One of the harder weeks for YOLO with multiple friends out of town or unavailable (shout out to Rheagan for joining us as a floater the second game to give us a solid squad of 10), with the night ending after two hard-fought, competitive, overall-spirited games each decided by one point. Much love to Ben Chapin for coming out hours after wrist surgery to support us, even if he may not remember it for one reason or another.
Lights Out started with 6.5 players (Speedy literally put his cleats on after they were on the line without warming up) but came out strong on D with several breaks and took an early 3-2 lead. After some adjustments to our zone D and gutsy defense down the stretch, YOLO managed to take half 6-4 and eventually win the game on hard cap (Black scored just after time expired to pull within 1). Shout out to Dawn and Bonnie for solid play on both ends while playing through the blistering heat on nearly every point, to TK/Dan/Anton/Jim for collectively keeping our offense moving against a tough zone D, and Luke and Mike for continuing to connect for nasty buckets and making excellence look easy. Also, Matt and Dawn finally connected for a score, and he finally got her number.
Peaky Blinders is a solid squad that showed a lot of resilience despite a big half-time scoring gap, falling as low as 6-3 before scoring 3 straight breaks out of half to tie the game 6-6 with minutes to go. The core of Fresca/Billy/Max/Ross/David/Will/Devon/Clea/Rosie, with virtually all of them able to cut or handle or do both at the same time, proved tough to defend against no matter what defense we threw at them. A couple of scores later (big-time shout-outs to Mike for coming back after an early game injury to carry us the last couple points, and to Ross for a super nasty layout score for Pink) brought us to universe. Some patient play led to YOLO managing to hold for the win on yet another big throw from Mike to Luke (huge kudos to Luke’s mental toughness in playing through a couple of frustrating plays and making multiple crucial plays for us down the stretch). More shout-outs to Fresca for staying level-headed as a leader to help navigate a frustrating goal-line situation, and to Dan for a sick D to help us break on the first point. This was one of the most difficult games we played all season, and I’m super proud of our team for playing hard and supporting each other even when things got frustrating.