#oc riptide

What is your favourite thing about them?

What is a memory they have that they’d rather forget?

Who/Where do they go for comfort?

Karxe -

• I really like her colour pallet that I came up with (as weird as that sounds). She's got more tropical colours but if you dive into the "meaning" behind the colours it also ties into her character a lot.

• Karxe would probably like to forget having to watch Dawn train. She never liked the extensive physical strain it put on her friend.

• When she was little she'd probably have gone to Nightshade but once Dawn started living in the Genesis Dome I think she'd go to them more.

Riptide -

• I don't like him that much but that's because I made him to be dislikeable. My fault really lol. But I do like how close he used to be with Fifi.

• He wishes he could forget his mother's death. He was old enough to understand and feel fear as he had to wait with her while Coral got help.

• Riptide would mostly shut himself off. When he was little it was always his mother. After she died he would occasionally visit her grave but that stopped when he realised he should be helping more with his little sister.

Fifi -

• I love how casual she is about things honestly. Like, her arm go cut off and she almost immediately turned around like "yeah but it's not that big a deal, I can still fight". She's also far too casual about her mum's death because she never knew her. So everyone gets surprised when she talks so casually about the dead queen.

• Fifi would rather forget how her brothers' father saw her. As a mistake who wouldn't amount to much. It's probably why she jumped at the chance to learn how to fight, so that she could try and prove herself in some way.

The Jungle Cats arrived in sunny Orange County, California on Wednesday morning after a crack of dawn flight out of the Lou. After picking up the stylish white vans, the team headed directly to the most looked forward to destination of the trip - In-N-Out, delicious as usual. We then set out for Newport Beach for a couple hours in the California sun before checking into the hotel and getting ready for practice with JCWP favorite Foothill Club Water Polo. 

The 18s practiced at Pomona College, home of Jungle Cat alum Pieter Derdeyn, with the Foothills 18A team while the 16Us headed to Claremont High School for practice with the Foothills 16B team. The 18s had a very productive practice as coach Chris had no trouble filling 2 and a half hours with drills that forced the boys and Coach Cutelli and myself to use our heads. After some "light" swimming (some of the boys questioned their definition of light), we worked on setting and shooting against a crash and then a fluid crash defense, and finished with a scrimmage. The Foothill Club had several D1 bound athletes and was hoping for a top 6, but the Cats held their own and learned a lot. Most importantly, Joe Shaughnessy found his twin (check twitter for the pic)

On Thursday morning, both teams went to Oceanview High School for some running clock scrimmages against OC Riptide. Riptide had a number of good athletes and played a much more physical game than our team was used to, which led to a lot of frustration for the Jungle Cats. Hopefully this experience prepped us for what will almost certainly be some of the most physical games our players have participated in this weekend. The Cats eventually figured out to play their own game and hold their own. In addition to the practice, Coach Milford arrived at the scene, so the Cats are now in full force.

After morning practice, the teams headed to a packed Huntington Beach where the US Open for surfing was taking place. The boys loved the atmosphere there, and Favier has still not stopped asking to go back. We quickly found the volleyball nets and proved why most of us stick to water sports; however, the team of the 4 coaches plus Dr. Castro and Mr. Critchfield proved to be dominant.

The 18U squad headed back to Pomona for another practice while the 16s scrimmaged against Valley Falcon. LA traffic got the best of us, and the team was very disappointed to miss the swimming set at the start of practice. However, they gathered themselves together and had another great practice, this time working on 6-on-5 and timeout plays. We did a great job of adapting to a much quicker paced 6-on-5, both offensively and defensively, that depended more on players sliding into open passing and shooting lanes more than usual. Coach Chris taught Coach Cutelli a few plays to take back home and wished us luck against SET, our first game of the tourney. We stopped at Norm's Diner for dinner and headed back to the hotel for some needed rest.

Friday was the Cats' day off, as we headed to Newport Beach and stayed there pretty much all day. Once again, we couldn't stay away from the volleyball nets and we showed a lot of improvement in our game, something we should all be proud of. The coaches headed to the JO's coaches meeting while the boys laid out in the sun and tried to make some new lady friends on the beach, and then we headed back to the hotel and got some more In-N-Out before taking it easy before the big day tomorrow.

We face off against the powerhouse SET at 8 am tomorrow and will go from there. Stayed tuned to twitter and the blog for more updates