Riot goes 6-1 at ECC

Riot kicked off Part II of our 2010 season with a successful weekend at the Emerald City Classic (ECC).  

We started Saturday by reuniting with our 5 teammates who weren't able to make the trip to Prague for Worlds earlier this summer.  It was wonderful to have Alyssa, Caitlin, Ebae, Lisa, and Shannon back!  Unfortunately, KK and Smalls had to miss ECC because of family and work commitments, and we missed Caitlin and Jinny for all of Sunday (illness and work), but this weekend was a major step in putting all the pieces together for the team.

In our four games on Saturday, no opponent scored more than 8 points on us.  A great achievement considering we played the reigning World Champions, Fury, in our second round (14-8) and had a re-match of our close bronze-medal game from Worlds against Brute Squad in the showcase game (15-8).  All day our tough D generated block after block and the still weather conditions were perfect for the offense to flow beautifully.  

On Sunday, we finished our modified pool play games (non-standard tournament format) against Safari and Traffic.  The wind had picked up a bit by the Traffic game and we started out with our closest half yet (8-7) before pulling away in the second half (13-8 final score).  Going 6-0 in pool play set us up for another game against Fury in the finals.  Jumping out to a 6-4 lead, Riot then let Fury go on a 4 point run to take half.  A sweet Duffy D block earned Riot a break back to tie the game at 8's and the teams traded breaks till 10-10.  Down the stretch, both teams were playing incredibly tight D, but Fury was able to convert two turnovers into breaks and won the capped game 11-14.  

Lots of inspired play all weekend long and Riot now gets three weeks (including our retreat!) to get to improve our game before the Labor Day tournament in Santa Cruz.  Can't wait.