Or was it blue takes silver? I can't remember, it was just such an irresistable headline.
Winnipeg started with a long, but entertaining bus ride. After a quick stop at a food court, we breezed through customs and arrived at our hotel around eight. Players relaxed and got ready for the early morning ahead of them.
Saturday started at 6:40am in the hotel lobby. Then everyone bundled up and headed to the local PanCakery establishment. Unfortanetly, the service was not nearly as good as the food and Hopkins was a little late to the fields that morning.
The four games played by Silver that day were disapointingly one sided and no team was able to gain more the three points on Silver.
Blue on the other hand had a more intersting game against SJR JV B, and were able to pull out a win and go 3-1 on Saturday, only losing to the team that would eventually defeat the A-team in the finals.
Saturday ended with a delicious BBQ put on my the HBTS volunteers and a relaxing evening at the hotel, lounging in the rooms and in the pool. There was also some ice bathing for a few brave souls who hadn't gotten enough cold that day.
With such good results by both teams Sunday, they met in the quarter finals. This was a really fun and intense game by both teams. Both blue silver played like they had something to prove.
Blue was even to tie the game at one point before Silver's experience got the best of them.
Blue then continued to the conselation bracket where they faced Memoral highschool and lost a tough game by two in hard cap. They played great defense and was able to mostly shut down the Wisoconson team that had placed second at Eastern Nationals last year.
This loss sent them to the 7th place game where they matched up against the hometown SJR JV A. The teams played neck and neck but SJR was just able to convert more often and got up 7-4 at soft cap. It was now a game to nine. It a great comeback Blue was able to win 9-8.
Some notable plays and players were:
-Robbie Shapiro for MVP, he handled, he guarded deep, he cut deep, he lead his team of new players to 7th place!
-McKenzie Burke won most improved player for the girls and for what I hear she quite the force on O and D.
-Colin Camp won most improved player for the boys and that was very clear. He was skying silver team players left and right and leaving them on the ground.
-Asa Gotlieb got a key handblock in the 7th place match that lead to the game winning score.
-Josh Klane played a great game as well and had some spectacular handling
Back to the silver team, after winning against the Blue team they went on to face the local MN team Cretin (CDH).
This was a riveting game. Silver was able to go up 2-0 right away, however, one CDH got its fast break offence in the groove they were hard to deal with.
Both teams played fast paced O and traded point until four. Then a series of goal line throw aways and mental errors had Hopkins facing a 7-4 half with the soft cap on. Game to nine.
Relying heavily on our insanely good girls, we were able to gain to bring the score to 7-8 them. Hard cap went off. The next point was fast and furious with both teams turning it over too many times and the person causing all of CDH's turnovers was none other than
"Captain" "Toucan" David "Iron Fist" "Swilly Canilly" Canillas. He had three, three! layout D's on one point to tie the game at eights.
It was universe point. I can't even remember what happened this point, but suffice to say with our ladies leading the charge we were able to bring home a W and advance to the finals.
Our last game was sadly less fruitful. It was against the second seed Kalvin from Winnipeg. They had just steam rolled SJR and were now waiting in the finals.
From the start of the game we knew this, they had two great players and they were going to exploit them and that proved to be an understatement. While the rest of their team was decent, these two were elite level players. They both played for the Winnipeg club team known as General Strike and were on the starting line of the Canadian Junior Worlds team.
It took us a while to adjust to their give-and-go, blade hucking offence and we went down 7-1 at half.
The next half we learned from our mistakes and played and interesting zone and tried to keep the disc from their two stars and force their other players too throw it away. This was quite effective, along with throwing to our girls and mismatched boys.
Disapointingly, we had already dug our grave and even with our revamped defence we were only able to score five more points until Kalvin wrapped up the game.
It was a tough loss, ending our two year winning streak, but I feel under windier conditions our superior depth and discipline would have won out.
Some notable plays and players"
-Erica Baken won girls MVP with her stellar handling and recieving along with some always delicious lay outs
-Brian "Deuce" Wilson and Steven "Das Boot" Rubinyi won co-mvps with their telepathic hucks and smooth bids
-David "nicknames" Canillas won MIP for his insane D, this was his break out tournament
-Greg "Snuggles" Milbrath had great tourney and was solid speed on D and a reliable cutter and handler on O
please feel free to add anything else:
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