Well I am going to give my persepective of the weekend. Reaper went into this tournament with only having attended sectionals (conference) once in our history last year. We felt we were underrated and came in with a defensive underdog mentality.
Game 1 was against a semi-familar foe, western illinois. Unlike tournaments past reaper answered the call and showed why were able to take down last call. Our zone made everything hard on western and really caught them off guard in the 1st half. 7-2 half result in Reapers favor was huge. Unfortunately we came out flat in the 2nd half and western capatilzed making the game semi-close. Rookies improved the zone and let the starters rest a bit closing the game something around 13-9.
Bye Round (Best bye round I've ever had ;) )
Game 2 coming off a bye Reaper faced University of Illinois - Chicago. They were the bottom seed in our pool and at the tournament. With only 9-10 guys or so on their team they couldn't handle our zone and didnt have the throws to work it well in the wind. Rookies get a lot of pt, handlers do work, Reaper wins something like 13-4
Game 3 was against Northwestern. The weather worsenend... freezing cold rain and heavy 30-40 mph crosswind with heavy gusts made this the windiest game I have ever played! Northwestern won the toss and pressed that advantage early. Both teams struggled a lot with the wind and working it through zones. This game involved both sides punting the disc quite often. After a close first half reaper stepped it up the 2nd half. We weren't able to convert multiple upwind chances and made northwestern fight for every downwinder each time. Eventually we were able to punch 1 through upwind and we never looked back, winning something like 11-9.
Game 4 was post poned until day 2 where we faced a familar opponent and semi-rival in Loyola. See last years sectional write-up to learn the details of why we were looking forward to this game. We came out fired up and ready to roll. We elected to pull and start things off with our zone. Loyola right off the bat showed that our zone was going to be effective. We jumped to a 3-0 lead with multiple handblocks, layout D's, and dropped throws. Huge skies by michael schwenk, and a great cup consisting of tim, mike, zach, and nate caused chaos for darkwing. OC and the wings cleaned up any attempts to get it past the reaper zone with reaper taking half 7-2. Our chilly O limited it to smart deep shots, being able to work the under and have cutters passing to cutters really let us move the disc well and limit our turns against loyola. Highlights of the game include motherbird cleaning up everything in the air and generally being "unmarkable," Timmy losing his mind on every loyola call big or small, and myself actually laying out to score, Zach also did a great job on the mark coming up with multiple handblocks and forced errors. We rolled to a 13-4 victory beating the 1 seed in our pool. And going 4-0 in pool play.
Championship bracket game 1 was against Chicago. We lost at southerns to chicago with a much smaller squad but we still were in an underdog mindset going into this game. The effectiveness of our zone seemed to catch chicago off-guard just like the loyola game. I believe we went up 4-0 to start before Chicago got serious and answered back. Both teams went on 1-3 spree's every now and then which is to be expected from closely-matched teams. We would not be denied this heated game and were able to hold them off the whole game for the win. Eastern over Chicago in the semi's.
The finals put us against the highly favored Univeristy of Illinois. I remember it got to around 2-4 when things fell apart. We opened with our zone which had handled loyola and gave chicago plenty of problems... Illinos however shredded it. There simply wasn't enough wind to make the Illini handlers question any break throws or support our cup. We switched to man and Illinois's flow continued to roll to an 8-2 half in their favor. After talking to mike, steve, and some of the other guys we decided we were not going to let up. This was a game we needed to learn from, especially the starters on the team. After a solid half-time talk the theme of which was, "Earn your playing time, step up the intensity or someone else is going to take your place!" Starters answered the call and we came out fired up scoring 4 straight in the second half. This half had an entirely different feel to it, Illinois still scored most of their O points but we forced more turns, more throws, and made them fight to win. While at the same time we were moving the disc better, and making better decisions. We ended up going 7-7 with IL in the second half, resulting in a 15-9 loss in the finals.
We had to play a backdoor game now aqainst Chicago. We were coming out of an exhausting were most of our starters subbed 1-3 points the entire game. Chicago came off a strong win aganst Northwestern, something like 15-6. We went with our O and D lines and the game started with both teams trading points until about 4-4, then from what I remember Chicago started to pull away. Lines unintentionally got a bit tighter and Chicago still maintained a 3-4 point lead. A lot of non-starters played very well this game. It was great to see our depth in action and see some guys really step up. Overall we made a run at the end and a huge handblock by chicago at 12-13 with us around 20 yards out of the endzone sealed the deal. They closed it out after some rather miraculous plays but the game was characterized by them simply having less tired legs and more depth. Chicago over Reaper. We finish rd.
Things to take away were that... tournaments this year for whatever reason had a lot of wind and rain. Players that will be around next year, learn from this and be aware of what skills you need to have to play in these conditions. If you can't throw an upfield throw because it's a 20mph headwind you need to practice. On the flip side, if you have the ability to throw far enough in the wind that will force teams to still respect a deep shot (even if it's 20-30 yards) you are doing something right. The best thing I can think to say from this tournament is don't be satisfied, always be seeking to improve, always be open to critque, put your team first and contribute. That mentality is what brought us success this weekend. This was our second appearance EVER at the college series and we made it to the finals in the FIRST ever Illinois Conference (usua restructuring). There was so much to be proud of this weekend and I hope that regardless of losing our last two games, we played very well and achieved multiple goals (Winning our pool, making the finals). Thank you so much to those that have supported us all season long, we had a lot of spectators this tournament and that was awesome. Between them and our rowdy sideline we were a voice to be heard this weekend.
Hopefully someone else will be willing to do a write-up for regionals. It's been a pleasure writing tournament recaps (even if only like 3 people have told me they actually READ this blog haha). I have at leat 1 blog post left that I hopefully will write soon.
Thanks again for reading.
~James Roush, #2
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