Ultimate Showcase Series

The Ultimate Showcase just completed its third year in the Boston area. It's a series of games featuring the club players in the Boston area against each other, competing in Open and Mixed.

There were three preliminary games at area schools (Concord, Bedford, BB&N in Cambridge, Charlestown) prior to the finals at a nice new soccer stadium in Somerville.

My team (Cambridge) won the Open final (hurray!) but gave up the final four points to lose the Mixed final by 1 (doh!). Even though I didn't care too much, I still hated losing that final in that way. I thought we had clinched the game after I caught a long pass in the crowd (flat-footed; I lead the league in flat-footed contested catches) and dished off a lefty backhand for the goal to put us up 14-11 with about 6 minutes left in a running clock (we had the field only until 3 pm). But boom, boom, and it's 14-13, pull with less than a minute. With about 20 seconds left, we decide to throw it deep, turn, and then they launch their own deep pass with about 8 seconds left for the goal. (It wasn't really clear, though, what the cap rule was, whether the game would have ended right there or if the point would have been finished.) The soccer guys who had the field next and were watching were nice and allowed us to play another point. But long throw, non-catch, and they moved it upwind 70 yards for the game.

Our Open team barely made it to the finals. We lost our first game 15-11, and because of point differential needed to win our next game by at least 4. We took half 8-6, then stretched it out to 14-9, but once again, we faltered. Gave up one again, then another, then another turn, got it back, another turn, got it back, and then punched it in to make it on the margin (our opponent had already clinched their spot by scoring at least 9).

It was good playing with the Boston Ultimate guys, but I wish more of them had participated. I don't think that any of the ones who played in the finals were teammates of mine ever (other than Alex) (ok, there were two, on further review). Hmm, interesting also, I just looked at their 2007 roster and only counted 11 guys who I had played with just the year before.

Kudos and thanks to the crew who ran these events, Erik Sebesta primarily. It would be good to get more fans for these events. We seemed to be plagued by bad weather this year. The finals had looked like storms, but instead just brought high winds, at least until about 30 minutes after the game, when lightning and heavy rains did hit.