Capitals in Florida Day 2

So, the problem with agreeing to post during a tournament, is that I forgot how busy the weekend is and how quickly you get to Sunday. Between being at the fields all day, having to eat, followed by a team meeeting, bedtime really sneaks up on you.

Day 2 we were in a power pool with Backhoe and Godiva as well as Fury, against whom we brought in a loss from the previous day. First up, Backhoe. They were the top seed from their pool and ranked 3rd overall going into the tournament. We were pretty geared up for this one, and came out firing. Our o-line scored on their first possession and the bar was set. The first half we got a bunch of breaks with some gritty man defence and took the half 8-3. During half-time, the wind picked up quite a bit, which definitely affected us negatively. Lots of long messy points, and Backhoe started clawing their way back into the game. They pulled to within 1 when the soft cap went on. I believe that we traded to close the game out and win by two. This was my first time being in the power pools on Friday, and I was stoked to win a game. On to the next one.

Of course, this took us the entire 2.5 hour time slot, so we had to jump right into the next game against Godiva, who was coming off a nice long break after a fairly short game against Fury. We were clearly not as focussed as we needed to be coming off a huge win and let them get out to a 4-0 lead right off the bat. The wind wasn't letting up and this wasn't to our benefit against a very fundamentals-oriented Godiva. Caps didn't let up, though, and we brought it to within 2 (6-4 maybe? I can't remember exactly). However, their offence proved too much for us, and we lost by 6 (again, ?). Whatever the score, we ended up coming in at the bottom end of a three way tie in our pool, sending us to the pre-quarterfinals against a team from on of the two lower pools.

Last game of Friday: Showdown. Still extremely windy. Winner goes to quarters, loser plays for 9th. We traded points for the entire first half, and for the amount of wind, it was relatively clean and there were few turns. They started on offence, so they took half 8-7. There was a promise from an o-line member of a round of drinks for the 7 on the field for the d-line that got the first break, so now that we had incentive, we decided to try a little harder. O-line started the half & scored. I can't remember if it was the next d point or the one after, but with some intense d and some nail-biting offence (now labelled "d-style" O) we scored the break. In fact, I scored the break on a sweet up the line throw from Kate Cav (who had just made a crazy catch with a girl riding on her back). We're up by one and pumped. They score the next one (while the wind is oddly absent) and then the following one as well to retake the lead. We score on O and then get another break on D to take the lead for the second time. Our normally smooth-running offence has a couple of hiccups, though, and we fail to score another point. Showdown 15 - Capitals 11. We're not heading to the quarters. The team is disappointed, I'm extremely disappointed, but trying really hard to move on to the new goal of finishing 9th. We all run a little cool down over to watch GOAT in their pre-quarter (they win).

Now, I was planning to launch into day 3 activities, but when I woke up the clock said 7:30, which I thought was a completely respectable time to get up - however, we screwed the clock up somehow and it was actually 6:30 - so I think a nap might be in order before packing up & getting ready to watch finals.