I came into this week excited to get to see our team in action after missing our first exhibition game against Red (games don’t count if all the captains aren’t there, right?). We got in early to check out what turned out to be pretty sweet “neon coral” manatee jerseys. Most of our squad made the game with the exceptions of Chris Falk, Alison (get well soon, physician heal thyself, please), Summer and Davis (come back to shore soon). We got off to a good start with a won flip to go downwind before trading a few points. Unfortunately, we couldn’t consistently string together plays and Teal capitalized on turnovers and took half 8 to 4. We came out of half strong running a zone that generated d’s and brought the score back to 6 to 8. Unfortunately, we couldn’t keep a consistent offensive flow, and, despite still generating some turnovers, we couldn’t capitalize and ended up finishing 7 to 15.
Overall, Teal had a lot of strong plays. Billy made some big catches and d’s, Joe and Fletcher had some big throws and Sam continued to get open at will and throw wherever he wants as usual. Nes and Ellie were everywhere on offense and defense and never seemed tired despite playing subless. We had our moments; I remember some nice hucks and deep cuts from Stephen, great d from Trey, some good handling sequences with Garrison, Tom, Tom and Dre. I noticed Sam (Williams) had a lot of good under cuts and resets when I was on with him. But, unfortunately, we just couldn’t string together enough plays consistently and I lost track of turnovers as we got over 20. This team has a lot of young, energetic legs but not a lot of experience together and I think we’re going to benefit a lot from developing some chemistry during the season. The good news (for us) is I think Red and Teal are probably going to be 2 of the top teams, at least for the regular season… It’s all single games this year, so I hope we get a rematch (sans Nes and Sam) in the tournament.