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Connecticut Underwater Hockey

New information since May.3, 2008 in Green


What it is
Clubs in Connecticut
   Connecticut State Championship
September 2001 Tournament 
Tournament History
(Road Trips)

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What it is.                                                                                                                      

picture of underwater hockey

Imagine this, a pool.with goals at both ends, a plastic coated lead puck on the bottom, two teams of 6 players in the water, with 4 substitutes on the side.
Players wearing mask, snorkel and fins and  holding a foot long stick. They hold their breath, submerge and try and get the puck in the goal.

It's different, challenging, low impact, high and low intensity, and definetly a good work out.



Connecticut Clubs

New to the Sport?  Contact us. It won't cost anything, but your time.We'll provide all the equipment, start you off with the basic skills and give you plenty of encouragement. If your not afraid of the water and have determination, you can learn this game at any age.

Got a pool and need help in starting a club? Contact me, Jamie 203-426-8824.

Club
Location
Days
Barnacles
University of Bridgeport
Wheeler Recreation Center
 400 University Avenue,
Bridgeport, CT 06604
203-576-4552
-- Canceled --
Barnacles Boys & Girls CLub of  Greenwich
4 Horseneck Lane
Greenwich, CT
 203-869-3224
Directions

Barnacles Stratford YMCA
3045 Main St.
Stratford, CT
 203-375-5844
website
Thursdays 7:30- 9:00PM
SECONN
East Lyme Aquatic Fitness Center Sunday 5:30-7PM
SECONN Groton, UCONN Avery point
1084 Shennecossett Rd.
Groton, CT 06340
860-405-9000
Friday nights
SECONN Westbrook YMCA

201 Spencer Plains Rd
Westbrook, CT 06498-1549,  860-399-9622

?
Husky UWH UCONN
Storres,  CT
Sorry, everyone graduated in 2006
Waterford
Waterford, CT
Sundays 6 - 7:30 PM ?

    Barnacles
     The club will provide equipment to interested new players. For more information contact Larry 203-281-0662 or Jamie 203-426-8824


Husky UWH

www.SECONNuwh.com
 The club will provide equipment to interested new players. For more information contact  Jeff at  860-526-3968. SECONN plays at several loctions see Club table above.
Wateford
 Sponsored by the Watertown Parks & Recreation, 860-945-5246
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Connecticut Underwater Hockey Tournament
September 22, 2001

2001 Results and Pictures

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Tournament History


Montreal Maps and Stuff DC Maps and Stuff UMASS Maps and Stuff
USA Nationals
Guelph Maps and Stuff
Quebec Maps and Stuff
2008


pot luck format, a few guys went


2008 Quebec
2007
2007 Montreal
2007 GMU
2007 UMASS
2007 US Nationals, Minneapolis

Didn't go same weekend as GMU
2006
2006 Montreal
2006 GMU
2006 UMASS
2006 US Nationals, Gainesville
2006 Guelph, opps, didn't register in time Didn't go same weekend as DC
2005
2005 Montreal


2005 US Nationals, Minneapolis
2005 Guelph
2005 Quebec
2004
2004 Montreal  

2004 US Nationals, Chicago
2004 Guelph
2004 Quebec
2003
2003 Montreal  


2003 US Nationals, DC
2003 Quebec    
2002
2002 Montreal 2002 DC



2002 Quebec City
2001





2001 Quebec City
2000



2000 USA Nationals, Houston

1992



1992 Nationals, Boca Raton, FL


1982



1982 USA Nationals,  Chicago



2008 Quebec                                                    Picture    
April 27

Saturday - A division Round Robin
CT 0   Vortex 6+6=12, We got our act together the second half.
CT 0   Team Canada  3+1=4, We never got past half way,  we did a good walll game though.
CT 0   Rimouski 2+1=3, We got it in their corner a couple of times.
CT 0   CAMO &+7=14, In the last minute of the game we had it in their corner,  we were 2 ft from their goal 2 times. Pat just couldn't finish it off with only two defenders.
We ended up at the bottom of A as expected.

Sunday - Finals
CT 1+0=0   Ottawa 2+2=4,
Top of B, Ottawa against Bottom of A, CT.  Pregame negitation: Ottawa wanted to play B and we wanted to lose in A so we could leave early.  They still gave us a good game.
CT 0   Rimouski 3+4=7, Rob had one shot that went behind the goal. Andrew decided to sit this one out.

End result 5th place in A division.



2007 Montreal

Team: dwight, joe, rob, pat, jamie, Lenni(MA)
jeff, Chris(MA), Timmy(MA), andy, chris
Sorry no team picture this time.

Saturday  - A division
Camo B 1=6=7 , CT 1+0=1. Timmy had us try 1-3-2  positioning.
LPPDC( little fish... in French, Christopher's team from Quebec) 2+2=4, CT 0+2=2. Moved Chris(MA) to back line this game.
Ottawa A 1+3=4, CT 0. Timmy had us try 3-3  positioning
Flush 2000( a Quebec team) 2+2=4, CT 1+0 = 0
JFK A 2+2=4, CT 0

Sunday
Last of the round robin games.
Shaft a hodge podge of 7 very good guys, 2+2=4, CT 1+0=1

Finals
First playoff game to determine who goes on to fight for 8th place.
Aftershock an Ontario team that also had a no win record. We seeded 8t because we had fewer goals against us. Aftershock 2+1=3, CT 1+1=2
We got 9th out of 9 in A. B division had 5 teams. maybe Tom did better in B.

