Hello! So, here's our write-up from Oregon Mixed Sectionals this
weekend. For those who don't know, due to injuries and other factors,
the local men's team 'Darkstar' wasn't left with enough folks to field a
competitive team for the series. So, we called an audible and went coed
at the last minute, recruiting some former Tonic players, some
current/recent SEHS ladies, and a former teammate of mine from PDX
coed. In addition, an early investment made by Darkstar paid off in TK
Halverson, who played open with Darkstar after Tonic (last year's local
womens team) didn't reform. We changed our name from Darkstar to 'Plan
B', which was great for some graphic, off-color cheers. "Now available
over the counter!"

We came into the tournament seeded 4th out of 12. There was very little
info available to justify that seed seeing as how we had attended 0
(zero) tournaments as a team. We scrimmaged Whore$hack (PDX mixed, 2005
national finalist) and Shotgun (PDX mixed, new very strong team) in
Portland a week or two ago, and we had a friendly against Churchill last
Monday. We lost to the PDX teams and beat Churchill, but that's about
all we had to go on.

Round 1: Plan B vs. Denial
Ho! Let's just skip right to the point and face off the two Eugene
teams! These two teams hadn't faced each other as organic wholes at
all, but of course everybody knew everybody else, and several players on
our roster had played with Denial at various tournaments during the
series. On paper Denial looked pretty stacked, and had a large solid
roster of women. Things went the way they did and we won 13-5.

Round 2: Plan B vs One Mississippi
Man, that's fun to type. I didn't know much about this team, I think
they went to regionals last year. They've got some aging coed players
from the PDX area that aren't on the big hot teams. I expected to roll
but they had some hustle and made us work for the 13-8 victory.
Christine Tsou, formerly of Eugene, was playing for them. Notable plays
in the game included Rachelle getting a Callahan goal.

Round 3: Plan B vs Pen-Fifteen
Get it? Get it!?! PEN15. Yup, it's all over their jerseys too.
Pretty funny stuff. We were looking forward to this game since at
Kleinman Chris "Rusty" Thorn (former Duck, permanent ultimate
personality) was featured on this roster. Unfortunately he was nowhere
to be seen. We spotted these guys a 0-2 lead before we went on a 13-1
run to win 13-3. I think all 3 points were scored on me.

Round 4: Plan B vs Soylent Green
This is a jersey wearing, tournament entering, bona fide PDX coed team.
They'd given Denial some close games at tournies this summer, and we
recognized a few of their players from former PDX tier 2 men's team
"SoPo", so we were expecting a bit of a match. Nope. We annihilated
them with a tricky 1-3-3 clam zone and won out 13-4, no sweat. Notable
play, Dan Walling (hey Danny!) tries to throw a score to the endzone and
gets royally hand-blocked. The disc flies up in the air and gets bat
down towards a woman that was nearby. She bobbles it and tries to push
it towards her feet and...always catch your Ds...in an amazing feat of
brilliant athletic talent and training, none other than myself lays out
for the clutch save on the disc. Enough auto-horn-tootage.

Sunday
Round 5: Plan B vs Whoreshack
We lost to these guys 15-12 during our little scrimmage, so we were
planning to come out and win this game. That scrimmage was our first
game as a coed team and we were feeling pretty buoyed by the results.
Winning this game guaranteed a berth at Regionals, and would be a huge
notch on the old Plan B bedpost if you know what I mean. We came out
weak, I turned over the disc twice in the first two points to go down
0-2. Bench me. We have a tight game from there but our offense just
wasn't efficient enough to be automatic, and our defense, while intense
and productive, couldn't covert. We lost this one 13-8. It was a
disappointing finish, but a good show considering Whoreshack has been
together for 3 years and had half that many points scored against them
the previous day...total.

A2 vs B2
So, we ended up holding seed, 2nd out of the A pool and 4th overall.
Now the 1 seeds in each pool play each other for first overall, and the
2 seeds out of each pool play for a guaranteed spot. Some craziness in
the B pool had their 1 seed, Cannonball out of Humbolt County, losing a
BUNCH of games, moving up Shotgun (PDX) and The Coltrane (PDX) into the
1 and 2 spots respectively. So, it's us vs Coltrane for a guaranteed
bid to Regionals.

We hadn't played these guys at all, or even seen them play. They had a
good showing at Kleinman, losing only to defending national champion
'Brass Monkey' (Bay Area), and beating some pretty strong teams. So, we
had no idea how this game would go, although I would say that we were
'quietly confident.'

We annihilated them. This was NO CONTEST. TK went off in this game,
recording layout Ds on the other team's men, several long hucks, and a
callahan goal. Nobody else could do any wrong as Johnny Bloch's huge
pulls had our D on their first throws, forcing several early turnovers
near the endzone we were attacking. The roster was opened up quite a
bit and even our bench was scoring easily. With the extra subs we could
rest our women and injuries and we played it out to 13-7. It was
nowhere near that close.

Loser of Finals vs US
Whoreshack over Shotgun in the finals. Shotgun lost to the horn in the
finals 14-13, extremely disappointing for them I'm sure. But, they play
us for seed, winner is the 2, loser is the 3. We decided before the
game that our goals had been met and that the roster would be wide open
for the whole game. We spotted them a 5-1 lead before playing even to
half 8-4 and got broken after half to 9-4. Lulled into complacency by
what was, up to then, a lackluster game, we "stormed back" to get close
at 9-11 them. Suddenly we decided we were 'in it' and could go for the
win, but the game played out to 11-15 them. It was a FUN game with lots
of learning for our younger players and a lot of gelling for the team.
It was a really nice way to end the tournament, and we hope to bring
that attitude and fun to Regionals.

Interesting note about the whole tournament: There was some talk on the
message boards and amongst the Portland folk about us not having women,
and not throwing to women, and whatnot. LOTS of teams, in particular
the PDX teams, went 4 women on us almost by default. Needless to say,
it didn't work out for them. Our women played so well and so often (we
only had 6 that could make it to sectionals) that they dominated these
teams. It might have been better to let our men swill it up on the
field than let our intense, efficient, and dominant women be a majority
force out there. Our women were getting the Ds, catching and throwing
the hucks, and had the 2 callahan scores for the weekend. Congrats and
thanks to them.

H