B Division

In the play-in game, The Huck and Chuck Show (8) beat Ultimate Scorgasms (9) on a ludicrously windy morning in Winnetka.  I didn’t catch the final score, but it didn’t appear close.  I watched most of the 2nd half, and can’t remember seeing many Ultimate Scorgasms goals.

In quarters, The Huck and Chuck Show lost pretty handily to Tarmac (1).   The Barrel (7) gave Slow Children at Play (2) a good run in the beginning.  I think the Barrel jumped out to a 3-0 lead, but Slow got rolling and didn’t stop, completely dominating the game from that point on.  Awesome Express (3) played a relatively closer game against Caltech (6) on a tiny field that we managed to squeeze into the corner, almost directly over a softball diamond.   This sounds bad, but the rest of the field wasn’t any better.  Awesome Express won I think by 3 or 4.  And finally, the only close game in quarters pitted Killer Chillers (4) vs. Homer’s Disc (5).  They played on the only N-S field which was parallel to the wind, so it was one of those situations where the team that can get the up-winder usually wins.  Oh, and the other exciting feature was the giant tree that hung over about 10 yards near the end zone.  Homer’s got the up-winder first, but KC matched it, and held on for a 10-9 win in soft cap.

Semis proved to be a clear delay of the inevitable match-up between Tarmac and Slow Children that we had been waiting for all year.  Since their regular season game was rained out, the anticipation of finals only grew larger.  And when both teams crushed their competition in semis, the inevitable pairing was finally secure.  I think the Slow/Awesome game was 9-1 or 10-1, and it finished 13-5 I believe.  Killer Chillers didn’t even score their first point against Tarmac until it was like 8-0 or something.  (I was watching the C Finals at the time, and just heard updates.)

So the entire B tournament went according to seed, and finals was the same.  Slow Children started off a quick 2-0, but Tarmac rolled to half with 7-straight points, and that was pretty much it.  At 12-5 there was a little bit of hope.  Last year Slow Children overcame a 14-7 deficit to beat Caltech 15-14 in finals.   So when they scored 3-straight to make it 12-8 and forced another turnover, it was starting to look like 2009 all over again.  But it wasn’t to be.  Tarmac finished it off 13-8 and was crowned the B Division Champions.

C Division

Only 5 of the 6 teams made it out to the tournament.  Although several teams in B worried about having enough players show up, the only team to miss the tourney was Flick You (5).  So First Phrisbeetarians (4) got a free ride to Semis.  In the other game, the pick-up team Chopped Liver (3) won on the far field over Afternoon Delight (6). 

In Semis, both games were handled pretty easily by the top seeds.  The Zoo (1) had some early trouble with First Phrisbeetarians, but made it through to face the Abominable Snowmen (2) who won their game over Chopped Liver.  This set up another 1v2 match-up, and a highly anticipated one since those were the two teams that seemed to dominate C Division all season.

Finals started off as a nice back-and-forth battle.  The Snowmen had a lead throughout the first half, but it was never by more than a few points.  They took half 7-4, which was their biggest lead to that point.  They started out the 2nd half strong to move up to 9-4 and a victory seemed assured, but The Zoo fought back to 9-7.  But that’s as close as they’d get.  The Snowmen scored 4 of the last 5 points to win 13-8 and break seed, the only time that happened all day.

In a final game after the C Division ended, Ultimate Scorgasms – the last seed in B – played the Abominable Snowmen in an excitingly close game.  Although the game wasn’t super serious (one player on the Snowmen played with a beer in his hand for one point) both teams still tried to win, but it was Ultimate Scorgasms who prevailed in a 1-point victory, which seemed to indicate that the pre-season seedings for B and C division were indeed accurate.

A Division

Quarters began on Monday night at Balboa, with a little bit of added intrigue since noone knew who was playing who until all four teams made it to the field.  But TD Sarah came up with a strength of schedule tie-breaker for 5th place that slightly benefitted Milquetoast (5), meaning they would play Empire (4).  The game was a tightly contested back-and-forth battle in which Milquetoast led as late as 12-11.  But Empire turned on the engines in time to gain a 15-13 win.  In the other contest, (a formidable opponent) (3) jumped out to a 6-0 lead on Top Shelf (6) and ultimately held on for a 15-10 win.

Semis were played on Wednesday and contained two upsets.  Empire and Marshall (1) played a heated game that got really fiery in the 2nd half, but was ultimately won by Empire 15-10.  And the new kids on the block, (a formidable opponent), managed their own 15-10 upset over Kong.

Finals took place on Friday night, and pitted the veteran Empire, the defending champions, against the upstart (a formidable opponent).  AFO had beaten Empire in two regular season games, so it looked like it could make for a great match-up, and it did.  AFO started the game up 3-0, but Empire quickly pulled back to a 4-4 tie.  AFO once again went up, taking half 8-6.  But the lead was erased again at 8-8.  The last tie was 9-9 when Empire pulled ahead for good, and won the game 15-12, giving them back-to-back championships, and three titles in four years.