Wow. What a weekend for the girls of 16 Crimson.
This awesome group of girls came together and put on quite the show during their best outing of the season at the Gateway Region Championships over the April 2-3 weekend. The ladies of Crimson ended the tournament with a record of 6-2 and found themselves as Gold Consolation Champions on Sunday afternoon after competing in a series of extremely impressive and exciting matches.
Saturday brought standard pool play with the team stepping up and getting the job done to advance to Gold on Sunday. H2 began the day by defeating St. Charles Stars and taking on the challenge of pushing PAO 16 Mizuno to 3 games and coming out on top. Crimson then took on Northwest Cat Attack in an unbelievably competitive 3-game thriller, however falling short to a team that simply would not allow the ball to touch the ground.
The girls came back on Sunday morning to kick off the day with a solid win against Top Notch 16. That lead Crimson to take on a tough STL CYC 16 team – falling in both sets but finding the drive and the heart to come back after a rough first game to compete neck and neck in the second game, although losing 22-25. Their first loss of the day caused the team to drop down to the consolation bracket, but their day was far from over. Crimson proceeded to sweep past Top Spin 16, TESL 16 Red and eventually Show Me 16 Rox in the championship to be named the outright victors of Consolation while coming in with a final finish of 5th in Regionals.
Overall, the weekend proved to be an amazing team effort by all 11 players. Every single girl showed outstanding aggressiveness, whether it was offensively or defensively. The highlight for Coach Anna was getting to witness a sense of confident ownership and trust in each other over both days – eventually letting the girls lead their own timeouts while watching them come together and deciding as a team how they as a group were going to find and create their own success on the court. They more than rose to the occasion – their coach couldn’t be prouder of the way they communicated, competed and WON! Next up: the Gateway Bid Event taking place on April 16-17. 16 Crimson is more than ready to fight for a chance to take their talent to the Junior Olympics in Indianapolis. Go H2!
