Hello, Dragon Coalition fans! This past weekend UCSD Women’s Ultimate Frisbee headed north to Santa Cruz, CA for Sean Ryan, our first away tournament of the 2024-2025 season. We got to the fields bright and early on Saturday to warm up for our first game of the day against Stanford Superfly. Superfly came out fairly strong and managed to score the first three points against us, but after a quick timeout and breathing exercise, D-Co was ready to amp it up. We proceeded to score the next six points in a row and remained ahead for the rest of the game using our decisive offense and lockdown defense, finishing the game with a 13-6 win. Our second game was against one of our fierce competitors from the previous season: UC Santa Cruz Sol. We’ve had many close games with them and this game proved to be no different as we went back and forth trading points. This being a developmental tournament, we had new handlers in the handler space, rookies as our main active cutters, and people playing with others they’ve never played with before, so being able to play close to our usual caliber was an incredibly impressive feat. The last point was a universe point and though D-Co fought hard, Sol managed to clinch the win this time, but we can’t wait to see them in the normal season to beat them and demonstrate our growth. Our third game started right afterward and was against UC Davis Rouge. This game was a test of endurance with a handful of points lasting longer than 10 minutes, and the D-Cos proved their determination by winning every single long point and many other points throughout the game. This game also had one of the two (2!!!) Callahans our team got this weekend as Sam “Fusion” Medina backed the Davis offense into their endzone and caught the D, getting a play most players can only dream of. Not long after, D-Co came out on top, winning 8-6. Our fourth and final game of the day was against Cal Poly Slo Motion, and it was a tough one. Everyone’s legs were feeling the exhaustion of 8 hours at the field and the three hard, close games before this. Both sides displayed good offense, able to break the other team’s zone defenses at least once and we played a close game against Slo Motion. Unfortunately, they broke away at the end to finish with a win of 12-8, so it looks like we’ll just have to wait for the regular season to show them what we’re made of. 

The next day D-Co got a slight reprieve with our first game not being until 11 AM, allowing us to get a full 8 hours of sleep and eat an entire (complimentary!) continental breakfast, so we were feeling good and ready to perform our best. We were locked in and focused during warm-ups and started our first game of the day against Santa Clara Rage. Our intensity showed as we crushed them, everyone playing phenomenal defense and running our disciplined, systematic offense like it was nobody’s business. It was in this game that we had our second Callahan of the weekend by none other than D-Co’s beloved captain Parissa “Tunez” Teli. We finished the game with a final score of 13-3, feeling good and ready to face off for our final game of the weekend against UC Berkeley Pi Queens. D-Co showed everyone the power of a full night's rest and came out with another demolishing win, Cal only scoring 3 points to our 9. Our rookies showed so much growth over this weekend and we can’t wait to see where this season takes us as we continue to get better and be the dominating team of the Southwest!