Bigler Bugler, Fall 2022

The Bigler Bugler
Fall 2022.


Tryouts

“A few good men”


Bigler in the fall is glorious, but Spank needs men who can weather the State College winter.  So we ran an ad in the Collegian.


And 360 hardened souls (fresh faced youths) attended tryouts in 2022, with a variety of experiences (or lack thereof).  This year was made challenging by some fall thunderstorms that canceled a couple days of practice. We adapted by having double sessions. The 4 hour nights made for some long days but let us get through the full tryout process in 2.5 weeks.  After some tough decisions, Logan Piercy, Evan Medrow, Parker Steele, Brandon Shunk, Ethan Pidgeon, Doug Hoyer, Charlie Hurwitz joined the team. (Coach’s desire to winnow the field by just running lines as in Miracle was wisely over-ruled).



 



‘Some call it 4 hours of tryouts because of bad weather, here at Spank.Inc we just call it the Twi-Light double header’.













Fall Brawl (Oct 8-9, 2022).
“The best part about Ohio is the way it looks in the rear view mirror”

Spank came into Fall Brawl with a couple weeks of practice as a team under our belt. We worked on developing new personnel, and trying guys in different roles.  In pool play we worked on running deep lines and handled Loyola and Akron in fairly short order. In the final pool game we played Case Western Reserve University, one of the finest, albeit most expensive, vo-tech colleges in the entire Eastern portion of Cleveland (who had eliminated us from competition at the 2022 Ohio Valley regionals), and we went down a couple breaks we couldn’t claw back. We wouldn’t see them again until regionals, but they, and this 15-12 loss were on our mind all year. 


On Sunday we started out in the pre-quarters vs Indiana - X.  They played a solid game and we battled, but held on to win 13-12.  This set up a quarter final matchup with Michigan. This one just kind of got away from us.  We definitely had our chances on most if not all points but first tournament miscues hurt us.  We did however get good reps, develop talent, and tryout a few different d-looks. In the 5th place game, we faced  OSU-X; fresh off a nationals run, OSU played particularly clean endzone looks. Sadly, we took that loss to our in region rivals 9-8, but it stoked the fires.  Per usual, we wrapped it up with a trip to a strip mall Chinese Buffet. 



Fall Fling - Oct 15-16, 2022. 

Aka, “The alumni gang is late for the first pull”


For our home tournament PSU split into 2 teams (instagram link). Each squad went 2-0 on Saturday notching comfortable wins over WVU, Lehigh, Pitt Johnstown, and Lovetap Y. 

Spank X, Spank Y, and Spank Washed.


The Alums got the win in the Saturday afternoon showcase game on the strength of some allegedly shady calls. The two Spank squads continued on through the tournament, with both split squads falling to the alums in the end in the Semis, and Finals (IIRC, SpankY/”Team Lebron” had the disc to win).  But the reps served the team well, with lots of chances to get quality touches, and plenty of playing time in anticipation of…




Fall Easterns, Wilmington NC, Nov 5-6 ish, 2022. 

Theme : “Cookout, and car break-ins”

Spank rolled into Wilmington as the 12th seed, and third in the pool behind perennial powerhouse UNC ‘Darkside’, 2022 Nationals attendee William and Mary, and ahead of New England Stalwarts Dartmouth. After a wake-up call loss to reigning national Champs UNC, we showed off the results of hard work in the fall with a crisp 13-8 wins against The Merry Men of William and Mary and the Pain Train of Dartmouth.  Some random highlights included finding out that no one at Dartmouth had 800m times even approaching 2:00, fine, that’s a legit OK play dartmouth, Alex ‘ADub’ Wierzbitzky  makes it look easy, Benji Fieldler wows the crowd (with a charmin soft Dartmouth call). Zander Lutz takes that soft call personally on the next D line up and flexes.

On Sunday, a large, partisan crowd of UNCW alums and family gathered to watch PSU… take the Dub 13-11 in the pre-quarters. There were a couple fun shenanigan calls in the game that aren’t worth discussion. In the quarters, we again came out on top against JMU 13-12 to advance to the Semis. In the semis the spankmobile started to experience some pinging and knocking, and we came up short 8-11 against a solid NC State side.

Fall Easterns finish - 4-2, Semis




Next… Winter… aka more road trips to NC for Cookout.

—-----

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