No Borders was the first chance we’ve had to see what the majority of our roster could do together; a glance forward to fall season. The weather in Ottawa in the weeks leading up to the tournament was downright nasty, with heavy rain taking a serious toll on the UPI fields. Standing water on many fields, and soft muddy turf on the rest made games interesting...

We started off against Medicare, the same team that gave us problems on Saturday morning at Jazzfest. With a full roster and pride at stake, we took that game fairly easily, 13-5, and felt pretty good heading into a tough matchup against NADS, who had picked up a good chunk of the GOAT boys for the weekend. We fought hard, but came out on the wrong end of a capped 14-12 score. Still confident, Mephisto was up next. This was a game that we should have won, leading 9-7 at soft cap. Unfortunately, we allowed 4 straight points to the determined Montreal team and 2008 National finalists, and lost a heartbreaker 11-9. That set up a crossover against Demon, Montreal’s #2 Open team. We were up to this challenge, and won 13-8 to hold our quarter-final seed.

Sunday dawned grey and wet again, and we had Phoenix on tap in the quarter-final, a repeat of our Jazzfest semi-final. This time, it was a much different game. Not sure if it was the absence of the wind that we had in Montreal, or a general lapse in intensity and focus, but we traded points for much of the game before some minor ugliness revved the younger boys up and left us fighting our own offensive fatigue and their increased desire. In some ways, the 13-10 loss was a good thing for both sides -- Phoenix goes to Nationals in Winnipeg without the monkey on their back of having been beat in the season series by the local Masters team and realizing that they have more levels of intensity to call on than they may have realized, and GLUM heads there knowing we still have considerable work to do before we can count ourselves ready for UPA Fall Series.

The weather had forced the tournament organizers to cull back Sunday’s games to just the top-8 in the Open and Womens divisions -- a very good call -- and we didn’t play out for finishing placement, so GLUM ended up somewhere between 5th and 8th.

Next up: Canadian Nationals in Winnipeg. I leave on Wednesday, and am very excited to start getting my own game back on track after a summer of achilles tendonitis that seems to be finally calming down, and to hopefully collect a repeat gold medal for GLUM.

No Borders tournament site and final results

Canadian Nationals tournament site