Student Outdoor Nationals Report 2001
The stage had been set. OW! - the National Indoor Champions. Could they take their game outdoors? The Outdoor Nationals were held up in York and OW! took two teams up to try to take the title.
OW! 1 started with the 2nd seeding and used the first day of the tourney to practice their offense against some weaker teams. This finished off with a 2v6 crossover against Jedi, which we won convincingly. Knowing what we could now do, we hit Sunday's games with all cylinders firing.
Sunday's games
OW1 15-11 Strange Blue
OW1 15-12 Far Flung
The bleary-eyed Tabs emerged from their tents on Sunday morning to receive a grand shoeing by their Varsity rivals! Our tough man defence was virtually impenetrable and our zone was awesome. They did put up a bit of a fight though and deserved more than their 15th seeding. The quarter-finals saw OW! 1 play Far Flung from Glasgow. As expected, this was a tough game but we were always in control and the game was ours.
The atmosphere changed dramatically for the semi-final. Ro Sham Bo, the Edinburgh team, was the team that OW! beat to win the indoors title. Early indications were that they were going to be even stronger outdoors: this was the big game. The game was tight but too often our offensive play was spoiled by highly gutsy RSB defense. If only they'd thrown more zones on us! Towards the end of the game, with both teams flagging, our defense finally weakened and RSB emerged victorious.
Semi-final score: OW! 1 11 - 15 Ro Sham Bo.
| Final Standings |
| Ro Sham Bo |
| Phat Eds |
| OW! 1 |
| Mohawks |
With the competition over, one more game remained: the third place play-off against a very high-spirited Mohawks. It was great to see what OW! can do when they relax and “let it flow”! Compulsory practice is required on the upside-down no-look forehand push-pass with no-look grab though. And Andy needs to work on his layouts. Who said we can't have fun too!
As for OW! 2, they had a really good tournament. After a difficult first day they managed to win some games and ended up as one of the highest placed second teams present. And you should have seen Patrick go at the party...