University Nationals - round robin day two

The second day of round robin play started with a bye in the first game for us. Again, we would go without a mid-day break for any sort of lunch. Joelle and I were happy to get up a bit later and take our time bussing out to UBC. In fact, we even stopped and had cinnamon buns for breakfast on the way to the fields!

Our first game of the day was against UBC team A, whom we expected to be really tough - and we were right! Although we didn't expect to win that game, we also didn't expect to be thoroughly trounced. UBC-A was an awesome team, and we really stepped up our intensity against this team, but to no avail. They spanked us with a final score of 13-1. The game finished 40 minutes early. However, we didn't feel terribly bad because they had beat every other team in a similar fashion, with the closest score being 13-3. We also didn't just roll over and let them win - we made them work for their points!

Our second game was just as difficult as our first game. The University of Victoria team brought a very large roster with some pretty awesome players. It's pretty easy to have a strong team when you live in or very close to the sponsoring city! Anyway, we made UVic play very hard to earn the points they did, and we could tell they were getting frustrated with how hard they had to work to score. Halfway through the game, they started playing a huck strategy to score their points, and similar to our game against U of S, we had trouble shutting it down. They beat us 13-6, but again we were happy with our game because we had played hard and well.

Unfortunately, though, we had poured too much of our energy into the first two, really tough games, so when we finally came across teams we could beat, we didn't have enough juice in the tank to get the job done. Simon Fraser University and McGill University were both beatable for us, but we didn't have the stamina to get all the points we needed to win. We lost both games, leaving us in 7th place out of 9 teams.

Kyle had arrived during our last game to watch us play, so after the game he kindly dropped us off at my friend's place downtown. Joelle and I had planned to have dinner with Lauren and Mike that evening, so we just showered at their house once we arrived there. After getting clean, we called my friend Carson to meet us, and we went out for sushi - AGAIN! We had a really nice dinner and visit with them, and lingered a long time to keep chatting and catching up. Afterwards, Joelle and I bussed back to UBC to meet our team at the tournament party that was happening at the Pit Pub. That's right, the Pit Pub. The tournament organizers chose the crappy campus bar as the place for the party. Even though the Pit has had a renovation since I was there last, it was exactly the same - dingy, loud and dirty. Plus, our team didn't show up until almost 11pm, so Joelle and I sat for about 45 minutes by ourself before they arrived. Since we were both pretty tired, we visited our team briefly and then met Kyle outside for the drive back to his house for the night. Both Joelle and I fell asleep in the backseat on the drive home, and then crawled into bed for a short sleep before morning.