2002 South New England College Sectionals

Date - April 27-28, 2002
Where - Middletown, CT
Official Site - N/A
Pictures - N/A
Team Members - Evan, Zack, Jay, Dan, Aman, Nate, Mark, Case, Staples, James, Dave, Nina

The Rundown
(For an alternate rundown courtesy of Evan and Zack, click here)

This is what we had all been waiting for.  The entire season up to this point meant nothing.  Everything had been in preparation for this one tournament.  This is when we would be tested, when we would be given the opportunity to reach our goal of making to to regionals.

We knew that reaching that goal wasn't going to be easy.  We had been moved from the West New England section, where we had played the last two seasons, into the South New England Section.  This meant that instead of playing teams like UMass and Williams, we'd be playing teams like Brown and Wesleyan.  Not much better, but not much worse either.  Since the south section has a lot of teams in it, we were hoping we would be helped by an extra size bid, which would mean five teams from the section would go to regionals, rather than four.  Unfortunately, some of the section regulars like URI, Quinnipiac, and Wheaton didn't show up, meaning we'd have to fight for that spot in regionals.

Saturday arrived and we had a first round bye.  This meant we got to sleep in a bit, but we still showed up plenty early so that we would have ample time to warm up and get psyched.  We ended up being seeded fifth, which would mean we needed to pull off an upset in order to get to regionals.  Brown A, Wesleyan A, Yale, and Connecticut College were seeded above us, with Brown B, Wesleyan B, Coast Guard Academy, and Brown C seeded below us.

Our first game was against Brown C.  We hoped this would be a good warm up game, as we usually play our worst in the first game of a tournament.  We had played a lot of these guys a few weeks back when they invited us to their mini-tournament, and while they had some good talent, they were still young and lacked much experience.  It was more of the same in this game.  They had good skills, but just weren't quite able to pull it together, and we handled them pretty easily, winning 13-0.

Next up was Wesleyan B.  For this game Wesleyan asked us to move from the fields where we would normally play to a rugby field in the middle of campus, so they could give their team a little more exposure.  We didn't complain, although maybe we should have, as the field was in bad shape and was set up to be short and wide.  The poor field conditions didn't hurt our game, though, as we came out strong, taking half 7-0, and eventually winning 13-3 in front of a crowd rooting against us.  After going 2-0 with two very strong games, we were definitely feeling good.

Our third game of the day was to be against Brown A.  These guys were ranked fifth in the entire nation and were favorites to win the New England Region and were rumored to already have bought plane tickets to nationals in Spokane, Washington.  Our theme for the game was "shock the world," as we knew there was very very little chance of us winning.  But that didn't stop us from playing hard.  Brown was a fantastic team to play against, as they had unbelievable talent, but also played with great spirit.  We even managed to score more points on them than anyone else had managed, but still lost (obviously) 13-4.

Our last game of pool play was against Conn College, the fourth seed in the tournament.  This was the team we needed to beat.  We had played them the week before at the coed tournament Disc 'til Dawn, where they had shut us down with a 1-3-3 defense and trounced us 13-0.  Again they pulled out there 1-3-3, and again we didn't have anything against it.  They easily took half, but then we bounced back.  In the second half we traded points and showed that we could play with them, even though we eventually lost 13-7.  We had held seed in our pool, which was good, but we would need to play better on Sunday, and we all knew it.

On Sunday, the gods were not happy with us.  Unlike the beautiful sunny weather Saturday had provided us, Sunday was rainy, very wet and rainy.  Oh yeah, it was cold too.  The weather was so nasty that Coast Guard, Brown C, and Wesleyan B decided not to come back.  With those three teams dropping out, the bracket got completely messed up, and I'm not sure anyone knew exactly what was going on.

Unfortunately they didn't screw up our first round game, and we did end up playing Yale.  They played a four-man cup zone defense that we just couldn't do anything against.  After every pull they would get us backed into the corner of our end zone and we would turn it over right near the goal line, giving them an easy score.  We simply could not break their defense and ended up getting steamrolled in a 13-0 loss.

Somehow we ended up with a bye after this game.  We took advantage by getting out of the rain and partaking in shinanigans in the Wesleyan rec center.  We got to watch little kids wrestling, then we rolled around in a big foam tube thing.  Good times were had by all, but then we had to get back to business.

For our last game, we would play Conn. College in the game to go to regionals.  They had just come off of a tough loss to Wesleyan (who eventually won the tournament, beating Brown in a huge upset), so we were ready to take advantage.  It was one of the hardest fought games we've played all season.  At one point they had pulled out to a four point lead as they took half 7-3.  But we battled back and tied the score, then traded points until it was tied at 11. But then, in what seemed like only a few moments, they pulled out two quick scores to win the game and end our season.  We thanked them for a great game and wished them luck at regionals.

This tournament was a fantastic end to a great season.  While we didn't quite reach our goal of making regionals, we came as close as we possible could have.  While it was sad to play our final games with Zack and Nate, we all look forward to next year.  Yeah Bullet!! 

Results (2-4)
Saturday Pool Play
Game 1 - Win over Brown C, score 13-0
Game 2 - Win over Wesleyan B, score 13-3
Game 3 - Loss to Brown A, score 4-13
Game 4 - Loss to Connecticut College, score 7-13
Sunday Elimination Bracket
Game 5 - Loss to Yale, score 0-13
Game 6 (Backdoor Semis to go to Regionals) - Loss to Connecticut College, score 11-13