UXON - University Mixed Outdoor Nationals 2015: The Story
Warning: Extremely Long Blog Post
At 7pm on Friday evening Knights mixed team met at the union to take a minibus to the scout hut in Liverpool where we were staying for the evening. We were seeded 45th and looked forward to attempting to beat this seeding, The journey was, simply put, disastrous. What should have been a simple four hour drive, due to road closures (so many road closures), turned out to take more than seven hours. We eventually arrived at the scout hut in the early hours of Saturday morning, and, knowing that we would have to get up in around 3 hours, went to sleep. All credit to Charlotte for getting us there, and driving for almost 5 hours without a break. HERO.
Saturday
Our first game was against Huddersfield. Both sides having had minimal sleep the game was scrappy from the start. We came out slow and, like most teams playing early morning games, took a while to settle in. In a game fraught with silly turnovers, Huddersfield settled in much faster than we did and started to pull away. With about ten minutes left in the game the score was 10-6. A few quick points for Knights later the buzzer went, and at the end of the point the scoreboard read 10-10. It came down to universe Point. We finally pulled it together properly for the final point and rather quickly scored , making the final score 11-10 to Knights.With a win under our belts (somehow coming back from 10-6 down) we had a short break before the start of our second game against...
...St Andrews. This was probably the most memorable game of the weekend for Knights and particularly myself. St Andrews are a great spirited team and play some fantastic ultimate. From the start they ran us hard and scored a few quick points. As the game progressed, Knights started playing some much more flowing ultimate, and both sides started having to fight for every point. My highlight of the game came shortly after half-time (with the score around 7-4), when I beat my man to a swung disc for A CALLAHAN. I have scored a couple of callahans before, but this was nationals! All of my teammates rushed onto the pitch to congratulate me and with the scores now the closest they’d been all game we were ready to fight for our second win. Unfortunately, as soon as we stepped up our game St Andrews did too, resulting in the score at the buzzer being 11-6. The first point in overtime went rather quickly, with us pulling one back, making the score 11-7. The next point, however, seemed to go on forever. Both teams had chances to score, but defensively both sides were rocking it. Ryan’s lay out D in our own end zone to stop the score is one of my favourite moments of the weekend. After about 10 minutes of hard fought play St Andrews managed to score. Meaning that the final score was 12-7. After the game we played one of the most intense games of ninja I've ever been involved in, and had a great time just talking to the guys from St Andrews. Personally (I know this is true for other members of my team) I think this is the best game we played at Nationals.It was so well spirited but also remained fiercely competitive to the end. I’d like to thank St Andrews for a fantastic demonstration of how ultimate should be played and for being just generally lovely people.
Our last game of the day was against Strathclyde and I honestly cant make myself write about this game. In short...we lost 13-0. I have no complaints about Stratclyde, they played fantastic. well-spirited, ultimate and deserved the win. I don’t even mind being bageled too much. What made me angry/upset was that from 9-0 most of Knights seemed to stop caring or trying. I could write a separate post about my feelings towards this game, but I shall spare you.
We finished the day ranked 43rd (gaining 2 seeds) and after some incredibly cold showers we headed to The Old Pint Pot, a quaint little pub in Salford, to watch the Rugby and wind down. Ryan and I decided that the scout hut floor was not somewhere we wished to sleep again so arranged to stay the night with my friend in Salford. Both shattered, we went to bed rather early in anticipation of a second days Ultimate.
Sunday
Ryan and I arrived slightly late to our first game against Bristol (having been slightly misinformed regarding the time It would take to walk to the venue), to find that we were 3-0 down. Bristol are a good team and the the wind had picked up from Saturday making it much harder for our less experienced players to throw. Bristol were better than us throughout but we managed to score a few points during the game, making the final score 12-5 to Bristol. My highlight of the game was Mark backhanding a guy in the face while attempting to huck. Aside from Mark’s idiocy it was a fun game and there were some moments where we were starting to play some really good ultimate.
Next up was Brighton Panthers. Another fantastically well spirited game with some lovely people. Knights continued to improve during the game, even attempting to put on a zone for a few points which seemed to work quite effectively. Brighton though are another very good team and maintained a healthy lead for most of the game.The score at the buzzer was something like 10-3. We pushed hard and managed to score a couple of points in overtime (one coming from a stall-out I got just in front of their endzone. Brighton informed us after the game that at this point we had them scared as they’d been beaten from a similar margin earlier in the weekend. Not wanting to cause them any more heartbreak we of course generously donated them the next point (*cough*) making the final score 11-5 to Panthers. We then joined them for an incredibly fun game of Lemon (Which Knights kit is definitely NOT designed for) and Ryan beat me again to be voted as their MVP, receiving a bouncy ball and a little trophy (I want a little trophy too *cries*). But on a serious note I really enjoyed this game and had a great time talking to Panthers after the game. Cheers guys!
Our final game was against Glasgow 2. Who we saw had lost all of their games so far at the weekend. I was sure to prevent any Knights players from getting complacent or thinking that this would be an easy game. They had come to nationals to play ultimate like us after all. Unfortunately we did start out rather complacent with a few silly turnovers, but brought it back to take the first few points. Glasgow 2 did play some great ultimate scoring a few fantastic points, with some quick passes that left us chasing them up the pitch. This was yet another game with amazing spirit, by the end of the game several players knew each others names having had brief discussions on the sideline between points and occasionally while waiting on the pitch. The game finished 13-6 to Knights and after enjoying some really enjoyable calls with Glasgow 2 we headed home.
Finally...
I’m really proud of how Knights played this weekend. We came together as a team to play some good, and at times great, ultimate. We all performed well individually to such an extent that we had a 3 or 4 way tie for MVP. I’m also very proud of the few less experienced players we had, Nationals is tough and they really tried their hardest. We finished the weekend seeded 45th, holding our original seed, and I’d like to thank all of Knights and those on the teams we played against for a fantastic weekend and some brilliant ultimate.
*Team photo to follow*
