As day broke on a beautiful Saturday morning in Chico, CA, 21 mixed teams and 10 open teams converged at Community Park, a short stone's throw from the Sierra Nevada Brewery. After several weeks of anticipation and preparation, it was tournament Saturday. The weather wasn't bad. Cool and brisk in the morning with occassional wind that topped out at maybe 10mph at times. Great fields, great weather, but an unusually late start time of 2:30pm.
Most of were already at the fields in the morning watching the Open division matchups between Strike Slip and Monster, or YR and Condors and were treated to very high level ultimate that gave hints as to which team would prove themselves to be superior in the NW and SW divisions. In the Southwest, just from a very early view of things, the team to beat is still Johnny Bravo folllowed by Street Gang, Strike Slip, Condors, and Monster. Early prediction, but we'll see how things pan out.
LA Metro was ranked #2 going into the tournament as the top seed in pool B that included Brass Monkey, Classy, and Bid*well Nuts. We had an awesome warm-up at around 1:00pm, felt confident, looked confident, almost borderline cocky. That proved to be our immediate downfall.
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Round 1 vs. Classy
Talk about a nut-buster of a first half. After trading the first two points on O, a "meltdown" would be an understatement. The wheels fell off early in this game as our O-line struggled to even move the disc off the pull. It wasn't the pressure from Classy running down on the pull, it wasn't their defense, it was just our nerves, our over-confidence, and our lack of heart. We did not work at all during this game. We had 19 turn-overs in this game, with the majority coming from unforced errors such as turfs and drops. No credit taken away from Classy, but they didn't do much to take this game from us other then to just take it from us. We gave this game to them, and it wasn't pretty. Being down 1-7 at half time, and then broken twice after half to make a 1-9 hole called for a huge change in mentality. Instead of winning the game, we focused on simply closing the gap. Small runs that would hopefully give us our dignity back. We closed until the final score of 7-13, but no heads were held high that game. *We embarassed ourselves, our supporters on the sideline, and Southern California ultimate in this game.* There were very few words during the post-game huddle other than from the captains. We were outplayed, and embarassed by a team we had beaten twice already, and it showed on the faces of every single player.
Classy upsets Metro 13-7
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Round 2 vs. Bid*Well Nuts
Mark of a good team: the ability to bounce back from disaster. After a disasterous first round, we changed our menality and began to work with our legs. We ran a 3 vs. 3 handler pre-game drill that would focus on quick movement and hard running which I believe was the main factor in the sudden metamorphosis of our offense from anemic, skiddish movement to beautiful ho-flo and fluid movement. It was an entirely different team out there the second game and our offense led the way to a 13-6 bounce back win. We played harder than these guys and definitely showed the character of an elite team by just having short-term memory and playing the game at hand.
Metro over Chico 13-6
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Round 3 vs. Brass Monkey
Brass Monkey was a reunion team with a lot of experience and skill. I'll keep this short, but the only way to describe this game was that we had our chances to put it away. We had MULTIPLE chances to put away but we let them off the hook (Insert Dennis Green joke here). We were up a couple breaks until their zone stiffled and frustrated our offense and took us to a universe point in which an ill-timed hard cap TO and a almost-heroic hammer doomed our team to a 10-9 defeat. On the upside, we played well. it wasn't a game where we gave them the W on a plate, but we showed a lot of resolve and fight, but they simply made the plays when they had to and we didn't. The focus was now on our decision-making with the disc and overall frisbee-IQ. Tough loss that would have all but sealed up the pool for us. Instead of winning the pool (that no longer had a distinct favorite), we took the B-4 spot. First to worst in our pool. It was kindof numbing that things could go so bad, but we weren't out of it yet. We still had a chance to do well in this tournament.
Brass Monkey over Metro 10-9 DGP
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Round 4 vs. Humboldt
Most fun game of the tournament for me. They played hard and as the sun set and the lights (kindof) came on, we proved to be the better team with a pretty easy 13-6 win. The margin should have been wider, but we kindof let off the gas a bit and made some ill-timed decisions that led to scores.
It was a good way to end the day, but we knew that because of our struggles the first day, we knew that we had a long day on Sunday and that the teams we played would give us quality games. Team Dinner+beer at the Sierra Nevada Brewery after a long day of ultimate. Perfect way to end the day.
LA Metro over Humboldt 13-6
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Pre-Quarters vs. Dutch Rudder
Quarters vs. Bid*well Nuts
We played well this game and opened up the deep game with Matt Welsh and Keegan leading the charge. After our disasterous first round on Saturday, we knew that we had to pick it up this game to prove that as a team, we didn't need a "warm-up" game to get into our groove. We didn't really do that as we started out down a break or two and had to claw our way back. We were down 4-6 I believe before we scored on O, and then two straight defensive breaks for the 7-6 half. We didn't look back from there and opened up the throttle and cruised to a 13-8 win, out-scoring Dutch Rudder 9-2 in the latter half of the game. That set up another match against Bid*well Nuts in which we won out again 13-8 in a very fun and spirited game that was actually covered by the local newspaper!
