Sectionals

Marathon Monday. Rainy, cold, windy. I heard a radio report that this is the worst weather for the event since the early 70's. The marathon has never been canceled. I was joking with my girls that I think this might be a year in which a person from Africa does not win the Marathon. I think it will be a 5'4" 200 pound Scottsman with about 20% body fat wearing hiking boots. He will win in a 4 hour war of attrition muttering "Ay, 'caint tell me this is rain. I'll show you some frigging rrrrain. Come to the Shetlands with me, Laddy....now that is rain".

I find Sectionals stressful. In fact, it is the same kind of stress that used to make me so nervous as a player in Club Regionals. Perhaps one has to lose a few games to go in order to have their mental awareness aggressively push out into the future and concern itself with the cloud of a season ending too short; in the case of my seniors, a college career coming to a close weeks before we had planned. In our little section, there are 6 pretty clear "upper tier" teams battling every year for 5 spots. We had hoped, due a bump from 9 teams over the past few years to 11 this year that we might be able to snag that 6th bid, and, in fact, it looked like we had 6 bids up until roughly Thursday when a UPA HQ miscount was discovered and we found ourselves in the comfy confines of the ubiquitous 5 bids. Just as a side note, said from the perspective of National Mixed Director, I find it frustrating that the number of bids (obviously pending participation) is not listed on the SRT for each Section (along with other details such as the number of fields, etc, etc). I think I am going to make my SC's put this kind of info on the SRT come the fall. With the general exception of Tufts (I think they might have played in the "game to go" in 03...at least that is what I recall Bernie saying to me this past Saturday), the other 5 have gone through years in which they danced with missing the cut. MIT(new to that club this year), BU, Northeastern, Harvard, and Wellesley. Just the latest edition of the Death March in Boston(well...RI this year).

First, I must say that Sam TH and Katie did a great job running the event. They were organized, communicative, and were clear about dealing with a Sunday of cold rain and sleet. About as good as one could hope for from a SC.

I must say that I received some flak this weekend about my "Death of Huck and Play D" comments two weeks ago. I think folks are not reading my insightful comments with enough care as I CLEARLY gave myself a huge out: "Unless the conditions merit such an approach". In my book, with a lot at stake, the conditions on both days, most of time, were troubling enough (Sat: Windy, Sun: Rainy) that a prudent person might at least give HAPD, at the minimum, brief consideration. In all our games, except for Tufts, I felt we did a good job of taking high percentage long looks and minimizing giving the other teams short, easy goals. I do think that in the Tufts game that we were too quick to pull the trigger when going upwind. By the end of the game, we did have some moments of finding our offense...I just wish that I had pushed my girls to try to establish it earlier. While Tufts might carry itself with the refined air of a vintage wine that looks down upon the working class malt of HAPD, they had, for the most part, just as much trouble scoring as we did on Sat. So, to overhear the Tufts players disrespecting our team by chiding our lack of offensive abilities certainly did not sit well with me or my players. I do think it is the responsibility of the top dog to not flaunt...well, in this case it would be the desire to be a fine wine.

It was great to see some new teams and faces this year. The section welcomed the addition of Bently College (I believe the name is Wubus.....I spent some time trying to figure that out and I didn't feel like bothering their coach with my inane banter). Always great to see a new program getting going. Just a few years ago, BC was in this position, and they have made great strides with Rosie Ano coaching them. They have an effective 4-person cup, and are developing confidence in their ability to throw and catch. My understanding is that they were up on BU in the 5th place bracket before BU got it together and won the game. Great stuff from a new program. Also, Brandeis is an improving team. Well, any team would benefit from Dory Ziperstein (and Peri Kurshan as a coach). I had a chance to catch up with her on Sat and she seems to be very much enjoying working toward building a team. I understand. It was only a few years ago that I was in that position.

Then there is Tufts-B and my own Wellesley-B team. It was just a year ago that I wrote that I wish I had a B-team like Tufts. Well, we do. It has been very hard for me to give enough time to both teams. Work is busy...blah blah blah. Excuses. Luckily, Nell Weiner (a captain from last year) descended upon us and has been taking the lead with the B-team. Really couldn't be better as Nell is the same calm and positive presence that she was for the past 4 years. Not that things are totally Hallmark Card material. My girls are frustrated some of the time. They work very hard to improve upon their fundamentals. They have some veteran leadership (Liz K, Pam, Tori...who might have broken her ankle on Sat). However, they are process oriented, so my hope is that the foundation is laid for these girls to have a great 4 years as a Whiptail. The B-team drove down today, in the pouring rain, to play one elimination game with Brandeis. That is a dedicated bunch.

