Nationals Recap

Apologies for the delay. I was waiting to feel less exhausted to write this post, but I don't want to forget everything that happened and the current forecast for some decent rest is distant. Random thoughs I have on the Tournament:

Nationals was great. Thanks for everyone who checked in and was thinking of me over the tourrnament. There were professional photographers there taking photos daily and several of our games were featured, so I will post that link once those are up and you can check out the scene.

Our kit was all Patagonia. The jersey material is really nice. We liked them much better than Gaia. (I still recommend 5ultimate, but we needed a pretty quick turnaround so we went with someone larger and more established.) The patagonia shorts material was super light and thin. They looked great and dried very quickly. The only drawback was that they were so light they gave the impression of not being there at all and we were all saddled with the vague notion that we were wearing the emperor's new shorts.

We also had matching Team Box wristbands, supplied by Michelle, who morphed a former Nike swoosh into the bill and neck of a goose, perfectly completing our professional look.

We played 9 games over 4 days. We had a first round game EVERY day. I got a ride in two of the days and took the tram in two of the days. Either way I left very early in the morning each day and was very tired by the time to come back home. The tournament site was a good hour from downtown where I live (more by tram).

The tournement was well run. The fields were nice. Rounds started on time. Everyone was fed and watered. There were scoreboards, but no timekeepers.

For each of our games we did the same 60 minute warm up, with running, stretching, plyos, drills and sprinting. After each game we did the same cooldown with running, plyos, stretching, and singing.

Team Box pre-game chants included:
Get out of the Box and into the Zone, Team Box is going to take this home.
and
Open the flaps, get into the box.
and
1-2-3 - Team! 1-2-3 Box! 1-2-3 Go Team Box!

Team box had 15 year olds and women who haad been playing for 10 years. I asked Sophie, one of our high school kids what she was doing for school on Monday and Tuesday. "Oh yeah. I'm not going."

Team Box captains insisted on and stuck to a plan where no subs were called. Even in finals. On most teams this would have been a disaster, but everyone on Team Box got along and there were no disc hogs and I think we all had equal, fair playing time and everyone was happy about it. Those of you who don't play won't understand how remarkable this is. Those who do play will not believe me that this happened. This is like Joe Torre just telling the Yankees to bat in whatever order they all agree on, and it working out instantly and silently with no dissenters. It was great.

Wednesday was the final day of the tournament. It was a national holiday here in Australia (ANZAC day) which I think is something about World War One and Turkey. It's basically veterans day. Of the 4 women's teams in semis, 3 were from Sydney. We played the Sydney Southsiders at 9, and they were looking for revenge for the close pool play round loss we handed them on day 2. It was a gorgeous day with very little wind. Every point was hotly contested and we were down 6-8 at half. In the second half we came out with a junk/clammy D and scored 5 in a row to get to 11-8. After that we traded points to get to 15. I was in on several of those D points and it was so exciting to feel the momentum of the game shift. You could see it in the Southside body language that they just knew we had stepped up the intensity and they were going to lose.

In Finals, we faced the only team we had lost two all tournement, Wildcard. There were a lot of spectators. The finals were filmed and there were commenators calling play-by-play. It was all a bit distracting, and I think our youth showed as a team. We came out slow in the first half with some acharactertistic mistakes including a pull out of bounds at mid-field and a dropped pull. Wildcard played a force middle D that effectively shut down our horizontal stack offense. They took half 8-6. We played a little better in the second half and even had some little runs, but never really played our best. I think we were tired and a bit unused to adversity. Wildcard played very well and played low risk disciplined O. The game was filled with layouts and sic bids on both sides and many people in the crowd said it was the highest level of play they had seen at a women's finals.

After finals we had a team circle up, a birthday cake for Riss, and then we got some beers and barbeque and watched the men's final. After that, there was an awards ceremony where we all got our second place medals and our name called out. It was fun cheering for everyone.

After the awards ceremony we had some champagne, went out for dumplings, and then I went home to deal with having to go to work the next day. I had a great time this season with Team Box and I'm dissapointed that the season is over and wondering what else I can find as an excuse to escape work.