Farmvillecup - Juli 2023
After several years absence, the air pussies were one of 19 lucky teams to make the trip to Lüneburg for the famous Farmvillecup 2023. Despite several last-minute cancellations due to illness and injury, 12 cool cats made their way northwest from Berlin, excited for our first 7v7 outdoor tournament of the season!
While we felines might be notorious for avoiding water, this merry band could not be put off by the morning drizzle and a forecast of rain all day. As we warmed up, we brought our three pickup players up to speed with our game plan, looking forward to finally unveiling our shiny new Hex offense for the first time competitively.
Despite our wet fur, our paws felt ready for our first match against Goldfingers, a familiar foe from nearby Potsdam. A strong start with some traded points eventually fell way to an insurmountable lead from the Goldies, who kept their feet on the gas pedal to earn a clear 8-4 victory. The next two games followed in a similar fashion, where we struggled to find any flow and disc movement, losing first to the Muddis 7-3, and later to Baltimate 8-2. Undeterred by the defeats, spirits were still high as we looked to turn things around in our three remaining matches. Maybe it was the catnip we had for lunch or a quick pause at the scratching post, but we found our first win of the day in a heated battle against Fischkutter, with a score of 7-5 settled after the cap went off. We took this momentum and added some bite to our defense to go along with the newfound flow, purring along to a 6-0 victory against SG Dynamo. And in the last match of the day, fighting against exhaustion and soaked to the bone, we were able to continue our success with a tight 5-4 win against Schleudertrauma. Next up, a quick catnap and on to the Scheunenfête for a beer and a boogie!
Sunday greeted us with lots of wind, but luckily no rain. This played out well for our sparse team, as we were able to set a zone right away to give ourselves a chance to catch our breath on defense. Our first opponent, RotPot could not find a way through this zone, scoring only 3 points, while we continued with our philosophy of moving the disc quickly, putting up 11 points for our biggest win of the weekend. But alas, our winning streak was not to last, ending in a scrappy 5-3 defeat, against the Muddis for a second time. However, we could be proud that we gave them a much tougher match than the day before. Our last match of the tournament was finally at hand. Our foes - the Sunblockers. As the game went on, it seemed that we had the upper hand, feeling relatively comfortable with the score at 7-4, before they were able to make it 5 as the cap went on. What followed was an epic cap period lasting 26 minutes, with the two teams giving every last ounce of effort in each never-ending point. It may not have been the prettiest frisbee of all time, with fatigue and lack of concentration leading to bad decisions and turnover after turnover, but the Sunblockers were able to tie it up at 7 to force a universe point. Despite allowing them back into the game, we cats licked our wounds, held our heads high, and in the end clawed our way to victory at 8-7, collapsing on the field in a proud and jubilant exhaustion. That win and a hard-earned 11th-place finish tasted sweeter than the best bowl of milk a cat could dream of!
All in all, the air pussies could be proud that we stuck with our new offense, didn’t let the early defeats demotivate us, and kept learning and improving through the entire weekend. Thanks go to the various pickups that supported us throughout the tournament (especially Floppy, Ramsy, and Adit), and a gigantic, enormous kudos to our superheroines Jessi and Melli, who never let up the whole tournament even as they played almost every point!