ENE Mixed Sectionals: "How Big are the Balls?"
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Loading ...Seeded fourth, should’ve been seeded third, finished third. This weekend was an exercise in taking care of business.
Saturday was rainy and chilly. (I’ve forgotten how capricious New England weather gets). We started off fairly sluggishly in pool play, but used our early games as an opportunity to seek out and hone our offensive strategies, pressing on through miscues and bad-weather drops/throws.
Last game of Saturday was against Mogwai, the supposed three seed (on the strength of one tournament three months ago), who we played twice on the weekend. The game was tight through half (8-7 at half I believe), but then we decided to buckle down and really work when we got the disc on D, and put away a 15-9 win to end the day against a tiring Mogwai.
Early in this game I got hurt; seems I can’t go a tournament without somebody falling on top of me. At least this one wasn’t my fault–late bidder landed on my ankle. Ouch. RICEd the rest of the game and a bit more that evening. Wound up sitting (well, standing) out most of Sunday’s games to avoid setting myself back. The ankle isn’t too bad; the swelling’s all localized to the front of the ankle, so side-to-side and most running won’t kill it, but pushing it too much too soon is not a good way to be fit for regionals.
Sunday started with a semifinal matchup against Slow White; we had plenty of chances to score on defense–from what we’ve seen, at least, Slow White is far from infallable, with a fair number of throwaways, forced and unforced. We’re still working to sort out our offense and it shows against better-defending teams. Lots of good signs here though, as we left the game (and the tournament) confident in our abilities and our potential.
The next game was against Gratuitous; we leapt out to an early lead, running much more efficiently on offense once we got the turn and rattling off lots of breaks in the first half, keeping in control in the second half, and heading into our rematch with Mogwai fairly well-rested.
In contrast to the first game with Mogwai, in our second meeting we leapt out to an early lead, on the strength of strong closing speed to get turns downfield and lockdown D around the disc (Alex “The Duke of Physics” Crew, who was covering their main handler, got a hand on a disc [if not an outright D] in each of the first four D points. In the fifth, the handler in question moved to cutting; the Duke skyed him downfield for another D). Mogwai made some good adjustments after our strong start, however, tightening up their play. Combined with adjustments made in their zone D to make our O line grind more to score, they battled back to make it a 9-8 or so tight game.
This was the point at which I warmed up (I was already cleated) and hopped in for a couple poitns. One goal caught, a D and an assist later we’d gotten two breaks and I went back to the sideline to watch us take another break and regain control of the game, finishing 15-11.
Last game on Sunday gave us our first meeting with Quiet Coyote** of the season. Apparently they’d lost some of their guys to a wedding late in the game vs Slow White, going from something like a 9-all logjam to a 15-9 loss (in other words, they’re right up there with Slow White on the legit-ness scale right now). They compensated for the loss of their men by going 3-4 against us on offense and using their women more on O, and ran an all-woman front wall with an all-male backfield trap on D, both of which proved difficult for us to handle (but provided valuable lessons on what to work on in the next month).
**”Quiet” is by far my favorite team name to hear cheered. Any exaltation to the “quiet sidelines” to be talking and actively cheering really tickled my irony bone–might I suggest cheers and references to the Coyote component? I didn’t hear a single howl all weekend.
Sum total, we did what we were supposed to and, in my mind, got a good confidence boost playing Slow and Quiet–both teams beat us, sure, but neither team gave us cause to think that, come regionals time, we won’t be able to do it right back.
Goals:
- Get in flow/on the same page on offense (myself and as a team): Mixed. I’m definitely making progress getting the hang of how we want to run our offense, but getting hurt and staying out most of Sunday kept me from solidifying that.
- Continue to refine decision-making with the disc and execution when I do throw : Met. Making good progress there; I don’t think I threw any turns, wasn’t forcing anything. Still plenty of room to grow there though.
- Dominating on defense, both when guarding players and once we get the turn.: Mixed. Definitely got the job done pretty routinely, but could definitely do a better job of dictating. Again, a lack of pt hindered me getting a lot of substantive work done here.
*how do we know? Ballometrics.
