The Elite Open was split into 2 pools of 7, round robin, then semis and finals on Sunday afternoon, plus one crossover game with the other pool for each of the non-semifinalists. The first of 5 rounds Saturday was supposed to begin at 10:30, but because of a mixup in the schedule I sent to the printer and because of the late start of the Easterns pool, it was determined at the captains meeting that the Elite pool would begin at 10 AM, and two of the teams (Ring and Rage) showed up for their first round games at about 10:20, and had difficulty getting started. Top seeded Ring lost a tough one to Miami 13-10 to start, and thus began a long road for the Carolinians, who lost their next game to second seed Westchester Summer League (NY), 13-7. WSL would cruise through the pool undefeated, with no game closer than 13-9. At the end of Saturday, WSL had first place effectively clinched, while Miami and roQ were slated to square off in the first round Sunday for the likely second place slot. RoQ prevailed in that one 13-8, but still had to beat Ring of Fire in their next game in order to advance, owing to a one-point loss to Big Ass Truck on Saturday. RoQ was up to the challenge, though, and won handily, 13-6, to advance to the semis.

Meanwhile, in the other pool, DoG and the Houston Houndz rolled over their opponents, with only the DoG-Chain Lightning game being close. In that Chain was up late, but DoG scored the last several to win by 3. Minnesota’s Sub-Zero was the surprise of the pool. They were almost bumped down to the Easterns pool in pre-tournament machinations, but played impressively throughout the weekend, losing only to the two semifinalists while beating Chain (2-4 overall), second seed Anodyne (1-5), Pumphouse 5 (1-5), and the NY/Boston Masters (2-4), who used the weekend as a tuneup for their upcoming Worlds appearance. The final round of pool play saw the two undefeated teams match up, and DoG won easily in their best game of the weekend, 13-6, pitting them against their nearby rival roQ in the semis.

DoG continued their roll and took first half 8-4, but a three goal run by roQ early in the second half brought the game to within 1. DoG toughened, though, and held out to win 15-12 or 15-10. Meanwhile, WSL beat Houston 15-10, setting up a final seen no fewer than 30 or 40 times this decade, Boston vs NY.

The weather started getting rough at this point. First came a drizzle, then a hard, cold downpour as the game got underway. Many fans scurried for the pavilion near the women’s final (both Boston teams had played on only one field all weekend, and neither would consider moving to accommodate the other or the fans, and hence the finals were played fairly far apart). The teams agreed to play with Observers as part of an effort to help out the Observer program. Head Observer Vic Kamhi made the trip up to Boston after receiving pledges by many locals to volunteer their services as Observers, but unfortunately, only this final game had enough Observers to field a full crew. The players went to the Observers about half a dozen times, mostly on receiving fouls, but also agreed to send the disc back to the thrower on at least two occasions.

Despite the terrible weather, both offenses got scored on only once in the first half, as DoG took an 8-7 lead. DoG got a couple short defensive runs in the second half, and held on to win 15-12.

The Easterns Open pool used the Scramble format as implemented the last few years at Mars. In this format, there is only one pool, and each team plays a cross-section of the other teams in pool play. Each game’s scores are then entered into the THORNE computer algorithm (a nifty user-friendly Windows software program) and the algorithm uses won-loss record, point differential, and strength of schedule to rank the teams. Top 8 of 14 advanced to the quarterfinals. The results should be independent of strength of schedule and pre-tournament seeding, both potential flaws in typical pool format tournaments, especially in ones where accurate seeding is difficult.

The first four rounds on Saturday were arranged beforehand, with an attempt made to balance the schedules based on a pre-seeding. Fifth-round pairings were determined during the fourth round to attempt to fine tune the balancing, since some teams performed substantially better or worse than their pre-seeds. Here are the results from Saturday:

("Strength of Schedule" is the sum of the rank of all opponents, so the lower the number, the tougher the schedule. If a team played the #1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 teams, "Strength of Schedule" would be 15. The average is 37.5)

Team, Record, +/- Goals, Strength of Schedule, Rating
1. Control Board, 5-0, +29, 43, 9.88
2. Texas, 4-1, +24, 39, 8.41
3. Red Tide, 3-2, +12, 28, 7.92
4. waX, 4-1, +13, 39, 5.94
5. Mephisto, 3-2, 0, 29, 4.39
6. El Nino, 3-2, +2, 37, 3.22
7. Havoc, 3-2, +3, 41, 2.63
8. Nathan, 2-3, +3, 37, 2.25
9. Dos Manos, 3-2, -4, 37, 1.31
10. Aftershock, 1-4, -9, 33, 0.82
11. Boston, 2-3, -2, 43, -0.16
12. Trout, 1-4, -14, 37, -2.97
13. Red Hook, 1-4, -12, 45, -3.04
14. Suspicious Package, 0-5, -40, 36, -10.12.

The top four seeds all won their quarterfinals. Red Tide and waX won their semis, waX in a close one over Control Board, then Red Tide beat waX by 3 or 4 in the finals.

Women’s Elite:

I have received little information so far on this division. The 8 teams played round robin, and the top two advanced to the finals. The finals was capped early so the Chicago women would be able to make their plane flight out. Nemesis jumped out to an 8-2 lead (maybe even 8-1), but Godiva came back to win 10-9. Ozone was 4-3, Vixen was 2-5, and Rare Air, Philly Peppers, Ambush, and Stella also competed. It appears that there were many close games and upsets.

Women’s Easterns:

Twister beat Juice in the finals 11-5 after losing to them in pool play 16-14. Also present were Harmony, Callipyge, Tallulah, and Discs and Salsa/GLU.

Tournament:

Many thanks to Tournament Director Henry Baker, who pulled this huge event off with only a tiny amount of help.

Jim Parinella