2010 WL Tourney:

Chimbley Sweeps Ascend

Sunday, February 21, 2010, Chapel Hill. Chimbley Sweeps pulled away with a 4-point run in the second half of the finals against the red Setzer team to complete a sweep of all of their games over the weekend's two-day Winter League tourney, taking possession of the Loretta Cup to become the league's 22nd championship team.

Saturday

After six weeks of cancellations through January and February due to rain, snow, and generally sloppy field conditions, North Carolina's weather finally took a turn for the better, producing five days of sunny skies, rising temperatures, and steady breezes, which all served to dry and make playable the fields that had for weeks sat snow covered or sodden. Saturday's 9:30am games began with an above-freezing chill that disappeared rapidly to become by 2pm a high of nearly sixty degrees. Saturday's cloudless skies produced an on-off breeze that never rose above our miles per hour.

The league's twenty teams were divvied up into four pools and assigned to four different two-field sites to play out their round-robin games, with the top two teams in each pool earning a berth in the 8-team single-elimination rounds on Sunday. Field sites were Lowes Grove Middle School (Durham), where Pool A's Green Light Party in the USA sat atop the initial rankings for the five teams there; Bethesda Athletic Association (Durham), where Pool B's teams fought to topple the number one seed High Maintenance; River Forest Park (Durham), where the absent captain's eponymous team, Setzer, ruled the Pool C roost; and Hooker Fields (Chapel Hill), where Chimbley Sweeps began their tourney domination with victories over the field in Pool D.

The initial seedings nearly held true for the top eight teams in the tourney, as seven of those eight advanced to Sunday, though not without some flip-flopping along the way. In Pool A, for instance, the number one Green Light Party in the USA dropped its final game against the Ribault/LeDonne squad in the fifth round. While both had been slated to advance, Ribault/LeDonne took the overall #1 seed while Green Light entered the elimination fray with a #8 seed overall. In Pools C and D, the status quo held, and higher seeds Setzer and Chimbley Sweeps stayed atop their respective pools, with Buckle up! and Poore Choices each continuing to hold down second place.

Pool B was the anomaly, however, and the high seed there, the Poulos/Tucker juggernaut High Maintenance, dropped to second, while the third place team in the pool, Snap Dragon, rose up to take pool precedence. Even though Pool B's number two team, Jason Bivins and Tom Gill's Stink Eye, ran off two solid victories in its first two rounds, the team could not find the same intensity and focus after their third-round bye, and they lost a close third game before submitting to a drubbing in their fourth game against High Maintenance.

Season-ending Standings (with ties resolved)

Seeding Pattern for 4 pools

Pools (using seeding pattern)

Pool Play results

Sunday

Sunday's elimination games began at 9am, with temperatures already above freezing and warming rapidly so that by 10am, nearly all were wearing shorts and resorting to sun screen. It was another cloudless day, with variable winds that occasionally rose to seven miles per hour, never quite enough to sustain any steady use of a zone defense. The quarters matchups had to be divided into two rounds to accommodate the use of but two fields at the Hooker Fields site, with the early round at 9am and the second quarters round at 10:45am.

Quarters

The initial round saw Michael Denardis and Sean Childers' Carolina-based Snap Dragon facing off against Nick Poore and Rachel Gross' Poor Choices squad, a solid mix of experienced former and current club players. With the home-field advantage, Snap Dragon began the game strong, taking the first point, exploiting its ability to run a very well controlled ho stack offense. The game remained close all the way down to the wire, and it was the slightly more mature play of Poore Choices that prevailed in this 15-point game that stretched to a 17-15 Poore Choices victory.

The other early quarters matchup was the Setzer team (led in John Setzer's absence by Frances Deschenes and Brian Lang) versus Green Light Party in the USA. In their earlier regular season matchup, Green Light had dominated, nullifying Setzer's poachy deep defense with an under game that revolved around Green Light's Brett Matzuka, able to squirrel under and around the Setzer defense to keep the disc moving. In the quarters matchup, however, that aspect of the Green Light game did not gain traction in the first half, as the team in general did not seem ready to play, making a long series of unforced errors that, despite flashes of competence, put them in a 2-8 hole at the end of the first half. Despite a long 1:45 minute-round, it was not enough time for Green Light to make a sufficient comeback, and with Setzer already at 13 when the cap sounded, it was all Green Light could do to pull within one by game's end, losing 13-14.

The late quarters paired maroon-colored Ribault/LeDonne against Taylor Pope and Victor Maneilly's Buckle up!. This game started with both teams trading, but by half, it was Buckle up! ahead 8-5, and the second half was more of the same, Taylor Pope sending it deep to several of his receivers time and again, while Motts Mueller, Mick Ribault, and Becky LeDonne were unable to do the same with their maroon squad. Final: 15-9, Buckle up! Meanwhile, in the other late quarters game, Chimbley Sweeps and High Maintenance were slugging it out, each team using a combination of short and long sequences to score. Strong person-to-person defense by each team kept the pressure on each squad's offense to simply maintain possession. High Maintenance was anchored by its youth (Brian Brickhouse, Eric Martin, Joey Saba, Sharon Tucker, and Stephen Poulos), while Chimbley Sweeps, with a slightly deeper roster of older players, worked around the play of Jared Inselmann, Josh Mullen, and Mick Styers. At the end, it was Chimbley Sweeps, 14-13.

