Regionals Recap, Part 1

Fourteen hours in a subcompact. Each way.

That’s how I spent a good chunk of my Thanksgiving weekend, travelling between Winnipeg and Naperville, Illinois for the chance to play a few games of ultimate. Not just any games, though – this was the Central Regional tournament of the UPA Championship series. Three teams of 16 in the open division would be heading to Nationals in a few weeks. Having earned a spot at he sectionals tourney weeks earlier, we were among those 16 teams. General Strike, from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, seeded 10^th in the region. While we had no delusions of actually going to nationals, we certainly were out to make a mark.

The ride down was long but uneventful. Most of the team had been prescient enough to take off all of Friday and had left Thursday night, getting in on Friday afternoon. My car was the late one. Leaving at 1:30 pm on Friday, we arrived 4 am Saturday morning. Little to do but quietly set up our thermarests on the hotel floor and catch a few hours sleep. We were to be at the fields for 8 am.

Morning came much too quickly, but with the help of a mediocre continental breakfast courtesy of the hotel, and several cups of coffee, I perked up enough to get to the fields. We pulled in and found our game location on the dew-covered polo fields where the tourney was being held. The weather was cool to start but the sun was rapidly warming the air. It would be a great day for ultimate. The team got together for a long warmup jog, then a stretch, followed by some throwing drills to warm up. First game would be important. As would the rest of them – the tournament was a bracket format, double knockout (triple knockout, if we made it far enough), so any losses would make it difficult to advance. Lose a couple early and we would be done the tourney on Saturday afternoon. With a seed in the bottom half, we’d need to come up with some upsets early to make it very far. With that in mind, we headed into our first game.

Game 1: Illinois X. Our first game was against 7^th-seeded Illinois X, a team of U of Illinois products haling from Champaign, IL. They had finished second in their section to nationals contender Machine. Despite their higher seed, they didn’t look to be as strong on paper as we were, and we were fairly confident goin in. As the game got underway, our confidence was borne out. We went up a few breaks early, and then continued to dominate the first half, taking it 7-2. Second half we started on D and I was in, and got a big layout block, then converted for the score – Bookends! I was happy to get some production on both sides of the disc early in the tournament, as I hadn’t done much of anything at sectionals. But enough about me… we continued to roll and while we eased up a little at the end, Illinois X was never in it and we ended up winning 13-6. Upset #1 was complete.

With our game ending so quickly we had a chance to rest and take in some other games. Right next to us, DingWop (who had received a late bid on Thursday night that week, after some other teams cancelled) was in a dogfight against Jawbone from Cleveland. Dingwop at 11^th seed had a chance to take down Jawbone at 6^th, and was close to pulling it off – down 11-10, they tied it up, then got a break on a very long point to go up 12-11. One more break could win. However Jawbone tied it up on another very long point and the teams proceeded to trade points for an eternity – there was no cap but the time cap, which wouldn’t go on for a while, so what would have been a game to 13 did not end remotely close to that. We had to leave to warm up again before we could see the end, but we later found out DingWop lost in a heartbreaker, 18-16. Too bad for them – but, back to us.

Game 2: Machine. Unfortunately even with our upset in the first round, the bracket was not friendly to us with a matchup against #2 seed Machine from Chicago. Machine was well structured and showed it early on by scoring within a few throws on our defence, then breaking our offence and getting another quick score. Reeling, we made some adjustments on D to stop their set plays, and began to have some success. We eventually got some breaks back and made their offence work hard even when they did score; our offence got back on track and worked a mix of patient play and hucks to great success. At halftime we trailed 8-7, and the first point after half the O line tied it up 8-8. But alas, we could not kkep it up forever. Machine was slow to adjust to our adjustments but eventually countered our huck-stopping defence with some good handler movement, which we had less of an answer to; and their defence found an answer to our offence, running off several breaks. We gave up a 7-1 run to watch Machine close out the game 15-9. With that, we exited the 1^st place bracket. However, second place was still in reach; we’d need to fight past some lower-ranked teams, then battle the quarterfinal and semifinal losers to do so. One game at a time though.

Game 3: Cork Juice. After getting bumped down into the ‘losers’ bracket, our fist game was against Cork Juice fro Kalamazoo, Michigan. They had come in ranked 9^th – just in front of us – but had lost in the first round before winning the next for the right to stay in the running for 2^nd place. As with our game against Illinois X, we knew we were likely the better team despite what the seedings said, and we were looking forward to a victory. One of our captains said something to the effect that our goal should be to win the game 15-0. That seemed to be the general attitude on our team going in. The game got underway with us on D. First possession by Cork Juice, they worked it up before taking a shot into the endzone, to my guy. I was a bit behind him as the throw went up but saved myself with a layout block. We couldn’t hold onto the disc off the turn though, and gave them another chance where they scored. No worries – down 1-0 on a D point, and where they were heading downwind. Our O would do their job and we’d get another chance. Sure enough we went up 2-1 as expected, but they got another back on us. This kept up a while, as we traded points but couldn’t start to break away. Finally it was 7-7, we were receiving to take half… and turned it over giving them a chance to lead. Luckily, our O line turned it back over and then scored, so we led 8-7 at half. By this time we realised we were playing far too complacent and needed to bring our A game to win this, even against what looked like a weaker opponent. We refocused and finally started to build a lead. The D line started to roll and scored several consecutive points. Finally we were up 14-10 with a chance to win on D… but Cork Juice got one back, bringing the O line back to finish it. The O line faltered, giving up a break, then another, and suddenly it was 14-13 and another break would mean a game to 16 or more. The O line finally delivered – 15-13 – and we were through to the next round.