Last week and Ka-Pow at Bruges

So, being away in Bruges from Friday morning to Monday night means I haven't blogged in a while so here's a recap.
Thursday I didn't do anything, stupid rain.
Friday, I was on a coach from 8 a.m until 1:45 p.m and then walked 6 miles whilst exploring Bruges.
For anyone that doesn't know, Ka-Pow were at Bruges in Belgium for the annual (and 20th edition of) Tom's Tourney. It was a fantastically run tournament with great food and questionable weather! Ka-pow had a great showing and below is a short recap of the games. I will post about my thoughts on my performance tomorrow.
Saturday games:
Uprising (Poland) (Finished: 18th/20) Win 12-6. Strong win, score wise in Ka-Pow's first international game, but we needed this easier game to get our heads into our offensive systems.

Flow (Belgium) (Finished: 13th/20) Win 11-10. Sudden death win. Don't remember that much about this game, apart from it being tight.

Ultimate Vibration Old Stars (France) (Finished 2nd/20) Lose 10-5. I think this game deserved to be a lot closer. We came into the Saturday show game with nothing to lose. It rained a lot and they didn't play a whole lot better than us, so I don't remember why they won by as much as 5, but they were a strong opponent.

Sunday Games:
Orange (Dutch National Team) (Finished: 6th/20) Lose 9-5. Started out slow and sloppy and went down 4-0 going on to lose by 4 points. A big disappointment because this knocked us out of top 8 against a team we really should have challenged at least. This put us into the Power pools with 9th being the highest we could finish.

Catchup (Austria) (Finished: 14th/20) Win 10-9. Another close game, though this wasn't sudden death. Tom's Tourney rules means there is no cap so when time was called with us up 10-8, we had won even though Catchup went on to score the final point. This was a game of huge Ka-Pow plays. I had what was possibly one of the best scoring layout grabs I've ever made, Elias had a massive layout grab for a score off a huge huck from his brother which unfortunately left him injured, Pringle had an incredible layout D to stop a score and Dave Tyler had one of those incredible grabs in the middle of the field that he is known for. Strong game for us.

Pata Negra (Spain) (Finished: 11th/20) Win 10-7. Don't remember too much about this game, except that it was the first time the sun came out on the weekend.

Quarter Final (9v16) against FreezBeez (Belgium) (Finished: 16th/20) Win 15-7. This game could have been closer had we not gotten an upwind score in some very strong winds. After that, we got a couple more upwinds to take it away and never looked like slowing up against the gracious hosts. We got a compliment about showing exemplary spirit in this game in the circle afterwards and it was generally a great game to finish Sunday on, especially since we managed to get to the points cap for the first time.

Sunday night fitness: Dancing until 3 a.m

Monday Games:
Semi Final (9v12) against Sun Ultimate (France) (Finished: 12th/20) Win 13-9. A fairly strong game again for Ka-Pow but with a few offensive mistakes, made up for by strong defense. We were up 13-8 when the timer went, with a disc going into our endzone. I didn't want to end another game on the opponents scoring and I peeled off my man to help with the coverage of the player the huck was aimed for, I layed out and got to the disc but it popped up into the air for a score. Was dissapointed, but a win is a win.

Final (9v10) against Cota Rica (Italy) (Finished: 9th/20) Lose 8-7. Was a shame to lose this game. Even had the disc on the upwind endzone in sudden death for the win, but the huck that got it there was called back for a travel. Played it tight the whole way and lost to quality opponents, but it could have easily gone the other way.

So we finished 10th of 20 but finished with 6 wins and only 3 losses. Half way up the table and winning spirit was a good achievement at only our 2nd tournament and our first international showing with a not full team.
Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves as well, and the systems were running well, and I came away very much looking forward to the Open season with this great bunch of LADS!!!

EUROPE!

Tomorrow I will post about my personal play at Bruges and my fitness from the rest of this week so far. Stay tuned.