A-Reli

10 teams: the bottom 5 from the erste Liga, the top 5 from the zweite Liga. Wall City won the second league last year and were hoping to break into the top division by finishing in the top five of the Relegation tournament in Sauerlach this weekend. It didn't quite work out that way.

Apparently it's not a surprise to the other teams in Germany that Wall City had a competitive meltdown in what was arguably the most important tournament of their season. In thinking about what happened, why and what role I played in their season up to this point, I end up trying to find correlations to my time with Machine. This past year, especially, we ran train all the way until Sectionals. We made it to the finals of two tournaments, achieved an overall record of 20-6 before the Series and won even when we were missing key players. We felt confident, like it wouldn't even matter that there were only 2 bids for 19 teams. We weren't prepared.

After Köln, I knew that the team I had been practicing with could be a legitimate competitor. Even after finding out that we would be missing a few key players at the Reli, I felt we had a strong shot at finishing high in our pool and securing a spot in the first league. I figured there was an outside shot that we'd drop a game or two and have to win out on Sunday, but I didn't even really consider that it was possible we would lose every game we played that weekend. But that's what happened. After storming to a 4-0 lead against the other Berlin team, Yeahaw!, it was like we thought the rest of the game would be easy, as if they would roll over for us. They climbed back, took the lead and won the game.

We went 0-5.

10-12 vs Yehaw
9-13 vs Frizzly Bears
4-13 vs Bad Raps
12-14 vs Mir San Mir

12-13 vs Hallunken