DAY 1:
This is long...but this day deserves a long writeup.

Saturday marked the first day of play for the season for the Harvard Bredline.
Converging on Portsmouth, RI with a gutsy squad of 12, consisting of 9
returners and 3 freshmen, the team began Division II Club Sectionals with high
hopes and expectations. Not disheartened by the late dropouts of some players
due to transportation problems and Jewish holidays, the B-team to end all
B-teams took the field...

Game one found the "Dirty Dozen" face to face with WPI B, truly an imposing foe
(...). The team jumped out early, scoring 4 quickly as sophomore Frank "Don't
Even Try to Pronounce My Real Name" Heydari had trouble staying on his feet,
picking up some huge layout D's and sick layout scores. Facing a mild crosswind
that would worsen as the day continued, strong handling and sharp cuts resulted
in many an easy score for the likes of Dave "Taller Than You" Marshall and Gabe
"No Regard for Physical Well-Being" Velez. Our strong offense basically scores
at will and an intense man defense makes short work of their relatively
inexperienced team. We take half 8-0 and cruise on to an easy 15-1 win.

On to Northeastern B, who are playing on an 8-man rotation and have just
finished a hard-fought loss to Tufts-B. NU comes out with a surprising amount
of energy, and a few miscues by the Bredline on offense make for some
less-than-easy points for us, but we take the first few points nonetheless.
Settling down on offense and redevoting ourselves to the intense defense that
made it so easy for us against WPI-B, we continue to score basically at will. A
second-half 3-2-2 zone continues to frustrate their offense as point blocks and
interceptions abound. Highlights of our hardcore defense included freshmen Zach
"The Hammer Attack" Yoneda and Jennings "This Nickname Thing Is Harder Than It
Looks" Xu teaming up for a great block on a high-stall dump pass and Frank
defying the laws of physics to jump around his man, pausing in mid-air to
lightly reach ahead and tap down the disc. Offensive highlights included an
impromptu Dushku orchestrated perfectly by Dan "The Man With the Van" Wiegand
for an easy score to Gabe to make it 14-1. We close it out to make the final
score 15-1. So far: Bredline 30, Everyone else 2.

We enter the 3rd game of pool play knowing that we take the pool with a win. The
foe - Tufts B-Men. An epic battle is expected, and for the first few points we
have no reason to doubt this. Tufts comes out with some early points on some
lucky grabs on hospital throws, but we counter with smooth disc movement for
some easy scores. Tufts 3, Harvard 2. This is where it turns around. At this
point, Harvard goes on a FIFTEEN TO ONE run to close out the match (due to some
terrible counting skills on Tufts' part). Our man defense continues to be
stifling, with Gabe and myself combining to contain their crafty Asian handler
and everyone else combining to not give up an inch of space to their men. A
panicking Tufts offense falls victim to a series of d-blocks and the fantastic
downfield defense of D-Mar ("Shit! I told them not to throw near him! - some
guy on Tufts), Yan "I am so fucking hardcore because I am so sick right now but
I am playing anyway" Zhang, and basically everyone. On offense we have no
problem plowing through their man defense or their crappy 1-3-3, with great
handling from players such as Rohit "Fraternizing With the Enemy" Acharya and
Jimmy "Jingaling" Sun results in multiple deep scores for Jeff "How Tall Is
He?" Nagy. Final score - Harvard 15 (17), Tufts 4.

Our last game pits us against WPI-A in what we know will be our hardest game.
Our offense starts off very shaky against the surprising WPI zone, and some
drops in our end gives WPI some quick scores as they go up 2-0. We regain our
composure and set up our zone o, and get a deep look to D-mar and an upwind
score to even it at 2's. The teams continue to trade points up to 4's, then WPI
pulls away a bit to 7-5, basically riding on their captain's shoulders and his
great deep looks and intense D. With the defense struggling to defend this one
player, someone had to step up, and that man was Aaron "Not On My Watch" Ross,
who took it upon himself to fuck shit up and shut this guy down. Their offense
struggles with him effectively out of the picture and we pick up more of the
blocks and interceptions that we've been riding all day. Smooth disc movement
from the handling core of Aaron, Jimmy Sun, and Adam "Ultimate over Judaism"
Johnston finds the space in their zone and we run off three in a row to take
half 8-7. Out of the half, it's more of the same as we go up 10-7. WPI makes
some headway as their captain reestablishes himself for some hard-fought
scores. 12-11. Looking to close it out, Harvard works it up through their zone
to D-mar, who wisely looks off the wide open huck to Rohit in favor of the
not-at-all open look to Dan. Things look grim, until Dan skies their two best
players and comes down with the score. A D-block and a great hammer from Jimmy
Sun to Dave in the endzone on the next point puts us up 14-11. Finishing out
with what got us there, a D-block on WPI's line by Aaron, the game's clear MVP,
gives us the disc, and Aaron is rewarded with the score on a single throw from
Dan. 15-11. Ballgame. 4-0.

