Sunday bloody Sunday

For the South African Open team, the start of worlds could have been a little bit better. For some of us, we were meeting for the first time. For others, it was our first big international tournament. For me, it might have been the 8:30 start time. However, we were all fired up to play our first game against the Swiss. The Swiss took an early lead, but after an initially 3-0 run, Mike Harber pulled down the first points for South Africa from a great pass from Ryan Males. We kept up the pressure and intensity, and after a quick Swiss score, we came right back. From a huge huck from Pete Rive, Michael Westin made a full superman layout in the back of the endzone to pull down a tremendous score. It was spectacular! The game was now at 4-2 and we were right in it. The Swiss turned up the intensity and after some very tightly contested points, they took the half. The score may have been 8-2, but the game was much closer than that. We had a number of great D's and some sweet offense, but we just didn't end up converting. You can see how the rest of the game went, but I'm not sure if I'd advise that. Instead, I'll just say it was a great learning experience. I think we all learned that we had to step up our games to compete at worlds, but it was also a lot of fun playing with our team.

Our next game wasn't until 4:30, so this gave us plenty of time to check out a lot of other Ultimate. A few of us occupied our time with a game of fantasy ultimate while watching the Finland-Switzerland Woman's game. We caught a game between two of the teams in our pool, Sweden and Dominican Republic. Sweden seemed disinterested in the match, but the Dominican Republic played very well against them, which boded poorly for our match with them later in the day. We were fairly impressed with the teams from the US and Japan and looking forward to when they might play each other. We watched a great finish to the USA-Columbia junior women's teams and the shear joy of the Columbia team when they won was amazing. Columbia has actually shown up with teams in every division and a huge amount of spirit. The South and Latin American teams have certainly added a lot of fun to the tournament. They just have amazing spirit and are always up for a party!

Around three o'clock, the team started to gather. We decided to meet early to discuss some formations and review some plays. Andre, Ryan, Jit, and newly appointed coach Johnny (who would be playing if it wasn't for an unfortunate wrist injury) had come up with some great strategy for our game against DR. The wind had been steadily picking up all day, so we were going to employ a zone defense for most of the time. The offense was mainly going to run horozontal and taking advantage of our awesome cutters.

We started off on D and ran pretty hot. A tenacious cup of Ankur, Tavish, and Steve ran constantly pestored their handlers as we trapped them along the sideline. As they struggled upwind, we were able to turn the disc over a number of times before we were able to finally find the endzone and take our first lead at worlds! Shortly after that, Jit and Mike connected for an upwind point, but that was matched by DR for their first points of the game. However, once South Africa started scoring, we decided not to stop with several more quick points. The first half was highlighted with lots of great hucks and lots of great D's. But we were pretty fired up to take half at 8-4! DR definitely frustrated our defense with great, quick passing around our cup and one awesome, crossfield, upwind hammer. I'm just glad they didn't try to do that more often! The second half was filled with some awesome plays from all over the team as we pulled further away and ended up with a great 17-8 win! Although, I give the guys from DR a lot of credit for playing a tough, energetic, at times crazy game but with great spirit. A highlight of the game was definitely watching the DR domino's fall!

The whole team contributed to the game. We slowly started to settle into an O and D lines as we became more familiar with our places on the team. The O-line had some great, beautiful Ultimate. No one could keep Andre and Finn out of the end zone as they grabbed plenty of big hucks from Pete and Ryan. Martin played some awesome chilly offense and kept the disc moving. Brent tied everything together with always being in the right spot. Pinky scored his first points at Worlds by pulling down the game winning score.

But this game belonged to the D-line and the great job they did running the zone. Huge props to my two cup mates, Ankur and Tavish, in running around and keeping up with the disc as it moved about and generally frustrating the DR handlers. Mike H. had some amazing D's throughout the game. He's definitely stepped up his game and we're definitely expecting more things from him. Chris was deadly after a turn. Westin and James were so strong on the wings that they never even attempted to throw up the sides. But the D was definitely held together by our anchor in Jit. He kept us all in the right places and kept us running hard. And his precision after a turn led to many of our scores.

I'll just end on two highlights from the game because I'm pretty tired and have to get some sleep in before Canada. When Tavish yells run through, you sure as hell better. Mike H learned that lesson well today as Tavish practically tackled him when he tried to pick up the disc after one of his D's. On the other hand, you better watch out when Tavish throws the disk. Chris made an incredibly sick grab for a score when Tavish though he was going long, but he was really cutting in. It was caught on film, so I can't wait to see that picture.

So despite a slow start to the today, it was an all around fantastic day at Worlds. The ultimate is amazing to watch and all the different teams here playing is incredible. It's definitely be a lot of fun today and we are totally looking forward to tomorrow!