David Baldwin Memorial Tournament

DBMT has been a destination for the Boogiemen for the past three years. Each year we have attended we have done better on that lush Tennessee grass. We went into the tournament seeded 5th overall and had our eyes on the $500 prize for 1st place.

The van ride down was luxurious. We had 2, 12 passenger vans for 15 people. We safely arrive at the Sleep Inn hotel and settle in for the night.

We arrive at the fields at 7:50 and are the first team on the scene. We get cleated up and start our warm up routine. We prepare for our first game, which is against Valdosta State University.

This tournament started out like many of the other tournaments this fall. Slow and sloppy. We killed ourselves with turns and made points much longer than they needed to be. We grinded the game out and won 13-10 but not without frustration. This frustration spilled over into my post-game talk and I think we finally realized we can't do this to ourselves every tournament. We had a bye to reflect on our short comings and the start of our next game was a turning point for our fall season.

From our second game on day 1 to about the end of the tournament, we played like a talented team who have played together for the last 2.5 months. This is what I had been waiting for all fall and I'm glad we put it together for the duration of the tournament.

The second game was against Wofford B. There's not much to report. We beat them 13-0.

The third game, against University of Tennessee, was where you could see the passion, the fundamentals, and our team finally come together. Since UT was hosting, there were a bunch of family and friends lining the fields. It's always fun to play in front of a bunch of people, not to mention a crowd not friendly to you. We played man defense for a few points and traded for 4 points. Then we felt a breeze starting to kick up and we never looked back. We clamped done with an unforgiving zone defense and went on an 11-2 run to close out the game. Miami takes the game in front of the hometown crowd, 13-4.

Our last game was against Vanderbilt. We lost to them with a short squad at Itchfest and it was nice to get to play them again. We put the exclamation mark on our last game of the day and took the game in convincing fashion, 13-3.

We took a cool down lap, stretched, and discussed eating plans. It was clear, Ruby Tuesdays would be a great team meal and some fine American dining. We went back to the hotel, showered up, watched Charlie Weis make an enormous coaching blunder, and headed over to Ruby Tuesdays. The highlight from our dinner was the post meal scavenging. There are always straw fries and leftovers on plates around the table and I was cleaning up some of this. Chuck and I seem to battle over these and at a place like Ruby Tuesdays, it's on. The best part was when I was being handed some fries by Shake and instead of even trying to steal the fries, Chuck goes straight for all the ketchup on my vicinity. He proceeds to spit in every viable container of ketchup for my fries and say to me, "Enjoy your dry fries!"

The best part of the night was not the delicious steak I ate for dinner, but in the Day 2 schedule. We got a one seed going into the championship bracket and had our first game scheduled for 10:45. Sick. Not only is that an unbelievably great start time, but we fell behind an hour for daylight savings time. Some of our guys got so much sleep, they were able to wake up at 6 am and do homework.

Our quarter final match up was against Davidson. A very solid team hailing from the AC Region, they were missing a few key players and we pounced. Before the game we talked about how important it was to come out with excitement and never stop. We did just that. We threw a suffocating zone and were yelling and high fiving after every point. Not only were we excited, we didn't turn the disc over in the first half. We ended up taking the game 13-0. Only two points in the entire game saw the Boogiemen turn the disc over (there was one other strip I didn't call...but we won't count that).

The semi finals brought us Ohio University. A sectional foe and defending David Baldwin champs. We got a good look at them because our previous game ended so early. We "re-warmed up" and got ready to battle. We stormed out of the gates and went up 4-1, before they called a timeout. We were not relenting and took half 7-3. OU had resilience and made a case for a comeback, but we were not interested in a meltdown. We finished out a hard fought game and took it 13-9. (Nice side note, Chuck got a large "boob" on his knee that swelled up and it looked like he had another knee. Hilarious.)

We did it. We set ourselves up to make 500 bucks and win another tournament this fall. We wanted this, we wanted it real bad. The finals brought us Michigan State. We traded with them for a while (and there might have been a break on both sides) and the game saw itself at 6s. Michigan State took half 7-6 and everything was on serve. We weren't playing with quite the same passion and efficiency as before but we were by no means out of this game. We tried to get excited for the second half but things sputtered once we got out there. They broke us three straight times and took the lead, 10-6. Each break worried me, and I tried to tell everyone to not let it get in our heads, but we just couldn't quite finish out this last game. At 10-6 it started to feel like it was slipping away, but we fought until the end. We traded out the rest of the game and lost 13-9.

Towards the end of the game, after a pull to us, I jogged off the line and farted. A small one, but apparently Beffel noticed and gave a hardy laugh. We both had a good laugh in the midst of the late game tensions and ended up scoring the O point.

We came up just short of our goal but the weekend still went real well. We finally put together a solid tournament that we could be proud of. We were unrelenting and fundamentally sound. It felt good to see this team finally put the pieces together and run on all cylinders.

We taped the entire tournament and the video will be posted tomorrow. Check back then and you'll have the link.