Practices and Parties

Frisbee’s been kind of slow lately around UT Dallas, especially after our tournament and the injuries some players suffered during it. I guess this is kind of my plea to those who read this to fire it up! We’re still out there playing all the time, in fact, this weekend there is another hat tournament in the Dallas area at Glenco (off of Mockingbird). It will be the Sunday before Thanksgiving and costumes are highly recommended. If you would like to come, just email me or leave a comment and we can all carpool together. I’m supposed to be getting pictures for the tournament to put up here, but as of yet my friend has not been able to scan them to me. Hopefully soon!

Ultimate 101: The Actual Tournament

This past weekend UTD Revolution competed in our own tournament that we hosted. This is an annual tournament (this was our second year) and we had a great turn out. We even had a team from Tennessee make the trip down. Here’s how it went:

Our first game, UTD vs. Ultimato (OSU): This was a hard fought game. It was our first game of the day and we were all getting into our strides. We’ve played this team before and we have a lot of friends on the team, so we also really enjoyed the spirit during the game. It was a lot of fun. We won 11-6.

Second game, UTD vs. Flying Squirrels (John Brown University): This was a good game as well. They weren’t as evenly matched to us, but they had great spirit. We won this game 11-5.

Third game, UTD vs. (I don’t remember): we won, that’s all you need to know

Fourth game, UTD vs. UNT: A great game. Up until now we have never been on the same playing level as UNT, but this year we have apparently upped our game because we matched them point for point. Finally, at the end of the game, it was down to ultimate point (the next team to score wins). We had a field long pass into the endzone but our player dropped it. They got the disc, but we defended and got the disc again. One bad pass, and they had the disc again. It was this time that they finally got it in the endzone. The game itself was hard fought and we all had a lot of fun. We all have friends on the UNT team (I have an ex-boyfriend) etc. so we always enjoy playing them. This was a wonderful game and the most fun I had in the whole tournament.

Unfortunately, the next day the tournament was rained out. Our team was still pleased as we enjoyed ourselves, made money for the team, and walked away with a winning record. We were favored with being in the championships the second day, and the way we were playing, I have no doubt that we walked away winners.

We Almost Went to Nationals

The Women’s team this past weekend nearly went to nationals!  Let me tell you a few background details so that you realize how incredibly awesome this is.  Our seed was 6th overall (out of 8 states and the 11 teams that went) and second in Texas.  We went with the goal of just keeping our seed.  On Saturday we lost our first two games to the number 3 and number 1 seeds in our pool (the first day is pool play). 

An aside: Pool play means that the teams play each other to figure out what bracket they will be in during bracket play, which is single elimination.  Most tournaments do pool play the first day and bracket play the second.  In highly competitive tournaments like Sectionals and Regionals not everyone makes it to the second day, so every game is important.

 We still held our seed after losing to these two teams, but morale was low and we were frustrated at our play.  Our next two games brought our spirits up though as we won both (closely; one ended with hard cap of 11-9 us)

An aside: A hard cap is called when a game is going over the time allotted.  Most times a game is played until the winning teams reaches the points they are playing to, and they need to win by two.  When a hard cap is called, 2 points are added to the highest score and you will then play to that number.  For example: if the score is 10-9 and hardcap is called they will now play to 12 regardless of if either is 2 points ahead.

Keeping our seed means we made it to the second day.  They only took the top 8, so that was an accomplishment in itself.  Our first game was against a team that had been beat before but is almost evenly matched with us.  We stomped em.  I’m not sure if we just came out hot or what, but we played excellent frisbee.  This means we exceeded our seed and we were now 5 out of the 11 teams and two more games away from Nationals.  The next game we played was against Rip Tide, one of the best women’s teams in the region.  They were expected to go to Nationals, but we fought tooth and nail, and we won 14-13.  That was probably the best game of the weekend.  This win put us in 4th and playing in the game to decide who went for the third bid to nationals.  The game was against Showdown, the Texas womens’ elite team.  We drove all the way to Little Rock to end up playing against girls we play with all the time!  They did beat us, but we scored one on them.  I caught it!

 All in all it was an excellent weekend.  Not only that, but now Ovaryaction is recognized as number 4 out of our region.  Here’s to Nationals next year!