Metro over Dutch Rudder 13-8
Metro over Bid*Well Nuts 13-8
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Advancing to semifinals meant another match against our rivals Brown Chicken Brown Cow. This was "supposed" to be the Saturday-night Showcase game, but at that point, we knew that this game would be close and that if we wanted to really push ourselves to win, we would need to show a lot of poise, passion, and heart.
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Semifinals vs. Brown Chicken Brown Cow
Both of our rosters were short-staffed. It was apparent as big names from both teams were absent but that was no way an excuse or a crutch that either team could lean on in case of a defeat. We were both good teams that had played each other 2 times in the past already, with the rivalry tied at 1 game-apiece. The game started out with simple trading before our defensive line generated an early break. It was very obvious that our energy level was elevated for this game and that we were running well and hard. Our offense looked very smooth and fluid, with good decisions but several bad executions. Of note was Meesh playing very fundamentally sound defense on BCBC's best woman, as well as our general defense on their ladies. They are one of the few teams that consistently runs a 3-4 on offense and makes us prove that we can beat
their very talented and fast ladies. So we threw a wonky zone at them. And it worked. That was where the tide turned. We were up maybe one break, but after throwing a zone, we confused them, and stopped any kind of flow that they had and went up several breaks for a 10-5 lead. The biggest complaint we had for this game was that we let off a bit at the end because we knew we had this game won (due to time-caps), and pulled out a 11-8 win, when it should have been easily 13-5. It was a hard fought game with huge lay-outs from Keegan and Whitey. Our women played so well and did us proud. Above all though, we played with passion and heart but didn't let the excitement and adrennaline from playing our main rivals force us into "hero" mode. Back to fundamentals, back to working hard, back to Finals!
LA Metro over BCBC 11-8 (hard cap)
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Finals vs. Night Train
NightTrain (to me), was the surprise of the tournament. I had seen them play this past year and didn't think too much of them, but they surprised the A-pool much like Classy did in our pool and beat BCBC in pool play and BAG in semis to advance to finals. They had finished maybe 5 minutes prior to end of our game and were watching us play, almost scouting us. That 5 minutes was probably the difference in that we were able to smoothly transition into the game with our level of play already up. Due to the fact that many of us had to catch flights, the captains from both teams agreed that the game would end at 4:55pm (55-minute round), so that we would have ample time.
We came out on fire with great Ho-Flow and great defense on their ladies. They had maybe one or two handlers that could really jack it deep, but we stiffled them a bit in the beginning and went on a big run to make it a 5-0 game, practically putting the game away early. They did manage to close the gap a bit by working it with their women, but we pulled out the victory 9-5 and the tournament title. Of note from this game was Lindsey running deep and snagging the disc over a guy who was bidding for it, as well as Trogdor's crazy poach Lay-out D on my cutter who had to jump over him as he hit the deck. I liked the offense in this game in that we simply out-worked the opposition through dump swings and short passes which would gradually open up our deep shots from Keegan to our ladies. It was a great feeling to win this game as many of us were fighting cramps, fatigue, and exhaustion.
LA Metro over Night Train 9-5 (time cap)
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So we did it. We started the tournament on a disasterous note, but showed enough poise and composure to slowly bring ourselves together and win each game, one at a time. Going into bracket play as the last seed out of pool play, we had a lot of critics to answer. Many people questioning our team ability, our cohesiveness, our desire to win. I think we did answer a lot of questions this weekend that we also had for ourselves. Could we bounce back? Could we win in more than one way? We learned a lot about ourselves this weekend and the tournament victory tasted so much better than the Sierra Nevada 24-pack that came with it.
As we raced back to the airport to catch our 8:00pm flights, it was apparent on the faces of every single player on this team that it had taken a lot out of each of us. True we were excited and proud that we won, but many of us wore our emotions on our sleeve after that game and displayed faces of exhaustion, fatigue, and above all relief. Coming all the way back to win really showed that we did have what it takes to gut it out but that we have so much more to learn and work on as a team. For every player that was there this week, it was a victory for our team, but it was also a personal victory as each person stepped up their game and brought it for Metro Blue. I am proud to wear this jersey, and I am proud of every single one of my teammates for their commitment to the team, their desire to work for each other, and just the smiles I saw as we earned the title of the 2009 Discos Calientes Mixed-Division Champions.
Great job Metro.
-Hammie
