Rhein Neckar Trophy

Rushed to Hauptbahnhof without showering, met up with Botto and Duy and sped off to Heidelberg as fast as Botto's mother's little German auto could take us. Made sure to warm up, because I didn't want to put myself out of commission for six weeks again. We only had 8 players, so it was also going to be a long day for us.

Game 1 vs Bad Skid: 8-4 and 17-15, though it felt like we were trailing the whole time. It was a dogfight, but we gutted it out from 14-14 to win. I matched up for most of the game against one of my younger teammates from the National squad, Niko, and I have to admit he gave me a rough time. We each had one layout D on each other (both arguably thrower errors, but layout D's nonetheless), and I beat him deep for a huck goal but he also skied me another time--there was contact and I thought he had fouled me, but I took the call back because I really just should have caught it. I had three turnovers (one huck that wasn't leading enough and got tipped out of bounds, another that gave Niko too much time to catch up and get a layout-D on the older/slower Botto, and then the endzone sky). I threw and caught some goals but didn't count them, and otherwise played pretty well.

Game 2 vs Sieben Schwaben: 8-6 and 15-12, they put up a run at the end after we were leading by a bit, but we closed it out. This game was significantly less contested throughout, and thank goodness because we were really gassed from the first one. I threw three goals, one turnover, and got one D back. Matched up a lot on Phillip from the national team, but wasn't sharp enough to shut him down. Gotta get back into conditioning.

We had a short lunch break, which was nice, because we got to spend it in the hall where the Mainz girls were playing the relegation tournament for the indoor season. Apparently they didn't make the first league, which is sad, but I nabbed a sandwich, a coke and a piece of cake for only 3€ so that helped raise my spirits. Only problem is, we still had another game with only one sub...

Game 3 vs Heidees: 5-8 and 12-15, we started to crawl back in the second half but were just too tired to hang. I had two more turnovers, another D and some goals thrown. We played more clam and poachy defense in this game, which worked to some extent, but on offense I got really frustrated with the playing style of some of my teammates. Hopefully we can get more on the same page later in the season.

The best part of the day was that nobody got seriously injured. We had a nice run with low numbers, and once we get some of our other players back we should be looking good for the outdoor season.