Best showing at Montreal ever. We kept scores to 4 or below except for first game. Even scored several goals and had only 2 shut out games. Truly amazing compared to every other year.


2007 US Nationals, Minneapolis

Hall of Shame Bailout:
Jeff for scheduling a vacation a year in advance and not first checking when Nationals is. Evan for going in to the Peace Corp. Chris for rather working and moving to NH. Dany's friend Jose, in and out in a week.

We went with a lot fewer that previous years so we didn't expect to end up other than in the middle. Michal showed up like last year and got a couple of practices in just before going. We had Andys brothers coming with Carol Roses permission, but  a few weeks before the tournament Greg over ruled her. Next time we'll follow "don't ask - don't tell" eligibility requirements. We stayed at  the Radisson right by the pool. nice place, but expensive breakfasts.

Friday
4 buckets of 5 teams. First game was a loss to Cincinnati 9-1. Second game was a loss to MN Loons 6-0 this one was filmed. Third game against Texas we won 5-1. Fourth game  We took it easy and several we late for the start. We should have played 1 person at a time against the kids or formed a big circle and just passed around it. Anyway Andy fought hard to give Roger Bacon a goal by fouling  and knocking off masks so RB only lost 5-1.
We seeded into the 3rd place grouping for Saturday.

Saturday
5 buckets of 4 teams. We were in the 3rd bucket.
Lost to University of FL 1+3=4 to 2+0=2. We were up at half time but since we didn't have the subs we couldn't keep up with them.
beat San Fransisco 2+3=5 to 1+1. They played a lot like U of FL but they didn't work the wall as well.
Next was San Diego. They also played a lot like U of FL. And again they beat us 2+3=5 to 1+1=0.
This ended the round robin, we almost left for the day figuring the final started on Sunday.
We played the 2nd place team in the 4th bucket, which was U of I. We easily beat them 3+4=7 to 1+2=3.

Sunday
We got a second chance at San Diego, but still lost 1+0 = 1 to 1+3=4.
We did a walk through outside to work on the corner to the goal play. That really worked well and got everyone on the same page.
And San Fransisco got a 2nd shot at us, but they still lost, 0+2=2 to 2+2=4


Final Results

Team
Division
1
Club Puck
A
2
Colorado
A
3
Orphans
A
4
Minnesota Loons
A
5
Matt Blair's Amazing Six Pack
A
6
Los Angeles- Drunken Starlets
A
7
Chicago 1
A
8
Washington DC Bottom Feeders
A
9
San Diego -Evil
B
10
U of Florida
B
11
Connecticut- CT Barnacles
B
12
San Francisco Sea Lions
B
13
U of Illinois, Champaign
B
14
Texas
B
15
Loon a Sticks
B
16
MSU
B
17
Roger Bacon Varsity
C
18
Chicago 2
C
19
Roger Bacon JV
C
20
Dallas
C


Preperation Drills: Deep end drill, swim and pass, YouTube
What worked: walk throughts. corner stratigy.
What to work on:  when to pass when to stall.

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2007 UMASS
May 6, 2007                                           Pictures    
We missed you guys at the tournament.  We kicked ass, took names and won the
tournament! Two in a row, wow, Nationals would make it three in a row!
--Jeff

Hey Jeff,
Let’s not get carried away here. They weren’t exactly top notch teams in MASS. You had a better team last year and the Canadian team was really good. I went out to get some lunch during the exhibition game, but I can’t imagine that if you took the best from the other four teams and played against our team the score wouldn’t be any different than the other games we played. There were four good B teams at best, and we didn’t have Jamie, Andy D., Dany, Rudy or Evan. It was nice to play in a Tournament again, but the hill was more challenging than the teams were.

  I was glad to see cousin Larry score in the first game, he didn’t score again but could have, Joe, Steve and Keith scored quite often and played well, as Skander did as well. Cousin Larry and Skander just need to work on getting down faster on the rush, Rob and Dwight were throwing the puck to the left side several times and nobody was there to receive it. All in all it was a good learning experience for the RI guys and Skander and a warm-up for those of you going to the Nationals.
 --Tom

At the Umass tournament Framingham lost to Chris's team[UMASS] because they didn't have enough players and were tired.
--Super Dave

I think the key point we should come away with is that Framingham got frustrated, lost composure and their game fell apart. We played to this weakness very successfully. Let's not forget that any decent uwh team is going to try the same on us. So if you get fouled, robbed of a goal or what ever, shrug it off, stay calm and play OUR game.
--SuperDave

Game Schedule

  1. Framingham 6 MIT 2
  2. Cape Cod 0 CT 8
  3. UML 5 Framingham 7
  4. MIT 7 Cape Cod 1
  5. UML 0 CT 9
  6. Framingham 5 Cape Cod 1
  7. MIT 0 CT 6
  8. Cape Cod 1 UML 6
  9. CT 5 Framingham 3
  10. UML 6 MIT 0
In the playoffs UML shutdown Framingham whiners. I believe the score was 6 to 0.  We were all rooting for UML.  Pat and I were refs this game. The one real whiner on Framingham got kicked out of the game for head butting.
  
