In a rare turn of events, both Santa Barbara Qualifier and Santa Barbara Invite were not rained out. However, due to Rec Cen staffing constraints, both tournaments were only held on the turf fields, leading to much fewer teams being able to participate.

Quals

Quals provided quality reps for the rookies this year, with only a small handful of vets leading the charge for the tournament. With dominant wins against Fresno State (9-3 Tide), Cal Poly Pomona (10-3 Tide), and UC Irvine (13-3 Tide), Tide’s only losses were to UCLA (who seemingly brought their top 14 and ran zone at SB Invite, 12-4 UCLA) and Santa Clara (who decisively won the tournament, 9-4 SCAB). The rookies performed well, with lots of improvement in their near future, and a chip on their shoulder for revenge. (3W, 2L)

Black Out also played well in the Developmental Division at Quals, with good wins over UCLA B (9-7 Black Out), UCSD B (8-4 Black Out, we love that), and a nurturing game against SBHS (9-8 Black Out). While deep looks and flow were both working well, compounding mistakes piled up and an inability to contain deep looks resulted in losses to SLO B (11-7 SLO) and Gunn HS (8-5 Gunn, fuck those kids are good). The vets continue to push the rookies to improve, and the rookies continue to rise to the occasion. (3W, 2L)

Invite

A different twist has hit this season. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, USAU decided not to require sanctioned games in order to determine bid rankings to Nationals. So, with Santa Barbara Invite being (for all intents and purposes) “unsanctioned” and many teams deciding not to come, the Tide found themselves in a pool play to power pool play format with 11 other teams.

After a tough late Friday night game against BYU, Tide’s first game on Saturday started in the afternoon at 2 PM. Tide started off the day with a good, gritty win against Kansas (9-7 Tide), but throwing errors and inability to contain deep looks (hmm, sounds familiar) resulted in losses to a huck-happy Utah team (11-7 Utah), and current best-in-the-Southwest SLO (13-7 SLO).

Going 1-2 on Day 1 firmly placed Tide in the middle-of-the-pack Power Pool. Sunday morning, Tide starts off again with a hot win against Washington University (from St. Louis, 11-8 Tide). Hoping to continue the momentum, they faced off against a quickly-rising Santa Cruz team. Going down early, Tide mounted a comeback that forced universe point deep into hard cap (and their subsequent round). Unfortunately, Tide wasn’t able to pull out the win (12-11 Slugs), and had to quickly refocus for a game against Chicago.

Tide found themselves having deja vu, going down early in the game. With classic Tide grit, they once again pulled themselves out of that hole with multiple breaks to force another universe point. Could call it fate, luck, whatever you want, but yet again, Tide wasn’t able to generate and convert in time (9-8 Chicago).

Despite a tough record for the weekend (2W, 5L), the heart and drive shown by the team promises a large amount of potential for the building process for this young team. We’ll see how the team progresses and how that progress manifests itself in 3 weeks at President’s Day in San Diego.