Hello Dragon Coalition fans! This past Saturday, UCSD’s Womxn’s Ultimate team woke
up bright and early to embark on the trip to UCLA for our first tournament of the
2024-2025 season. This tournament, we were split into three different, Hunger
Games-inspired teams: Team Gale (UCSD X), Team Peeta (UCSD Y), and Team Katniss
(UCSD Z). With each team playing 4 games in just that one day, the D-COs were
working hard all day. This tournament gave the rookies a chance to finally show off all of
their newly learned ultimate skills to the world, and they did not disappoint.

As the sun rose over the UCLA campus, we started off on our first games, with Team
Gale facing UCLA X, Team Peeta facing Irvine, and Team Katniss facing USC. Team
Peeta was victorious, and Team Gale and Katniss played incredibly close games but both
lost by one point. They were some great, spirited games to start the tournament off
strong, with some awesome, foundational, shut down defense. In the second game, Team
Peeta and Gale were defeated by UCLA Y and Claremont respectively, and Team Katniss
won against Occidental. The rookies were showing up with some excellent cutting and
were catching some crazy throws. However, team Katniss lost their next two games
against UCLA X and UCLA Y. Team Peeta played their next two games against USC and
SDSU, ending the day with no more wins but feeling proud of the amount of games they
played and how hard they fought. Team Gale went on to win their next two games against
Long Beach and Irvine!

At the end of the beautiful, sunny LA day, every D-Co was sore and satisfied with the
long day of playing the best, most fun sport of all time. It was a super great day filled
with lots of tough competition and pumped energy. Everyone was able to get a bunch of
playing time and experience, and there was a ton of improvement by everyone. However,
despite the tough competition, there was also definitely an emphasis on sportsmanship
and the spirit of the game by all teams, with many spirit circles and spirit awards. Can’t
wait to see what our Dragon Coalition brings to KFall next weekend!