Our first game on Saturday was against Tufts. Tufts has been a perennial Metro Boston Section rival. They always have a deep, athletic squad. We fought a close game against them, coming back from a small deficit to win, on universe point 11-10. Little did we know that this would begin a curious trend over the course of the season...more on that later.
The second game was against Brown, the undisputed first seed in the region. We went down early against them, and despite winning the second half, we were unable to make up our deficit in the time left, losing 11-8. However, we were pleased to find that we could play with, and potentially beat them.
Our third game was against Northeastern. We were just deeper than they were, and came away with a pretty comfortable victory 13-7.
Our final game of the day was against Dartmouth. I don't really remember much about this game, other than that it was pretty close, but they ended up going on a run toward the end, beating us 10-8.
Sunday, was...forgettable. Our first game was against UVM, and we were probably still asleep, or something. They threw a tight 1-3-3 zone on us, and our offense stagnated. There were some ill-advised blades, several surprising drops in the end zone, and Yang separated his shoulder, again. Despite Kevin's Callahan to open the second half, we lost 10-8. Our second game was against Bucknell, but we were still reeling from our upset by UVM. It was pretty windy, and Bucknell put up a lot of swill, which they managed to come down with an amazing percentage of the time. We lost a couple more players to minor injuries, and eventually lost by a few points, ending our tournament.
Saturday of Sectionals was pretty nice. We had first round bye, so we got to sleep in a little, before heading out to Lancaster, MA. The fields were turf, and while they were nice, the little black rubber chunks got everywhere (including some people's hair). Not much to say about Saturday... We cruised through our first three games against Stonehill, Tufts C, and Brandeis B. Notable moments included the first all Asian line. Bryan Ng got a D on the first pass, and we scored in one pass. Our final game was against Bentley. They gave us an early scare, going up 2-0, but we came back and easily won 13-7.
On Sunday, the weather was unforgettable. When we started our game against Tufts, it was barely above freezing, and there was light rain coming down. We played a pretty stacked line against them, and came away with a pretty nice 9-5 (hard-capped) win. Our zone D got a few nice turns, and our man O was quite solid. The weather turned really crappy shortly thereafter. The snow was coming down in huge chunks as we watched Tufts get crushed by Northeastern from the warmth of our cars. Our meeting with Harvard in the finals was awesome. The snow was still coming down, but both sides played their hearts out. Simon got about a billion D's, and we basically outworked them to a glorious 11-8 win.
Our first game at Regionals was against Roger Williams. They had a very one-dimensional game, which was the deep game. After our man D kept getting beat deep, we switched to Bozo and effectively shut them down, winning 15-12. Our second game was against Williams. We had some unnecessary turns near our own end zone, but in general, we just got beaten by their perfect hucks which seemed to always hit their receivers in stride, even upwind. They ended up winning 15-10. Our next game was against Connecticut College. They did not put up much of a fight, and we won easily 15-7. Our final game of the day was against Tufts. Again, a hard-played, well-fought game, but we had their number and pulled out the win 15-10.
On Sunday, we faced yet another Sectionals rival, Harvard. Our Bozo was generally pretty effective at generating turns, and our vertical stack man O was tough to stop. Proving that Sectionals was not a fluke, we worked hard to a hotly contested 15-12 victory. Our second game, the "game-to-go" to the "game-to-go" was against Dartmouth. We came out on fire, getting a few quick turns near their end zone, and scoring immediately. On defense, we put up a couple zones, but they got torn apart by perfect hammers in the swirling crosswind. We decided to just play man D the rest of the game, which may have been a mistake. Our cutters were getting pretty tired, since we were using a tight rotation both in the Harvard game and in this one. Also, our handlers were having a little trouble dump-swinging the disc, due to the extremely tight Dartmouth handler D. The result was that our offense stagnated a little, and then we started to get beat on defense. We never gave up, but our offense just wasn't able to score enough, and Dartmouth ended our season and our Nationals dreams.
Still, our season was fantastic, and our 4th place finish at Regionals was the best finish in recent memory. We beat Tufts 3 times, and Harvard twice, both of which are admirable feats. In fact, throughout the entire Spring season, we never lost to a team from Metro Boston! Our final record was a respectable 23-12.
