After coming back from trailing 11-9 in the first round, Slow Children at Play should have been used to playing from behind in the LAOUT B-League Winter Tournament. After all, this is the same team that went 0-6 last season including a 15-0 loss! So when they held a wire-to-wire lead in their semifinal win against Barrel, they must have felt out of place.

But the Slow Children found themselves back in a nice hole at the start of the championship game against Caltech as the rising winds game them fits, and Caltech’s methodical, conservative offense pushed them out to a 3-0 lead. Eventually getting on track, Slow Children were able to answer back and hold serve for the rest of the half, trailing 8-5 at halftime.

The second half saw the frustrated Slow Children begin to force throws to get back into the game, but it had the opposite effect as Caltech grew their lead to 14-7, and the end looked close at hand.

Slow Children put in the same “A-Line” of guys that had gotten them back from the brink in the first round and decided that they would leave them in for the rest of the game, however long that would be. Their women did a great job of focusing all their energy on defense to shut down Caltech’s formidable ladies, letting the Slow Children guys play 5-on-5 offense. It worked.

Jim Klimek and Eric Tener played handler nearly flawlessly for the rest of the game and Tim Dulaney, Scott Bergen and Dave Knight proved to be too much for Caltech to handle downfield. Point by point, their momentum grew and Caltech’s confidence withered. Defensively the Slow Children stepped up and rarely had to defend in their own half of the field. Caltech was able to stem the tide at 14-14 and get one last game point at 15-14, but now finally taking a few subs, Slow Children would not be denied as Nathan Jakubiak and Neil Fromer came in and seamlessly kept the pressure on.

With one last upwind huck to Dave Knight to finish it off, the Slow Children came back from a winless 2008 and faced down eight game points to finally win 18-16.