Sectionals 2019

Burn was up and out of town by 6:15 am on Saturday morning, an early start to a long day of ultimate ahead, with five bids to Regionals at stake this past weekend. Eight teams showed up, and three would have to make the long drive home at the end of the weekend with their seasons finished.

Saturday - Without a first round bye for this tournament, our first game was at 9 against Radford. We came out with a ton of energy and managed to stay in control the entire game, cruising to a 13 - 2 win to start the day. Our next game was against VCU, and we brought even more energy out (in the form of vine cheers) to dominate them as well, winning 13 - 2 again. Our last game of pool play came against the top seed William and Mary, who we were 0 - 8 against since 2017, so we were really hyped up and looking for some revenge. It was such an important game that Prison Marc broke out of jail just to help us out. We came out playing very clean ultimate and each team only mustered a single break (shout-out to Pelt for a layout D) in the first half so it was still even at halftime. In the second half our D-line started balling out and got four breaks over the course of the half to pull out a decisive win over our in-state rivals 13 - 9. The curse has officially been broken! Following this game we had our quarterfinal game against George Mason, and we played a lower energy game and let them stay in it. But we still managed a solid win, 15 - 8.

- Prison Marc and the Boys (photo credits to Kevin Flynn)

Sunday - Our Sunday morning started with a semifinal game against JMU at 10. We were very excited that it wasn't pouring rain on us and opened the game with four breaks to go up 5 - 0. We never looked back and kept up the intensity the whole game, winning 15 - 6. This left us facing UVA in the finals who had also gone undefeated so far. It was a super high energy game with every point loud with cheers from both sidelines, and we started strong with a few breaks but let them get close right before taking half 8 - 6. The second half we had a few layout D's that snagged us 3 breaks and that was enough to hold a lead and ride it to the win 15 - 12. This closed out our weekend having gone undefeated and winning Sectionals for (please correct me if I'm wrong) the second time ever in Burn team history.

What a fun weekend, we are super excited to compete at Regionals in two weeks, April 27th and 28th. Two bids to Nationals are at stake at Regionals, stay tuned to see what craziness occurs at the Atlantic Coast Regionals this time around!