Our time at Winter Cuppers, though burned into all our memories, is
worth writing up for posterity. So here's the story of DCU Lions at
Winter Cuppers 2011:

We showed up at Churchill on what should have been a chilly December
morning, but was instead a warm, pleasant day. With DCU entering the
tournament with two mixed experience teams seeded 5th and 6th, we had
cautious hopes of this being a good day - we knew it wasn't going to be
easy to maintain our seed with many other colleges bringing back
world-class alumni players, but hoped to stay in the top bracket.

DCU Lions 6-6 Corpus
With nearly everyone showing up on time (!), we got off to a great start
against a Corpus team that perhaps hadn't quite woken up yet, and raced
away to a 4-0 lead.
But then Corpus suddenly remembered they were the 3rd ranked College
League team and fired off some great deep shots (combined with some
really unlucky drops from us) to grab 5 points in a row. It took us a
while to realise what was happening, but eventually we got our act
together and traded the last few points to end the game with a draw.
Corpus were an athletic team, without superb disc skills, but very
active both under and deep -- quite hard to mark. Corpus end the day
ranked 3rd, so while I feel this was a game we could have won, this was
an excellent result.

DCU Lions 5-1 Churchill Beta
We went into this game wanting to win it, and it paid off - after a
tough first few points we dominated the match and made an good Churchill
team look ordinary. I thought our D this match was exemplary. Off the
back of this result, we went into the knockout stages topping our group
in 3rd seed!

DCU Lions 5-6 DCU Eagles (3v6)
This game has already gone down in DCU history as the greatest match
ever played. By this time there was a slight upwind-downwind thing going
on -- we broke, but then Eagles broke back. In the final point -- which
was epic -- I think the Eagles used the mismatches on D better than we
did, and were a bit more conservative with the disc, which combined with
the downwind advantage gave them the victory. In the end the result went
with the toss, which was probably fair given how evenly matched the
teams were. Everyone put in such a huge effort, every Lion can be proud
of their contribution.

DCU Lions 5-7 Penguins (6v7)
Considering we were going up against a team containing half-a-dozen SB
1st team players, and had just played an epic sudden death match, this
was a brilliant performance. We were solid on D, and played some really
sweet O. Towards the end of the match, when we were really starting to
feel tired, I think we had a few mindless hucks, but overall this was
the best we played all day. We didn't do anything special or crazy but
we got all the basics spot-on and really pushed an excellent Penguins
team hard.

DCU Lions 7-6 Churchill Alpha (7v8)
As we went into this match, we knew this was the last match of the day,
this was it, no regrets. This was another really good Churchill team
that had beat Eagles comprehensively so was never going to be easy. But
the way we played this match was excellent -- everyone gave everything
they had. Churchill eked out a 3-1 lead but we clawed back the points to
trade till time went at 6-5 to Lions. On D we had great bids flying
everywhere (Kaustuv's layout D springs to mind), on O we worked around
their zone with clinical efficiency. Their combination of JP, Calvin and
Alicia were a great handling trio and were hard to stop (JP's crazy
no-look forehands, arghhh), and JP was looking huge and blocking
everything deep on D, but we managed to do enough to come away with the
win in sudden death, to finish in 7th place overall.

Looking at the final standings I'd say the teams ranked 3-8 were all
incredibly close to each other, it was an extremely competitive Winter
Cuppers, so to end up in 7th with a mixed experience team is truly
outstanding.

Our overall cuppers MVP was Dan Janman, not just for his superb deep
cuts and grabs which he always has, but for the way throughout the day
he was also able to cut under and help the handlers out with a chilly reset.

The thing I was most happy with overall was our consistency - I felt we
as a team played really well the whole day, every match. We didn't have
any time where we switched off or let a team sneak up on us. Also, every
team member contributed -- including amazing play from the freshers
(James, Kim -- some great grabs, and so calm on the disc!). Thanks to
those that found time in a busy day to come play with us, too!

We also had good team spirit -- everyone was really together and
supportive -- and spirit of the game. Over the term, Lions ended up 3rd
out of 16 teams in terms of spirit score (average 4.17 out of 5) -- this
is excellent! It's important to remember we play ultimate because it's
fun, and because the people are great -- winning is great, but not at
the cost of both teams having a good time.

I was extremely happy with the day, I hope you all were -- and I look
forward to playing ulti with every one of you next term!

T