Purple Reign played in the Mankato indoor, our first game starting shortly after 1 AM on saturday morning with session 1 ending at 5 AM. We then played from 10:50pm on Saturday to roughly 2 AM Sunday morning.
Short Story: Purple Reign won it's first ever tournament victory over a field of 7 other teams with a record of 5-0. We topped Hamline, St. Olaf B, Eau Claire (twice), and Macalester. Rock.
Long Story:
We opened against St. Olaf B with very few real highlights. Our play was generally flat and listless, but it was also 1 AM. SOB ran hard and took us to half yet we proved we are truly a second half team by getting our groove and pulling out a win at the last minute. I forget the final score. It was really close.
Our second game of the morning was Macalester's Blue Monkeys. Vengeance was in the eyes of Reign, as we revisited our defeat at the Fall '07 MacTommie. Shortly after the start, there was a fall, a cry, and a stoppage of play. Our smiling brother was laying on the ground and not smiling, for he had fractured his collarbone. We dispatched Emergency Contact Smokey with ambulance noise action to hustle Smiles to the Mankato hospital. Reign then vowed to win for Smiles. And we did. Our feet were swift, our decisions smart, and our handlers chilly. Rock. St. Thomas 2, bad guys 0.
The third game was expected to be our most challenging, squaring off against UW Eau Claire's Eau-zones. We went down two immediately. We eventually figured things out, got ourselves back together and focused and went on to win our pool opposite Mankato (who was at this time also undefeated).
Reigns fourth game, the first of the second session, we played a near savage Hamline. Hamline really caught us off balance and forced us to really use our depth and every advantage we could get. We came from behind for the win, but boy was it close...
Fifth, and championship game, was against Eau Claire again, who came to us fresh off a win over Mankato's Blue Skunks. It was a pretty intense game, lots of long points, lots of hucks, massive D's by both teams, all in all, it was a damn good game. It came down to Eau Claire being up 12-10, and us fighting back to 12-12, Universe Point. Reign started on D, and put the pressure on immediately. Our final possession, we used our Corvette to Louis for the win.This was Purple Reigns first tournament victory. Hopefully the first in a string of many more.
History Making Team: Here's an incomplete picture.
Smiles
Smokey
Heine
BFG
Chicken Bread
Louis
Leaf
Frogger
Bubbles
Doodle
Ironman
Joe
Spooner
Rookie
Ice
Israel
&
Bueno.
