End of Season Summer 07’

For those of us who doesn’t play at the club level, the end of season summer league tournament is pretty much the biggest tournament all year. After months of regular league play, this was the chance to shine with all the teams playing together (over 35!).

I’m not going to say that I haven’t been a bit disappointed with the season this year. Unlike the other years, I got on a really good team this summer. Looking at the roster we were sure to be a top 10 team. Especially after winning the spring league with the majority of the same people, we were suppose to be in the elite group.

It all started falling apart after a very impressive first week when we won all of our games. We easily beat the 4 teams that we played. One of our main players got hurt. It was like a disease as the injuries spread to over half the team. All but one of our best players was hurt during most of the season. A few of us had some bad traveling schedules that didn’t let us go to the games, so we played short handed most of the season.

The week before the end of season tournament was the first time we had everyone back. Just like the first week, the team won all their games. However, unlike the first week, it was close and very hard fought.

As many of you know who have played team sports, it’s not enough to just have the talent. If the team chemistry is not there, it’s not going to work. We struggled against teams that were far less talented than us, but because they’ve played together all summer, they have the teamwork and chemistry that lets them play much better as the sum of whole then each individually.

During the tournament we were put in a bracket with 2 top 10 teams and a top 20 team. There are 5 teams in our bracket and the top 2 goes to the A bracket which will compete for the championship.

We lost our first game to the first top 10 team, and then what I think is our best game of the tournament, we upset the other top 10 team in our bracket. We just have to beat the top 20 team and we’ll be in the A bracket.

Everything that could go wrong did during this game. It was a good competitive game, but we couldn’t pull it out in the end. We ended up being 2-2 for the day and that wasn’t good enough to make it.

We ended up being in the C bracket and we did win that bracket on Sunday, but like beating a kid in a wheelchair at basketball, it’s not something to brag about.

The C championship game was pretty fun though. Before the game, everyone first shotgun a beer before play started. During most of the game, there was always at least one person that was drinking on the field. I was trying to sober up a bit so I was drinking Jack and Coke.

Another reason not to be bragging about winning the C bracket.

It was a fun time overall. I’ll miss the playing 3 – 4 times a week during the summer. I’m gonna have to find another way to stay in shape.

Well, there’s always next summer.

Fall league starts soon. We’ll see what happens with that.