Quarters Recap:
Poore Choices over Snap Dragon, 17-15
Setzer over Green Light, 14-13
Buckle up! over Ribault/LeDonne, 15-9
Chimbley Sweeps over High Maintenance, 14-13

Semis

The semis matchups had the winners of the early quarters round face each other, while, similarly, the winners of the late quarters matchups faced one another: Poore Choices versus Setzer and Buckle up! versus Chimbley Sweeps. Both semis matchups were close in the initial going, with the eventual winner up only by one or two goals at half, but in the second half the gaps widened. Buckle up! simply could not match the depth in Chimbley Sweeps roster, while Chimbley Sweeps was able to successfully force Buckle up! to play a shorter game than it was accustomed to, with more passes and consequently more chances for errors. Chimbley Sweeps ran away with it, 15-10. A similar story unfolded in the Setzer - Poore Choices game, with the Setzer squad taking away Poore Choices' ability to send the disc deep, capitalizing on its force middle defense to take away the short game and tempt long passes that would be taken down by deep poach Lang. Despite the firepower of Poore Choices' Troy Revell, Nick Poore, and Brad Trubey; the strong defensive work of Alan Ellis, Knute Svenson, and Kurt Chapman; and the strong supporting play from Jessi Jones, Scott Vandelinde, and Rachel Gross, Setzer's red squad time and again found occasion to send the deep shots, either coming from Brian Lang or Augie Kreivenas (to one another, or to any of a multitude of other cutters). Final: 15-10, Setzer.

Semis Recap:
Chimbley Sweeps over Buckle up!, 15-10
Setzer over Poore Choices, 15-10

Finals

The finals, then, pitted Mike Riley and Mick Styers black-hued Chimbley Sweeps against the red Setzer squad. Both teams featured strong, deep rosters with players who were capable of fast, sustained play. The edge, however, seemed to lie with Chimbley Sweeps, as there was no one on the Setzer squad who could consistently prevent Jared Inselmann from getting the disc and moving it to a teammate. Even when Inselmann was kept from outright scoring, there were many others on the Chimbley Sweeps squad who could take control, which was especially the case in the second half. The game began with Chimbley pulling, but a miscue on a long shot got them the disc and their first score, a 30-yarder to Dennis Nield from Inselmann. The second point had Setzer working the disc to mid-field, with everyone coming under while Frances Deschenes went deep to take a long shot from Augie Krievenas for Setzer's first goal. A dropped pull in the third point gave Setzer possession two yards outside the goal. After a goal shot from Augie to Frances was called back, the disc was reset to Lang who, at stall 9, threw a hail mary into the congested endzone where a deflection off defending Chimbley player Ben Greene's hand sent the disc into Dwayne Purper's hands for another Setzer score. In the following point, strong pressure D by Setzer forced a turnover, and Andy Ivory was able to send a 15-yarder to Matt Avery for a goal. Each team was running its strongest players, testing the limits of the long and short games, trying to force each other into making errant or low-percentage passes. Chimbley was able to take the next two points, working the disc to the red zone where short passes gave them easy goals. Tied at 3s, Setzer's squad worked just a couple of passes to within midfield, where Kreivenas sent a deep shot to a sprinting Lang who was able to pull down the disc past the outstretched hands of Chimbley defender Josh Mullen. Another Chimbley miscue gave the disc back to Setzer, and a Tim Lupo to Purper 20-yarder gave them a 5-3 edge.

Chimbley methodically worked the next four points for scores, the first three workmanlike sequences with short passes, and the fourth a long 50-yard flick from Tom Reid to Dave Anderson. This four-point swing put Chimbley up two, 7-5. In the next five-point sequence, Setzer scored on two Lang shots and a throw from Kreivenas, but two Dave Anderson to Liz Willetts connections gave Chimbley the half, 9-8.

The first six points in the second half were a tit-for-tat trading match, each team scoring one, then relenting to the other, till another Kreivenas to Lang shot restored the one-point difference, Chimbley up, 12-11. A short goal to Greene from Mick Styers continued the seesaw, but in the next sequence, Chimbley regained the disc and worked it back upfield where Mick found buddy Kinnarney. Another break, then another by Chimbley gave them a 16-11 lead. The Setzer squad was beginning to look spent, and the Chimbley players were crowding the sidelines, eager to continue their run. A string of contested Setzer passes got the disc down the flick sideline to Liz Mahanna, where she was able to throw a 15-yarder to Andy Ivory for their 12th goal. The next point was classic Chimbley, a series of short passes, several resets, a crossfield shot, then a two-pass sequence on the breakside for the score, the conclusion a quick 20-yarder from Greene to Anderson at the front cone. Chimbley Sweeps swarmed the field to celebrate their 17-12 victory, which culminated in the team hoisting and then drinking from the Loretta Cup.

All hail the swarthy, sooty Chimbley Sweeps!

Video

Video of the final point is here, with promise from videographer Charles Kerr that there will be more points posted in the future: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hec46uQSXpA

Horizontal Line Score for Finals
Chimbley::1............2..3........4..5..6..7.....8.........9..10.....11.....12.....13..14..15..16......17
Setzer....::...1..2..3.........4..5................6.....7..8............9.....10.....11.......................12

SmugMug Pix

There were four dedicated SmugMug photographers at the elimination rounds on Sunday: Doug Wilson, Samuel Adams, Michelle Staben-Wobker, and Arnett Brown. Look for their pix, when they post them, here:
http://tfda.smugmug.com/

Remember that any hardcopy picture purchased from this site contributes to the Ultiplex fund!

Vertical Line Score for Finals

TFDA is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit: IRS Tax #56-2038555.
719 W. Cornwallis Rd., Durham, NC 27707.