Regionals, day 1

Today was strange.

I slept like crap last night, to be greeted with an overcast morning, no breakfast items I could really eat as most were bread or wheat-based (oh, waffles, how do I miss thee? Let me count the ways!).

Guy was there to help with the camera work, so I handed him the video cameras, showed him where the tapes were, and sent him off. A few minutes later, I was handing him my hat and my rain jacket, as the weather was crappy. Yay, Regionals in Burlington, Washington, where even the locals ask, "Why again aren't we having Regionals in California?"

We knew we had to be on this weekend, so we had a long warmup before the first game. Based on how the schedule was, and what we knew about the teams, I planned on playing the first two games, maybe the third game, then stand on the sidelines the rest of the tournament.

Our first game was against Shadrach, the second against Sleepover. Both teams were ranked fairly low in the tournament, both managed a few points on us, I played in both, while Guy used the games to practice videoing and Gillian practiced taking stats.

The third game was against Golden Spike, which gave us a game at Labor Day this year, and beat Brass Monkey at the same tournament. I didn't play in the game against them. We lost 13-15. The game was close the whole time, with our biggest lead at 9-6, and their biggest lead 10-13. Yeah, a 1-7 run for them. We faltered. We faltered, and the game was ugly. Almost every goal was called back on a foul, or travel, or pick, or other call. The wind picked up, and the game was ugly, and we lost.

By the time the fourth game started, I had already taken off my cleats. However, instead of playing Brass Monkey as we expected to play, we played Bozos, from Bosemon, Montana, originally seated 10th. The game wasn't really close. We were disheartened, yes, but they had lost before they even began. Crystal suggested I put my cleats back on, and play a few points, so in I went. I caught one throw just outside the endzone on a swing pass from Shirley, but didn't have the confidence to release the low release throw to Warren who had the perfect continue for me for the score. I had another score called back on a pick call that I mostly disagreed with, having seen my defender on my left as I was starting my cut, when I heard the pick call on my right. However, she said she was picked, so I lost my other goal. Sigh.

The bad thing about the last game was the headache that started in the middle of a point. Instead of my usual both sides migraine, this one was the right-side only headache that sent bolts of pain around the side of my head with every minor effort, such as standing up, running, lifting my bag. Two advil, a meal, and two more advil didn't do much to help it, I'm afraid.

So, we we'll go into Sunday without a first round bye. I think this'll work better for us. We're not always a first day team, and having a good game early on will fire us up.