SoCal College Sectionals

Sectionals results were surprising to say the least. I don't think anyone expected Long Beach to show up as the best team at the tournament, but they did and won very convincingly. They beat Tide in pool play, Squids in semis and SDSU in finals to take the section. Those guys love ultimate, and they love playing with each other, and the effects are really starting to show. Jake has taken a big step up as an ultimate player and has become a near unstoppable force. A college team can go a long way with those things.

The other surprising part of the weekend was the squids dropping from the #1 seed down to #4. I don't think they were prepared for the quality of LB in the semis. It reminded me of our semis against them last year, except Long Beach had the mental strength to close out the game. After that, I would guess that the team checked out a little.

As for us, I think it's fair to say that our results were disappointing. Sectionals is always a weird tournament, with maybe one tough game on Saturday and lots of unfocused, sloppy ultimate in the other ones. We gave up a combined 5 points in our first 3 games of the day. Irvine played well against us, and we weren't super focused, but we pulled it out at 11-7 despite great play from Stig, Miller, and Fish.

Our Sunday morning game against against SDSU started with 2 breaks for them. We traded basically for the rest of the game, maybe giving up another break or two at the end of the game. They play hard nosed ultimate with solid fundamentals, and they have a lot of young athletic players to complement their senior leaders. Our defense just wasn't good enough to stop their systematic deep and under cuts, and on the few turns that we did get, our D-lines O looked pretty helpless moving the disc upfield.

The Tide game was the most frustrating for me. We've played tight games with Tide so far this year, but Boucher and Max were both hurt for this game. They were just the mentally tougher team, falling back on their excellent system and coaching and we didn't. Not enough of our cutters stepped up to make plays. Tim was all over the field for them, moving the disc and being generally impressive. This game was the most frustrating to watch and the most that I've wanted to play since I hurt myself.

The huddle after this game was one of the most emotional huddles of the year. We stood for a long while in silence just thinking over the game. I hope that we can use the feeling that we had in that huddle as motivation for the remaining few weeks of the year.

Going into Regionals, I really have no idea what to expect. I was very impressed by SDSU and CSULB. UCSD is too loaded with talent to not contend, and every year Tide proves that no matter what their roster is, they will compete at a high level. I think we're seeing the benefits of Strike-Slip (and Streetgang) with the parity of the top handful of teams at sectionals, and once again, I'm bummed that Strike-Slip fell apart.

I think the weather in Ft. Collins will play a big role in determining who gets the bids. I fully expect it to be windy and horrible, but I'm not really sure which teams that would favor.

I finally cleated up and played some real ultimate at practice tonight. My PT would not be very happy if I told him about it, but there is absolutely 0% chance that I will allow myself to not be ready for regionals. It was great to finally be on the field again, and it's so much easier to get a sense of what the team needs to do. However, right now my legs feel like they're made of lead. There's no way I'm going to be in good shape in CO. I'll just do the best I can.