regionals overview

congrats to all who made nationals!

people played awesome. i mostly stayed on brute's sideline, but caught some slow white, tandem, metal action as well. got there late on saturday, and brute was rolling through their easy pool play games. so i took the opportunity to watch tandem squeak by 6TM in the coed quarters. tandem picked up a bunch of players for regionals, so they looked better than they had in the past. there were still some issues with communication and just getting used to playing with each other. there's something to be said about practicing together... i also saw some of slow white's game against... i don't even remember. it doesn't matter cause they crushed them. heh. go darlene and company!

the first tough game in brute's schedule was vs capitols, the crossover game. both teams were trading points in the beginning. capitols were calling interesting picks and fast counting. i think that threw some people off. i believe the capitols took half, and in the end, the brute offense struggled in the red zone and capitols took advantage to win the game. the capitols played a ho stack and the brute's man D had some difficulties containing it. even though the game ended in a loss, the experience of playing them was useful later when brute met the capitols again in the finals and won! the only other exciting game was against godiva. again, the beginning was filled with trading points until about 10-10 then brutes pulled ahead. yay! erika was matched up against jess blanton. and that was fun to watch. both had big Ds against each other esp going deep. i'm impressed with erika's speed and her throws have gotten better =) nurit was also a D machine pulling out layout D one after another throughout the tournament. and i still wish i were chasing down nancy's hucks... sigh. shuang played great as well. she was pretty instrumental in the finals against capitols. after getting permission to poach, she confused the hell out of the capitols offense and then threw this one beautiful io backhand for a score. as the cut was happening, i was invisioning the IO, and lo and behold, shuang made my dreams come true. yay =) paul greff was also extremely happy with shuang's progress over the season thus far. it made me smile to hear that from him.

the finals game had interesting ups and downs. brute played much better in general. kathy's D layed out into her, knocking her legs out after she caught the goal. her knees went in strange directions and i was scared. kathy doesn't get hurt! after a couple minutes on the ground, she was able to get up and walk around and later enter the game again. whew. the canadians didn't like the observers. maybe they shouldn't make bad calls. like calling a timeout they didn't have. that's a little embarrassing.

meryl was my sideline buddy. please send her your healing vibes to get her ankle back on track so she can play.

i'm sure erika will have much more to add to this. ps. why must all brute regionals saturday games end after sunset?