SpW3: Quiet vs. Nader’s Raiders

Week Three – Tuesday – Riverside

Quiet, coming off a gut-check win over Chicken & Waffles, was trying to rise out of the MUD standings gutter. Nader’s Raiders, reeling from a loss to The Funeral, have been holding their own in the middle of the pack. A win for Quiet would show how good of a team they can be. A win would mean their underperformance thus far is about undeveloped chemistry. A win would mean that come finals, Quiet, can make some noise. For Nader’s Raiders a win would show they can hold strong against the lower-tier teams. A win would say to the likes of Pillow Talk and the Good Guys, “We belong here with you, right behind The Funeral.”

Notorious amongst themselves and the rest of the league for their stellar attendance, Nader’s Raiders began their evening with drills led by first-mate Albert Wu. Quiet would show up on time, which, as we all know, is late. With captain Christian and his team enduring several last-minute no shows, Quiet was still lacking enough women to field a full line by game time.

First Half: So Quiet put out a gender ratio of 5-1 to the Raiders’ 5-2. On defense, Quiet was pretty much forced to bring the zone, but it got turnovers. On offense they were forced to throw around a lane poacher, but they succeeded. The ratio imbalance was quickly irrelevant as Quiet ran up a 3-1 lead over the Raiders, who had a tough time getting anything to happen. The cuts, catches and defense just weren’t there. Quiet’s other captain Brittany “BKap” Kaplan and Jennifer Norris soon arrived (by some accounts, 30 minutes into the game), and provided energy and skills to supplement Christian “C$” Gaffney’s needle-threading, break-force, IO forehands and to keep Quiet ahead of Nader’s Raiders. The half time score was 8-5 in favor of Quiet, but the game wasn’t as close as it seemed.

Second Half: Frankly, it doesn’t matter who pulled to whom. Quiet’s lead continued to grow after halftime and the specifics are boring. Quiet’s Alex Berzofsky threw a hammer for a score to Evan Shulman. The Raiders’ Winston Suntaree was caught flat-footed waiting for a catch while Shulman swooped in for the D. Then Shulman finally got his comeuppance when Ryan Drost intercepted what should have been Shulman’s catch in the end-zone. So the game went, if you weren’t going to the disc you were being beat to it, but as Cary Hammond likes to say, “position doesn’t matter as long as you have possession.” The game finished with a Rene Shen score, Quiet getting the W, 15 to 7. Raiders’ Erin Mcmurtrey said the game was “frustrating. I was soooooo angry and frustrated.” Albert Wu later claimed, “They mainly won by breaking our mark.”

Here’s what I don’t get: This was supposed to be a coming out party for freshman MUD Captain Andy Eklund, who for his last three MUD seasons played for the Gaffney-Kaplan duo. Despite Andy being in his 6th season and Christian in his 10th, the two had never played each other. Betting lines for the game prophesied a trouncing of Quiet at the hands of Nader’s Raiders, yet Eklund was nowhere to be found. Like the cool guy that just did a bunch of drugs in his basement even though his old friends were begging him to come to prom, Andy missed the party. First-mate Albert Wu was left to lead the Raiders to their glorious defeat.

Apparently Andy was upstate pondering his role in this season. His thoughts: How can I get Martha to show up on time? Am I ready to do this on my own? Was I asked to captain just as a ploy by Mateo to pit one of Gaffney/BKap’s most-trusted lieutenants against them? Can I tell the Drost twins apart? When do we play Quiet next? Wednesday? OK, this won’t happen again.