Saturday, May 12, 2007

Weekend Open Thread - Westerns and State Championship Edition

Arguably the biggest weekend in ultimate this weekend, huge tournaments coast to coast.

The big show...


State Championships...

Other tournaments...

Last minute predictions welcome now, and post scores as you hear them. I will be receiving text messages from Luke throughout the day tomorrow so i will update as soon as i have access to those for the Westerns scores.

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50 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know how useful the WA Mixed Championships are going to be because there are five out of about 25 Washington teams signed up and three of those teams are ringers (sorry Northwest). Also the Tournament is during the DiscNW mixed league which contains the majority of WA state teams. My team would have had to forfeit a league game to compete in the tournament. The defacto state championship should be the DiscNW playoffs held in the last half of May.

Anonymous said...

something tells me that this states is simply to set the precedent for next year so teams and leagues can plan for it, making it a legitimate tournament.

Mike Mullen said...

Anon 11:52 is mostly correct. Anon 10:54, who are you and who do you represent?

The ringer teams from NWS are in fact our single gender JV's combined to form coed teams so those kids can get more experience. Our varsities will be at Westerns. And how can it be a ringer team if all the kids are actually from the same school? I guess that is a compliment.

We scheduled coed states on this date so that NWS and the other Westerns teams would not be able to dominate states like Spring Reign.

Monroe will likely win coed states. They almost beat Lakeside in the 3/4 game at single gender state. They are great team from a town about 20 miles outside of Seattle. Their boys team would have been great fun to watch at Westerns. Hopefully they will be there next year.

It is only 5 teams because most of the coed league teams didn't want to pay $20 per player to play for a state championship. That is understandable and I hope that we get to a better UPA youth memebership policy so that more teams will come to state, but that hasn't happend yet. We were hoping that more of the coed teams would pay the $20 and actually do single gender states too, but only a couple did that.

I think Monroe will win the league championship too, though Ballard (who also could win league or state), ICS, and Bush have really put together some quality teams. And watch out for Roosevelt, they are the next Nathan Hale but they are also bigger than Hale.

I'll be going up to Westerns to watch so I will try to post some updates.

-Mike

Anonymous said...

Mike,
Anon 10:54 here
I'm from Edmonds-Woodway. I completely understand the points you are making. The mixed state will probably turn into an institution and turn into a great tournament. Best of luck to your teams this weekend.
-Alex

Anonymous said...

scores are up on the SRT for westerns' first round. everything holding seed except for Rockhurst going down on universe point to seattle boys academy 10-11.

looks like those scores will be updated throughout the day.

Anonymous said...

word from the PA State champs -

teams switched around for the D pool based on a Boiling Springs drop out of the tournament.

Hampton wins the pool 3-0, beating Prep 13-6 i believe?

According to sources, Prep gave up on the game, three of their best players including the aforementioned captain Joe Kruse, Matt Paparone, and Greg Owens did not show at the games at all, leaving prep without some of their stars and "leadership" personell.

Given that they lost to Ohara on universe point, Montour 13-10, and Hampton by the previously mentioned score.

Goes down in PA states history as one of the better, "what would have happened if..." questions.

one thing is for sure, there are definitely some prep players pissed off at other members of their team.

unfortunate day for PHUEL today.

Anonymous said...

As you can see on the Score Reporter, it seems that all the top 4 seeds won their respective pools. Hampton goes down 8-2 at half to Pennsbury before giving them a tough game but still falling 15-10. Mount Lebanon and North Hills rematch the PHUL Championship game just 2 days ago. Lebo's able to score one more than they did previously, but North Hills takes the game 15-10. North Hills and Pennsbury, as expected, will duel tomorrow for the State Championship. Hampton and Lebo will regroup and try to knock off other teams and the loser of the championship game in the second place bracket.

Anonymous said...

how bout St Johnsbury any news on how the ladies there are doin? I'm predicting Johnsbury winning the tournament

Anonymous said...

hows the VA state tournament going? is HB woodlawn rolling?

Anonymous said...

will the game between north hills and pennsbury be for number one seed at easterns?

Anonymous said...

Wow, I'm gonna bet the semi's for the girls divison will look EXACTLY the same on the score reporter for girls div and dudes: NWS v. NHHS, SEHS v. CHS.

-Alex
ICS

TomBassett said...

northwest over south eugene 15-4 in the finals to seal their three-peat

Anonymous said...

I heard that it was tied 4-4 and that Northwest went on an 11 point run to win it. Churchill won 15-3 in the girls finals.

Simon Montague
Seattle Academy

Anonymous said...

Biggest upset of the tourney was south over churchill in semis. NWS girls were really tired in their final after their intense semi against hale. Same thing seemed to happened to south open.

Alex from ICS

Anonymous said...

It looks like sty won st johnsbury beating CHS ladies 13-1, nmh 13-4, longmeadow, 13-5, watchung 11-5, and St Johnsbury8-5.

Anonymous said...

