Gold team had been undefeated entering this week and we had been expecting an easy win against Forest last week, but due to tropical storm Elsa that game was delayed until this week. We were expecting to be missing a few of our key players. Mikey had a Cannons game and Adub and Dave were still injured from our game against Cardinal. Unfortunately we had many of our other players out. And as all league teams have too at some point we started our game against Forest savage.
The captains for Forest and Gold talked and we decided it would be best to play 6 v 6 since we had injured players who were still playing (we love you Monica!) to give each team a sub or two. Gold is used to having a killer group of primary handlers but only Phil was present this week, so Gold ended up relying on their Captain Shea to handle more in Tim Darnell and Adub’s absence. Forest had their excellent handler core of Steven Nguy, Alex Janelle, and Zak Kostamo moving the disc around the field but they were unable to find consistent deep targets and both teams had a lot of turns in the first half.
Gold played great defense trying out man and zone but sticking with man for much of the first half. Forest and Gold traded points until the score was 4-4 but by then the lack of consistent handles, long points, and no subs wore down Gold. We started slipping up and playing lazy defense as well as relying on poor deep shots to try and score. At half Gold got some relief from Tim Darnell showing up but we switched to 7 v 7 since Forest had more players show up as well. Forest would win this game by 3, with a final score of 6-9.
I was very proud of how gold team took their first loss, and how all our players remained in high spirits and good sports. This would have been a different game with a few more players present but that’s the way league goes.