Prelim pool (Thursday)
Blackfish 12 NADS (North Bay) 10 – A tough, bump-and-grind game in which we battled back from a slow start where we were down 6-2.
Blackfish 15 Roy (Toronto) 4
Blackfish 15 SWASS (New Brunswick) 5
Blackfish 7 GOAT 15 – Down 6-0, we nearly went point for point against them in the second half. We scored more than the other three teams in our pool combined.
Power pool (Friday) with NADS, GOAT, Les Q, Invictus and Phoenix. Top 4 make quarters.
Blackfish 8 Les Q (Quebec) 11 – Came into this one thinking it’s a must win game and lost it. These guys play a quick handler give-and-go type game, and with only 2 years under our belt, we haven’t figured out yet how to shut down this kind of game. We were down 10-8 when Pat and Adam got a big D, only to be called back on a really weak foul call.
Blackfish 8 Invictus (Calgary) 14 – Traded points for most of the first half and then started slipping. No bench clearing brawl either. In fact, we’ve found Invictus to actually be a well-spirited team.
Blackfish 11 Phoenix (Ottawa) 8 – Winner goes to quarters, so this one was going to be a battle. (Don’t know why the CUC committee stopped reporting our scores here. ) We didn’t have a chance to play Phoenix last year, and we wish we had. The arguing started on the first point and we called in an observer on point #3. Points were traded the entire first half in the same way that Cam traded smacks to the head with the Phoenix player early in the game. We took half at 8-7. Two more were traded, and the soft cap took effect, so it was 9-8 Blackfish. We got a D and Dan through a huck to double-covered Brian Duchovnay, who despite being shorter than the average ultimate player, absolutely SKYED the 2 veteran Phoenix guys. 10-8 us. Another D, and Dan throws another huck up to “The Duke”, who’s now covered by one of Phoenix’s best players. Brian skys this guy as well, but gets pushed out of the back of the end zone. An uncontested foul, and the point stands for the win. As the Spores know, this man knows out to go balls-out on everything.
This puts us in third in our power pool, and in the quarters against Mephisto, which is the best draw we could have asked for. We lost to Mephisto 14-12 and 14-6 at Nationals last year, and they were the ones who knocked us out in quarters at Halifax last year.
Playoffs (Saturday)
Blackfish vs Mephisto (Montreal) – This was Mephisto’s 12th consecutive Nationals quarterfinals appearance. It’s Blackfish’s 2nd nationals appearance and only our 10th tournament ever. We’re hungry to revenge our quarters knockout last year and to make semis for the first time. An experienced observer (who was also the TD) is brought in after a few contested calls on the first point, and we begin trading points. The trading is slow, as it’s a little windy and both teams are stronger defensively. Matt Doyle and Kieran McConnell pull down some hucks in the end zone to put us up by one at 6-5. They tie, we trade again and it’s tied at 7’s with us pulling upwind. They turn it over but we can’t score. We get another D but can’t punch it in. The soft cap blows and we haven’t even hit half time yet. Five more minutes of turnovers caused by layout Ds and they finally score the downwinder to go up 8-7. The 5-minute timeout kicks in and we find ourselves pulling due to the mirror’d half. We need two quick breaks to win. We force a turnover right near their endzone and put it in for the tying score. The hard cap goes off soon afterwards and we’re at universe point with us pulling upwind again. Shaggy’s on for Mephisto, despite having his broken ribs bumped only a few points earlier. Their experience pays off, as they put one inches above our fingers for a quick score. Final score: Mephisto 9 Blackfish 8.
Blackfish 12 Mangina (Regina) 6 – We’re playing to get into the 5/6 game and we take this one easily, despite having giving everything we had in the previous game.
Blackfish 8 General Strike (Winnipeg) 11 – The athletic squad from Winnipeg beats us here in a close one. We finish 6th overall.
Open final rankings: 1) Furious George 2) GOAT 3) Invictus 4) Mephisto 5) General Strike 6) Blackfish 7/8) NADS/Mangina 9-20) Results not posted
Our original goal was semis, but a month before Nats we realized the competition was going to be way higher than last year. Just making quarters was going to require a great tournament on our part. We finished 6th this year, which on paper sounds like we did worse than our 5th place finish in Halifax last year. However, consider that 5 of the top 8 teams didn’t even play Nats last year, and that three of the teams who we matched up well against in Halifax (Phoenix, Grand Trunk and Magma) didn’t even make quarters this year. A 6th place finish in a pool with tough competition is awesome, especially in just our second year. Nice work boys!
August 13th, 2007 | General