CT Played UML in the final game and we beat them 8 to 1.
--Jeff


Jamie, this is as best as I can remember.
 First game CT 12  Cape Cod 0
 2nd game CT 9  UML 0
 3rd game  CT 8 MIT 0
 4th game  CT 5 Fram 3 This was a tough one to watch. Rob and I sat this one out. We were down at the half 3 – 2, and managed to get it going defensively going down hill and scored enough to win. It was a struggle but they held on for the win.
  Playoffs
 We played Framingham first and they didn’t like our style of bringing it up the hill and keeping it there once we got up there because with a 6 – 0 lead they felt that we were rough and unsportsmanlike for doing that. I guess they were expecting a closer game like the first one, but with Rob and I in this time, there big loudmouth didn’t score and got rather pushy in the pool. I took it off of him in the deep end and he gave me a full body shove, and when I did it again going up the hill, he stabbed me in the ribs with his stick. He sent me an email via Chris who ran the Tournament, what a WHINER! If I can figure out how to forward it to the Barnacles sight, I will. We ended up beating them 8 or 9 to zip and they didn’t like our bury the puck in the corner style at all. Very poor sports and they were asking for players in the locker room when I arrived and they thought that it was unfair for us to have 12 players and they only had seven. I remember going to several Tournaments short-handed and not asking for or complaining about lack of bodies. Send him some cheese to go along with that WHINE or WINE if you will.
 The final was against UML and we beat them rather easily 7 – 1, blame me for giving up the lone goal, I thought SuperDave could handle the puck against one guy and I was a bit slow getting down to cover his back and gave up the goal. Sorry about that Dave. I don’t know if they played an exhibition game or not and what the results were.
 --Tom

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2007 GMU
March 31- April 1                                           Pictures                             
Video of the Final game

FRIDAY

Gotta leave a little earlier than we did this year to avoid traffic around NJ. For us leaving Monroe at 3PM we got stuck going real slow after the GW bridge. Rob missed the turn on to 95 and we did the NJ parkway, which was a moving parking lot. Jeff didn't do much better as he got in around 2:30AM after dropping Chris and Evan off.

SATURDAY
We seeded well for the round robin games on Saturday.
First game was with the Michigan State University Spartans. We won 9-0 and this was a good warm up game.
An hour later the University of North Carolina Tar Heels put up a bit more of a fight, but they still lost 6-0.
We had 3 hours off to prepare for an orphan team Orphan A. Club Pucks Coach Duck had only seven players so we knew this would be an easy game. After scoring a few goals, Pat came up with the Andrew strategy, where Andrew would be the only person to score goals. It worked quite well as he scored four against Coach Duck all by himself. This turned out to be a really go work out for the rest of us and will be the preferred strategy for games like this one was.
Next came the hardest game of the day against the Beltway Bottom Feeders. Last time we played them they just beat us at Nationals so we knew this would be a close game. They came out strong as they always do but didn't score as early as usual. They managed the first goal, but we also scored. So at half time it was 1-1. The second half we dominated and the puck was in their half most of the time and we have it close to the goal quite a lot. Super Dave even had it in the trough, but when Dave Sun he can to the surface and yelled "no goal". Well, the ref didn't call any fouls or award the goal we can confidently say we won that game even though the score stayed 1-1.
Nit picking rule incident #1. During the first half one of the deck refs noticed that one of the DC players wasn't wearing a black cap under his black wrestling ear protectors. When told to get a cap his response was  "I have played 3 games with out a cap so far."
Last came the George Mason University Patriots, which we easily beat 4-0.

We stuck around for the University of Florida Gator game against DC. I knew this would be close, but Chris formerly of Gainesville said UF didn't have a chance. Well I routed UF on and they did pretty good only to lose 2-1.

The banquet was held on campus with pulled pork barbecue and chicken as the main fare. While Dave Kennedy was setting up his karaoke equipment the host kept us entertained with announcements. The best we from the audience and ranged from upcoming tournaments announcements, Rudolf and NYC activities, and Andy making fun of Coach Duck not being able to stop four goals from a 67 year old.

The schedule they sent out on Thursday had a really messed up playoff times for Sunday. We seeded first and according to the schedule wouldn't play until 1PM. Luckily Josh showed us the real schedule showing a 11:35 first game. No wonder one of the DC guy said "wow you don't play until 1".

SUNDAY
Two games today playing Orphan A again. Coach Duck asked us how we wanted them to play us and we requested a wall game. They did it real well and cam e at us real strong the whole game. No time the Andrew strategy this time. In circle time we came to the conclusion if we play like that against DC they would have beat us bad. It was a timely eye opener.

