Women's Eastern's 2011

After months of cold, snow, and indoor practice, Scorned has finally reached Spring Break 2011 and the second tournament in a nearly 5 week run of tournament weekends. This past week was filled with an insane amount of anticipation for Easterns and Spring Break. Even as we jumped into the cars Thursday for the long car trip, everyone was bubbling over with excitement. Other than running into both Saucy Nancy and Bella Donna in the mountains along the way, the car ride was relatively uneventful.

After a tough first showing at Midwest Throwdown the previous weekend, Woman Scorned walked into Easterns as the 10^th seed, matched up against 2^nd seeded UNC for the first game. Because the weekend was the start of Spring Break for Iowa State, our roster was smaller than usual with only 13 girls, but we had the support of about 18 ISUC boys to hold up our sidelines!

Scorned came out in the first game, ready to run after 22 hours in the car the day before. UNC came out stronger, putting points up right away, but it didn’t take long for WS to find their groove and answer back. WS finally started to find our offensive groove, with HUGE layouts from Magon and Becca. While our offense was looking up, our team defense was inadequate despite big D’s from Jazz and Gapstur. With UNC’s strong handler set, our marks let off far too many breaks, and Scorned was unable to stop the Pleiades from scoring.

9-12 UNC Pleiades

As the wind picked up, our second game of pool play put us up against Texas Melee. Both teams ran zone quite a bit. This game started with several break scores by both teams to jack up the intensity right away. Scorned was grateful for this opportunity to work on both zone O and D. Lady Pesch and Hoistad had great breaks on the mark and through the cup, while Scorned worked out the kinks we saw in our zone offense at Throwdown. Our sidelines we huge in this game, offering plenty of chatter to aid in shutting down up field options for Melee. Texas utilized their speed and height well in this game to take the win with a big huck to a one on one match up near the end zone on universe point.

9-10 University of Texas Melee

In the 3^rd and 4^th rounds, Scorned had byes, which offered plenty of time for us to get some lunch, rest up, and escape the sun for a bit. Groups split with some going to the beach, some back to the hotel, others to restaurants, and several returning to watch games after grabbing food. One cool experience we had at lunch was being asked about our games by complete strangers. It’s not so unusual to get asked what sport we play when we walk into places looking the way we do, but it was very cool that these people actually knew what ultimate was and that there was a big tournament going on in Wilmington. Very cool.

Our final pool play game was against Maryland Helpful Corn. Scorned split wins with this team last season, winning at Philly Invite and losing a close game in soft cap at Centex. This year’s team is made up of a lot of different faces after losing a huge part of their roster from last season. Scorned was able to walk away with the win, making adjustments to our defense and tightening up weaknesses in our game. Scorned really admired Corn’s fight, as they were playing with even fewer girls than us. It is hard not to feel a connection with this team, due to our shared affinity to corn and the love of ultimate…

13-4 Woman Scorned over Maryland Helpful Corn

Woman Scorned matched up with Virginia in pre-quarters for a late game starting at 6:30 pm. This game was a TON of fun! While our boys hooked up big speakers to a car for sideline tunes, Michelle turned on the lights, and both teams played some great Frisbee. Scorned was more than ready to play, not letting our low numbers slow us down. Sam, Jessy, and Cami were open in almost every under cut, while Daisy and Kristen grabbed everything in the end zone for the scores. By far, the biggest baller of this game was Rebecca Miller. If speed and agility weren’t enough, this girl has finally perfected her layout style and is very quickly becoming unstoppable. Virginia was a ton of fun to play and even had a great cheer about Des Moines. We hope to play them again in the future!

13-5 Woman Scorned over University of Virginia Hydra

Saturday night was probably the most uneventful Saturday of all time. The majority of the team went to bed around 9:30 and plenty of sleep was had.

Sunday morning’s quarter finals game had us playing none other than the University of Iowa’s Saucy Nancy. I’m pretty sure that Woman Scorned has never gone to a tournament and NOT played Saucy. Saucy and Scorned traded wins in the Fall but took a close victory at a January scrimmage and a solid win over us at Midwest Throwdown. This game started off looking much like Midwest Throwdown, but Scorned kept our heads up and made some changes in our offense to break through Saucy’s zone defense and walk some discs into the end zone. Jiear and Hoistad were rock solid handlers in this game and facilitated the disc through, around, and over the cup all day. Saucy continued to bring it during each point and the score proved it. Although this matchup is anything but rare, it always proves to be an intense game. This rivalry is deep, yet friendly and always results in a great game of ultimate.

6-13 University of Iowa, Saucy Nancy

With the tough match up in Quarters resulting in a loss, we dropped down to the 5^th/6^th place bracket to play Pittsburg Danger in the first round game. This is another team that Scorned has rarely (if ever) seen. These girls came out ready to play some ultimate. Highlights from this game were big hucks from Magic and an insane run through D by Jazzy-phay. Near the end of this game, Becca and Pesch both went up for a Sky D (we did get the D) which resulted in a pretty ugly collision that took Pesch out for the rest of the weekend and cut our numbers down to 12.

13-6 Woman Scorned over Pittsburg Danger

The last game of the tournament took place at the hottest part of the weekend for sure. We matched up on Michigan Flywheel on a field between the finals (Iowa v. Wisconsin) and 2^nd/3^rd (UNC v. UNC-W). Scorned came out in this game, fired up and ready to end the weekend strong. We were down to 12 girls and looking to lose Jazz about 30 min into this game because she had to catch a flight. Scorned took the first 5 or 6 points of the game, looking the best we have yet this season. Magon and Gapstur put up big hucks to Jessy, Cami, Love, and Becca to throw scores up on the board and take half at 7-1. The second half of this game, showed the results of playing a long weekend with few girls. Scorned hit a wall and Flywheel capitalized. Michigan came back with a huge run to pull their score up to 10. Scorned only took the win by one point in hard cap. In one of the points in the second half, Love had a huge D in the end zone that involved one of the tallest girls I have ever seen in college ultimate. Both girls were running for a floaty huck to the end zone. Love had positioning, but the Michigan girl did not notice tiny Love and continued to literally run her over. The results of this play ended in a sweet D from love due to great positioning, a lot of laughter from us, and a pretty roughed up (but not injured) Love. Love took a few, well deserved points to recover which bumped us down to 10 players for most of the remainder of the game.

11-10 Woman Scorned over Michigan Flywheel

Woman Scorned finished up the tournament with a proud 5^th place finish. North Central region had a great weekend in Wilmington, with all 3 teams placing in the top 5 (Iowa #1, Wisco #2). Following games, Gap sweet talked a security guy into letting the girls shower in one of the UNC-W buildings before the team headed to grab food and hit up the beach. After some beach time, the team more or less randomly found a slightly sketchy biker pool bar to kill approximately 5 hours before making the drive to Georgia where our vacation farm house was located.

We would like to give a BIG thanks to Michelle and the Seaweed girls for another great tournament! The weather was unbelievable and the tournament could not have been better. Thanks again!

-Written by Gapstur, Jessy, Magon, Hoistad, Pesch, Cami, and Jiear (chillin’ on a front porch on a farm in Georgia)