Spring quarter means it is time for our run to Nationals, which starts off strong with Sectionals held in Irvine, California. Seeded as second in the tournament and the top of our pool, Saturday games were easy money and DCo cooked all day, despite having many key individuals out due to injuries. 

As Irvine is only an hour away from San Diego, our players had an extremely early morning, hitting the road by 6am to arrive at the fields by 7:30am. Our first game of the day was against the University of Southern California. Our second year handlers, Sophia “Aera-Aera” Fitch and Cassiday “Pharaoh” Morgan had some crazy beautiful handler movement as well as some huge defensive plays. This game was an easy victory for DCo, winning 14-5. Next, we headed into our game against Cal State Long Beach, with some crazy skies from Yari “Beanabopcumberplop” Perkins as our deep-deep in our defensive zone and awesome offensive hucks from Nicole “Cairo” Moran. DCo continued to show out, taking a 15-1 victory over Long Beach. Going into our third game of the day, DCo would take on Cal Poly SLO, where Dylan “Ravine” Mullaney and Kezha “Crush” Neale-Sacks would run circles around their defenders and make some epic deep cuts for our handlers. DCo secured their win against SLO, with a final score of 10-7. 

With a record of 3-0 and winning our pool, DCo didn’t have to play a 4th game (woohoo!) and instead celebrated by going to (you guessed it) a Thai restaurant for a late lunch. We grubbed down on some delicious food, and then headed back to our hotel to shower and get ready for a delectable dinner at Cassidy “Pharoah” Morgan’s beautiful home, where her lovely parents made a feast of chili and cornbread and salad and brownies for us, and of course we absolutely devoured it. Our coaches, who we love and adore so much, had to bust their butts back down to San Diego for their own professional Ultimate Frisbee game Saturday night, so during dinner we had a watch party and cheered on our coaches. After we had filled our tummies to our heart’s content and watched our amazing coaches win their own game, we all headed back to the hotel for the night. 

Sunday morning was a big deal for DCo, because we were playing UCLA in the semi-finals. UCLA beat us last year at Regionals, and you best believe that DCo is out for blood when we play them. With some amazing cutter and handler defense on their best player from our own Dani “TONYT” Weatherwax, she absolutely shut down a lot of their passes and flow of the game, coupled with Margot “Sigma” Nissen’s unbelievable ability to grab any disc in the air, DCo took an easy victory over UCLA, finishing with a final score of 10-7. This put DCo into the Final, where we would play UCSB. You can tell that we have been working hard to perfect our zone-O, and thanks to Jessie “Saber” Finkelor’s chili handler movement and crazy cuts from Mars “Viper” Bau, DCo held possession of the frisbee extremely well and moved the disc well all the way to the endzone. We took UCSB to uni, where we were not able to score. While we lost 8-7, it was a very close game and DCo should be so proud of how well they did with so many players out. We placed 2nd in the tournament, which means we held our seed! And what a nice drive home, only an hour! All the DCos made it home safe and sound, and will be getting ready to compete at Regionals in 2 weeks. See you soon!