PHUL blog has Pennsbury over NH 15-13 in the final. Can anyone confirm and/or give more details?

McCabe said...

consider it confirmed, i heard Pennsbury was up as much as 14-11 before North Hills came back a bit.

Peyote was up 8-7 at half though. Word from the fields was two impressive teams running smooth offenses, lots of hucking.

Philly reigns supreme!

Anonymous said...

How could Northwest own so badly, are they better then Paideia?

Anonymous said...

Paideia owns pretty bad as well, compare both teams scores against other teams and the scores are pretty similar. However NWS did dominate westerns and Paideia doesn't have a chance at owning Easterns (due to them not going, not them being bad).

Anonymous said...

also, look at Paidea under the college division...they won 2 tourny's and their only loss was to Georgia Tech by 2...i would pay to see a matchup between the two....meet in st louis??...

J. Becker said...

As a resident of St. Louis, let me just say that that would be most excellent.

Anonymous said...

northwest would beat paidea 15-9. They havent lost a single highschool game in 3 years.

Anonymous said...

neither had amherst, and look at them now

Anonymous said...

I am tired of people saying who would win and giving score perdictions, nobody has seen both teams play this year, I think that both teams should just play each other several times (just lots of games or one big game with lots of breaks) and that would settle all arguments.

Jay Huerbin said...

McCabe, you can't actually be serious in Philly reigning supreme, can you?

Yeah, they won a battle, but Pittsburgh brought home 3 of the top 4 seeds in the tournament. This shows that aside from one elite team in Philadelphia, which mind you beat North Hills by only 2 points (15-13), Pittsburgh is now the more dominant league in PA.

The tables have turned...

McCabe said...

philly took home the title, thats what i mean by philly reigning supreme.

last year the semis were pennsbury, wissahickon, cbeast and mt lebo based on a universe point for lebo over lower merion.

naturally there is going to be a balance between the two leagues of who takes the other spots in semis, who knows what would have happened if prep players had decided to show up this weekend.

next year will be definitely be interesting to see if north hills can live up to the hype as being the very early natural favorite, or if pennsbury or another phuel team will step up and fill the void.

dominance doesnt change in one year young grasshopper. if phul can maintain a grasp of the championship for a few years in a row, then i would be ok with saying pittsburgh is the more dominant league. but the records speak for themselves - 4 of the last 4 pa state champs have been phuel.

one thing is for sure though, pa is definitely a hot bed of high school ultimate and will only continue to climb the ranks of the national scene.

i can easily forsee a amherst-league style atmosphere in PA develop over the next 3-4 years. when north hills and pennsbury raise the bar certainly other teams will follow, no one likes to be beat.

hopefully, i personally would like to see all 3 leagues find some level of elite parity, with philly of course having the teensiest of edge.

cant wait to see the hs leagues develop in the erie and scranton regions of the state, then we'll be talking.

Anonymous said...

pics from westerns?

Anonymous said...

4 of the last 4 State Titles have been won by PHUEL.

3 of the last 4 State Titles have been won by Pennsbury.

TomBassett said...

someone needs to report all the rest of the scores from the PA state tournament. it says reporting scores for this touranment is closed, so that needs to be changed...

Anonymous said...

Great play at Westerns this weekend. Northwest is in a class by themselves. On offense they score at will because they always seem to have 2-3 mismatches in their favor. Their defense is like a pack of sharks, ready to pounce on the slightest mistake.

However, Northwest loses a lot of seniors. Look to South Eugene to break the Northwest lock at Westerns next year.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, even though the final wasn't close at all we got to see some cool match ups people were trashing about before: Casey Ikeda on Jacob Janin and John Bloch on Sam K-S. It was cool that both teams let these guys mark each other for a bunch of points. It was the most interesting thing in the game.

Although, I have to say, South was looking dead after their huge semi, which was their biggest game.

Jacob got pretty tooled by Casey. One huck got put up that turned into a half-field sprint off between these guys. I dunno if Casey got a quicker read than Janin but he definately out ran him, catching up from behind and grabbing the disc. Janin's leg cramp? might have been a factor, but it was pretty much the best showdown you can ask for to settle the who's faster debate.
Sam K-S vs. Johnny Bloch was closer. Skies and stuff went back and forth. In the last point, as far as I could see, Johnny straight up skied him, but then K-S got a huge handblock on him, getting the disc back and scoring.

But again, the South guys had a lot more play time probably, since their performance was huge for their team, who doesn't have as many mega players as NWS. Their last game (the final) wasn't the best time to judge, but whatev, it was really fun to watch.

Any other perspectives or cool match ups at Westerns this year?

-Alex from ICS

Anonymous said...

johnny did not sky k.s. John was in front and just went to the disc while k.s. just waited for it. I would have to say K.S. won this match up. Casey easily won the Jacob Jannin match up. But Jacob Jannin is ridiculously good.

Anonymous said...

