We finally did it! After earning third place at PleASUre Fest and 2nd place at the Kendra Fallon Memorial Tournament in the fall, Scorch continued the trend by coming in first at the Santa Barbara Qualifier tournament to start out the spring semester. Having had only three practices between winter break and heading off to Santa Barbara, the focus for the tournament was mostly on improvement, and focusing on things that we needed to work on as a team. Winning just happened to be a side effect of all of that effort!
Going into the tournament as the second seed, Scorch started out atop the B pool, followed by San Diego State, Stanford-B, UC Davis-B, and UC San Diego-B. Though not every point was as pretty as it could have been, Scorch still managed to finish the day with four wins, finishing the day atop the pool, just as we had come in. Sunday brought us a game against UC Irvine, and then a rematch against SDSU, where we managed to come out stronger than our game against them on Saturday. All of our scores from the weekend can be found at http://scores.usaultimate.org/scores/#college-womens/tournament/12108, and play-by-play tweets can be found on our twitter account: http://www.twitter.com/Scorchapolis.
Once again, the whole team found that tournaments are more than just the playing on the field. From between-game dance lessons to ocean ice baths to dinnertime laughs to long roadtrip conversations, the whole team was able to bond and become even closer than we had been in the fall. This young team continues to show lots of love for one another as well as for the sport, and we can't wait to get back out on the road again in two weeks at the President's Day Invitational!
All photos were taken by Steve Prelsnik - found here. |