Air Squids LITE took a trip up the coast to Cal Poly SLO for their first sanctioned tournament of the season. 

LITE woke up bright and early for their first match against UCLA Smoke at 9:00 am. A complete warmup by LITE helped them get off to a strong start. LITE struck first blood after a deep connection from Vivek "Yuti" Gadicherla to KJ "Jamba" Jamakhandi set up a wide-open continuation throw into the endzone for Amogh "Papa" Ramachandra. LITE subsequently earned two straight breaks to set up a commanding 3-0 lead. The match was long from done, however, with Smoke bringing a physicality that LITE could not match. Smoke ran a conventional Vert Stack but used their player's speed and physicality to often shake off marks and create space. Their cuts would often cause crashes between players leading to several uncalled picks throughout the game. The final score was a hard-fought 8-13.

LITE’s next match would be against the 2-seeded GCU. The team came into the match with the goal of increasing their intensity of play. However, it was hard matching up against bigger and faster GCU lines. After falling behind a couple of points via monster hucks by GCU at the start of the match, LITE stepped up their marks. Notable moments were from Collin "Apollo" Ong, who successfully prevented multiple hucks from getting off, and Bryce "Hessian" Long, who stood tall after passes to the break side. However, a lack of handler movement and well-timed cuts in the Ho-Stack led to a lot of forced hucks into double and triple coverage. LITE fell swiftly to GCU 2-13. Despite the struggles on offense, the defense forced GCU to grind out possessions. This would translate into improved defense for the rest of the tournament. 

The final game of pool play came against the Cal Poly SLO C Team. Coming immediately after the GCU game in which the team was dominated, LITE needed to change their attitude to finish the day with a win. The veterans on the team set the tone of the game. Arda "Baby Maz" Gurel diced up the SHYLOCK's defense and ended with a game-high 5 assists. Jared "Momo" Jose could not be guarded as a cutter, finding open space on undercuts as well as deep cuts. Meanwhile, the defense, with some minor hiccups, prevented easy open unders from SLO cutters, forcing intense handler movement. In the end, Baby Maz threw a lucrative hammer that flattened out at the top and fell straight into the arms of Papa for the game-sealing point. The match ended in a comfortable 13-9 win, which ended the day on a positive note.

On Sunday, the boys woke up energized and ready for the bracket play.  However, they were invigorated in their first game against Berkeley's Ursa Minor. At the beginning of the game, through sheer willpower and knowledge of the system, Lite went on an early run. It also helped a ton as Momo was catching everything that was and was not thrown at him. However, Ursa Minor decided to turn up the heat in the second half with some tight D, and Lite started giving ground. Though the game ended at the score 9-12, the Squids fought hard, with encouragement from the returners, especially the constant motivation from Joseph "FanFan" Toscano.

Our second game of the day was against the SDSU B team. At this time of the day, Lite not only had to play hard but they were forced to contest with the strong winds that blew across the field. Evidence of this could be seen in the inability of the team to throw flick hucks up the field. There were also instances where many of Lite’s players were thrown to the ground by the heavy defense that was run, an unfortunate moment being when Jamba got sandwiched between two defenders. However, the team fought through the adversity by making small passes, which exploited the zone that SDSU ran throughout the match. This, coupled with a strong showing from the rookies during numerous rookie-only lines allowed the team to squeak out a narrow win with a score of 10-9. A big highlight of the game was the first and only Callahan of the tournament, achieved by rookie Papa.

The last game of the day was against UCSD B team Blackout. A familiar foe Lite had faced before at SBQ. Lite was facing numerous struggles from the interesting cross winds that blew across the field, the muddy field, and the large number of players on the side of UCSB blackout. Similar to SDSU, Blackout was running a zone defense to counter the ho stack that Lite had set up. Doing a good job of contesting Lite's unders and the wind-stopping Lite's attempts of clean deep hucks. Lite started off slow but was able to push the disk down the field with short passes to contest the wind and good team coordination. Notably, Momo was giving his all with multiple attempts and success of layout d’s and multiple attempts of layout catches. The team fought valiantly but it was evidently clear that Lite was nearing the end of its energy after half. With Blackout's huge roster compared to the relatively smaller roster that Lite was fielding, Lite still tried its best to fight hard. A series of unfortunate events and mistakes led Lite to turn the disk several times. But valiant efforts from Ben "Casa" Cohan-Schiff with multiple footblocks and Papa with his footblock made it possible for Lite to keep fighting on. But in the end, the multitude of exhaustion, wind, and field errors lead to the defeat of Squid Lite. Everyone put in their best efforts but Lite inevitably lost to Blackout 9-5. Ending PDQ on a bit of a sour note, but also one of hope for improvement and refinement of both our offense and defense. 

In the end, Squid Lite put up a valiant effort. Winning 2 of 6 games played with many of them being close. PDQ was a great experience to show what the team and individuals needed to improve and what worked. Many of the games Lite played were close showing that with a bit more time and energy, Lite will be able to change the outcome next time.