My A-team girls had a good go of it on Saturday. Our first game was against...Wellesley-B. Lovely. I wrote Sam TH and proposed that we have the game be our Friday scrimmage and that we could just show up for the second round. He didn't go for that for some reason. Damn UPA folks are such sticklers. I spent a little time during our first round checking out MIT vs BC. BC, as I mentioned above, has improved. We went into our second round against them determined not to overlook them, and we had some work to do on our zone. Surprisingly, it seemed like BC really struggled against our zone. We were able to get a lot of short goals and secure a much easier victory than I anticipated. Next round was against MIT. Big game. A win maintains us with our 2 seed in the pool and gives us a good shot at Tufts. We have some success with our zone and are able to go up a couple when a very strong player, Erika(?), for them lays out for an errant throw and breaks her hand. This is a big loss for them. After that, they seemed a bit deflated. We found our offense (Angie, who was not feeling well, played a few points and was great with her break mark throws) and had success with our zone. As I have said before, Nancy and Nurit are great coaches. The team is strong fundamentally and they play good defense. MIT would go on to lose its first round on Sunday to Harvard and will play BU in the game to go at a later date as the last round of the tournament was postponed. Lest a coach become a bit cocky with their success, let's remind ourselves that MIT is just 4 years from the best run a NE team has had in College Women's Ultimate. They will be back...and it might be in just a few weeks.

Our final game on Sat was against Tufts. The are a very good team. Caroline Chow is clearly one of the best throwers in the Region. They are deep, play good defense, have a patient offense, and they crushed us a Yale Cup. My girls, however, really wanted to come after them. There were many incentives at play: qualifying for Regionals with the win, getting a later start on Sunday, plus there was, I guess, a large party to attend on campus that night. I don't even really want to know about those kind of things. I felt this was an opportunity to work on our mental toughness as we could play with the awareness of what was at stake without the tightness of be concerned about what was at stake. Good training for Regionals. The game was not pretty, really. There were several very long points in which Tufts would turn it against our zone and we would sort of stand around...and, with no cuts, we would just throw back into Tuft's end zone...repeat ad nauseum. In general, Tufts really challenged our zone with good popping and handling. We were able to force a lot of turns and get some risky throws out of them, but I think if you give a team 40 looks at your zone...they better break it. 65 minutes later it is 5-5, capped game to 7 (in our pool of 6, games were to 11). We pull to Tufts and get a nice turn in the open lane, but can't convert. Tufts scores upwind to take the lead 6-5. We receive but turn and then start trading with Tufts. About half way through the point, Sam TH says to me that we forgot the half. I thought to myself, "The Half...what is he talking about". Oh yeah, it is a game to 11, remember. I guess We (meaning Tufts and Wellesley) forgot about the half and just "played through" without mirroring, or more importantly, us PULLING to Tufts. Obviously, we had just gained an unfair and significant advantage. Well, Tufts scores to make it 7-5 and the game is over, clearly. There isn't even a discussion. Looking back, though, I wonder what would have happened if we had been able to punch it in and tie up the game? My opinion is that the "course of action" should be consistent. In other words, we are either "playing through" OR we are replaying the point. It is inconsistent to have the possible outcomes be ONLY: a) Tufts scores and wins or b) Wellesley scores and we replay the point. So we were able to avoid a potential nasty problem. Luckily. Tufts went on to beat Northeastern on Sunday to win the section. Congrats to them...they are clearly the top of the class.

Our loss to Tufts and the three way tie in pool A meant that we played BU on Sunday morning. Loser of that game drops into the 5th place bracket. In the pouring rain. And sleet. My girls showed up on time and in good shape. I think most of them didn't even go to the big party. BU is clearly amped up and gunning for us. I warn my girls about hypothermia and that they need to self-monitor. We go down 0-2 as we can't throw in the rain and BU is playing good defense. Kathy Dobson has done great work there. BU is athletic, has confidence in its O, and they play good defense. We manage to score and have a chance to put pressure on their offense. We play zone and they really give us all we can handle. We are able to get some short goals, but we have very little offense as open side cuts to the forehand side are heavily fronted and several long forehands literally slip out of our hands. We struggle to 6-6...capped game to 8. We take half after we tweak our zone a bit and get a short goal. We pull to them to start the next point and are lucky to get an early turn which we punch in to secure the win and a bid to regionals. My girls ran into their cars to keep from getting too cold. BU is a very good team. I see that they are playing MIT in the "game to go"(postponed). Boy, both those teams really would be quality additions at that event.

Our final game was against Harvard. Jeff Listfield said to my captains that he was going to open up his rotation to get PT for his newer players and prevent injuries for his starters. We walked the disc up through their zone to take the first point, so we never saw zone again. Harvard is a much stronger team now that Ellen has returned. She killed us with her forehand. Basically, they scored most of the time that Ellen and Lucy were on the field, and we broke them when they weren't. I thought we played well, though, and earned a 13-7 win. After shaking hands, everyone ran into their cars and headed home. Sam TH made the right decision to postpone the final two games(MIT v BU, Wellesley v NU) to a later date.

So, it was a successful weekend for us. Min came up to me and said "I was a bit worried after Yale Cup. I thought that was as good as we were going to be". There is always work to do, but we are certainly building in a positive and organized way.