After an hour and a half of extremely high level goaltimate (sign up for Men’s League!), it was clear that the wind was going to play a role in this game. If the best and brightest that league has to offer were struggling to complete 10 yard passes upwind, what chance did our league opponents have? With this in mind my strategy going into the game was to never give them the disc outside of their own endzone when we were going downwind. This meant hucks, lots and lots of hucks. Good hucks, bad hucks, sky hucks, blade hucks. If you like hucks, this was the game for you.
At 10 minutes past start time, the Dragging Flies only had 8 bodies. A warmed up Jared lumbered over with big puppy dog eyes and sweet talked his way into playing the first half, but only downwind points. It only took a few points for me to regret my decision. We traded points until around 3-4 when I went against my own strategy and tried to play small ball going downwind. I swung the disc to Michelle and went up line for her, only to have her continuing pass fly right out of my hands. This gave Colverson a short field to work with, which combined with a lull in the wind, led to a big hammer completion and the first break of the game. That break turned into a second break on the upwind point and we found ourselves in a big hole (3-6), with no sign that the wind was going to let up. Thankfully, Asa called a time out around this time and we took advantage of it to regroup and figure out how to go upwind. Some excellent popping from Andy, Bailey, and Eric, along with some dime upwind passes from School got us our first break a couple of points later. We kept the break train rolling and eventually took half 8-7.
In the second half, tired legs started to cause problems for the Dragonflies and we were able to, for the most part, just out effort them toward a victory. Our downwind strategy of huck and play D continued to be successful, with a surprising number of the hucks actually being completed. Shoutout to Marshall, Nevin, and Aymo who all made some monster grabs against Aaron in the deep space. After a 130 minute slugfest, and some questionable score-keeping, Cutterflies came away with the win, 15-12.
MVP for us this week was Nevin, with 3 goals, 3 assists and several Ds. He also absorbed a massive collision with Judah on an attempted strike pass D attempt and kept playing after.
For Dragonflies, KJ was a menace as the mark in the zone and made me throw some really difficult hucks to get around him. Evan was Mr. Consistent on offense and kept finding ways through our zone on the big upwind points they had in the first half.
Looking forward to playing our flying friends again later this season when they have more of their roster and the wind isn’t trying to blow us all away!