On Saturday, September 16th, about 20 girls woke up at 6 a.m. to make the hour long drive over to Grinnell for Saucy Nancy's first tournament of the season: Elephantitis. Grinnell has always been a great tournament, not only because of its fun and relaxed style, but for the chance to show our rookies what an ultimate tournament is and teach them more about playing the game. This year we had a great group of rookies who already have shown their dedication and eagerness to learn at practice. Our vets took this tournament to become teachers to the rookies they were paired with on their line, while also working on improving their fundamentals. Our first game against McCalister was the first time our rookies got to play in a real ultimate game. While it took a while to get the hang of things, our rookies began to understand where to cut and when, establishing a good flow on the field. Vets continued to help out both on and off field by talking to rookies, one of the things I heard most was "other side" (to be fair as a rookie I got flick and backhand force wrong ALL the time). IHUC came towards he end of the second half and helped cheer us on as we continued to fight to take the game. While we didn't win, our first game provided Saucy with a look on what adjustments needed to be made for our next game. After the LONG trek to field 1 we started our second game against Grinnell. The rookies really began to come into the game, there was an impressive amount of sick Ds. Our dump drill we did last Thursday proved to be very helpful, however there were a ton of good rookie to rookie throws that connected and helped our team take the W for this game. Our last game of the day was against Mizzou and proved to be tougher than the last. While everyone was tired from our previous two games, we did not cease to continue pushing ourselves. The vets stepped up to help bring the game to universe and displayed to the rookies just how important fundamentals become in a tight game. Bucket was on the edge of his seat the the entire time! While we couldn't clinch the win on universe it was a great game that was well fought by both sides. What we take away from a game like this is we can never stop pushing. Even when you're tired or even if it's Grinnell, every point is just as important as the last and we need to keep our heads up and our eyes on the prize. Because Mother Nature decided to be unkind we ended up not camping at Grinnell this year. Once back in Iowa City we had some saucy bonding where most of us danced/sung the night away before our bedtime at 9 (Okay maybe I stayed up until 10, I sacrificed a little bit of my beauty sleep to catch up on my shows). On Sunday we began to warm up to what would prove to be our toughest game: Scorn (ISU). Scorn has always been a tough match up for us, I still remember playing them at Old Cap Open and it was our most competitive game, it was no different at Grinnell. Scorn proved to be a very solid team, with not many new players their vets really pushed our rookies to play harder than they had before. Our vets new the drill and played a very smart and hard game against Scorn's tough and quick offense. I believe the score of this game did not reflect the way that Saucy played. Both sides fought hard, but Saucy's rookies proved they will stop at nothing to continue learning and getting better. Our vets also proved what our mindset will be for the rest of this season. We want to play and we want to win, and we are willing to work towards that. That game was our last game on Sunday because the other team we were going to play kind of disappeared. So instead we played a friendly scrimmage against UNI, which culminated to a rookie point(!) in which we scored and took home another win! Twilight also made us do some drills, because we had the field and why East an opportunity? With it only being my second year on Saucy I can't talk about how excited I am for the rest of the season. Last year I was were the rookies were, nervous because I still kind of didn't know how to play ultimate, but excited because I came into college and was immediately greeted by my new family. Ultimate has become one of my passions and one of my loves. Saucy has become my family, and I wouldn't have it any other way. We're a very young team and we still have a lot of growing to do, but I can already envision Saucy becoming a very good and competitive team come the spring season. Everyone here is dedicated and everyone wants to improve. So I'll be out there on the pentacrest or thirty minutes before practice throwing and I hope you'll all join me as we continue help Saucy grow into the best version we can be. Cheers to this year, HFS Bex
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February 2021
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