In a regular season rematch of the Spwinter League finals, Michelle and I found ourselves up against the familiar foes of Ben and Bonnie. Post draft shenanigans and an unfortunate injury to Alison had this game starting off very similarly to finals with Bonnie and Emory being the only two ladies present for Coral, while we had our usual stable of 4. The potential lady mismatch plus a decent amount of wind led us to play zone for much of this game. The handling core of Ben, Steven, and G alongside the popping of Jeffrey and Bonnie had no trouble with our zone and breaks were at a premium for most of the game. The game was on serve at 6-5 until Bhagya landed a pull in the front corner of the endzone that confused Ben and let us take away all of his immediate centering options. Excellent man defense pressure from our team and two throws later, I found myself catching an under pass from Coral and hitting a wide open Nevin for the first break of the game. We would use that momentum to break again going to half, up 8-5.
On the offensive side of the first half, we did an excellent job of quickly moving the disc and putting our handlers in power position. The lack of numbers on the Coral side seemed to force them to play a little more lax on the D side of things, and our cutters had little problem getting open.
Coming out in the second half, Coral now had 4 ladies present and seemed a bit renewed. They quickly scored and we traded quick O points for a while. I was finally able to figure out how to huck to Bhagya and he came down with 4 initial play call hucks over Steven and Ben. With the right throw, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better deep receiver in league.
We would go on to break Coral only once in the second half. They tried to make a comeback, bringing it to 14-13, but a well executed rapid fire offense would quickly end their run, with Amelia catching right outside the endzone and throwing the game winner to a wide open receiver.
Highlights for Coral: Emory was every bit the game changer I was afraid she would be, catching several highly contested passes over our MMP deep or wing. Jeffrey was one with the dirt, throwing his body all over the place to secure the catch.
Highlights for Royal: Nevin caught a huck just outside the endzone and called a timeout. We called for Thomas to be an isolation cutter from 1 and he executed the break side fake perfectly, letting Nevin put a very soft force side flick to him for the goal. Amelia had an extremely scary goal catch with multiple bodies flying at her, but didn’t waver and somehow caught it while avoiding all contact.