UPAs... Day 2

After a phenomenal meal at Captain Brian’s in Sarasota (On the Tamiami Trail, right near the airport; best seafood in Sarasota) on Thursday evening, we had a pretty low key night and hit the hay early in preparation for a big Friday. We were looking at a game against Ironside followed by Jam. We needed to win one of those games if we wanted to have a chance to make it into quarters without having to play a pre-quarter final match.

Our first game was against Ironside. We started really well and actually had the lead at one point. Did I mention that they are a really good team? I picked them to win it all before the tournament started and I came very close with my prediction. Anyway, as the game wore on our O-line got tired and our D line just didn’t force enough turnovers and when we did we weren’t able to score often enough. Ironside ended up winning the game 15-11 but I feel the game was closer than the score indicated. I played only a handful of points which is a shame because I thought I was ready for a big game. I almost blocked the first pass of my first point (I only got one finger on the disc; enough to change its path but not enough to block it) and I got a D on a huck on my second point. Despite my play time I promised myself that I was going to be a really good team player and be as supportive as possible whatever my role so I did as much as I could to help from the sidelines.

That left our game against Jam as the last chance to avoid pre-quarters as we both had losses against Sockeye and Ironside on the books. We thought we had a pretty good chance against Jam but I don’t think that we should feel so bad about getting beat by them after you consider how the tournament ended. They ended up beating us quite handily by a score of 15-8 or 9. Our O-line just wasn’t clicking and our D-line was again unable to stop our opponents (that theme will come up again and again). From a personal play standpoint it meant that I got to play more since our captains shut down the starting O-line. I got to play just about every O point after that decision. I thought that I did a good job out there. I continued my tournament streak of no turnovers and was having no trouble getting open against some of their big players; I was being covered by one of their D-line studs, Jeff Eastham-Anderson. Of course you can argue that the motivation for them to play really hard was gone as well but I think elite players only have one speed at a tournament like UPAs and that is all out.

Much to our chagrin we had to play a pre-quarter after all. We had the more difficult pre-quarter against a Sub-Zero team that many people, including them, thought was under seeded and got a bad draw by being in a “pool of death” with Johnny Bravo and Chain Lightning. We got to play this game on the showcase field right in front of the beer garden. Next to us was the other pre-quarter which featured a surprise match-up of Doublewide (no surprise there) against Johnny Bravo (big surprise) who managed to lose their way into the pre-quarters!

We came out really strong and jumped out to a big lead against Sub. They had a very strong defensive squad but we did a great job of keeping their O line on the field. I think we started the game with a 5-1 run and took half at something like 8-3. Well it was a good thing that we had that big lead because sure enough their D line managed to get onto the field and made some headway against our tiring O line and before long we were only holding onto a 12-10 lead and they had all the momentum. Our O line manager to get off the field in time and our D line stepped up and we managed to pull away the slightest bit and won 15-12.

I was glad that we beat those guys because they had some of the biggest cheaters I’ve ever seen playing for them. There is this one guy nick-named Muffin who should really have a more appropriate nick-name; something more along the lines of Wanker, Douchebag or Blatant Cheater. Some of the stuff he was calling was so bad that it actually became funny (only because we still managed to win). I don’t think anyone really liked them because they had the lowest spirit score of any team in the division. It’s really too bad because they had some really athletic guys and they could probably be really good but no one is going to respect them as a team.

After that game it was time to head over to Captain Brian’s for another delicious seafood dinner but first we took the time to take a dip in the Gulf. It seemed like it was really chilly standing knee deep in the water but once you got in it was fine. I’m glad I took the time for a dip that evening because it was the only time that I managed to drag my butt down to the beach.

Since we were still in the tournament it was another early night to bed with the chance to dream about our quarterfinal matchup for Saturday; we had Chain Lightning in the quarters and if we won that we would get to play the winner of Ironside and Ring of Fire.

I’ll get to the Saturday recap later.

DF