A weekend in O.

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I apologize for not posting earlier but sometimes things get hectic and I’d rather be outside throwing the disc.  To refresh your memories the big three events in North America were:  Northern Flights (North Bay, ON), No Surf (Cleveland, OH), and Solstice (Eugene, OR).

Each of these tournaments was important for competitive teams with the season starting to wind up in the South and Regionals almost here for Canadians.  I wasn’t at Northern Flights so I’ll mention the results quickly (thank you to those that posted results on previous posts):

  1. Dockers – Toronto Open and Women’s
  2. Liquid – Waterloo Region
  3. Tundra – Toronto
  4. Disc Graceful – North Bay
  5. Sick Mitts – Barrie
  6. Big Fish – Ottawa
  7. DeskLamp – Guelph
  8. Crisis – Waterloo Region

Interesting to note that BFC and MONSTER were not at the tournament and the first time we’ll actually see MONSTER take on Liquid is at Regionals.  Is this a strategic move on the part of MONSTER or was this coincidence.   BFC should benefit from the return of Jamieson McKay but whether his impact is on the field or on the sideline will be determined by his fitness.

That Dockers won is not much of a surprise.  Liquid has faced a mix of Open and Women’s players from Toronto twice this season (May Day and Soggy Bottom Bowl) and while Liquid won at SBB it was quite a powerhouse that was at North Bay (Anatoly V., Inian M., Sam K., Hadiya R. to mention a few).  I am a little surprised that the margin of victory (15-13) by Dockers was as slim as it was.

Solstice!  A West coast tournament that I couldn’t attend and will not provide any results for.  Why?  One of my friend’s attended and he may write a post detailing his experience.  Let’s hope he does.

Which brings me (finally) Cleveland No Surf!  Last year I attended with ROY and while it was fun we just didn’t seem to click as well as I do on Too Bad.  This year was a different story.  First off, due to a combination of a wedding and an extended detour I didn’t make it in until the last game of the day by which point we’d lost to Haymaker (Chicago, IL) and Madcow (Columbus, OH).  Too Bad had, however, beaten Grand Trunk 12 to 9 in a game that saw poor play from both sides.  In general Too Bad felt quite rough this weekend and I suspect we’ll develop over the season to properly take advantage of each of our strengths.  Our final game on Saturday saw us take on Forge whom we had beat at Cazenovia.  The difference between the Forge at CUT and the Forge we faced now was significant.  Many of the core players had returned and their strong handlers were making pin point throws that we simply could not combat.  In the end Forge prevailed 13-8.

Too Bad finished the day 1-3 tied with Grand Trunk and facing a tough Sunday morning crossover.  In the other pool power pool LouEvil pulled off an upset over first seed Spoiler to take pool A and face a crossover against GT on Sunday.  In other pool play ROY had a phenomenal Saturday going 2-2 to improve over their 2008 Saturday record of 0 wins.  It sounds like ROY in 2009 will be a much tougher opponent for teams expecting a cakewalk.

Onto Sunday and a bad day of Ultimate for Too Bad.  Well, relatively bad given that our first game was a crossover game and a tight win against Tuxedo.  Tuxedo was deceptively strong with a few former Truck players initially disrespecting our zone before we got into our groove to win 12-10.  The winner of the game moved into the top (us!!) while the loser went on to face Grand Trunk (who had lost 13-8 to LouEvil in their crossover).

Our second (and final game) of Sunday was against LouEvil (Louisville, KY) and it turned out to be the worst game I’ve ever played and perhaps many of us have played (there’s a past post on this topic so I won’t rehash it).  While we kept it tight initially we had terrible offense with unforced errors littering the stats sheets.  Our early lead was for naught and in the end LouEvil pulled away to win 13-8.  Our day done we kicked back, joked with the other teams, and watched Madcow take the finals 15-9 against Haymaker (rematch of Saturday pool play which Madcow won 13-11).

Overall an interesting weekend and it’s clear that Madcow and MACHINE will come to a head at Regionals.  Expect Haymaker to make a strong showing and possibly taking Madcow out if the chips fall in their favour.  In other finals GT lost to Tuxedo in the 9th place match while ROY took out Impulse for 19th.

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