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Originally published in Skyd Magazine on February 28, 2012.  Written by Calise Cardenas.

Day 1

Today, February 1st, is National Girls and Women in Sports Day (NGWSD), a day to recognize female athletes' accomplishments and promote more sports participation by girls and women. Considering how important sports have been in my life, I felt this was an appropriate time to recognize some great initiatives happening for the promotion of girls' and women's ultimate.

ECBA Interbay 7:10 PM Flatballers vs The Minions

Before Shannon laps me with another Flatballers write-up from Riot's off-season forays into the world of basketball, I figured I should at least create a placeholder for the Nationals write-up that I am working on.  Sorry to disappoint those of you who clicked on this link ready to devour a full recap!  The tournament's scores shouldn't be news to anyone (in case you missed it, we lost 13-15 in the finals to Fury), but I will leave you with a few stats to tide you over until the full story is told...

November 1st, 8:30pm, Bitterlake Community Center sets the scene for the
first Flatballers game on the season. Being the day after a majority of
us have returned from Nationals, numbers appear to be low early in the
day. As game time approached, the realization that Flatballers would
only have 4 players sank in, despite Alyssa and Shannon's efforts to
contact every semi athletic person they knew in and out of the Ultimate
community.
Bermi, Alyssa, and I (Shannon) showed up around 8:10 in hopes of

Long story short: Riot went 4-0 in pool play on Saturday to punch our ticket to Sarasota with an assured bid to the USA Ultimate Club Championships.  On Sunday we faced Fury in the finals, playing for the #1 seed at Nationals, but we were unable to overcome a 4-9 deficit and lost 13-15.  We then had to play the 2/3 placement game against Traffic where we also went down early and couldn't fight our way back out of the hole, losing 11-14.

Riot extended its 2011 winning streak to 21 games straight by going 6-0 at this past weekend's Virginia Fusion. It was a tournament full of building team chemistry and showcasing great play for the small, tight-knit roster that was able to make the trip out East.

Sectional champs for the 9th time in a row! All the results are posted in the Score Reporter and all 5 teams qualified for NW Regionals.

Over the years I've come to believe that one of the biggest secrets to success for sports teams is tradition. Tradition through repeated rituals helps establish a sense of team identity and enhances players' buy-in towards a common purpose. Year to year, traditions help connect players to the idea of a program that is bigger than a single season's roster and accomplishments. Last night, Riot had a team dinner hosted by one of our most generous and loyal sponsors, Mary Ann Fordyce, in what has become a wonderful tradition each season.

Stringing together back-to-back tournament victories, Riot was undefeated at the Labor Day Ultimate Championships in Santa Cruz, CA last weekend. The full tournament results are posted on the Score Reporter, but here's a recap of how the weekend went down for Riot.