Second game was against DC as expected.  Rudolf in the spirit of the game wrote on the backs of Chris, and Evan, Dany and on himself. Just before the game started the DC nitpicker complained to the refs. There was a bit of confusion because the water refs wanted to start the game and others said they had 5 minutes to wipe it off. The guys got out of the water and started to clean it off. The game started with about four of us in the water when the gong went off but the puck quickly went to the wall where Jamie got called for some a 2 minute penalty. Rob noted much later that this was a pretty good strategy, since it stopped play and let us get organized. next time I'll just glove it. In retrospect the current rules do say something about you can't have temporary marking on your body except for the C and VC in the shoulders of the captain and vice captain. It's one of those silly rule that came out of some incident at worlds. Well it didn't work as DC expected it didn't throw our game off one bit and the first half ended 1-1. We scored a little past half way through the second half and managed to hold DC off from scoring. They did manage to get the puck down in to one of our corners, but by the amount of time the puck sat in the corner by its self we could tell they were running out of steam.

RESULTS
First time  first place at end of round robin.
First time first place.
Kept cool under pressure.
On the way to the suave game.

College Division

1st place- University of Florida Gators
2nd place- George Mason Patriots
3rd place- University of Illinois Fighting Illini
4th place- University of North Carolina Tarheels
5th place- Michigan State Spartans

Open Division
1st place- Connecticut                                  
2nd place- Beltway Bottomfeeders
3rd place- Gainseville
4th place- Orphan A
5th place- Orphan B

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2006 Montreal                                                                                                     pictures,
                          Sorry there are none we are to lame/ashamed to show our faces.
Andy, Pat, Rob, Chris, Evan, Dave,                    
   and Massachusets superstars Chris and Timmy


Hall of shame bail out report:
Andy 2 weeks before. He didn't get his schedule OK by his wife.
Jamie, the day before. Thanks to Rudolfs only pass at parctice he spent a few hours in the hospital emergency room getting two lacerations stiched up. Good shot Rudolf, right between the eyes.

We came in 6th out of 8 in the A division beating York & Ottawa and lost to the other 5 teams.  Montreal creamed us 10:0.  Somewhat embarrassing, but typical. We're too embarrassed to post a team picture.
Tom played in B because he didn't want to lose in A. He got stuck on a team that didn't win a game.
Big Mike who was too out of shape o play with us jumpe don teh Dinasaur team and did better than any of us.

Final results?

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2006 Nationals Gainesville                                                                                 pictures
June 16-18

Thursday
No travel mishaps getting there this trip and everyone showed up. We should have eaten in Orlando since when we got to Gainesville we only found Domino open and they sure don't know how to cook pizza dough.

Friday
The goal was to get in to A division and then cruise through Saturday not expending too much energy by loosing all the games so we would have enough for the finals on Sunday. By getting into A we would limit final ranking to 8th overall. The most challenging team was GMU. We put in the strongest team for this game since we are evenly matched against GMU. It was tied 2-2 at half time and we managed 2 point to their 1 the second half.  Next was Bacon the stronger of the Roger Bacon High School teams. We easily won 6(3+3) to 1(0+1). Last came Chicago which historically has been a top contended. We won 8(4+4) to 2(1+1). The UWH gods were with us this year and we started in a weak division. So we seeded top of the division and moved into the A division for Saturdays round robin. For a celebration we went to Benegins instead of the motels Mongolian Sushi Buffet, which I thought would be a real treat. Too many beef eaters on this team. The 2 for 1 drafts inspired Michal to drink and be merry, because when it came time to figure out the tip he wast still calculating 5 minutes after we found out it was included in the bill.

Saturday
We didn't really expect to win any of these and even soring was quite a surprise. Pat was pushing a throw the puck forward game plan, which is quite different from our "old Man Pat" strategy. It worked pretty well even though they changed the puck from Friday's sticky Oreo puck to the slippery pink Australian puck, which didn't help our passes any. I'd say the scores don't indicate how well we did since we had several missed opportunities in front of the goal where the puck was inches from going in.
One of the best shots was Rudolfs in the Club Puck game. where he shot it along the back wall and it barely missing going over the back of the goal.
Lost to WPB 9(3+6) to 3(2+1).
Lost to Denver 4(3+1) to 1(1+0).
Lost to Charleston A 9(4+5) to 0. We put a weak team against these guys and they brawled us unnecessarily.
Lost to Club Puck 8(4+4) to 3(1+2).
Lost to Champaign-Minnesota 6(4+2) to 2(1+1).
No 2 for 1 drafts at TGIF, but Andy and crew took care of  Rudolf for throwing paper in their drinks later that night.

Sunday
Game plan was to place ahead of GMU. We started off against Champaign-Minnesota and lost 7(4+3) to 2(1+1).
Then lost to Florida 5(3+2) to 2(1+0). Lack of subbing killed us in this game.
Lost to GMU 5(5+0) to 4(1+3).  Rudolf ref'ed their WPB game and noticed that they were playing the wall game. So we focused on a counter strategy. Unfortunately they changed tactics for us since they came out strong the first half. They lost steam the second half and we gained momentum. We had it on their goal several times but couldn't finish it. It was good that the team recovered and didn't lost composure. Thinking about it now GMU played a defensive game against a stronger team WPB, against an equal team they went full out, which is what we usually do when we're not out smarting ourselves.

