Welcome to the Windy City: Sectionals 2012

No, not that Windy City... as it turns out, Chicago ain't got nothin' on Cedar Falls, Iowa. This past weekend, the Ninjas headed across the border for the Western North Central D-1 Women's College Conference Championships, where seven teams from Minnesota and Iowa competed for just four bids to Regionals. We were ranked fourth in our conference, behind Iowa State, Iowa, and Carleton, so we really needed to hold (or break) seed. We managed to hold seed, but in the end it came down to the wire... and who won the disc flip for possession in our very last game.

The weather definitely played a huge factor this weekend and, frankly, was super annoying. On Saturday we had some wind, but it was wind we could play in. We lost our first two games vs. Carleton and Iowa State, but won the more important games vs. Winona State and Northern Iowa.

Sunday morning the wind picked up, but we managed to score some upwinds against Iowa's B-team and won the game. Our last game of pool play was against Iowa's Saucy Nancy, and we lost to them in a very windy game. Due to rankings after pool play, we had to play Iowa again right away for bids... and lost again. 

So we moved on to our final game of the weekend, against Winona State, playing for the fourth and final bid. By this time the wind was horrendously strong (it had to be 30-40mph), and it was nearly impossible to move the disc upfield, much less score upfield. Essentially, the outcome of this game was determined by who was on offense first, and thank goodness we won the flip... or we may not have gotten the bid to Regionals! We ended up winning 5-4 in a very short, and painful one-hour game. 

(A shout-out to Brenna, Regan, Sloth and Gootch, who were actually able to string together 11, then 13 short passes in that last game, working it approximately 1/4 of the way up the field!!! It was truly beautiful.)

Here's a little taste of the difference between the "wind" on Saturday, vs the tempest of Sunday...

Now we shift our gazes towards North Central Regionals (practically in our backyard in Northfield, MN) in two weeks, and we pray for decent weather... because we want to play some real ultimate, we're ready to show our region what we're made of, and we're hungry for one of those three bids to Nationals!

-The Bird Nerd