The Fall Series, Part II: Regionals

This season the women's Northwest region received four bids to the UPA Club National Championships in Sarasota - two automatic bids and two strength bids based on our region's performance at Nationals in 2008 (all three NW teams - Fury, Riot, and Traffic - advanced to the semifinals). With eight teams at Regionals, the Saturday tournament format consisted of two pools of four teams that played themselves out in three games apiece. Sunday bracket-play went directly to a finals matchup between the first place finisher from each pool - both of these teams were guaranteed a bid to the championships, with 1st place seeding at stake. The loser of the finals was to play the winner of the 2 v. 2 cross-pool matchup for the 2nd/3rd bids. The third and fourth place finishers in each pool had to play two early Sunday games to earn a shot at playing the loser of the 2 v. 2 matchup for the 4th bid to the coveted Championships.

Saturday saw both pools go to seed, with Fury and Riot each winning their pool and Underground and Zeitgeist finishing second. On Sunday morning, Riot beat Fury in the finals by a score of 13-12 to earn the 1st bid out of the NW region and the 1st seed at Nationals. It was an incredibly intense, clean, high-level Ultimate game with very few turns. The game stayed on serve nearly the whole way and whenever one team would earn a defensive score, the other team would take a break point right back. Ultimately the game reached hard cap at 12-12 with Fury pulling to Riot, and Riot's offense was able to work the disc into the endzone for the win, thanks to some creative handling by Alyssa Weatherford and impressive grabs by Liz Duffy.

After a decisive 13-8 victory over Underground, Zeitgeist was outplayed by Fury in the 2/3 game by a score of 13-7. With the 1, 2 and 3 seeds set, Seattle's Underground faced Vancouver's Traffic in a battle for the fourth and final bid. Underground had beaten Traffic in their prior two matchups - the previous day in pool play as well as at Sectionals. For Traffic, Canadian Ultimate pride was on the line and the team did not want to see two Bay Area and two Seattle teams head to Sarasota while they sat at home. For Underground, a strong inaugural season for a new, young team attempting to establish itself on the Northwest Ultimate scene was on the line. Unfortunately for Underground, Traffic's first win in the teams' last three meetings came in this game, and the clutch 15-8 victory sent Traffic to Nationals as the 4th NW representative.

Congratulations to Riot, Fury, Zeitgeist and Traffic on their success this weekend. Let's represent the region well in Sarasota!

The National Championships will be played in Sarasota, Florida October 29-November 1. You can follow Riot's progress at http://twitter.com/seattleriot and the entire tournament at http://club2009.upa.org/.