Subs, you say?
For the first time that I can recall, I stood on the sidelines with CUA teams and wondered what to do with all of the subs. The open team had 18 players at CUFF this weekend while the women ran with 11 or 12. I spent most of Saturday with the women. They continue to improve and traded points early with Georgetown, took half, but fell 9-7. They played down to Towson B in a sloppy game and managed to win 9-7. They then took on a fiery Salisbury team and again took half. It was 9-9 as the play-makers for both teams were making plays on offense and defense. Salisbury eventually pulled away to win 11-9, but it all seemed so close. The final game of the day was against powerhouse Maryland and after the tough loss, the egg would not get cracked.

The women’s team is captained by two seniors, both handle well and both claim they’d rather cut, despite their general effectiveness as handlers. I believe the rest of the team, except for one grad student who pops in and out, is sophomores or freshmen, so there’s lots of hope for the future. We’ve got two handlers in training who seem to be improving in those roles, but aren’t quite comfortable yet. There are three sophomores cutting who played at Sectionals last year and they have strong cuts and good hands. All three make a pretty big impact on both sides of the disc, but one in particular has really started to read the disc and catch well above her head. When her hands go up and she starts to extend, 8 times out of 10 she’s been coming down with the disc. This makes her highly effective on offense and a solid deep-deep in the zone on defense. Of the new players, we have a couple speedy receivers who have decent hands and are working on their throws. We have one who quietly goes about her business and I need to watch more closely, but I think she also quietly shuts down her opponents. They just don’t touch the disc. She also came up with one big D on Saturday on a deep put that floated. There are a few others with promise as well. There’s a lot to be excited about, as they notched a hard-cap victory over Messiah and two close losses, one to ?, and one to conference (rival of the future) St. Mary’s. Habit ended up 16th overall, dropping in seed a few notches, but I think they’ll come back stronger.

I spent less time with the men, but got to witness the highlight of the weekend on Saturday. After going 2-1 in pool play, Habit faced off against Salisbury for the right to enter the championship bracket. The basic game plan was to keep our go-to guys in the game until they needed rest. This was 2 cutters and 1 handler. We then rotated 4 handlers around the other 2 handler spots, trying to keep them fresh and focusing on offense or defense where we could. The other 2 cutters were rotated between offense and defense, some occasionally going both ways, but usually between 3 players on either side. Using those 13 players, we still had 5 in reserve on the sidelines. Salisbury felt the full force of this plan as Habit was tearing it up with those 13. It was 4-0 before they knew what hit them. It was 7-2 at half and 13-3 by game’s end. The lengthy defenders gave them fits and the speedy cutters did the same. It was a thing of beauty. It was hard for me to leave 5 people standing on the sidelines, but they all said they understood and if they truly did, I have high hopes for the future.

When we tried the same mix again against Delaware on Sunday, we found out that Delaware was not as impressed. We fought hard, but Delaware was much stronger and dispatched Habit 13-5 (I think). From there, our legs started to give. We gave Rutgers an early fight, but made some costly mistakes and seemed to lose interest in defense so we fell behind 7-3, before opening up the rotation and losing 13-4 (I think). It was a similar story with Towson, particularly because they made sure to keep the disc out of the right hands making our offense sputter. That too was made worse by some ill-timed (or well-forced) mistakes. We didn’t open that one up for rotating in subs, and soon fell 13-4 (or 5). I didn’t watch the game for 15th place, but with an open rotation and our captains on the sidelines, we fell hard again. We all checked our egos as best we could and hope that we’ll build character from this experience. I have high hopes for the team this year. They look as strong as ever and we have some depth to go with the talent. We’re going to have to more fully form into a team, but I think we took a step in the right direction as we move toward the vision of DIII Nationals. I don’t think it will be an easy road, but with some time together and some good luck, I think it’s a very real possibility. That’s pretty exciting. And subs are pretty exciting too!