Eugene Solstice just wrapped up this weekend and saw Revolver and Fury winning the Elite and Women’s division respectively.

Rules
There were no funny rules or formats this year at Solstice. I got caught up with having a baby, coaching and work and fell down on the job. The format and rules were as vanilla as vanilla can get. Elite and Women’s were two pools that played into semifinals. Open and Coed used the ECC format (round robin into finals.)

Everyone I talked to expressed disappointment that I hadn’t cooked up anything interesting, so I immediately began planning for next year. Expect a couple interesting rules modifications, but the real excitement will be from a great new format!

Women’s
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Fury brought seven returners (of the twelve they are keeping,) four of whom are second-year players. Their median age has dropped from 31 to 25. Riot brought a team that is 100% turned over since the 2004 National Champion team. Zeitgeist, Traffic, Schwa, Slackjaw, Special Forces (Montana) and Underground (a new Seattle team, largely Viva plus UW) all brought teams in various states of upheaval. None of that mattered. Fury beat Riot in the final.

The final wasn’t particularly well played as both teams looked like they were finding their way toward an identity. There were lots of turnovers off of bad decisions and weird mistakes. They are clearly feeling their way toward functional offenses and the spacing on both sides looked murky and unsure. For Riot, Smalls, Alyssa and KK were putting up big throws in the absence of Jenn Willson, Gambler led the way on defense and Miranda seemed to be taking a step back to make room for her teammates. For Fury, Jodi Dozono was carrying a lot of weight for an otherwise young team, Slap and Georgia Bosscher (you read that right) were putting up big throws that were successful often enough. Fury put on an run to open the game and after the half, so that even when Riot made some noise and a run (using man in the first and zone in the second,) they were too far down to ever really threaten. It is a complete fail for me not to know the score, but I don’t. Since I am guessing, I’ll say 15-12 or 15-11.

Teams on the Up
Fury: Reload and keep shooting.
Zeitgeist: Handily beat the team ahead of them last year (Schwa)
Underground: Second team from Seattle: beat Traffic, challenged Riot, hung with Fury, made Semis.
Special Forces: Please play women’s instead of coed.

Even
Slackjaw: Beat Underground, challenged Traffic, coughed it up against Special Forces Sunday AM.
Riot: Made Finals. Lost to Fury.

Down
Traffic: Lost to Riot and Underground. That makes them 3rd in their section.
Scwha: Missing Chelsea (Team USA) and a team identity.

Elite
Revolver is for real. They handled everyone they played this weekend, beating them a variety of ways (pressure push against Rhino, blow out against the Monkey, punishing mistakes against the Fish.) Combining the mentally tough small ball Revolver has traditionally played with the three big, fast Coloradans (Beau, Mac and Martin) pushes this team over the top from Dark Horse to Short List.

The Fish have a lot of work to do. Their roster has gotten younger and younger in the last couple of years and they are very dependent on their youth to perform on defense. What I saw this weekend is not going to get it done. They failed to put away a scrappy Rhino team and pissed away their chances against Revolver. Their offense looked fine.

The finals was Revolver the whole way. They came out and capitalized on Sockeye mistakes and bad luck to go up 3-0. Sockeye’s offense finally got it together and the teams traded through half until 10-8. Sockeye got its first break when Skip scraped up a ridiculous lay-out grab to make it 10-9. Sockeye pulls, plays great d and forces a tough drop on the Revolver goal line. Then they drop the dump. 11-9. Revolver breaks them twice in a row to go up 13-9 game over. The teams trade again to a 15-11 final.

Both teams hucked a lot. Revolver hucking not just to Beau, but to their whole stable of little fast guys. Sockeye went to Ray Illian and BJ (both of UW) again and again. Final stats: Revolver offense: 11 of 12 and never really tested. Sockeye offense: 10 of 14 off of some silly mistakes and a 1 for 5 hucking day from Ben Wiggins. Revolver defense: 4 for 14 and a nice job of pressuring Sockeye into mistakes and punishing them for it. Sockeye defense: 1 for 12.

Teams on the Up
Revolver: Handled Sockeye in the final (and everyone else along the way.)
Rhino: Beat Furious to make Semis. Showed themselves to be legit, if a bit thin.
TFP Men: Half a coed team finished third in their pool, beating Voodoo?

Even
Furious: Typical Solstice. 80 screaming lab monkeys, Lugsdin in running shoes and a rumor of MG, Kirk and Shank playing in the fall.
YR/Shark: Played okay. Didn’t beat any big teams.

Down
Voodoo: Lost to half of a coed team and a non-practicing Portland team.
Sockeye: see above
Oregon Ultimate: Between Rhino, Portland and Ego (coed) there is enough talent to field a damn good team. Somebody please get it together!

Hi5 won the Open division and Manifest Destiny (from Eugene) won Coed.

Thanks to everyone who came and played. Enjoy your summer and good luck in the fall.

This year’s version of ECC is being helmed by Ben Wiggins, my partner in crime on The Huddle, and me. As things progress and we get closer to the tournament, we’ll have more and more updates and information here to fill you in. And, hopefully, once tournament time comes we’ll have plenty of live updates from the fields.

For now though, you can whet your world’s-best-tournament-appetite at the official Emerald City Classic website. There is info about tournament travel, sponsors, and schedules, and we have recently updated the near-finalized list of teams, save one Mixed team TBD and the questionable availability of a Scandinavian team.