Our first game was against the Fantastic Fourhands who were missing World Beach Ultimate Gold medalist, Kate Travaglini, and her slightly less notable baby daddy. With these two out and FF’s numbers looking like they would have to forfeit, we agreed to let Alek and Aiden pick up some local pickup players so we could have a good game. I immediately regretted that decision as Joe “Sunshine” Dickens showed up and immediately started wrecking us. The disc movement of FF was some of the best we’ve played against all season, and our defense really struggled against the under cuts until nearly the end of the game. They also had several lucky breaks go there way, specifically, where I got a piece of the disc on three separate throws and they still caught it. Aiden has done that to me both times we’ve played them. Well played, grasshopper.
Our offense struggled to complete hucks in the first half, but found some success with shorter range hucks in the second half. Michelle playing her first real game all season really helped with our handler flow, which we relied on heavily to mount our comeback after going down 7-9 and 9-10. It seemed that their luck ran out a bit, and we were able to force a turn on double game point, which we then marched in for the game winner, 11-10. Was a fun game, and not at all what we were expecting coming into it. Shout-out to Karl and Joe for filling in and making us earn a hard fought victory!
Now that the “easy” game of the weekend was done, we set our sights on the team that kicked our butts the first time around, Jaylynne’s Weenies. This was going to be a weird game from the get-go, being that they only had 7 players to our 14 and 4 of them were female matching. With Liz hurting her knee in the first game and Michelle still not at 100%, we would go 5-2 on our genzone and 3-4 on their genzone against their 7 people. Fortunately for WHJ, nearly everyone present was a Nationals caliber player so the gender mismatch points would rarely be an issue for them.
We started off the game strong, breaking them to go up 1-0. It gave me hope that things would be different from the last time we played. Then the next 8 points happened and we were down at half 3-6. Billy was unstoppable in the backfield, Austin kept finding ways to get open and get Billy the disc, and our ladies had trouble stopping the deep shots, especially to Jemma. Offensively, we kept making silly forced throws despite nearly always having a dominant mismatch or a wide open person.
Our half time was spent figuring out ways to take their FMPs out of the equation, only to be presented with yet another wrinkle, one of their three guys had to leave. So not only would we be playing 7 on 6, but also misgendered for half the points. No way this could go wrong for us, right?! Billy had other ideas and absolutely blitzed us on their first few O points of the half, touching the disc every other pass, leaving both Pat and myself in his dust trail. The time where we did stop him from getting it the handler space, they just floated one up to him deep for him to posterize a well positioned Nick. We did not improve much offensively and after the umpteenth time of us throwing to Billy’s general vicinity, I lost my cool a bit and screamed at everyone to stop doing that! Not great, but it worked and after being down 5-9, we mounted our best comeback of the season to win 11-10.
Nick and Bueno had some great hucks for goals. Trey had one of his best offensive games of the season and was extremely reliable on the last few points. I got some redemption on Rosie for trying to break my hands and my pride at volleyball with an early Callahan on a dump pass to Billy.