Quick Deets:
- Gold 15 – 7 over Royal
- Royal team was missing many of their best players, Gold team was not
- Nate Astrom is a beast
- Avoid Cody if you are playing against him, he likes to touch the disc
Captain’s Report:
Gold Team was anticipating a close game this week after hearing about the royal smackdown Team Royal handed out last week. However when we arrived Royal was short handed. One of their best players, the one and only Jared Futral, was rocking a sling due to a shoulder injury he sustained over the weekend. Royal was also missing both of their captains as well as some other key players. Jared and Emily stepped up and were acting captains for the Royal Team. Gold Team had 13/15 of our players present, though we were missing one of our top players Dave Klinges.
Natalie and Emily coordinated the flip. Gold won and chose to start on defense, and Royal selected the north endzone. After throw-off Gold quickly capitalized on Royal’s lack of key players and broke multiple times to go up 3-0. Though once we were up we grew a little relaxed and played lazy defense and had a few offensive mistakes and we let Royal score 2.
After this point we stepped up our defense deciding to run a 2-4-1 zone which was very effective against Royal; we shut them down for the rest of the half which we took at 8-2. During the first half some of Gold’s players that missed the first week really showed up and showed out. Nate had a sick layout D when he was in the cup giving us an easy upfield score. Jacob Speedy provided excellent pressure in the middle of our zone and was a great asset on the field on turn working as either a handler or cutter as needed. Coley was all over the field playing active defense and really pressured Royal. Our awesome captain Natalie also had a sick catch over a guy much taller than her who was playing tight coverage, that was pretty cool.
Returning from half we started on offense and quickly scored. We traded points with Royal until the score came to 11-4, at which point we got two breaks, and Mikey decided to switch up roles and make Adub run deep for a endzone-to-endzone huck. Bystanders state that it was not a pretty catch but it was a catch nonetheless. At this point it was 13-4 and we felt like the game was very much in the bag. However, Royal was not going to give up that easily. Sam and Cody really stepped up in the second half and made us have to work. Cody was a constant menace for our offense and was a major offensive weapon for Royal. Royal managed to comeback and make the score 13-6. At this point we were trying to develop our newer players in different positions of a zone and our defense was a little iffy. We had a few decent plays here and eventually ended the game 15-7.
Royal played very well despite being short handed and seemed to have high spirits throughout the game. Cody was a pain in our asses and thus our MVP of Royal Team. Nate is Gold’s MVP with multiple great Ds and 5 scores, this kid is gonna be great. Honorable mention to Adub who managed 7 assists and 2 scores.
Natalie and I are excited to see what our team is capable of if we ever have our full team present, and excited for the rest of the season.
-Shea