So in summary the master plan worked better than expected,
We ended up 8 out of 17 (47th percentile)
We scored goals against every team except the #1 team.
We didn't get too tired on Sunday. (See all that stair climbing real pays off.)

Final Results
A Division:
1) Charleston A
2) Denver
3) Club Puck
4) Minneapolis/Champaign
5) West Palm
6) FL
7) GMU
8) Connecticut

Consolation Division:
1) Chicago
2) Cincinnati/Houston
3) UF
4) Dallas
5) MSU
6) UNC
7)  Roger Bacon A
8) Charleston B
9) Roger Bacon B

Collegiate Division:
1) UNC
2) UF

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2006 UMASS                                                                                                                  pictures

Hall of Shame Bail Out Report::
Danny sprains his knee weeks earlier, and shows up at practice the Thursday before to notify us.
Dwight, the day of the tournament, he calls in sick.

Several of us now know why Larry doesn't like to ride when Cousin Larry is driving.
 
A fun time was had by all, 5 teams showed up and we had 4 round robin games every hour.
We played the first game against Montreal. They blew us out of the water as expected, 11-0. This was a good warm up game for us and worked well to our advantage to get the hardest game over with early.

Next was against UMASS Lowell. They put up a good fight but eventually lost 4+2=6 to 0+1=1.
Next against MIT, a real college team which we played some keep away against in the deep end,. final score 7-1.
Framing ham was next and we pretty much did the same as with MIT, 7-0. It would be better to do the zig zag drill with them after getting the score up a few points.

We seeded second in to the finals, and played MIT again, 6+2=8 to 0+1=1.
The UML guys wanted to forfeit to Montreal so that they could play us again, we agreed, but first we played Montreal for the finals. They beat us, but we did pretty good. 5+2=7 to 0.

Rudolf, Pat, Andy and Jamie played an exhibition game before the UML game, which was right afterwards so we were well warmed up and down right tired. UML held us to 2 goals going down hill. They scored 3 going down and Rudolf did a fantastic job bringing it up the hill in assisting in the tying goal close to the end of the second half. We played 2 minute overtime halfs and we scored going down and they didn't. Andy gave the best team advice at the begining of the last overtime period, " Rufolf take it to the wall, play defensive, don't go up the hill, that's your job. Cousin Larry, don't even think of getting in the water." Final score 4-3.

The last game of the day was the Montreal Challenge. It was the best of the 4 teams against Montreal. They did worse that we did they lost 8-0. This goes to show the effectiveness of Pat's Old Man UWH strategy.

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2006 GMU                                                                                                                       pictures

Typical road trip.  We peaked on Saturday and suffered from oxygen deprivation on Sunday.
We arrived all well and good on Friday, even leaving late from NYC there was only some minor delays getting through NYC and at the merge on the NJ turnpike.

We started out losing to Charleston 6-1 as expected. then won the next two games against the college teams of UNC 5-1 and Champaign 6-1. The best game was against DC and we put it to them 3-0. They were really frustrated.

Saturday night party, Andrew left the party first at ~8:30 he didn't show up at the hotel until after 11. He needs a better navigator.
Andy left after 9 and only got a little lost. He needs only a slightly better navigator.

We seeded 4th for the open division  finals on Sunday, but the womens teams wanted to play together so instead we played DC again. DC got pumped up and scored 2 goals real fast. We recovered and ended the half down a point at 3-2. The second half was scoreless. In circle time we learned that SuperDave didn't get in at all the second half. That cost us a win.

So we battled the Womens Masters team for 5th place and tied 2-2. It was evident that the offensive conveyor belt stopped working as the front line bobbed up and down in front of their goal.

Final results from this weekend's GMU Invitational.

College Division
1st Place- University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill
2nd Place- George Mason University
3rd Place- University of Illinois- Urbana Champaign
4th Place- Michigan State University

Open Division
1st Place- Florida Gainesville/Gators
2nd Place- Charleston Blockade Runners
3rd Place- Washington DC Beltway Bottom Feeders
4th Place- US Women's Elite
5th/6th Place- Connecticut Barnacles (Both teams opted out of overtime)
5th/6th Place- US Women's Master's (Both teams opted out of overtime)



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2005 Montreal                                                   Pictures ( hey Dwight get them off that phone!)
Hall of Shame Bailout:
Jeff and Chris  two days before.
Andy  a month before

When you let Dwight drive it's always an adventure. We didn't miss any exits this time, but going there we talked to Dwight. That's not bad, but he totaly ignored the little red light that says time to fill up. We made it to a station on fumes.

We went short handed to play in A since Andy and Michael weren't going this time.
So we had a decent team of 8 and could place mid level in A . Then two days before Jeff gives a lame excuse about tendinitis and how his doctor said to take it easy. Of course Chris bailed when daddy bailed. So 10 minutes from the schedule being sent out we notifies the organizers that we would prefer to go to B. They weren't happy., but did oblige us. It turned out that A wasn't that strong this year since the Canadian Worlds mens tryouts were being run during the tournament. they has 3 teams of 7 to 8 that basicly removed JFK A and Vortex from the tournament.

Our strategy worked out by Pat on the ride up was to make two groups of 3, left and right side, and rotate within those groups. We divided the two groups so that there was a balance between endurance and and skill level.

