Nucci's Cup

...was this weekend. I picked up with the "Metro Boston All-Stars of New York". That makes me an honorary member of two self-proclaimed all-star teams, which feels pretty good. I rode down to the Mercer fields early with Brian and Alex, Alex's girlfriend driving. I wandered around for a while and eventually found the motley collection of kids that comprised MBASNY--mainly Harvard grads, plus alums from Tufts, UPenn, William and Mary, Bucknell, etc. We told each other our names, then ran through some discouraging reps of an away-cut drill and brought it in for some basic strategy talk. The plan was vert stack, man flick...about as basic as you can get. First game was against New Noise, the top seed of our pool, and we promptly went up 4-1, then 5-2, and took half 8-6. We were holding our own against a competitive, practicing club team and even taking break points. It felt pretty good, but I was worried about how much longer we could keep it up. With a roster of only 14 against the army of tall athletes on New Noise, I feared that we would run out of steam by the end of the game. In reality, we started to make poor decisions after half once they started playing some junk zone. Handler errors, mostly, and New Noise clawed back and handed us a 12-14 loss at hard cap.

I chilled in the shade during the next round, a bye for us and Garden State, and nibbled on banana and bagel. The third round, our second game, was against the 2nd seed of our pool, Medicine Men. This game was about the same as our game against New Noise, except with more handler mistakes and dump miscommunication. We took half 8-6 and lost 13-15. Next us was Pennsbury HS, and we had them pretty well covered individually. They didn't put up much of a fight defensively, so we rolled to a 15-6 win. Our final game was against AC/DC, which looked like a bunch of JMU guys. At this point, we had really run out of gas--we didn't have enough to even run an efficient offense, much less break theirs. They drubbed us, 5-15. I went home and slept, tired as hell.

I woke up at a too-early 6am for Sunday, rode to the fields and slept in the car for half an hour before our play-in game. I threw around with Coach Mio, cleated up, and met up with the rest of Metro fifteen minutes prior to the game. We were up against DC Funk, a team of mostly older dudes who broke our marks exceptionally well. That really was what killed us, and we had a lot of trouble stopping their offense because of their break throws. We lost half, but fought back to win at double-game-point, 13-12. I caught the game-winning goal on a deep cut, outrunning my matchup while Caitlin watched from the sidelines, so that felt pretty good--she had arrived during the second half, and got to watch our comeback win.

Then, we played HOV in the quarters, and we were clearly feeling beat up. We had fewer players than we did on Saturday, and I know I was pretty sore from running with all kinds of guys--I knew club open would be harder than Mixed, but I didn't know it would leave me in that much pain. We lost 9-15, and I don't know if it was even that close. I was pretty well done by the end of this tournament...I don't think I'm that out of shape, but it took a lot out of me. It is strange to think that the most tired I have ever felt from a tournament was after the Saturday of Philly Sportsfest a few weeks ago, but this tournament was right behind it.