond with.  We were able to easily outwork them.  Despite several early mistakes on our part, we managed to keep the gas on defense getting several breaks. 

 

Cottonmouth was a very different team than we saw at regionals last year.  There were certainly a few returning players, but they were hurt by several key absences.  Nevertheless, we were ready to extract revenge for 08 regionals.  We came out early and got several breaks right off the bat.  The game started to get chipy quickly as emotions flared from calls made on the field.  Despite their best efforts, we continued to convert and score points, walking away with a big win.

 

During our game with Cottomouth, we were excited to find out that Mileage had pulled out an ultimate point victory over Suess.  Their effort put us in an essential lock to take the #1 seed into Sunday.  We new it was only guaranteed if we beat Suess to go 3-0 on the day.  Unlike last year's team, the 2009 version of Dr. Suess was filled with much more talented players than in years past.  We knew that we would have to come out swinging if we were going to be able to pull out the victory.  Like most of Satuday's games, the Suess game was very up-wind/down-wind.  If we got a break, we would trade it back.  If they got a break, we had to earn it back.  Towards the end of the game, Suess finally went up a break with only a few points left in the game.  We knew our backs were against a wall, and we went on to score three straight to earn the break back and win the game. 

 

We all left Saturday night with a feeling of cautious optimism.  In 2008, we also went undefeated on Saturday only to be eliminated by Suess on Sunday.  We knew this team was different.  We new that if we didn't make mistakes, executed our offense, and worked on defense, that we would easily win the tournament.  But, Saturday play showed that we were far from perfect.  Even though we won all of our games, we were far from our final goal, to win the tournament.

 

Our schedule for Sunday was quarter-finals against Harriet Tubgirl, Semi-finals, and finals. Three more games to win.

 

Harriet Tubgirl was essentially a team of LSU and ex-Suess players.  They immediately started to go for the downwind huck.  Unfortunately, we weren't ready to respond to their quick attacks.  We let them trade points/breaks for effectively the entire game.  Finally, late in the second half.  Our defense woke up and shut down their threats, allowing us to easily win the game. 

 

The semi-finals was going to be against the winner of Cottonmouth and RiffRaff (UNT).  We were all hoping for a match up with RiffRaff.  Not only did we want to avoid the rematch with Cottonmouth, but we wanted to play against RiffRaff since we have several connections to the team (ex-DU players, current UNT players, etc).  The RiffRaff game was exciting to watch with big plays from both teams, but they just couldn't match us.  We continued to break for scores, and, despite some "excessive" travel calls, we easily won the game.

 

After the semi-finals, we began to prepare for the finals against Dr. Suess.  We knew this would be a difficult game, but we had been successful in achieving our goal to this point, going 5-0.  The first half greatly resembeled our Saturday game.  We traded points and breaks, managing to go up early, but falling behind at half.  Both teams came out ready to play in the second half.  Grit's energy was high but so was our exaustion.  The second half could easily be summed up into one word, "errors".  Despite repeated efforts to pull ourselves back ahead of Suess, we started to drop discs and make poor throws.  Several times we made incredible defensive efforts, earning ourselves a chance to score and break. But we kept putting ourselves back on offense, making it difficult to keep the game in reach. 

 

We ended up going 5-1 on the weekend.  The loss in the finals was disappointing, but we knew it was our own fault.  This was our first non-tryout tournament of the season.  It was exciting to watch players come together to win.  Everyone was impressed with our level of talent, and it was apparent that we were a team to be contended with.