Day 1

Had a first round bye, rolled all 3 teams in our pool. We were a lot better than I’ve seen us play at any other tournament. Granted, the first two teams were pretty weak, but we played Muff'n Men last and beat them 13-5 (we lost to them in Sectionals pool play and then pulled out a 12-8 win in the 2-3 games). After games, we ate Thai food, chilled in the hot tub and played a poker tournament at the hotel.

Day 2

We started the day playing against Ant Madness (the 4 seed). The game was a roller coaster of ups and downs. We took half 8-3, they tied it up at 9s, we went up 12-9, they closed the gap again. We managed to hold our lead until hard cap, winning 14-13. I’d say we played pretty well for the most part. The weakest part of our game was our terrible deep shots. We often went deep to girls when there were guy defenders in the area, or put up floaters against their best deep defender. We also tried to throw at least 3 hammer hucks instead of putting up a normal huck or just swinging the disc.

In semis, we played Amp. This was the game I’d been waiting for since I decided to play Termite’s, but it didn’t go the way I expected. We started off really really poorly, going down 5-1 or so and limping into half at 8-2. Once again, our deep game let us down as we threw floaty hucks into unfavorable situations. We also gave up a few poach Ds. To their credit, Amp played really well. They moved the disc well and their offense never seemed stagnant. We also didn’t do good job (any job, really) of stopping their dump-swing, which is the core of their offense. In the second half, we stepped our game up, took away their dumps and matched them point for point, but it was too late by then. They won 15-9, knocking us out of nationals contention. On a positive note, I layout callahaned Butter’s pushpass dump, thereby winning the layout D competition and a bottle of liquor from Shelley Su.

Wrap Up

Amp went on to win the region and take the only bid to Nationals. They mounted a huge 7-point D run in the second half to come back from an 8-5 halftime deficit and crush Ambiguously Grey. They’ll be the only Philly team at Nationals, as GMG and Southpaw both lost very close games in their games-to-go (Southpaw lost 15-13 to Truck, GMG lost 15-11 to Hot Metal).

So that’s it for my run at Nationals this year. This is the first year since I started playing club that I won’t be playing in Sarasota in October. In some ways, it was nice to take it easy this season and relax after Spinners. I don’t feel as wiped out as I normally feel after Nationals and I’ll be able to start training for next year a month earlier. My plan is to try to hit the gym 2-3 days a week and do a met-con workout with Diana 1-2 days a week. Plus winter league and ultisquash.

Winter training, here I come.

P.S. Regionals results