In the windiest of weeks yet, we had the unfortunate luck to match up against the team best suited for “garbage ball” with one of the best deep throwers in Ben and two of the best skyballers in Nathan and Logan. Ultimately a lot of lucky catches by Nathan and uncharacteristically sloppy play by us would determine the outcome of the game. The first half went almost entirely on serve, with us getting two breaks in a row and very quickly giving them back up for Green to take half 8-7. Our zone was unable to generate much pressure, and every time we thought we had Ben, Bailey & Co. they would float something up to Nathan or Logan that only a tree could hope to stop and give them a fresh start. Green made the mistake of going zone against us a few times and I was very pleased with how patient we were and how easily we scored those points, that was about the only upside to our offensive game this week.
The second half would be more of the same. High stall count punts from Green that we would get a hand on, and Nathan would somehow land with his body between the ground and the disc. We couldn’t ever really clean up our offense and Green would go on to win 15-13.
MVP for Green was definitely Lady Luck. I had 7 hand blocks this game, 3 of them would end up being caught by unintended receivers and one would come back on a close foul call. We turned over the centering pass on a pull because it hit foot high weeds, which despite my hand being fully under it, is still a turn. Nathan had no fewer than 5 second chance catches. Bailey and Regan also had very solid games, with most of the good offensive possessions for Green flowing through them.
Highlights for Royal: Nevin and Aymo had a great bromance point with nearly every pass going between the two all the way down the field. If we could keep both of them healthy for a whole game, we might have something. Abby, in her first game back since preseason, had a great heads up layout D on an attempted cross field goal throw from Nathan. Bhagya had a tough game on D, drawing Logan or Nathan every point, but still came away with over half of our scores. Amelia continues to be a goal line threat, catching several tough passes and throwing another goal.
On the plus side, I can’t see how we could have played much worse and we only lost by 2, to what I expect to be an emerging powerhouse in Green now that they have a bit of momentum and have figured out how to win. Hoping to put this week behind us in preparation for our finals preview against Red next week.