Thursday, December 15, 2005

Year in Review

7 tournaments (lowest total since 1998)
36 wins-14 losses

I struggled with my confidence and enjoyment of playing this year. I felt physically ready to play, but I was sometimes out of sync in terms of mental focus.

Mixed Easterns (6TM)- A tryout tournament for 6TM. Lost in quarters to Slow White. At 14-12, Slow is pulling to us, and Eitan says to the folks on the line, "This is to beat the 3rd best team in country". I look down at our line, and Marshall is the only player on the line that played in 04. This is not to make light of what Eitan said. They were pumped up, and I think beating us was a good way to get their season going. My point is that it was an odd tournament to have 19 tryouts and 5 returners, and be iunder the 6TM moniker.

Boston Invite(6TM)-lost to Slow in pool play. Beat Flaming Moe twice. Got to play WMD on Sunday morning with Al and Jim watching as we took over their field for our second round game. I was a bit surprised they didn't move, but it was hot enough to deter any extraneous motion, even if it meant having to glace over the Sunday paper at Mixed Ultimate. Beat Slow White in the final. Played real team defense.

Potatch(Northeast Neighborhood Bullies)- The blog highlight of my weekend was scoring a goal on Corey. I pulled my hamstring on the morning of day 3. DTL won the "have Ted Munter coach your team" raffle, so he coached against us. Josh M got his wish and we played Harvard on Sunday morning. He took over the game and we won.

CHC-Lost in finals to Moe. Beat CLX in Semis.

Sectionals-Got pasted by Chinstrap on Day 1. In the final, WMD's first two passes were intercepted for Callahan goals. The third point they completed 1 pass, then we got the turn and goal. A lot of teams would have collapsed, but they took it in stride. If you discount the first 3 points, we beat them 12-8.

Regionals- lots of rain on Saturday. Went down 5-2 to BMF. Beat Chinstrap in the final. Close game, though.

Nationals-I think that tournament is pretty well documented.

4 comments:

Sam Tobin-Hochstadt said...

I should note that on the next (4th) point, we (WMD) only completed one pass as well. So you could discount that point as well.

On the other hand, your team didn't really seem to be trying as hard in that game as in some others that I've seen, and we were mostly just happy to have beaten Chinstrap, so I wouldn't put too much stock in it either way.

sam th
#1 WMD

gcooke said...

Hey Sam,

Thanks for the clarification. Looking back, you seem correct. I played a lot of points that game.....so we must not have been trying that hard.

I was just impressed that you guys continued on pretty much unruffled.

-G

Marshall said...

I think there was some discussion on r.s.d about teams playing under other names, or suffering in rankings by playing under their own name, when they are playing tryout tournaments. The Easterns example was significant for us in that way because we were SO far from being the same 6TM team. And in fact, very few of those tryouts ended up playing with the team. On the other hand, it ultimately didn't affect us much in determining future standing, except at the Invite, where went in seeded fairly low based on performance at Easterns. Then again, winning the Invite probably canceled out any future effect of losing at Easterns.

Save for a few spectacular moments, you performed pretty consistently this year. That doesn't mean you aren't capable of more, of course.

Nice job by Sam quick-on-the-blog-draw TH. And indeed at 4-0 with only four passes completed (2 them, 2 us), the tenor of the game had changed somewhat. Good showing by WMD at Sectionals, and nice for our not-really-ready team not to face Chinstrap again until Regionals. I guess that's the way it goes sometimes.

Marshall said...

P.S. I meant consistently well. But it sure didn't sound like I meant that on first read.