Draft league summary part 1: finals

As you may or may not be aware, two of the biggest summer tournaments were held this weekend: Emerald City Classic, and of course WUDI 09 draft league finals.

Got to the field early to wait out the first round bye and scope out the competition. Whoo carpooling! The sky was blue and the sun was bright. Our first round opponent turned out to be moss, in my opinion the toughest possible team we could have faced in quarters (and easily a semis team, had they not faced us...). Both teams came out strong and play was quick and brutal. I don't remember who took half but it was 8 - 7. Second half we managed to pull ahead and win the hotly contested matchup. Must have been nice for Billy to knock out Drew's team.

Our second round was against black, a team we had not seen since we trounced them soundly the first game of the summer. I did not know what to expect. They went up on us early and we had to struggle to score two points to their five. They were fired up and using the tried and true "game to three" mental method. At 6 - 4 things were getting out of hand, and then they took half 8 - 5. They scored right out of half to make it 9 - 5, and that's when things got interesting.

We got fired up like crazy and juiced them to tie it at nines. We traded to make it elevens, but the game had changed in that we were dictating the flow of play. We made it 10 -9, they answered, we made it 11 - 10, and they answered. Then the cap went on. In my opinion they had been slowrolling pulls and stoppages in the early game once they were up in hopes of a big cap win. Whether this was a concious strategy or not, they were taking it slooow and once the cap went on they were suddenly rushing everything. Hilarious. Well at that point we were too fired up to lose to such scallywags, and we won 13 - 11 in the grittiest game I can think of. After being down the whole game, gritting it out to win was amazing. Finals baby!

Finals was not suprisingly against white team, who gritted it out to win 14 - 12 against Power Blue despite my predictions to the contrary. Anyway, white scored quickly before we could answer for a 2 - 1 early lead. Eventually white had us at 7 - 4, until we decided that that sucks and scored three in a row for the sevens tie. White took half and and the pressure was on.

Second we got fired up the way we do and evened the score at elevens, then 13 - 11 in our favor. At that point, the game was ours. Or was it? White took our lead personally and decided to tie it at thirteens after some atrocious foul calls (yeah I said it) on Orange d's. White scored again for 14 - 13, and then got a point block and jacked it deep for the 15 - 13 win that left Juice players on the sidelines flabbergasted that the game was over.

Anyway, second place. Not bad. We played hard all day and had arguably the tougher road to finals. That's not an excuse just an opinion. We finish the draft league with a respectable 15 - 5 record, the best of any team despite our finals loss. We jockeyed for first place with white all summer and facing any other team in the finals would have been slightly disapointing. They came out on top, fair enough.

Part II coming soon!