Saturday - Round Robin
First game against Guy Unit(JFK B team). We defended deep first and won easily 1+3=4 to 0.
Second game  game against Quebec Extreme We defended shallow first and won easily 2+4=4 to 0.
Third game against Alberta U19. We defended deep first and won easily 3+2=5 to 0.
Fourth game against Bare Necessity(Hamilton-Guelph B team). We decided to try the Zig Zag drill against them in circle time, but they sent two emisaries before the game that they weren't having fun loosing and wanted to forfeit the game. They would grab three of their A players so we could play a "fun" game. It didn't turn out to fun for them. We defended shallow first and won easily 3+? to 0+1=0. We even did the change of stick color at start of second half. The ref never called it and some of them didn't think it was funny.

Sunday - Round Robin
First game against Rais(Roumski). We defended deep first and won easily 3+2=5 to 0.
Second game against Ottawa. We defended deep first and won easily 3+3=6 to 0.

Finals
We seeded first  and played Ottawa. We defended shallow first and won easily 4+4=8 to 0.
in the finals we played Guy Unit. They had a come from behind win over Alberta so were really pumped. We defended shallow first and won easily 2+5=7 to 0+1=1.

In all the games we had more puck control, passing, down time, and sheer strength then they did. We took all of Saturdays games easy to conserve energy.

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2005 USA Nationals - Minneapolis                        Pictures

Well we went in to this thinking that we could place higher than Minnesota since they beat us in overtime in the finals last year and several of our players seemed much better than last year. Although Evan pulled out months prior and Super Dave prefered going to the Ottawa party(I mean tournament). We started off with a smaller team this time around. Mike was working in L.A. for the past few months and still flew out and  we picked up Carolyn from FL to get us to 10. She made a good decision since she received offers from Houston and Cape Cod (good going Super Dave, you really convinced her). In the last week Michal decided to come along. So we arrived with a team of 11.

Thursday
Well before the tournament, they announced that pool time would start at 3PM Friday. After several of us had booked flights to arrive at around 1:30PM they announced a screw up that they couldn't get the pool from 3 to 6PM. No problem because they said they would schedule around those teams that would arrive late. When the schedule came out on Thursday we were scheduled to play Denver at 12PM and Roger Bacon Reserves at 2PM. It seems that we were the only team that short handed due to the pool scheduling screw up and Greg basicly said "
The problem was that it was impossible to adjust everyones schedule when dealing with 21 teams."

Friday
Andy and Carolyn arrived Thursday night and played the Denver game to a 0-19 loss.
Tom, Pat, Jamie, Michal and Dwight's flight arrived early and made a mad dash to the pool. Luckly the games were running a few minutes late so they managed to arrive just in time to play the full game and won 12-0. The next two games would be the most difficult and we would need Mike to have any chance. The 3rd game at 6:15 was against Sea-tech. Mike was scheduled to arrive a 4:30, but his flight was canceled and he didn't arrive until 11PM. They handly beat us 8-0. Jamie tried to negotiate them to tie us to overcome the loss to Denver hoping that we could finagle our way in to the 2nd highrest bucket on Saturday. No deal they were too competative. The third game was against DC. They beat us 6-0. A much stronger team than the team we tied in Guelph. We realized we didn't train correctly for this tournament.

Saturday

By only winning one game on Friday we were placed in the 4th bucket on Saturday. If we had beaten Denver we would have been in the 3rd bucket and played teams at or just below our level. So in the 4th bucket we were not really challenged at all. Mike and Chris had stayed up for one more beer than the rest of us and both woke up feeling sick. Not good for a long tournament. It looked like we would not do better than last year. Houston was the first game and we won handly  3+1=4 to 0. They put up a good fight. Mike stoped playing for the rest of the day, but Chris felt good enough to keep playing.  After an inspiring lecture by Pat in the next game against Dalloons we won 6+4=10 to 1+0=1. In this one we just played it like a normal game. By now we decide we neede ot focus on playing our game and sticking to "the plan". The third game against Roger Bacon Reserves we decide to take the score to 4 and then play around and work on moving the puck up the side of the pool since that is what we need to concentrate on if we wanted to beat the teams that were playing in the 2nd and 3rd buckets. We beat RBR 6-0. The next game against MSU we won 6-0. Jamie took the puck back to his goal when it got too close to theirs, this apparently pissed Andy off, (i'm not sure why because it's the same thing he did in Quebec a few years ago.)  The last game was against Minnesota-2. We won 6-0 and managed to use the time for practing as much as we could. We then took a field trip to the Mall of America for a big steak dinner with Charlie Brown, Lucy and Snoopy. Rob refed his one of the 1st bucket games and became convinced that all you need is down time, speed and good puck handling, stratagy is not needed.

