Not too shabby. The usual suspects clogged the top of the charts in the competitive divisions while the shenanigans all around continued unabated.
For the uninitiated, playing in any division at Wildwood means you never know what team you’re playing and how good or how bad they might be. I’m playing in the 2-2 “beer” division with a team called Weenus that is top-shelf Slow White and we’re matching up against Kudzu College and Bacon U and winning by double digits.
The great part is that no matter the talent level it all shakes out and by the end of the day Sunday both Kudzu and Weenus will have a chance to win a pretty nice trophy and end on a high note. On Sunday there’s something like 50 brackets for the 430 teams in attendance to winnow towards which means roughly ¼ of the teams make some sort of finals.
Details are still sketchy but here’s what I think: in 3-1 competitive, O-Pig defeated Interrobang in Pre-Quarters. Ryan West and the Miami Sound Machine are in the quarters, Death by Misadventure aka Team USA (Masters) is also in the upper bracket quarters, the NexGen team I believe is in, and in the most exciting play-in of the day by far is Team USA (Open) over defending champions and Paganello finalists Yellow Submarine. An unexpected pool play by Yellow Sub forced them into a nasty pre-quarter match with USA. This game was tight throughout and went to 11s, double-game point, USA receiving. And there it could have ended for the men in red, white and blue after a turnover gave Yellow Sub the disc. But rangy Jared Inselmann, a former and future Yellow Sub stud, took it back on a layout D in the end zone for USA and caught the game winner. Just like that Yellow Sub was knocked out of contention before Sunday and Team USA had avoided an unseemly fate.
In 2-2 competitive I just don’t know as it’s quite hard to follow it all without seeing matchups for tomorrow. Hopefully a later post tonight will clear some of that up.
As for the tournament itself they are currently working on raising the bar for coverage, bringing in an expert video crew known for livestreaming Disc Golf world championships to record and commentate a showcase game played between Team USA and New York’s Club team PoNY. For the showcase they expanded the field to BULA 5-on-5 size and played to 13. The change of pace and field size elevated the action for both teams with huge full-field hucks coming from both sides rapidly.
PoNY scored first but USA turned on the jets for defense and ran off 4 straight before a PoNY timeout failed to quell the onslaught. In the end USA won by 6 or 7 and looked the most impressive I’ve seen them so far at Sandblast and now Wildwood.
The video crew will be completing a 20-minute highlight reel. When I get the link I will post it, as well as some on the field live GoPro footage I shot of one of our games.
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