September 4, 2012 by Charlie Eisenhood in News, Recap with 1 comments
Close games, bid drama, and some surprising results defined the last weekend of the USA Ultimate regular season. Here’s what went down:
Labor Day Ultimate Championships — Santa Cruz, CA [S]
Open
Check out our full recap and analysis of the Open division here.
Women’s
San Francisco’s Fury continued to show their dominance over the Women’s division with another tournament title after beating Seattle’s Riot 15-13 in the finals. That is their fourth win against the #2 ranked Riot this season. Fury is one of just two teams that remains undefeated across all the USA Ultimate divisions (Madison’s Heist is the other).
Riot hasn’t been able to get a victory against Fury yet this season, but they continue to dominate the other teams they face. They avenged an ECC loss against Vancouver’s Traffic in the semifinals with a 15-6 blowout win. No team except Fury scored double digits against them (in games to 15). Three of those teams are ranked in the top 10. It goes to show just what a gap there is between Fury/Riot and the rest of the field.
In the bid battle, Portland’s Schwa (currently ranked #15) and San Diego’s Safari (#17) both went 1-5 in pool play, setting them up for a crossover game that was probably the deciding matchup for the bid. Schwa got the win, 13-9.
Bid Predictions:
Northwest: 4
Southwest: 2
South Central: 2
North Central: 1
Great Lakes: 1
Southeast: 2
Mid-Atlantic: 2
Northeast: 2
Mixed Labor Day — Davis, CA [S]
Just up the road from their San Francisco home, Mischief rolled through the competition to earn an 8-0 record and the tournament title. With their performance, they’ve assured the Southwest region will have 4 — and possibly 5 — bids to Nationals. Their finals win came against American BBQ, who broke seed with a 14-10 win against the Polar Bears (San Francisco), the top seed and #2 team in the country.
Portland’s Engine 45, the 12 seed, was the surprise of the tournament, going 6-2 with losses only to the Polar Bears in the crossover and Mischief in the semis. They will likely find their way into the top 16 with their performance, up from #35.
The bids could fall in a lot of directions, but the Southwest and Northeast have a strong grip on at least half of the bids, and possibly more. Because rankings 14 through 19 are currently separated by just five points, it’s possible Philadelphia’s AMP may have lost the Mid-Atlantic their second bid, much like Southpaw — their Open counterpart — did in Santa Cruz. Very tough to predict the last 4 or 5 bids in Mixed, but here’s our educated guess.
Bid Predictions:
Northwest: 2
Southwest: 4
South Central: 1
North Central: 2
Great Lakes: 1
Southeast: 1
Mid-Atlantic: 1
Northeast: 4
USA Ultimate Grand Masters Championships — Blaine, MN
Many of the sport’s wiliest veterans (age 40 or older) headed to Minnesota for this year’s Grand Masters Championships. The top seeds cruised through the tournament, until the two/three matchup in semifinals, which pitted Surly GM (Minneapolis/Chicago) against Boulder Gun Club. The match was close throughout, but ended with a whimper after Surly used two timeouts to grab the win on hard cap, 12-11.
Surly would face top seed Scrapple (Philadelphia/Mid-Atlantic) in the finals. Surly would earn the National title with a 14-11 victory.
Four seed and legendary club team DoG (Boston) lost in the quarterfinals to Georgetown Brewing (Seattle), 13-9.
