Winter 2022-2023

The Bigler Bugle

Winter 2023

‘We got 3 enemies.  Ultiworld.  Facilities.  And the Weather.  And Case Western’

‘That’s 4 coach’

‘1, Don’t correct your elders, and B, STATE SKOOL MATH’

Rolling into winter break, our Captains Christian Piccioni, Pat O’Brien, and Ben Zhu worked hard to get buy-in to ‘win the winter’. Athletes posted their holiday workouts and there was clear commitment to fitness by the team.  As always, the weather, and facilities would be a challenge in the dark days back on campus, but, plans were afoot.  We rented the Nittany indoor soccer fields 1 day/week for some high quality 10-1130 pm reps on Sunday nights. We were able to reserve multi-sport one day a week, and in a bold move, we added goaltimate 1 night / week in the white building. In unsurprising fashion, we were kicked out of Multisport,often, and at the last minute.  But while ‘less than ideal’ the Center time and the Goalty time kept us moving.

Senior night at Multi- Sport

Goalty winners.  Little known fact.  Shane loves goalty more than anyone.

Carolina Kickoff

Jan 28,29

We rolled out of mountains and into Chapel Hill with high hopes, and plenty of determination. We played our first game indoor vs. Georgetown.  As you might expect given the lack of full field practice (A common refrain until about Spring break) we were a little sloppy out of the gate, but after pulling first to the Hoyas we traded goals until 5 all before getting our first break and then slowly exerting our will to win 14-12. Next we played UNC in our first observed, timed game in… a long time.  We lost.  They were still the reigning champs.  In round 3, facing a Duke team that beat us 15-8 in 2022, we played a masterful game, especially for being early season.  Our O-line had only 5 turns on 11 holds, and was only broken once, and the d-line scored 3 goals and had only 3 turns;  Duke was likewise stingy in an all round clean game.  The App State game to end the day had 4 lead changes, with each team rising to a 2 point margin at one point. There was Joy in mudville as we broke to win. 

On Sunday we faced UNC Charlotte in the Quarters. In a tough loss that saw us tied 10-10 we fell 15-12 and rolled into consolation.  In the 5th place bracket we again played Georgetown, and Duke, dispatching both 15-11, marked by break rates of around 50% in each game, which helped take the load off an O-line bitten by the injury bug.  On the weekend, we had a 70% hold rate, and average break rate of 36% per game (goals were 80% and 40%); and we averaged about 1.2 turns per goal scored (<1.0 was the goal).

"Offered w/o comment"

Queen City Tune Up
Feb 11-12, 2023

"In which we say, 'take our name out of your dirty mouth Ultiworld'"

All in all we were disappointed with the results of QCTU. We came in 15th seed, and held seed, but there was some bitter taste.  We lost 3 games by a total of 4 points to finish 2-4.  While freely acknowledging that excuses are nails in the coffin probably illegally buried under that crappy trees with the crows in it out by the outhouse behind the house of failure, we'd managed to only have 9 practices in this first month, 4 in the White Gym basketball court, and 5 on the turf.  But there were some upsides. We became increasingly cranky with each loss, and would use it as tackling fuel to stay motivated in the remaining weeks of winter.  

Fishbowl, March 4-5, 2023

Now up to a whopping 15 practices for the year (8 of which were White Building Goaltimate), we jumped on the chance to squueze in one more tournament the first weekend of spring break at the James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. Saturday was quite windy with sustained 20mph winds gusting north of 30 but we took care of The Hellfish Bumblers (Alumblers) and CarNAYgee Mellon before falling to UNCW in the final round for the pool. Not the worst day in the world, but weather was 'low key trash' as the kids say, and the howling wind got blowing around between the ears.

Sunday would see us first in the pre-quarters vs home town hosts the JMU hellfish.  Our offense played a clean game (~85% hold rate) and our defense got the 3 breaks we needed.  We continued to work through some different guys on offense, gaining reps that would be valuable in the post-season, as well as working to get some run for our depth on D to get the reps. On to the quarters, where we faced a scrappy Jersey State Rutgers team that had fully embraced a huck and hope game plan. We won 13-11, but it was, obviously closer than we liked. In the Finals, we again faced off with our good friends from UNCW.  Same result as the prior day as we struggled to find our footing, and lost 13-8.

We wrapped up the winter 11-8 on the back of a fair amount of goaltimate and a lot of practice on astroturf on about 1/3 of a frisbee field.  No one was completely satisfied, but we worked hard given the circumstances, and, we were excited to actually (finally) get some outdoor time on full fields as we rolled into the spring.

Next up.... the Spring.

March 13, 2023
First Practice on Bigler, under the lights.
"The gang realizes it's still winter"

We showed up at 8 pm the Monday after spring break, ready to flex, and of course, Club Sports forgot to show up and open the gates.

(K, now seriously done).