GUEST BLOGGER: Lou Burruss
Sunday morning saw us arrive at the fields two and a half hours early for our quarterfinal match-up with Ottawa. Fugue 2009 is hands down the faffing-est team I have ever been on and we really need the two and half hours to get ourselves to the fields and cleated up and so forth. As we went through our warm up, I could feel the pressure and focus building. We were relaxed and chatty and jokey like usual, but underneath was a sense of determination. By contrast, Ottawa was walking to the field 30 minutes before game time. I don’t know what happened, but the rest of the weekend they looked like a regular team in their warm ups and cool downs. Maybe they got Corvallised (not scheduling for the 20 minute walk from the parking lot to the fields) or maybe they went to the wrong field, who knows. In any case, they didn’t get in a very good warm up and it showed. I also don’t think they were ready for us defensively, either. It took them into the second half to sort their match ups out to the point where they were able to exert a lot of defensive pressure. Anyway, on to the game itself; it played out in four parts.
Part one was the entire first half. We picked up right where we had left off Saturday evening: playing great defense and punishing the other team’s mistakes. We focused pretty intensely on Ottawa’s big three: Anne Mercier, Alex Benedict and Danielle Fortin. We were fortunate to have the right combination of size, physicality and speed to matchup on those three. We played almost exclusively force flick or force backhand and challenged our defenders on the Big Three to contain the breaks as best they could. As I mentioned before, it took them a while to figure out match ups and we capitalized on this early by really opening the game up and hitting on a number of deep looks. Halftime saw us up 8-4.
Coming out of half, we traded points all the way out to 12-8. This part of the game was very well played on both sides. Ottawa’s defense picked up and we were forced to work the disc a little more, but they still weren’t generating a lot of pressure around the disc. Neither were we, though, so both teams were scoring fairly easily. Around 11-7, I called a time out and said, “Hey, let’s put this away. Let’s bank one on defense.” Two points later we got a great opportunity. We got a beautiful poach block right on their brick, but three throws later, we rushed a forehand into a little window and missed. The Lady Geegees took it 70 and scored. What would have been 13-8 (and game over) was 12-9 and another opportunity for Ottawa.
We blinked. Trading back and forth is a staple of elite men’s ultimate and I have been involved in many, many of these battles over the years with Sockeye. I love the slow build up of pressure and the constant, “We did it, now you do it!” It was very cool to be involved in a game of that caliber at the college level. Anyway, we blinked. Two points in a row, we made careless errors and they scored. Yikes. 12-11.
I thought about calling our last time out, but wanted to save it if we really needed it. Ottawa was playing crazy defense at this point, shutting down the deep game and locking down our handlers. In that circumstance, there is nothing to do but to step up and make plays. Again and again, we made tough catches, robbed defenders of blocks and threw timely breaks. We inched down the field ten yards at a time finally scoring on a high-backhand around the mark. 13-11. Ottawa scores to make it 13-12. We shake loose on a big backhand 14-12. Then Ottawa blinks. A beautiful forty yard forehand gets dropped (dropped!) in the endzone and we go seventy to win, closing with a Sherwood to Sharman backhand.
Final 15-12. UCSB, here we come!
No comments:
Post a Comment