New York Invite

After only 3 hours of sleep I stumbled into the back of Jake the Jake's car, complained about the music selection, and promptly passed out for the ride up to Middletown, NY. Though I would later appreciate the shorter drive this tournament came with, compared to the nine hours each way we had last year for Furniture City Shootout, I was really feeling the effects of some less-than-stellar decisions the night before and half of me wanted to sleep through the first few rounds. But I put my big boy pants on, went to the porta-potty to put in my contacts and got into the warmup.

I wasn't sure how much playing time I would get at this tournament. I made the roster but am in a very different place than last year, where I got all my playing time on the O-team after the Boston Invite. This year I've been playing D-line almost exclusively, and haven't yet proven that I deserve significant playing time in big games. Our pool play games were perhaps only big in the sense that we had to take care of business this weekend to get ourselves into bigger games against better opponents for the rest of the season, but I was happy when I got into the first game early on and decided to keep track of what I did on the field. We pretty much rolled over Colt .45, so I got 7 points (3/4) and had one assist in our 15-3 win. The next game against Brooklyn started out close, and I think it was tied at 4 or so before we started running away with it. 6 points in this game (2/4) with two assists and a final score of 15-7.

During the bye round I snagged a pulled pork sandwich and a Dr. Pepper, both of which took some effort to get down but made me feel much better afterwards. Then a nice nap on some carboard under the sunshade and I finally felt great. Re-warmed up after the bye and we got up for the game against Wiretap, a team that beat us at Cazenovia and Boston and we were out for blood. Tight at first, but we went on a big D run in the second half that felt very satisfying, 3 breaks in a row that I was on the field for. During the second point of that run we had them pushed back in their own endzone, all the downfield cutters shut down, tight D on the dump and I took the thrower to stall 9 and then handblocked him to put icing on the cake. 5 points in this game (1/4) and that one D, final score 15-11. Last game against Wilmington I got in a lot more, 6 in the first half and 7 in the second, putting up 2 goals and 2 assists to bring my fantasy for the day up to +8 with no turnovers. I also had another half of a D when I knocked down a blady flick that the mark forced, but I'll also take credit for half a turnover when Fink threw a big bendy backhand huck over my head in the endzone--I half-bid for it, but it was coming in fast and I didn't have much of a shot at it. I did get beat deep for a goal once on the day, late in the Wilmington game but it was a breakside huck after two other break throws, so it was more frustrating as a team defense failure. I got beat in a few times as well, but I think overall I was tight to my man when I was in and didn't let up any really dangerous break throws.

Rounded out the day with a legendary stop at Olive Garden with Frenchy, Bo, CJ and Jake the Jake, putting away bowl after bowl of soup, something like a dozen breadsticks and a ton of water, then watched Will Smith dominate in MiB before falling asleep aroudn 10pm.

Sunday started out very well, I felt good in warmups even as the rain moved in, but I only got 1 point in the Poenix game where we went from down 6-8 at half to a 15-13 win. That set us up for a a quarterfinals match against host PoNY, where we stayed with them through the first half and went up 10-9 before they ran off 6 in a row to win 11-15. I got in 5 points this game (4/1), and had my first and only true turnover of the tournament on a contested throw to Tous upfield. The rain had really started coming down during this game and when we found out our loss put us against Mephisto in the 5th place bracket I could feel the team's energy drop. I tried to pick up the team from the sidelines but didn't get put in, so I was also trying to not freeze under Kinsey's rain jacket. We went down 4-9 before the game got called due to waterlogged fields. We spent a few minutes trying to put turf back on top of the mud we'd kicked up with our cleats, shook hands with Mephisto and hit the road. Some clutch Wendy's on the way back, I napped in the back seat and then lost $5 in a bet to Rainwater that he couldn't make it home from the 206/287 intersection within 20 minutes. He made it in 18 with some serious speedage on 287 and Easton Ave.

While I look forward to practices for the opportunity to put in the work I need to, I'm also excited about how the team came together for the first 5.5 games this weekend. Even as I work to be a bigger part of this team, I'm looking forward to Pike rolling over other teams, as a team.