Apollo 10.10.10

This pretty much sums up what happened over the weekend...

My team decided to join Apollo 10, a two-day tournament sponsored by the University of the Philippines Diliman Ultimate Organization (UP DUO). The format? Ten players in the lineup, with only seven playing at a time--NO SUBS, aka savage! Essentially, it's 45 minutes of hell under the sun.

Normally, you're allowed to sub in between points, and our team is used to subbing every two points so that we always have fresh legs on the field. So you can imagine how much fun I had that first game. By the 30th minute, I was on my knees, crawling and screaming for the love of all things good for water.

But I would do it again in a heartbeat!

My Apollo 10 top 10:

1. We divided into three teams--two in the open division, and one in the newbies division (meaning, eight out of the ten players haven't played in any PUA tournament). Our Warriors B team (aka Barracks), with a record of 2-1 on Day 1, moved up to Pool A!
2. Our newbies team pretty much massacred all the teams they met and made it all the way to the finals!
3. My team (Warriors A, aka Marines), had a 1-2 record on Day 1--this, after playing against the No-Mercy Shark team (made up of some of the best male college players in the country) and Spuck U (another team with young lungs, young legs, and girls that moved like boys. Fast ones!).
4. Went into Day 2 thinking we had a chance at making it to the Pool B finals...that is until our game started and there were only four of us (I was the only girl) playing against seven!
5. ...BUT we scored the first point despite being down three players! (Guess who scored? Tee-hee.) Our players started to trickle in as the game progressed. By half time, we were complete. And we won! Personal highlight: I scored around three points.:) And I said that whatever else happened that day, I was happy enough that we won with four people on the line at the start of the game. To quote Fel, "Nakapag-1 versus 100 na rin tayo!"
   
6. We won the semis too! Personal highlight: I scored a few more points. Yay!
7. We fully expected to meet our friend Spy's team in the finals. But, surprise surprise, they lost to high school team Xavier! So much for our well-laid plans. Spy's quotable quote, after sitting out of the semis to supposedly rest for the finals: "Mas mabuti pa palang pagod sa finals kesa hindi umabot!"
   
8. Before our big finals game, we watched our newbies' finals game. They lost, but they put in a valiant effort--they were playing four girls and three guys versus the other team's standard four guy-three girl ratio. And I gotta say we had the louder cheering squad.:)
9. We lost in the finals versus the kiddies. Sigh. We just couldn't figure out how to shut down their O, and it was too late when we figured out how to work our own O. I did score five out of our six or seven points. It was kind of nice and also rather embarrassing when the Xavier sidelines applauded me and gave me verbal pats on the back as I exited the field.
   
10. Several of the Warriors got awards! Fel was our pool's MVP, JM and Edith (who played splendidly!) were in the Pool A Mythical 7, our turbo-charged Lem was Newbies MVP, newcomer Cams was part of the Newbies Mythical 7, and Czar was best defensive player across all pools! Unbelievable! I'm so proud of the way our teams performed!
    

All in all, a pretty great tournament! Even my aching joints agree.