Semis next vs. Nomads.

We won our first game today against Sofa Kings, 14-5.

Saturday

Blackfish 15 – Armada 6 – Our goal for this game was to start off strong. Last year we had troubled starts, so we had guys show up an hour and a half early and ran an intense 45 minutes warm-up. It paid off as we started off with 3 breaks and never looked back. Some great players on this team, but they didn’t come prepared, and had players arriving at the fields halfway through this game.

Blackfish 15 – Predator 10 – Predator’s a new team from Tacoma, WA, mostly composed of players from the UPS and PLU college teams. They were tall and athletic, but hadn’t had the chance to practice together yet. A good chunk of their points were scored by hucks to their two 6’6+ receivers. Great guys, and I hope they continue to play together as I’d like to see more competitive teams coming from the Northwest. We played chilly all game after getting 3 quick breaks right off the bat again.

Blackfish 15 – Nomads 5 – I heard that 8 guys backed out on the day of the tourney, so they were running with only 11 guys. They started with 2 straight but then started to look tired later on. Looking forward to playing their full team this year at Provincials and Nationals.

Blackfish 15 – Invictus 13 – We had our sights on beating Invictus this year, having lost a few close games last season, and we did! We led by a fair margin the entire game, but then let Invictus go on a late-game run and almost catch up. This was our controversial game of the tournament and is worth a separate discussion. (* See bottom of this posting)

Sunday

Blackfish 15 – Canada Jr Men 3 – The Juniors had just finished a huge comeback against Armada to qualify for this game and seemed spent. They decided to take it easy and do some team bonding during this game. The juniors clearly have a lot of athletic talent but look like they need a little practice on their skills if they’re looking to compete at Worlds this year.

Blackfish 16 – Tonka Trucks 17 – (Semi-finals against the TFP men) Down 5-0 after we had trouble with their zone, coach Jeff Bell suggested a few tweaks to our offense and we caught up to bring it 6-4. We then traded a few more points and were losing at half 8-6. We received after the mirrored half, and quickly brought it to 9-9 after Doyle made a few huge skys and T-dub brought down the disc on defense using his massive ape arms. A few points later at 11-10 for us, Gotwals scored a Callahan and it looked like we might actually win this game, despite haven given them 5 at the start. Another break earned by Scott Craig’s poach made it 13-10 with us pulling. They scored 2 and we returned with 1 to make it 14-12. The intensity raised and there were a number of turnovers each way. We had it near their end-zone for the win, but Leduc picked off a short pass. A few throws later, Adam collided with someone and had his head seriously rattled. They scored, and then scored another to tie 14-14, with no caps in place. The O-line worked it in for a score, TFP tied. Then the same thing again and it was 16-16 with a hard cap at 17. We marched it down the field to their brick and then it got cloggy. A high stall count turnover caused some confusion on our side, and our guys had trouble transitioning to D. A quick wide open huck, a time out and an easy pass later, the game was over. It was tough being so close and then not making it, but we were extremely proud of our weekend. A year ago, we wouldn’t even have considered making semis, and this year we just missed finals by a few yards. Lessons were learned, and we’ll take it from here.

*At 13-12, one of our players pushed an Invictus player to the ground after he felt like he had been bumped around on offense a few too many times. One of Invictus’ players (yes, THE SAME PLAYER who got in a fight at Nats last year) then charged the field from the sidelines and tackled our player by the neck from behind. All players from both teams then jumped into the scrum and it took several minutes to get the Invictus player to release his hold on our guy. We agreed to a mutual time out and then the game continued through to the end.

After the game, I had several players from my team and another men’s team tell me that they’re not OK with what happened and that something needs to be done. One of my other captain’s and myself went over and talked with the offending player, but he didn’t get it. The Invictus guy thought that because our guy stepped over that line, that he needed to cause our player some pain as retribution. He seemed to have no regrets and took the attitude that he’d do it again if need be. (Seeing that he admitted to this being at least the second time this occurred, I believe him.) What can we as an ultimate community do to stop this behavior from re-occurring?

UPA nor CUPA seems to have official rules regarding fighting, probably because they don’t want to think about fights even occurring. Perhaps it’s time to add some rules about this? Or at least discuss it.

Final scores were:

Blackfish 15 – Roy 3 – A nice warmup game.
Grand Trunk 14 – Blackfish 12 – Down 8-2 at the half with a big second half comeback. Our first challenge and it took a little while to get the feel of each other. 13 – 12, capped at 14 and they managed a score to stop our comeback completion.
Magma 13 – Blackfish 12 – Once again, a second half comeback. 8-5 at the half and later tied at twelves.
Mephisto 14 – Blackfish 12 – Best game of the tournament by far as we showed the Montreal boys that we can run. We were down 8-4, then 10-5, before scoring 5 straight to tie it at 10s. Traded points til they were up 13-12, when we received on Offense. A long huck by us to 5 yards out of their endzone was called back (wrongly) due to an injury on the throw and they got a big D and an O to take the game…So close to a tie against a solid experienced team!
Blackfish 15 – Firebird 4 – We were the ones on fire. The IndigoFish play was born during this game.
Blackfish 15 – Red Circus 7 – Stellar play by all. Greg had two big Ds here!
Mephisto 14 – Blackfish 6 – Quarterfinals – With them until it was 6-5 when we ran out of steam…Our short roster showed here, as a few guys were out with injuries and heat stroke
Blackfish 9 – Magma 8 – 5th/7th seed game – Windy. Very windy game with lots of turnovers that saw Adam continuously bomb the disc up wind for some big gainers.
Blackfish 15 – Firebird 5 – 5th Seed – These guys were fired up, warming up for 45 minutes before the game. We were beat and just managed to get our cleats on for game time after putting down our beers. Everyone dug deep and pulled the energy out for our final game of the tournament. Notable moment: Rhett with a HUGE huck and then possibly the biggest pull of the tourney.

We went undefeated for our first 3 games on Saturday and won our crossover game against Grind. On Sunday, we won the semi-finals game against The Keg Workers and then beat the Canadian Juniors in the final. Final scores to come.