August 16, 2013 by Charlie Eisenhood in News with 2 comments
This article is part of our new, expanded New York City coverage. For more, follow@UltiworldNYC on Twitter and stay tuned for a dedicated New York-focused blog.
After an outstanding Terminus performance capped by a finals victory over Atlanta’s Chain Lightning, PoNY came back to Earth at Colorado Cup.
While a 5-2 performance still qualifies as a good weekend, PoNY didn’t have any really quality wins, unless you count their 8-6 lightning-cancelled victory over Truck Stop, who had beaten them earlier in the tournament.
“I think it was pretty good,” said captain Jack Marsh. “Our pool ended up being a pretty tough one, probably the toughest one at the tournament.”
The Santa Barbara Condors, Seattle Voodoo, and an underseeded Florida United rounded out pool B. PoNY went 3-0, but had to work for their wins.
In the crossover, PoNY got another shot at Truck Stop after falling to them at Terminus. Truck seems to have PoNY’s number, dating back to the MLU season when the DC Current (largely comprised of Truck Stop players) got two huge late season wins over the New York Rumble (with a large number of PoNY players).
“[Truck Stop is] a good team,” said Marsh. “They’ve got a bunch of solid players. Alan Kolick is playing really well for them…We’ve had trouble with them, and we haven’t had our best games against them.”
Marsh didn’t think that Truck was doing anything notably different than other teams; New York was just not bringing their best performance.
After a tough, back-and-forth game against Madison Club in the quarterfinals (Madison led by two at half, PoNY surged ahead, Madison closed the gap, and PoNY won on double game point), PoNY faced their toughest matchup of the season: Denver Johnny Bravo, at home.
Marsh and the captains changed their strategy after the taxing quarters game, opening up the lines a little bit and trying to focus on having more fun. Their loose approach worked early, causing Bravo to turn the disc over a number of times at the start of the game.
“But,” said Marsh, “we had no idea what we were doing on offense and just jacked it away.”
Frustrated, Marsh added, “We just jacked it away to whoever Jimmy Mickle was guarding and he ate it up.”
ONe of PoNY’s main focuses this weekend at the Chesapeake Invite will be to hone their defensive line offense, which struggled throughout Colorado Cup. Marsh said that it needed “serious work” at practice.
They will definitely have their work cut out for them, facing off against the UK’s Clapham, Chain Lightning, and Ring of Fire in pool play. PoNY has likely already sealed a bid for the Northeast, but this tournament will show their true colors — can they beat top teams in the late season?
They face the Pool B one seed — Ring — first thing tomorrow morning in Leesburg, Virginia. Stay tuned to @ultiworldnyc for updates throughout the day.
