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| July 20, 2003
By Jim Anderson
NARCh Finals Update - Day 3
July 19, 2003
|  We crown our first champion of the 2003 Finals, and TECO has much more of a playoff feel as we head further into the tournament.
Once again the Pee Wee’s would kick off the event as the teams would jockey for their final seedings heading into tomorrow’s playoffs.
Our first final would have the #1 seed
Team Misconduct and #2 CPH Mission
Vixens face off in the Women’s Gold
Final. Misconduct would be hoping to
get an early lead and play strong
defense to smother the Vixens and
repeat their opening round win . The Vixens wouldn’t be surprised this time
though and they jumped out to and early 3-1 lead before claiming the title with a well earned 4-1 win. This gives CPH the season sweep having won the WN title this past January.
The York Region Magic Windows and
Mission Raiders would be the only two
teams to finish undefeated after winning their games on Saturday and both advanced to the quarterfinals where they will await the remaining six teams. There are quite a few familiar names who will be joining them in the playoffs tomorrow including AMB Grey, Rush, Laverne Marvel Ironman and Marvel Vision, CPH Black. The Projoy Predators will be Florida’s lone hope as they claim the #8 seed. While they haven’t garnered much attention the past 2 days from me in the write-ups, the sleeper team just may be the East Coast Fury, who have a tough 1st round matchup with the #12 ’89 Team Breakaway who despite their low seed have a win over the #6 TSA Twisted Wristers.
In the Mite Gold division, the#8 seed,
AMB Grey, would win a 3-2 win over the
#9 Rollin Rebels and move on to a meeting with the top seeded Nike OC
Blades ’93 in the quarterfinals. They
would give OC all they could handle
before falling 4-3. #2 AKS Empire
’92 also advanced to the semifinal with a 4-0 win over the Mission Revolution. Joining them will be St. Louis Blast and NPI Force. It will be up to the Blast and Force to prevent a repeat of last month’s Tour Pacific Cup Finals championship game.
Squirt Gold would continue early
round play as well and one of the more
entertaining games was the Brighton
Lightnin and CPH Cyclones, the
Lightnin would be playing ironman most of the game and held a lead most of the way before running out of gas in their 3-3 tie. Also looking strong in
preliminary play was Team Breakaway ’90, who had the offense in sync with a 10 goal outburst, along with the Wizards and OC
Blades ’91. The teams will continue the round robin tomorrow morning.
Also continuing play today was the
Bantam division. Looking strong in
their games are the Nike Buffalo Wings, ISCA Grizzlies (who also played Jr gold and played close games with the #1, 2, 3 seeds) and Marvel Silver Surfers. Quite a bit more information coming tomorrow as more teams play and we can get a better handle on the division.
The Junior Division would see the
start of early round playoff play after completing their preliminary round. Getting bye until tomorrow’s
semifinals are the #1 seed K-Tek Kondors, this team has come a long way over the past couple of years, and #2 Rivermen. CPH Black would be the next team to advance with a 3-2 win over the Labeda Knights of Corona. Claiming the final spot would be Team Octane as they held off the Redding Roadrunners to claim the final spot. As is normally the case in the Bantam division, the teams that can keep their composure will have the upper
hand with regards to advancing to the
Final.
The Senior Division would have its first 2 rounds of playoffs. In the first game the Bogotá Capitals would continue their surprising run with a 3-1 win over the Chiefs, who could have used teammate Ryan Carey who was landing in Ft. Myers about the same time the Capitals were closing it out.
In the next playoff the
Chicago Magic would again rebound from
an average showing in the round robin to hold off the BC Blur, also by a 3-1
score. Bogotá would then meet up with
the #2 Madhatters. The ‘Hatters jumped out to an early 2-0 lead and extended to 3-0 before a parade of penalties allowed the Caps to close the lead to 3-2 and the game would be decided on the last shot and the ‘Hatters would hold on and advance again to the semifinals.
In the next semifinal, EPROShop.com would score twice while playing 2 on 2 against the Mission Raiders to break the game open and advance to a semifinal meeting against the top seed Greasy Joe’s. Rounding out the Sr playoffs would be Omni St. Louis and St. Louis Blast. Omni would jump out to a 4-0 lead before the Blast would come all the way back to tie it at 4 with just over a minute remaining and then score the eventual game winner just seconds later to set up a repeat of their 2001 semifinal against the Madhatters.
To read Jim's past articles on Day 1 and Day 2 of the 2003 Finals see the Latest News section.
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