January 27, 2018 marked the first tournament for the UCSD Women’s Club Ultimate Frisbee’s A-team. The team traveled to Santa Barbra with high hopes of showing off their hard work and skills. Starting the tournament seeded fifth, the team was eager to prove to everyone that they deserved a better spot.
The first day started off strong, competing against Washington University (13-6), San Luis Obispo (13-5), and USC (13-4). The Washington University game really set the tone for the day, where we saw a lot of the younger players stepping up and taking charge. Alex “Dante” Diaz, one of our newest additions had amazing defense and caused a lot of turnovers. Also, our second-year players, Madison “Dash” Tenney and Sara “Frost” Zhang had a great connection to the end zone for a score! The next two games followed similarly with many scores and forced turnovers, allowing the team to slide right into the quarter finals.
The second day started with an early 8am game against UCSB Burning Skirts. After eating a great breakfast cooked by one of our very own’s “Mama G”, the team was pumped for another successful day. The game started with the Psychos gaining an early lead, ending the half at 7-3. A lot of sprints and dump throws later, the team found themselves in the Semis with a great throw from Jasmine “Pyro” Simmons. This lead us to the second game of the day, playing against a national level team, Stanford. Although starting the game off with a bit of hesitation, the team was able to pull themselves together and give Stanford a great game. With countless huge layout D’s by Dena “Chrome” Elimelech, and the two captains Stacy “Aero” Tran and Leanne “Muse” Go leading the team with amazing chemistry, the team ended the half with the score being a close 5-7. After a long and hard battle, the team finished the game at 8-13, with many notes to take back to practice and come back stronger the next time.
The last game played was for third place against Berkeley. Not having played this team since the last SB tournament, we were excited to see how the team matched up with this top ranked team. However, a few doubts were circling around due to the team’s fatigue after just playing their hardest against Stanford. As the game started, these doubts soon faded away as the team started off with a lead. By half time the score was 7-1, and the team was excited. Ending the game at 12-6, and an overall third place in the tournament, the Psychos were honestly relived that they could finally get out of their cleats and put ice on all the acquired boo-boos from the day.
If you want to see the Psychos doing their thing, come out to our next tournament at UCSD during the weekend of Febuary the 17th.
-Kelli “Krypto” Iwamoto