Strange Blue Tournament Report

University Indoor Nationals

Hi

Our first game was at 1.35 and just before one, Pedro managed to convince Shannon that Hammad had a flat tire and was changing it in a service station near Birmingham. They arrived five minutes later.

Game 1:

SB vs Too Many Pies (Newcastle), Pies win.

The first game pretty much consisted of us trying to come to terms with the fact that we weren't actually outdoors, not helped by the weird rubber crumb surface that tried really hard to look like grass. A few hucks were put up by us only to slam into the far wall whilst Newcastle looked very at home indoors and made the most of our shaky start, winning quite confortably in the end.

Game 2:

SB vs Dundee, SB win

Dundee came into the tournament as the 1st seeds so we expected this game to be pretty tough and decided to use it to try a few things out. Nimble suggested something called 'roaming' while Pedro went for the no look dump into the wall at stall one. Both were implemented to great effect. In all seriousness though, the roaming, which consisted of a chase, two 'ups', a mid and a deep worked really well and Dundee didn't seem to know what to do. Our offence really started to come together too with everyone adjusting to indoors well, Hammad and John amongst others getting some great scores. I think it was in this match where I threw the worst hammer ever seen, causing the opposition to look up in disgust and forget to D it.

Game 3:

SB vs Surrey Scorpions, SB win

I can't really remember this match that well, I only know that we came out confidently, playing hard on O and using the zone well on D. Pedro was cutting to great effect during this match and Shannon got some awesome grabs whilst Nimble got a couple a excellent hand blocks as chase.

It turned out that the other results in the group meant that this put us tied on points with Dundee and that the head to head result left us top of our group and the first seeds going into the second day. It also meant we didn't have to play any more matches until 2.20pm on Sunday. We went out for a meal on the curry mile and then got a ridiculous amount of sleep in a nice hotel (it didn't really feel like a frisbee tournament) before splitting up to make best use of the time. Shannon, Natman, Jon and Nimble decided an art gallery of all places was the way forward whilst Pedro preferred to read Loaded in Sainsbury's.

Game 4: Quarter final!

SB vs Cardiff. SB loose in sudden death.

We knew this was going to be a tough game and everyone stepped up and played really well but unfortunately we went two points down at the start and never quite came back despite great grabs from Hammad (MVP), an awesome layout D from Jon which took him out of the rest of the weekend and a sweet juggling act from Gary.

Game 5:

SB vs Bears. SB loose narrowly

This saw us up against our old rivals Warwick, both teams gunning for the 5th spot after loosing their quarter finals. The game was really well spirited, physical and evenly matched and could have gone either way. Eventually though, Bears just came out on top.

Game 6, 7vs8 game

SB vs Dundee again. SB loose in sudden death.

In the final game we played Dundee again but this time the game went the other way in a very close, tense match. The main thing I can remember about this match is that Natman laid out for the first time ever indoors and got the D (although noone was quite sure how).

Overall we came a very respectable 8th and voted Hammad as MVP for, amongst other things, consistently bringing down high discs and playing really hard throughout and Gary as MIP for a great combination of handling and cutting.

So I got a bit carried away there, haven't written that much in ages.

Over and out, Adam