Centex is regularly cited as the premier women’s college ultimate tournament before Nationals, and this year the competition, organization, fields, weather, and patagonia sponsorship kept that title accurate. For Bella Donna, Centex marked the end of our once-a-week indoor practice season, an exciting transition.
While looking forward to outdoor practices again, it was apparent in our first game that the indoor throwing we were used to wasn’t going to work as well outside. Our first game was against UBC; a team that we had not seen since losing to them on double game point in the third place game of Centex ’09.
With this history, Bella was fired up to play and started the game strong with two quick breaks, Georgia to a skying Sandy and Gaynor to Vu. UBC called a time-out to pull themselves together and the points traded to 3-2, Bella. Keeping the turnovers low, Bella then rattled off 3 in a row before giving up 2 after a short pull. Half finally arrived with a score of 8-5 after some messy offense. Bella took two time-outs in the second half, recharging after two UBC scores in a row, and finally closed out the game at 15-11 with a dismal 38 turnovers.
Western Washington Chaos was up next, an exciting, athletic team that we had seen last at Stanford Invite. The 20-hour drive down seemed to still be affecting us, as we were broken twice to start the game. We caught up to tie it after a Speaker huck, but didn’t manage to get ahead until scoring three in a row to bring it to 5-3. From there the teams traded points until half at 8-6. Bella came out firing, with freshman, Al, getting a Callahan that pumped the team up and provided the spark necessary to take the game away. Bella only allowed two more points, closing out the game at 15-8 a much more acceptable 18 turnovers. Bitterman led the game, ending +7 out of 9 points played.
For the last game of Saturday, Bella was pitted against Colorado Kali, the two seed in our pool. This game started a little slow, fitting the trend so far, but after half was taken 8-5 we only allowed one more point, ending 15-6, Bella. Bitterman somehow managed to improve her stats, ending +8 after again, only 9 points. Al managed to earn an R (for a ridiculous play) in every single game, followed by Kelsey getting two, and Erin and McKain each getting one.
After ending undefeated, Bella dispersed to shower, returning to watch Coach Courtney take on Showdown in the showcase game. Court managed to be the best player on the field even though we definitely distracted, heckled, and made fun of her every second of the game. Afterwards we cheered on Wisconsin-Eau Claire dominating the dance-off, before going back to our hosts’ houses and falling asleep to 30 Rock reruns.