Casey and Jacob was a sick match up, both are amazingly quick players with sick layouts. The play mentioned above where Casey ran past Jacob, Jacob did cramp up. As for Sam and Johnny, they were great to watch, both skied each other, but only on defense. and in the final point sam got the first d of the point by just running by johnny, then john got it back with a sick sky (I think jhon just read it better and got in front of sam, but it looked dope), and then sam got another d on johnny with a first throw hand block..leading to a quick nws score. Intense and fairly fun game to watch, good match ups and players on both sides.
-a fan

Anonymous said...

wow what happened at VA states

Anonymous said...

no one cares about VA hahaha

Anonymous said...

"northwest would beat paidea 15-9. They havent lost a single highschool game in 3 years."


There might not be a college team who could keep Paideia in single digits, slow your roll.

Anonymous said...

215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215! 215!

Anonymous said...

are there any pictures?

Anonymous said...

what about jeremy norden? was his matchup with south eugene just him vs. anyone who thinks they can take him?

Anonymous said...

JEREMY TOOLED EVERYBODY THAT MARKED HIM, AXEMEN COULD NOT KEEP THE DISC OUT OF HIS HANDS. NWS WOULD KILL PAIDEA

Anonymous said...

Paideia would own Northwest, no question. Who has Northwest played? Nathan Hale? Wow! The west has no competition this year compared to the East. Unlike NWS, Paideia plays good college teams, and owns them. With the exception of Georgia Tech, no one, high school or college, has scored more than 9 against Paideia. Paideia HS won two college tournaments...that's not supposed to happen. NWS lost to easy college teams like Victoria (has anyone heard of Victoria?). This game would be like any other Paideia game: Paideia 15, Northwest 8 at the most.

Anonymous said...

anon 6:04 are you joking? nws played and beat far better college teams than paideia did, look at the records before you make false and stupid claims. unlike most of these outrageous claims, I believe that a nws paideia game would be close to the end, both teams are full of all stars as well as backed up by tons of strong players. Also how are you to determine what counts as competition, unless you have played against them, or even better, if paideia has played against them. As for Victoria, yea it was a terrible game, but as already mentioned they had just picked up 2 furious guys, and all that they did was have one throw goals to the other. NWS beat UW who are ranked 34th in the nation of college ultimate. And they lost by only 2 to western Washington who are ranked 29th in the nation. The teams the paideia beat are nowhere near as highly ranked as UW or WW.

What I also believe should be looked at is the fact that the finals were 15-4. What this says are a couple of things. It says yes the south Eugene was tired, but more importantly that, the nws after a two day tournament, had enough depth and enough players, to absolutely destroy in the finals. A team has not beaten another team that badly in the open division of the finals, (in either easters, westers, or nationals) as far back as the records go.

Another thing to keep in mind is that paideia had 3 worlds players, and all three are sick. However nws had 2 worlds players and an alternate. That being said milo and ben should have arguably made the team. Those 5 are excellent athletes and players but nws has so much depth it isn't even fair. This can be seen partly in the finals, where south Eugene was forced to put their two best players on sam and casey, leavening not only jeremy to do whatever he wanted, but milo, ben, and everyone else. In the final nws had a mismatch on every single player.

Also ben had sprained his ankle early on Saturday, sam is still recovering from a sprained ankle early in the season and jeremy got his hand injured just a couple days before westerns. (just saying all were not playing at their best)

After all this being said, I am going to say that we should drop it, because a game will never happen and there is little to no point bickering about the potential outcome (even if it is entertaining)

Anonymous said...

word, Paideia is nasty, call it a wrap.

Anonymous said...

word, NWS is nasty, call it a wrap.

Anonymous said...

You can't say Paideia hasn't played good colleges. They have played 5 colleges that went to their respective regional tournaments. And you say NWS had a bad day against Victoria. Well I'm sure Paideia has it's bad days too, when they only beat teams by 6 or 7 as opposed to annihilating them. You gotta admit it, though: not only are there more teams in the East but the competition is better this year, not to take anything away from NWS. I guess it's safe to say: (with the results of Westerns, Paideia Invite, and Amherst Invitational) Paideia and NWS are in a league of their own when compared to the other high schools and the game between them would be close.

Anonymous said...

no suprise with YHB taking 1st and LC Bird getting 2nd at VA states. 3rd place though: TJ? They must have really shown up the second day with huge upsets over Godwin and Woodside. I would've thought the 3/4 game would be Woodside/Godwin.

Angela said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Angela said...

Some pictures from Westerns this weekend would be at http://chsultimate.com/Gallery/westerns07. This is mostly chs and south but it has some others...

Anonymous said...

it is stupid to argue about paidea vs. NWS. NWS would smash on Paidea. I've seen them both play. NWS would own Paidea, Gruel would be lucky to get in double digits.

Anonymous said...

WHO ARE YOU?
i mean seriously, if you want to have any credibility, you'll at least give what team you play for...
or you could also say WHY nws would win...seriously.