Strange Blue Tournament Report

University Womens Indoor Regionals

The great/cool/crazy/keen SB women that played UWIR.
Hello

just for those who want to know how we got on at the weekend

Tournament report for University Women's Indoor Regionals '07 (North and Midlands), Leeds, 20th/21st January
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Squad:

Hannah W and Susanna I - general monsters and joint MVP
Dani, though it was hard to be sure, peeking between fluffy ear warmer thing and huge warm jacket and muttering about 'all the English girls in their itty bitty tank tops'.
Jassy, dancing girl who got the party started! yes! STRANGE BLUE made it to the PARTY! and were the first to BOOGIE!
Hayley 'chocolate clogs' Sharpe of the uncontrollable giggles
Emma-Foghorn-Waps-Rouse: allegedly a poor navigator, but made up for it on the pitch and with her very veyr very loud voice on the sideline
Lucy F aka 'Lucifer'/'D-mon' who played superhot defence and entertained us all the way home with shocking tales from her boarding school
Tina Wen, of the genuine scottish kilt
me

Results: qualified for nationals by the skin of our teeth and tied with Boogie Queens for the SPIRIT prize.

We had a frightening start to the weekend as at 6.15am Hayley realised the right wing mirror was missing from her car, rendering it unsafe to drive all the way to Leeds. Luckily the mirror was found, intact, outside her house, and popped back in. Eventually we got to Leeds, though it took us a while. On the way there we found out that a) putting underwear on the right way round in the dark at 5.45am is difficult for some people and b) reading maps is also difficult for some people.

This year Cambridge has been moved from the South-East to the Midlands so we were playing lots of unfamiliar teams. First game was against FISH who, being a player short, had to play pickup and forfeit. A nice and much-needed warm-up. Next we played FLOORPLAY and lost, and after that JESTERS. Most of our points in this game came from Hannah's simple-but-deadly offence plan - Jesters knew exactly what was going to happen every time, and still couldn't do much about it. In the end we drew, though in points scored per inch height of player we pretty much bageled them. Overall we finished third in our pool of four - bit disappointing given we were top seeds...

At this point we had a wee look at the tournament schedule and realised we would have to win every game from then on in order to qualify for Nationals. So. Our first crossover game was against YORK on Saturday afternoon. I think we started out trading points but after a wee while we pulled away, they got a bit frustrated and grumpy (.. a few contentious foul and pick calls..), and we ended up winning 9-4. The poor things looked so miserable afterwards that I almost wished we had lost. Almost.

Then we went to the party. The theme was 'Yellow' - a weird one - and our costumes were lacklustre, but.. have you heard about Jassy? She got the party started singlehanded by forcibly wrenching people from their seats and gyrating at them until they couldn't help but join in. I recommend her. She and Hayley did the important job of representing SB until the end of the party while the rest of us woobled off to our host's house for the best night's sleep i have ever had at a tournament (bar mild disruption when Hayley and Jassy returned from party at 2am). They made us bacon and eggs in the morning and our first game wasn't until noon on Sunday.

Said first game on Sunday was against JEDI 1 of whom I at least - and, i assume, anyone else who saw them at outdoor nationals last year - was quite scared. Somehow this fear was communicated to team and converted to awesomeness, and we whupped them 13-4. Fire in our bellies raged on as we confronted FLOORPLAY for the second time in two days and gnnrraahggghhh revenge was wrought. We won 7-5 (same score as in our earlier match, but the other way round) which earned us a place in the 6th/7th place qualification final, playing our old South-East buddies AYE-AYE.

The qualification final was the last game of the tournament and we came out wide awake, but not quite as wide awake and plastic-hungry as Birds-Aye. After a while, we got our grr on but continued to trade points until it was 12-12 and the whistle blew, and the game went on to sudden death. somehow we won. So we have qualified for nationals. wooooooo

Special thanks to our MVPs Hannah and Susanna who both played beautifully all weekend and to our drivers Hayley and Hannah.

PS did i mention we tied for the spirit prize, too? we tried to get Jassy to enter into a dance-off with a Boogie Queen for the allocated bottle of liquor, but none of the jedi guys can beat-box, so they played ro-sham-bo instead, and she lost.





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