WTF?!

Final Fours are in a week and the line up for D1 women's is interesting. Stanford is there, of course. Penn State too. The two surprises are New Mexico and Davis. I hadn't heard much about New Mexico before now but congrats to them. As for Davis, my feelings are mixed.

I have too many things to say to make a coherent paragraph so I'm just going to list.

1. I'm bitter. Yes, Davis beat us fair and square. However, they got a much easier path to Final Fours than we did last year. We played Air Force, the West #1, on the first day and if we had won we would have played another military school. Davis got to play Virginia and UNI. I'm not saying those were easy games but I don't think it quite holds up to two military schools.
2. If any team from our league besides Stanford deserves to be in Final Fours it's Chico. They're better than Davis but their pool was ridiculous. It had three teams ranked #1 in their league, including Penn State who has been in the final game the past two years, and then Chico who is #2 in PCRFU. How is that fair?
3. PCRFU should have 4 spots in Sweet 16s. Stanford and Chico are consistently two of the top teams in the country. We're good and Davis has proven themselves up to par too. Take seeds away from the South. Why do they have two seeds? They got killed last year and they got killed this year.
4. Why does SoCal only have 1 seed? Again, the South has two. Are you really telling me that the South has better teams than UCSB and UCSD?
5. I don't mean to totally bash on the South but their results both last year and this year demonstrate that their league is just not up there with the rest of the leagues. Every league had at least 1 team advance to the Elite 8 except SoCal and the South. Fold the South into a different league or make them DII. Maybe in a few years they'll be able to compete with the best but right now, they're not cutting it.
6. On Friday, it's going to be Stanford vs. Davis. For the first time in my life I might just root for Stanford.

Good luck to everyone! Yes, even Davis. May the best team win.

Not the ending we wanted...

Pacific Coast playoffs were this weekend. We played OSU on Saturday and won by an good margin. We came out hard, scored first and kept scoring. There were some things that needed to be tweaked at half time but overall it was a good game.

Sunday was our game against Davis and it was an agonizing game to watch. We played hard and with a lot of heart but we just couldn't get anything going. There were good individual moments but we couldn't string them enough of them together to result in points. We did score at the very end which was good but this game was a heartbreaking end to our run.

This has been a difficult season and in some ways I'm relieved that it's over. It's just been a bit emotionally draining, for me at least and I think for other people on the team as well. We still had some beautiful moments. The fall was great with a fun bunch of rookies and we did well at Stanford 10s and Scrum by the Sea. The league season also went well. We got off to a slow start against Stanford and Chico but we improved and beat Humboldt, Davis, and Reno. So it's not like this year has been dismal but it wasn't the glory season that we thought it could have been. We had so many amazing returning players and after our successes from last year, all the vets and especially the seniors had high hopes coming into this year. Injuries really took their toll though. We had broken bones, concussions, and torn ligaments. We've already had three players have surgery this year and there are several who are looking at possible surgery this summer. The injuries took several of our star players out of contention and just made it hard to have a consistent lineup.

I simply can't believe it's over. The entire team is in a bit of a daze. I don't even want to imagine the rugby team without the seniors. I'm really going to miss them.

Here's to a great year despite the ending. Here's to a well deserved break. And here's to coming back bigger and better than ever next year!

Davis, you better do something with this opportunity. Soak it up because next year, Sweet 16s are ours!

Wish us luck!

Because playoffs are this weekend! I admit that I'm nervous. We've been looking good in practice but we're really gonna have to bring it.

Besides our own games, I'm really excited to watch the Chico/Stanford match. Chico has the momentum but I'm sure Stanford would love nothing more than to take back the number 1 spot.

In other news, I'm off crutches! Actually I've been off them for about a week. I walk with a bit of a limp but my range of motion is good and my knee is relatively pain free. I think my doctor may have a slightly unorthodox approach. I just saw my physical therapist for the first time and she about had a heart attack when she realized that I wasn't wearing a brace. I've gotta admit I'm glad my doctor is this aggressive. My leg has already atrophied some. I can't imagine what it would have looked like if I'd worn a brace for a month.