Nucci Cup

I was big pappa on Saturday, driving a minivan full of high school kids down to the fields with Lu as my copilot. We got a band of Machiners together with some additions--notably Bo Li, Eli from HP and the 3 'chungers--coming in as the 3rd seed of 6 in the B pool, 8th of 11 overall. Our first game was against Big Floppy Clocks, a team I faced at Philly Invite with a very different kind of pickup team. We went down several breaks in the beginning but somehow climbed out of the hole and pulled off the upset 13-10. Same story in the second game, 13-10 against Bear Proof though it was close the whole time, rather than a comeback victory. Next up was Gender Bias, a fun team of MSU and Ramapo types that we underestimated in the first half, letting them go up by 4 or so before we got our heads on straight and took over, winning 13-9. I was surprised early on against the Peters' team "YFOIFI" (You're fucking out, I'm fucking in) when we went up by several breaks, and I expected them to answer back with a big run of their own because they had some really good players, but maybe because they had low energy we were able to cruise to a 13-7 win. Finally we played Sideshow in our 5th of the day, our 3rd in a row on the worst field of the generally substandard grounds of Quakerbridge Road, and I think we just ran out of gas. Way too many poor-decision hucks and dumb turnovers, we went down by a lot and crawled our way back to an 11-13 loss. 4-1 on the day, setting us up for a quarterfinals game on Sunday against OLD SAG. The game was exciting and intense on both sides as they held the lead for pretty much the whole time, going up by a few early on but keeping us at bay even as we fought back and tied it before the cap went on. There was some silliness with the cap rules, giving us another shot to tie the game when they were up 12-13, but we just couldn't force the turn and they put it away to hand us a 12-14 loss. I was proud, especially because we were playing with only 3 subs for the whole game. It was probably the most fun game of the weekend, too, as our next two were big blowouts that we controlled the entire time, 15-2 against a much depleted Gender Bias and 15-3 against Big Floppy Clocks, who somehow had lost all throwing ability overnight I suppose. We bagged our last game for a 5th place tie, and I think it was a successful weekend overall--we were able to come together well, learning to flow despite being a pickup team and using exclusively ho-stack, an entirely new offense for 75% of our players. I had fun and I saw great potential for Machine coming up this year. I can't wait for school to start again...