Flowerbowl - playing ultimate

The Vancouver Aquarium was great, but the real reason I was in VanCity was Flowerbowl. We were a half Flo, half Vancouver squad, since we couldn't get enough folks and neither could they. Some of the Van ladies were my Prime teammates from 2006, and a couple I met for the first time. We pretty much had the toughest pool play drawn I've ever gotten - Traffic (aka Team Canada), Fury (aka Team USA) and EZ Bake Oven (aka TFP women, aka Team Canada co-ed women). Ouch. The other pool had Riot (aka the second best team in the US), Great Britain women (who came to this tournament, and I think Cal States the weekend before, as a warm up for Worlds. How cool is that?), Viva (the second Seattle team) and Luna Tide (a Vancouver team - I heard they used to be Crush, who we played at Nationals last year).

Game 1 against Traffic was a bit rough. It was windy and rainy, and we were still working out everyone's names, let alone strengths and weaknesses. It was without question a difficult situation to go in to, but I don't think that excuses the result: we got bagelled 15-0. I felt like we played intimidated, made unforced errors, and didn't capitalize on the mistakes that Traffic made (more than you might think). It wasn't all bad, but I think this was our worst game on the tournament.

We started out gelling process in game 2 against Fury. We played harder, we were more organized, we relaxed, and we executed better. We lost 15-5, but I felt like I and we really got something out of this game. It's okay to get your ass handed to you by one of the best teams in the world as long as you run hard, play well and learn.

Game 3 against EZ Bake Oven was much more like the Traffic game than the Fury game. I'm not sure why this was the case, but whatever the reason, we just didn't bring it. There were more unforced errors of the EGADS variety. Again, it wasn't all bad, but I wasn't at all pleased with this game - I don't recall the score. We might have gotten 3?

The last game of the day (the crossover game against the last team in the other pool) was much better. Perhaps we had an easier time executing against the weaker defense (weaker compared to the other teams we played that day), but things seems to run a lot more smoothly. I think our connections were starting to get there as well. I didn't feel that we were especially challenged by this team. We beat them (guessing) 15-4?

If you can't tell by the title of this post, the rest of the non-ultimate stuff on Flowerbowl will be a separate blogpost.

Our 1-3 on Saturday put us up against Riot (from Seattle) on Sunday morning. This game was much more like the Fury game. Riot is an f'ing good team, but we stepped up our game and playing harder because of it. That's exactly the reason we go to Flowerbowl! We lost 15-1, but I felt like we were in many points much more than the score reflects. Disappointing score, but enjoyable game.

Our final game on Sunday was against Viva, the second Seattle team (all Seattle all day!). We beat Viva twice at Flowerbowl last year, but keep in mind we were Team Alberta, and not a half Calgary half Vancouver mix. We traded points for most of the first half. We took half, but I don't recall the score at this point. After half, we really started to pull away. We went up 11-8, and should have scored the next D point. Janice got a sweet (and totally clean D), which in my mind basically made it 12-8 (after getting a D like that, you really shouldn't f up - you should just put the disc in). Unfortunately, the girl Janice D'd called a totally bogus foul, and so they took the disc back (brutal) and scored. 11-9 and 12-8 are very different. Viva mounted a comeback at this point, and eventually brought it to 13's (then 14's). This one's a happy ending - we pulled it out 16-14 (it could have been 15-13).

ps. I hoped to never wonder, while writing this blog, if 'bagelled' had one l or two. At least not on the receiving end. Ouch.