Pre-Regionals Thoughts

Everything that could be said about this weekend has probably been said twice already. I'm tired of talking about team goals, personal goals, strategy, and whatever else. It's time to go do or do not. I don't feel the nervousness that I felt before sectionals (not yet anyway). I have full confidence that Smaug has the talent to go to nationals; it's only a question of whether we have the grit and desire to grind it out against equally talented teams.

The season up until now has been great. We've had huge highs (beating Cal) and devastating low (losing to the Squids). We've seen beautiful conditions (Stanford) and also the most miserable conditions I've ever played in (Vegas, beating out Denver last October and Edinburgh in January.) We've been in pretty much every situation that a team can be in, and it's time to put all the chips on the table.

Saturday, our must win game is SLO. They are very talented and experienced this year, and we had a tough loss to them at sectionals. However, I don't think that result was necessarily representative of our capabilities. We got the better of them at Pres Day, but this game will be a battle. Assuming that the winner of this game wins the pool, the winner will play Colorado in a cross over game.

We would likely rest our starters in this (relatively meaningless) game so we could be fresher going into the important ones Sunday. If we fall to SLO, every game becomes "must win" as we try to fight our way through the back door.

It's kind of surprising to think that this is my first college regionals ever. I've still never won a game at the regionals level, either. Just at the worst time, I came down with a very annoying cold and, of course, there's a good chance of rain in Colorado. Why would we ever play regionals outside of California, anyway? It's the most efficient in terms of travel for most teams, and it's basically guaranteed good weather at this time of year.

Anyway, gripes aside, it's time to either do or do not. The results of this weekend have already been decided by the months of preparation we've invested. If we can remember why we play this game that we've sacrificed so much for, we can relax and play unconsciously.