Without a tournament of our own this weekend, I was avidly following all four divisions' results on Score Reporter, starting on Thursday morning. There were some things that almost nobody predicted, like Furious tanking, Rival beating Shazam, or Barrio's wins. Some things most of us saw coming: Sockeye making the finals (and winning), a Fury-Riot womens finals, and Shazam taking Mixed. I was not surprised with GOAT making semis - as soon as I saw that Chain took Pool D, I knew that would be the quarterfinal matchup, and GOAT had been lights out against east coast competition all year, with the exception of NE Regionals. I was surprised that AMP made semis in Mixed, but once again, when Rival got the #1 seed for bracket play, I knew AMP would win their quarterfinal matchup.
A lot of interesting things happened in Masters, which nobody is talking about yet. Four teams from the A pool made semis, something that probably would have been different if Miami hadn't beaten OaitW (resting their studs?) and forced OLDSAG down to the #4 seed out of the B pool. DoG had their hardest matchup in the quarters, and I would have loved to see that all-east coast final. But now DoG returns to Worlds and their strongest competition may be Tombstone, a team that combined with GLUM for NE Regionals and DoG knocked out of Nationals.
I'm happiest with the play of Truck Stop, representing for the Mid-Atlantic as Ring of Fire tanks at Nationals for the third year in a row. Condors joined Ring in disappointing, as they couldn't maintain the momentum they had from the SW Regionals final and ended up crashing into the "ninals" bracket after their play-in loss to Truck Stop. After beating Boston 15-13 at the Chesapeake Open, Ring lost 9-15 in the play-in game. Accusations that they just can't play as a team surface yet again, as their strategy of being angry and athletic falls short at Nationals once more. Another storyline: the NW loses a strength bid. That leaves five elite teams fighting for three bids to Nationals next year. Can Furious reload and shake off their Day 1 failures? Will Revolver be able to return to the show? Will Jam's age hurt them?
On the womens side, Lady Godiva had the most startling tournament, proving that their win over Capitals at Regionals was no fluke. Is this a last hurrah for these Boston dames? Or is there a resurgence and reaction to Brute Squad? Either way, the Northeast managed to grab a strength bid with Capitals taking 5th. Maybe Ambush will get to come back next year with a full roster. The Northwest is still limited to three bids, meaning that the fight to finish third behind Fury and Riot will be just as tough next year. Brute Squad seems to be the most capable of breaking into the finals, as their close semifinal against Riot shows. They're picking up a lot of young talent that is making an immediate impact on the club scene, and they will only continue to get better. Riot is doing the same, and only Fury's roster seems bereft of former high school and young college stars. Will it hurt them in the long run? Only time will tell.
In Mixed, Shazam didn't get to avenge their loss to Rival but still won Nationals and will be making the short trip to Vancouver for Worlds next summer. Rival managed to beat BOTH finalists, something that may not have ever happened in ANY division. Haven't bothered checking the results, but it seems pretty unlikely. And yet they still couldn't make the semis, running into a determined AMP team that had already handled them 13-3 earlier in the season and was not afraid. Barrio and Tandem proved the strength of the B-pool, with Barrio finishing 6th and Tandem one point away from a berth in the semifinals.
As an aside, I just spent a while analyzing spirit scores (my favorite!) from Nationals, in all divisions. My number-crunching shows that the Open division is the most-spirited while Womens is the least-spirited, the SW and CN regions send the most-spirited teams, and the South and Mid-Atlantic have the least-spirited elite teams.
Santa Clara tournament this weekend, Stanford is going split-squad. Games start at 12:30 on Saturday and finish under the lights - it should be exciting and we'll get a chance to see what the potential rookies are like when they have to play against people they've never seen before. And vets will get their chance to lead a team whose success will depend on a lot on how they manage the pressure and perform with a cast of rookies around them.
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Presumably, Open teams rank their oponents highly in Spirit scores because they all understand what Nationals is all about, what it should be about, and that's how they play. They respect each other.
But so do the ladies. So what makes them rank each other lower? I think it is safe to assume that mixed teams encounted special problems with SOTG that don't occur in other divisions, and we all know about grumpy old men. But what's the deal with women's teams?
Average Open score: 4.35 (sd = .339)
Average Womens score: 3.8 (sd = .497)
Average Mixed score: 4.231 (sd = .471)
Average Masters score: 4.233 (sd = .498)
Regional spirit "trends" were calculated by adding the number of standard deviations away from the mean for each team (above = positive, below = negative).
Of course, there were outliers like the SW women averaging a 3.4 between them, or the MA men averaging a 4.6.
To be fair, Tombstone didn't take a majority of their team down to Regionals. However DoG looked good dismantling teams in Boston.
And I forgot about VIGI or whatever team comes out of Japan for Worlds. I think that their narrow win over a younger OLDSAG team will make for some fun competition in Vancouver.
Astute observation about Fury's roster lacking many recent college or youth players. One might say that part of the team's success has been the experience of its players, waiting to pick up young players until they've finished college and are slightly more polished.
Of course, Alex Snyder, Enessa Janes, Lauren Casey, Kate Wilson and Sarah Pittiglio all competed in the 2006 college season. Nonetheless, the roster is definitely top-heavy (in terms of age) and many of the older Fury players are considering retiring after Worlds. It remains to be seen how Fury will reload, but I'm optimistic given how much talent there seems to be in the Bay Area.
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