Sunday
We ended up in the B division as expected and had three games ahead to win to take B. Chris woke up with larengitis and decide not to play, and went shopping back at the mall.  The first game against Denver was close, but we controlled the puck most of the time.
Mike was well enough to play, and had some awesum runs up the pool. Final score 2+1=3 to 1+1=2. Andy got his revenge. Next game was against Dalloons. We had already beaten them and Andy had sat that game out so we knew this would be an easy one. So we did it again 4-0. They put up a much better fight this time. I guess Andy brings that out in teams. During this game Dwight and Tom had a subbing spat, which Pat  set straight in Circle time. Going into the last game against Fort Collins we knew that it would be close. They had 4-5 world level women that were like a swarm of bees. At around 2PM Andy let us know that he was leaving for the airport. He thought his flight was at 6 but it was at 4:45, and the B finals game was at 3:40. We called Chris and convinced him that he came to play, not shop, so he arrived just in time for the game. Michal prepared us by introducing a special play called "MIIKKE SSTTRRIIKE" and it worked perfectly, although not flawlessly. It's basicly the Montreal Pizza Play. We did it on the first play and scored. It set them back and they played defensly for most of the rest of the first half. One of the refs was quite pumped up and the other team noticed this and mentioned that we were pulling fins. Ludicrous. He was calling advantage puck against us quite often. It worked to our advantage since it gave us more time to rest. The score was 2+0=2 to 1+1+2 at the end of regulation play. In overtime we won 3-2. From the sub box both teams were tired, only one person on the botton per side at a time.

Andy called while we were at dinner and Pat managed to convince him we lost 3-2 in the finals, to which andy replied "I'm glad I didn't lose to a bunch of girls". Even by the next Thursday he still wasn't aware we had won, even though there was congradulations on the e-mail list and he had received his medialion trophy. So he may never find out.

What to do better next year
Positions: 1 for 1 subing in the front. 4 backs the fitest players since there is only one sub. Used Andy to fill in for who ever was sitting out.
Stratagy: Our 2/3rds defensive zig zag wall game. Their 1/3 go for it.

Endurance training 3 months before the tournament.
Practice zig zag  wall game months before the tournament.
Pratice the pizza play.
Fly in Thursday night  - leave no earler than 7PM Sunday night.
Carry Oscillococcinum and take it when you start to feel a cold/flu coming on.
Practice zig zag wall game in a circle around the pool past their goal, past our goal during the easy games.
Don't let Dwight order the beer.
Laps before the first game of the day.
Manage the health of the team mates, add it to circle time.
Get into the lowest bucket necessary on Saturday, let the other teams wear themselves out.

So we ended up at the top of B or 9th out of 21 which in percentile is higher than last year.

            A Division

        1.    SeaTech
        2.    Chicago 1
        3.    Charleston
        4.    Club Puck
        5.    Floridatrophy
        6.    Cincinnati
        7.    DC
        8.    Puck-N-Loons (Minnesota-1)

B Division

1.   Connecticut
2.   Fort Collins
3.   Houston
4.   DalLoons                                                                                            

5.   Denver
6.   Champaign
7.   Cape Cod
8    Chicago 2

       C. Division

1.   Dallas Fort Worth
2.   Michigan State University
3.   Roger Bacon Varsity
4.   Loonasticks
5.   Roger Bacon Reserves

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2005 Quebec                       No Pictures  the novelity of Jeffs Digital camera has worn off
.
"Spliting up is easy to do"
Hall of Shame Bail out report: 
We came with a full team this time and with some new faces that have little to no tournament play, even so we played in A division.
The first game was against Montreal A, we lost as expected 7+7=14 to 0. Before circle time Tom had managed to negotate his way on to a B team and also move Cousin Larry, Andrew,  Scott and eventually Andy there also. We picked up some A grade players in the trade. Cousin Larry and Tom ended up on Sherbrooke and the other 3 on Ottawa B. the CT picked up Will, Sebastian, Daniel, and Sebastian from Ottawa and  Dave, from Quebec.

The A team saga
We followed Wills stratigy of doing a 3-2-1. We had one for one subbing in the front line, and one sub in the back line.  The back line played much differently than we are used to playing. It took a little getting use to it. With all the subs in the front they could keep the pressure on and let the backs player at a slower tempo.
front line: Will, Sebastian, Daniel, Mike, Chris, Pat
backline: Dave, Sebastian, Jamie, Jeff

2nd game was against Vortex, we lost as expected and as it was our first game together it wasn't too bad, Vortex 2+5=7,
CT 2+0=2,
3rd game against Montreal A Will managed to against then with a brilliant play agains the deep end wall, Montreal 2+4=6, CT 1+0=0.
4th game against Vortex. We held then to 0-0 at half time and then fell apart, like all the other games. Vortex 0+3=3,
CT 0,.
Round robin ranking after Saturday: Montreal, Vortex, CT(/Ottawa).

The B saga
Andys Ottawa B beat Toms Sherbrooke, with a little dirty play. So much for sportsmanship.
Round robin ranking after Saturday:
Amazones,  Ottawa,  Sherbrooke, Rimouski, JFK B, Quebec Extreme

Sunday
A saga continues.
Our first game was an exibition against top team in B, the Amazones. Last time we played them Tom lost his pants.  It was a pretty easy game. we won 4+2=6  Amazones 0+1=1. By the end of the day the gracious Amazones had returned the famous trophy pants.
A Finals:
2nd game of the day against Vortex, lost as usual, Vortex 3+1=4 , CT 0+1=1. Still a 3 point difference.
3rd game against Montreal, lost as usual, Montreal 2+6=8, CT 0.
4th game , last change to get 2nd place, couldn't do it. Vortex 2+4=6, CT 1+0=1, 3 points again.
This last game was at 1PM so 3 of us were ready to leave.


