TK Round 1 2011

Yesterday was the start of the 3rd season of the TK series. There were 19 teams at this round, which is a good turnout for a local WA tournament.
 


We finished 2nd to Perth City Trauma. I can't really remember the first and second games of the finals, only that we lost the first and won the second. The third game, we lost two players off the break and Trauma made it out with all of them alive. We had good positions on the field, we drew the game out as long as we could. I felt like we just needed to make one G to swing the game, but it never came and Trauma earned 1st place.

STK & Dye 2011

WASP Open

On Sunday we played the WASP Open. It was a standalone tournament WASP ran independently. It was a relaxed day, finishing just before 12pm! The day was based on points with no finals. We came 2nd. We even had time to stay after the tournament and train as we usually would on a Sunday lol.

It was the final tournament we'd play not in Dye gear!

WCA 2010

Got back from World Cup Asia in KL this morning. We came 3rd. I'm pretty happy with it. We fought our way through a difficult pool winning against Datis, SWAT, Demonz Red, Boonie Dogs and drawing to French team Bad Element and German team Dirty Annihilation. All of the games were extremely difficult and it really seemed like any of the teams from our pool could have gone on to win the tournament. There were plenty of moments where we were on the knife edge of losing games but thankfully instead of cracking we were able to use it to pull together and bring it back. We finished the prelims in 2nd seed to SWAT.

This left us to play Xtioneer/Xfox in the quarterfinals (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjil0Fj9zlI). We won this which left us to face Datis in the semi-finals. It was a difficult game. I think we made a bit of a mistake not conceding a 2v1 point when we should have, which left us grappling for time to make up points. The game finished at time in Datis favour sending them on to play the championship game, which they won. Datis are nice guys and I'm happy for them to have won the tournament!

This left us to play for 3rd and 4th. I felt like we were playing good enough to win the event, and I think we came up against a semi-deflated Ronin team, so we were able to beat them 4-0 and take 3rd. We finished the PALS series in 2nd place.

 

TK Round 5 2010

Today was the final round of the TK series. We had all 8 of our roster playing... it was a little bit tricky to work through rotating at just a local 5 man... but it worked out ok as we won, giving us a clean sweep of the TK series this year and the series title again.

TK Round 4 2010

Yesterday was the fourth round of the TK. We came first in the finals against Perth City Trauma.

The Philippines

Just got back from The Philippines where we competed in the second leg of the PALS. The event was really great, an extremely high quality tournament -- I thought everything ran really smoothly.

We went to the tournament with the mentality to "get it back" from Thailand where we were really unfocused and performed badly.

Our first match was against team Ku from Japan. Before the game, I felt the familiar sickness in my stomach that I get when playing for STK... I feel the pressure to perform because it's a name and something that we made ourselves. We were able to aggressively get down the field and win the match 3-1.

Our second match was against Datis from Iran. The points were close, but they rolled over us beating us down 3-0. It didn't really get us down though and I think losing gave us a better insight into how to play the field.

Despite the positive outlook, we started our next match against Epic quite badly, quickly going to 2-0, with Epic requiring only 1 more point to win the match. We all grit our teeth and got ready to sweat, and came back to win 4 points in a row -- 4 because I hung one point with a hit on my hopper lol oops.

The comeback gave us a confidence boost and I felt at this point we had found a groove.

Sunday we played team USA. We were able to beat them. And then we had our final prelim game against Xtioneers, who hadn't lost any matches so far. We were able to beat them 3-0.

We entered the semifinals in third place which left us facing Xtioneers again. They had rallied from the previous game and put up a real fight. We both sat at 2-2, but we were able to tip it over the edge and win the final point, putting us into the running for first and second.

Man, I freakin tasted victory in the finals. My heart was going 10 million miles an hour, I was certain we had it. It was 2-1 with 1 minute left of game time. All we had to do was last out that minute and we would have first place. It was Griffin left in the snake and me left in the dorito corner. They had all the spots on the field but it didn't matter because where we were crossed up they couldn't really pull anything to dig us out with the remaining time. I shot my last balls in a gun battle then knelt down picked up two paintballs from the ground. It was unbeknown to me that picking paint up in Millennium rules gets you eliminated. A ref was standing right next to me. I pleaded with him unsuccessfully and then left the field at a snails pace to try ANYTHING to burn down those remaining seconds, but it wasn't enough and Team USA bunkered Griff and sprinted to the buzzer, sending us into overtime as the score was locked at 2-2. I was crushed, but ready to basically sweat blood to win the overtime point. We just about took the overtime point to time. They gradually whittled us down and first place just slipped away.

The Philippines is definitely a developing country, but we all had a really great time there. The people are friendly and there's plenty of stuff to do. The players party was pretty cool, Zooey and I were judges on the Miss Philippines panel. We made a bunch of new friends and then all went to Fields Av to party it up.