What makes ultimate a funny sport is the fact that you only play in tournaments. Individual games (at least at the college level) are virtually non-existent. So every tournament you play, you know that you have to mentally and physically make it through a handful of games any given day. I would imagine that any team would play a decidedly different game if it were the only one they had to play that day. The 90 degree heat and format of the power pools only accentuated this “this-day-is-not-over-yet” mentality. Not knowing how many games you have to play and when and against whom is also quite the trip.
Centex pool play:
We knew we had to come out with a bang in our first game against Texas. The structure of the power pools meant that our day had many hard-fought points, and little time between games to rest up and rehydrate. We had already played Texas twice this year, so we knew that we were up against an athletic and physical team that would fight us until the very end. They were on offense first, so when Texas took the first half ended 7-8, we knew we had to score some breaks to pull out a win. The round seemed to fly by and before I knew it, cap was on. Tied at 11’s, we were in universe point in our first game at Centex. This point seemed to last much longer than it should have, as each side had multiple turnovers (drops, Ds, and overthrows), but we remained calm and put the last point in to take the game 12-11.
Our next game against Stanford started before we had a chance to process our win on DGP (double game point, obvs). We called a line and rushed through our cheer to join Stanford on the field. The first half of this game seemed to run away from us before we knew what was happening. Stanford is an excellent team and moved the disc quickly and efficiently. How they ended up as the 3rd seed in our pool of four is beyond me. My only memory of playing Stanford was losing to them last year at the Stanford Invite, where 11 Pleiads had a great time being run ragged. They took half a lot to a little (I never seem to know what the actual score is), and although we fought our way into the double-digits we still lost 10-15. Ending this game with a hard run improved our mental game going into our last game against Oregon. Did I say last game? I meant last pool play game…
I think my teammates had split opinions about having Oregon in our pool. Some were excited to finally get to play the defending national champs and others were a little scared (and others were disappointed that they were not wearing their BAMF all-yellow…maybe this was just me?). Bottom line: we knew we had to beat Oregon to have any hope of holding seed. Some people were not”impressed” by Oregon this past weekend, and there was a lot of chatter later on about who was actually playing (I heard a lot of, “They were missing all seven starters!” Um, really?). Pleiades, however, knew that Oregon was still one of the most (if not the most) formidable teams in women’s college ultimate and that we had it in our capacity to make this a great game. And it was. Oregon is the type of team that I love to play: they are well-respected, have great SOTG, and are a very well-rounded team. They have been around the block, so to speak. We played a solid game and kept out heads together to come out on top 12-11 (our favorite score?).
At the end of the day, we had three hard-fought games to come out of our pool 2-1 (what our record should have been since we were 2nd in our pool). Although we upset the #1 seed in our pool, they walked through to the pre-quarters unscathed. And because we lost to the “wrong” team, we had to play another game. I know that I, personally, was not prepared for a fourth game. There is something about the concept of conserving energy that just doesn’t mesh well with my hunger to D the first throw (or maybe it’s the prospect of winning a juice box).
In any case, our last game against Tufts was a struggle. Tufts is a great team. Having to play them was something of a surprise to me since I thought we would hold seed, but based on point differential Stanford ended up second in our pool. Tufts proved that they deserved a seat in the Division I bracket, and ended up making it to the semi-finals. They were able to work it 70 yards, swinging the disc back and forth constantly with few turnovers. We traded points back and forth throughout the game and it seemed as though we were just waiting for a chance to get a break. The breaks we were looking for never came, and Tufts ended up taking the game 15-11.
As our forward-looking coaches pointed out to us at the end of the day, this was not the end of the season. We took the loss hard, but as Lindsey Hack puts it, “You learn a lot more from a loss than you do from a win.” Although we were technically knocked out of the Division I bracket by Tufts, I think it was the first half of our game against Stanford that really did us in this weekend. We had a pool full of top-quality teams and having the opportunity to play them has only made us that much better.
