The morning dew made footing a little tricking the first game and the wind made for a great chance for each of the teams to work on their zone offense and defense.

Pool A

In Pool A, the first seed, Amherst Varsity, began their morning with a 15-0 win over Memorial.  Meanwhile, Brutal was having difficulty getting their clam zone together.  Sparkle Motion was determined to make Brutal work for their victory, scoring four of their five points in the second half.  Final score: 12-5.  In the second round, Amherst again stole the victory from Sparkle Motion despite sloppy O from some key players.  After the jitters where calmed, handling skills from Huber helped to bring in the easy victory.  In this pool, there are two teams who have been in existence for many years and two other teams who are just getting their cleats muddy.  Brutal proved that they were one of the more experienced teams in their game against Memorial.  Both teams threw zone but Memorial just could not get around Brutal’s four-man cup and Lutz stopping everything put deep.  Add in the tremendous handling skills of Hoover and Quinn and Brutal easily put this game in their pocket with the final score reading 15-1.

The last game of Pool A featured the undefeated Amherst Varsity and University School of Nashville.  The game between Amherst’s top team (they fielded two Girl’s teams, and I’d watched the JV squad handily beat a talented Stuyvesant team earlier in the day) and Nashville started out S-L-O-P-P-Y, to say the least. Lots of bouncy nervous energy and hucks turned floaters in the cross-breeze. Not what I expected from Amherst’s top squad right off the bat. It took a full eight minutes for Amherst to finally score the game’s first point.  Amherst’s Amber Sinicrope was a solid star, with good solid downwind pulls into the end zone – impressive for any women’s tournament, no less a high school tourney.

Amherst and Nashville traded points early on, but Nashville seemed to lack focus and leadership. The Girl’s coach at Nashville also coaches the Open team, and his new assistant, a graduate from last year’s team, didn’t seem able to gel the team. However, their spirit was raucous from the start, then dwindled, then later returned as they gave Goo-Goos – some sort of ice cream bars – for the opposing team afterwards.

Nashville played scrappy but effective, matching Amherst point for point for the first couple, but once Amherst pulled away, there was no returning. Amber Sinicrope to Sophi Herscu was a popular combination and resulted in a number of scores.

Amherst led at the half, 8-3.

After halftime, Nashville started out strong and capitalized on mistakes by Amherst, bringing the game to 8-5.

But taking their sweet time between points and having several long, drawn-out points (with many, many turnovers) resulted in a final score of 10-5 at hard cap, with Amherst winning handily.

Pool B

In the third and final round for Girl’s Ultimate in Pool B, third seed Stuyvesant went up against fourth seed, HB Woodlawn.  Stuyvesant began the game with a strong start but didn’t have enough stamina to lead to half.  Despite awesome energy from Stuyvesant’s sidelines and key defensive plays by Shah, Stuyvesant never caught back up.  Woodlawn, on the other hand played basic defense and managed to keep slightly ahead through the second half.  Time was on the side of Woodlawn at the close of this game.  With Burt’s handling skills, Elkington’s defense, and all-round good team spirit, Woodlawn wanted to prove that they just might be better than fourth seed and took the game 10-9.

The quarterfinals of the Girl’s division went according to the re-seeding, with Amherst winning their closet game of the day 11–7 against Stuyvesant, HB Woodlawn over Columbia 9–4, University School of Nashville winning a tight game against Amherst JV 7–6, and Andover winning easily over Memorial 14–2.