Vintage road-tripped down to Boston last weekend to attend the prestigious Boston Invite tournament. The second of three tournaments on our schedule for the summer, Boston Invite provided us with an opportunity to put our hard work, Specifik training and practices to the test against other elite women’s teams attending from as far away as Minnesota and the UK.

Initially ranked 9th in the Elite Women’s division, we had the privilege of starting our day on Saturday against Brute Squad, one of the top teams in the US. Their youth, height, speed and experience made it an excellent warmup game for us, despite a 15-5 loss. Our second game pitted us against the only other masters women’s team in the competition, Godiva, a team that will be representing the US at the World Championships in August. In a fun and spirited match-up, our team cohesion and fitness enabled us to dominate for the majority of the match. Late in the game Godiva threw a zone that gave us some trouble, but we came out on top with a 15-10 win.

Our third game of the day against a very new team from Rhode Island was relatively easy as we coasted to a 15-2 win. Finishing second in our pool, we played a cross-over against the second team from Boston, named Vice. Our fatigue showed early the effects of Boston’s infamous two-hour rounds came into play. Nonetheless we won the game by a score of 15-11.

On Sunday morning, we faced the Capitals in our quarterfinal. Another very competitive team that usually places well at USAU Championships and represented Canada in 2012 at the World Ultimate and Guts Championships, the Capitals experienced a lot of turnover from previous years and did not have too many vets on their squad at Boston Invite. Nonetheless, they came out fast and strong, and due to some errors on our part we found ourselves down 8-2 at halftime. Gen’s pump up speech must have done its job because after half we fought back hard, tying the game and then taking the lead. In the end, the game went to hard cap with the teams tied at 14s. Unfortunately, we lost an opportunity to score following a major injury to one of our cutters on an attempted catch for the score. Capitals took the win 15-14.

Our consolation game against the UK Bristols started two minutes after the loss in quarters, but nonetheless the team was able to rally to win against the very tall ladies from across the pond. As a result, we played Pop, from Minnesota, for the game for 5th place. After a long battle, trading points after half and losing numerous players to injury, we once again lost on universe point after turning it in the red zone.

Despite two losses on universe, Vintage is happy with our performance at Boston Invite. We showed mental fortitude in our comeback against Capitals, we fought hard in each game and we improved our ranking from 9th to 6th. We are proud that we were only one point away from making it to semis in the elite women’s division, as a masters team. And we have plenty to work on over the next month ahead of Italy in August!