Buongiorno Dragon Coalition fans! This weekend your favorite Womxn’s Ultimate Disc team embarked upon our first tournament of the postseason, Sectionals at Cal Poly SLO! We’re getting into the elimination tournaments of the season, with every team fighting hard for a spot at Regionals and then for a bid to Nationals. Our Dragon Coalition has been working hard for these past weeks, and it’s surely showing on the field.

We started our weekend bright and early in sunny SLO with pool play, with the first games against USC and Long Beach. Very fun, high-spirited games to kick off the tournament, and our DCO’s killed it with basics! Foundational defense wins games, and we came out victorious in these first two games. For our final pool game, we faced UCLA, and after much windy play, a few awesome connections and scores, and an excessive amount of foul calls, DCO felt our first defeat of the weekend. The game gave us some great reps though, with Parissa “Tunez” Teli showing off some insane zone offense popping and some swaggy run-through D’s. To finish off the day, we entered pre-quarters against SDSU. They had a rizzy moment scoring a Callahan in a zone, but DCO came out victorious and advanced to quarters.

Our Motel 6 stay was eventful as usual, with the receptionist hitting on one of our captains, and some delicious food and boba at our favorite spot after the games. We recharged with FFF about injuries as athletes, and woke up early again for the second day of games. 

Our first game on Sunday was against UCSB, always an intense matchup. Chantal “Dzaddy” Rabay saved the day by laying out to pick up the trash (missed catches) a few times, and Josie “Bumpa” O’Toole had some sick run-through D’s. The game was a challenge, and it ended in a loss, but we’ll be seeing you again at Regionals for another rematch, SB! Liana “Rango” Kitchel had some awesome D’s in the sky, and Abbi “Pierogi” Shilts had an insane layout to score with a laser assist-pass from Audrey “BATS” Schneider. Altogether, some great Ultimate. 

We ended our day playing for second once again against UCLA, a rematch we looked forward to all weekend. Our team learned from mistakes made, and came together to fight hard. Kate “Guava” Lindeman had some sick snags and deep slays, as we call the new play. We focused on the basics and left it all out on the field, winning the redemption match and securing second place in the tournament! It was a very fun weekend, with lots of improvement for the whole team, and lots of fun on and off the field. Can’t wait to see what UCSD’s Dragon Coalition brings to Regionals in two weekends! DCO, You Know!