Last night marked the end of the Longmont spring ultimate season, so we had the big tournament. Last week’s regular-season games had been snowed out and the weather yesterday was pretty crazy. When the tournament started, the wind was probably blowing at a consistent 20mph, which always makes for a tough game with a frisbee. Halfway through the first round of games, the rain started… at first as a little bit of mist, but then as a full-fledged downpour.
We managed to eke out a win against our opponents, moving to the semi-finals. The rain continued and the temperature dropped. It was a hard-fought game, and we came out on top to advance to the finals. The team who had been dominating the league all season was knocked out in the semis, which was a little bit of a relief because we’d had trouble against them in earlier games. They later admitted it was because of the wind: their core strategy was to huck long passes to their fast/tall runners, and that simply didn’t work. I guess that’s a lesson in not being a one-trick pony.
As the final game started, the weather became strangely calm. The rain and wind stopped, and unbelievably, the sun came out as it was setting over the mountains. That caused a fantastic huge double rainbow to arch over the fields– beautiful. We played a hard game and dominated the first half, leading 7-3 as we took a few minutes to rest at halftime. But the second half was a struggle, and we found ourselves tied 8-8 after they’d outscored us 5-1 in an amazing comeback. We traded a couple more points and at the time cap we were still tied. That meant it was “universe point”, where the first team to score would be the champions.
It went back and forth as both teams played strong defense. Finally we managed to drive it into the endzone for the win. Woo hoo!
The championship prize was GRU athletic shorts, which everyone was pretty excited about. We took a few pictures to celebrate our win:
This was one of the most fun teams I’ve been on in a long time. Instead of the usual cheers that teams traditionally write after each game, we decided to play goofy games on the field like Ninja, Wah, Bang, and even Rock-Paper-Scissors. So all season long we’d finish our games and then challenge our opponents to something silly. I hope to make it a new tradition (partly because I’m terrible at writing cheers).
After last season’s indoor league championship, I have two in a row under my belt. Nice!