B saga continues.
Andys's Ottawa team blew their 2nd place ranking by losing to 5th ranked JFK. The JFK kids and I do mean kids, wipped them, it was probably all those warm up laps they did at 7:30 before our Amazone exibhition match.
Most of the B guys were ready to finish up early. But not Tom and crew, he stayed around to rally his team to a 3rd place victory and a long bus ride home.

Results:
A Division
Montreal A
Vortex
CT-Ottawa
B Division
we don't really care


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2005 Guelph                                                Pictures   
5th place in A, with some very close games.

Hall of Shame Bail out report:
Round Robin game details:
First game was a loss against Hamilton, (1st place), 5-0 in a bath tub hot pool. This was the deep/shallow pool. We played this game conservatively and the score shows. We never really controlled the puck or got it near their goal for long.

Coach Andrew saves the day: Retiree Andrew P demonstrated that age is no impediment when he stopped a goal attempt by three members of the winning team. Tom was swimming back to sub out and the game is following him. When Tom jumped out and Andy jumped in he was the only person between the goal and the three attackers. Undeterred Andrew went down, stole the puck with a sneaky left handed move and returned it to our team at the top of the slope who were sat there
waiting for the goal to go be scored. Good job Tom got out really and shows the benefit of bringing in fresh players.

In circle Time Jeff convinced us to go for and skip the consertave game, it since the flat pool plays a much faster game. He was right.

The second game we had a 5-4 loss against London,(4th place). It was very close through out and the deck refs screwed the scoring because we though we had tied 5-5. As Tom recants " They got a last minute goal just before the end of the first half, the first time we played them. The score was screwed up and had us tied with two minutes to go. I'm sure we would've pushed harder for a goal if we knew we were down one."

Third game agains Teams USA (2nd place), we though these guys would clobber us going into it. But we did our typical best showing iwhen the odds are against us. After it was over they were very fustrated. In the end it was a 3-3 tie.

As their performance deteriorated and their lead got closed to 3-2 the whippersnapper wimps from Team USA decided to go hold the puck in the corner for a few minutes at the end of the match because they knew they couldn't beat us in open water, After several of their players had taken it in turn to play this weak game Andy decided enough is enough. So he swam into the corner (against all the rules) and with a cry of remember Quebec (Wildturkey) took possession of the puck, First he rotated right and a very smug whippersnapper shoved the puck back into the corner - and completely overcommitted himself in doing so. So Andy rotated left this time with the Team USA guy stuck in the corner and the next team USA guy is positioning himself to stop Andy going down the wall to the net. Knowing our whole team had two minutes to setup for this, Andy decided someone had to be on the 45 degree Angle and so without looking pushed the puck away from the corner and away from the wall to Jamie. Jamie in his usual style swam through a few of the kids about 5 feet out from the goal and gave the puck to wild turkey. Wild turkey fired the puck into on of the kiddies faces to soften up for his main blow then pounded the puck into the goal. Seems we learnt from letting the chicks hold the puck in the corner in Quebec(2003) near the end of the game.


The last round robin game was 4-1 win against Guelph, (6th place). It was close during teh first half and teh game was in jeporady, but they got more tired faster than we did.

Finals:
A 3-2 loss against London. As Mike says "it should be noted that the two losses to London were heartbreakers, could have gone either way, and should have gone our way based on puck possession. I would estimate we held possession like 70-80 percent of the time, and they managed a few weak break away goals. The scores of those two games does not reflect how nasty we played." And Toms comments "Also in the playoffs we got hosed on a horrible call that took away our first goal and a huge momentum swing
with us in the lead at that point."

 

A results:
Hamilton
Team USA
Cinncinatti
London
CT
Guelph

B Results:
who cares. Ok, check out the College Royal site if you really want to know.

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2004 Montreal                                "A tale of the Forgotten"

It started when stopping for lunch, Pat mentions that he though he left his keys in his truck, So when we went back, he not only left the keys in the ingitation, the radio was on and the windows were down. Good start Pat. I asked Pat if he forgot his pasport, He scuffed it off saying he didn't need it. If you don't know even though he has a US pasport he has one of those accents that alerts border guards that he hasn''t spent much time in the USA.

Tom flew up the night before and was staying with Rene. We picked him up at pool, where Rene told us to take him away since he was cramping his style. Went to Peite Marche friday night, where Dwight order just the right amount of pitchers this time.

Andys friend Chris wimped out due to the fear of increades paralysis so we voted and replaced him with Andrew, our entertainment director.

Note: scores are given in First Half + Second Half = Total format.
First game on Saturday against Ottawa, we lost 3+2=5 to 1+0=1. Pat broke away in the flat and lead the single defender away from the goal before pasting it off to Evan who finished it off. This was our only score all weekend and Evan who hasn't played since Nationals got it.

Next game against Vortex they scored 4+4=8 They seemd younger than usual.
We held LaCamorra to 6+4=10 , still not too bad