Saturday, March 16, 2013

Southern Regional Championship

Once again I must apologize for my lack of posting. Between school and work and quidditch I have not had nearly enough time to do all of the things that I want to get done. However, I finally found a little bit of time to finally write this.

The Southern Regional Championship for quidditch took place the first weekend of March in North Augusta, South Carolina. Thirteen teams were vying for one of six spots to qualify for the World Cup, which will be happening on April 13-14 in Kissimmee, Florida. Having come in second place at World Cup last year, my team, the University of Florida, was eager to get back there and prove that were just as good if not better than before.

See? Cold.
The first day of playing started with a barely visible snow flurry.  The SOUTHERN Regional Championship was one of the coldest. Makes perfect sense, right? Anyway, I guess it put us all at a slight disadvantage seeing as we're all southern teams and most were from Florida. The day also included several rounds of very cold rain.

We started out pool play by facing Ringling College of Art and Design. After losing to them in the last Swamp Cup my team really wanted to beat them this time. After a well-fought game we ended up winning 150*-40 (* represents snitch catch). This was a great confidence boost to start the tournament off.

Next up we had Brevard Community College, who we greatly underestimated. However, we still pulled off a 130*-90 win after the game went into overtime.  We then played College of Charleston and won 100*-50. Our first day of games concluded with a win of 160*-0 over Florida International University. I scored a few of our goals on the first day, but none of them were as exciting as those that I scored the next day versus Tennessee Technological University (TTU).

Throughout the first day of games my blood glucose levels remained surprisingly steady.  They started out a bit higher than I was comfortable with having, but the soon came down and then stayed relatively steady. I'm not sure if it was due to how I chose to change my basal or if it was due to the somewhat healthier food that the team had for lunch and as snacks, but whatever the case, I was glad to have my BG's on my side.

The second day of the tournament started out just as cold as the first but without precipitation.  We fit the majority of our team into our small camping tent in order to try to stay warm.  Our first game of the day was against TTU.  We had never played them before, so we were not sure what to expect.  It was a well-played game on both sides. I scored two of our goals this game back-to-back. On one of these goals I am still not sure how I scored because I could not see the hoop. The other one was one of the best blocking and dodging runs down the field I have had recently.  We ended up winning 110*-60.

Our final game of pool play was against USF, a team we had not beaten in a while.  I got another pretty cool score in this game and we ended up winning 80*-30.  Thus, pool play was concluded and we went undefeated in pool play!

Now it came time for the games that would qualify us for World Cup. Being the top seed in our pool, we played the fourth seed from the other pool for trying to qualify for World Cup.  This happened to be Florida Atlantic University (FAU), who we ended up beating 140*-20. With our win over FAU we qualified for World Cup!

Because TTU beat Florida State University in the first round we were set to play them again to see who would go to the finals for the tournament. TTU was better prepared to play us this time around and gave us a much harder game and they ended up beating us 110*-50.  Both of our games against them were really great games of quidditch.

We may not have gotten to play in the finals, but we got what we came for - a spot in the Quidditch World Cup! We also ended up placing 3rd in the tournament!


As for my BG's on this day, they were a little less cooperative. I kept having to bring it up from going too low.  However, I feel like as long as it was not below 80, I was playing better than on the first day. On both days of the tournament I had both my CGM and a pod on my stomach. Wearing compression Under Armour and putting a little bit of tape on them help keep them in place nicely and I had no problems with them the whole time.

It was a great tournament and now I cannot wait for World Cup to get here!

-Keep flying steady