Picture snapped after our last regular season game, check out the team – courtesy of SarasotaUltimate.com
It was a hard season that saw a lot of new players in the first couple weeks, driven practice discussions, high emotions, and a lot of grit. By the last 3 weeks all 4 teams had stepped it up to the point where each game was a squeaker. However, we played through and managed to finish the season undefeated.
These week was the playoffs, a two round series to determine the end all champion. Round one would see 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3 … the final round would be a duke out of the two winners. The first season (last summer before I started with the team) saw our team enter the playoffs as the last seed – yet come out on top. So, we couldn’t take any game lightly – it was anyones disc … who would take it home?
The first game, vs New College, saw us trying a bit too hard – “holding the stick too tight” if I might steal a term from my hockey days. But by second half we were in more of a groove. Kay found open ground repeatedly in the end-zone to help us take the first game 15 – 7 (or something like that). Now we had to wait as the other game still had to finish up. We tossed the disc a little, rested a little, trying to keep our heads in it.
Turns out that Dos Manos (#3 seed) managed to sneak out the win 15-14 and headed over on a big high. In the final game they came out strong taking an early lead. We came out completely flat and dropped the first half 5-8. The initial part of the second half was not much better going down another 3 points right out of the gate … with the score 5-11 for Dos Manos we called a time-out.
Time to settle it down, clear the bad karam we had on the field, re-group as a team … play as a team. It was time to deliver! And we did. We stopped the inter-team banter and started playing “our” game. As the momentum shifted you could see Dos Manos fade. They played a hard first game and were seeing this one slip away. Everytime they got the disc we had pressure … all kinds of pressure. We were not letting any easy throws get caught.
And after completing a 10-0 run we took the game 15-11 … we went 10 and 0 after our time-out and regrouping.
A massive calf cramp on point 13 ended my game a little early, but the win made everything just fine! Today we are all sore … now is the time to heal cause end of June we are back … and it looks like we are going to fielding 6 teams. Competition is going to be even stronger … and I look forward to every minute of it. Heck, I am in decent shape again 🙂
Though if anyone knows any good exercises for my calf I am all ears!
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