The fun will continue Sunday morning; it looks like we're the #2 seed for the
elimination rounds, and we'll have to beat out BC, NU, or MIT A to earn a
regionals bid. We'll have some replenished numbers for Day 2, and you can
expect another writeup from that, most likely from Skoren. Thanks for reading
this far if indeed you have.

~Adam


DAY 2:
This will be shorter than Adam's if for no other reason than I am shorter 
than him. To start off, I want to say two things:

1) BRed Line is really coming together as a team and getting more 
comfortable playing with each other.
2) We, somewhat unfortunately, seem to be a second half team.

You'll see what I mean about the second one, but on to the games.

It turns out that we (4-0) were the #3 seed, with WiPPs (3-1) being placed 
higher than us, mostly due to some bullshit from the tournament coordinator, 
who happens to play for WiPPs. I didn't care enough to continue the 
argument, so we started the day with a re-match against Tufts-B. They didn't 
show. Apparently they found out they were playing us, and decided it wasn't 
worth the humiliation to play us again. We come away with an easy win, 15-0. 
Highlights include our good spirit.

On to the the #2 vs. #3 game to get into the finals and guarantee a spot to 
regionals, and we are playing WiPPs. If you don't know anything about WiPPs, 
they are a club team of aging guys who probably played in college. They are 
the standard old man club team: excellent throws, quite slow. I won't say 
much about the first half except that they took it 8-0. We knew, and they 
knew, that the score was way more lopsided than the game was, and they were 
getting tired. Either way, we came out in the second half and scored a 
couple points, bringing it to 9-2, and we played a tough match to them 
winning, 15-6. Highlights include questionable spirit, including a BS foul 
call to which "Crazy" Dan Wiegand turned around and yelled "NO WAY" and 
looked like he was about to kick the guy in the face, and Jeff "I seriously 
can't figure out how to lock Dan's van" Nagy, after getting a D and being 
told it might have been a foul, told the O guy, "You could've called it, but 
you'd be SO WRONG." (P.S. Nagy, I shut that bitch down after you left.) Real 
highlights include after we settled down in the second half, our chilly O 
breaking through their zone to take it all the way downfield. Much great 
handling was done throughout the day by Adam "Rock Star" Johnston, Frank 
"I'd rather play D" Heydari, Aaron "I play every point" Ross, Jimmy "jjsun" 
Sun, and Dan.

So we can still play into the #3 spot, but we first have to take on a solid 
WPI-A team, who gave us our toughest match the day before. They had brought 
a couple new guys today, including their captain (who didn't look Jewish but 
whatever) who had a penchant for jumping five feet in the air to make grabs. 
Once again, our first half sucked, and they took half at something like 8-1. 
They eventually won 15-9. WPI was a good, spirited team, and they lost to 
Northeastern A to get the final bid to regionals. Very solid man defense was 
the highlight of this game.

Our last game of the day is for fifth place, against a fairly week WPI-B 
team that we had also beaten the previous day. We played them with a 
combination of hard man and zone defenses, shutting down most of their 
offense except for a few miscues on our part. We took half at something like 
8-3. The second half had some sweet plays, with (X) Y "Maybe I should sit 
this one out, no wait I feel better all of a sudden" Z making some sweet 
cuts and Jimmy with some very smooth handling. For one score, Frank threw 
one of the nicest break-mark backhands I've ever seen, and Zach "Z-Buster" 
Yoneda had about three stalls on one of their handlers. Phil "I missed my 
train yesterday" Roebuck had some sweet Ds and nice cuts, and Rohit "Get off 
your cell phone or I'm leaving you here" Acharya handled handling duties 
nicely. Highlights include Gabe "I'm faster than you" Velez and Dave "I'm 
taller than you" Marshall being wide open deep all the time, Stephen "FSU" 
Koren (see title) making a sick one-handed, flipping over grab, then looking 
off Frank "Just put it up, I'm two feet taller than the kid" Heydari and 
hitting Aaron instead. We take the game 15-5.

With more experience, BRed Line will be more comfortable and come out 
smooth, avoiding the first half collapses that plagued us today. If we play 
our game - hot defense and smooth, controlled offense - there were very few 
teams at that tournament that could come close. We are definitely in the top 
couple of B-teams in the region, and we can take several A-teams. This looks 
like a promising year for BRed Line, and we really are coming together. 
Watch out A-team.

-sk
Sorry, this was about as long as Adam's and my nicknames weren't as good.