Congrats Matt and Maniac. Sounds like your sessions went/are going great.
We had our local semi-finals last night. Our team was dead last in the division, but drew the wildcard into the 4 team playoff.
Our captain is the owner of the APA in the area and has been our recruiting for next session, so he hasn't been there in 3-4 weeks. Our stand-in captain hasn't been there in over a month, and hasn't even talked to anyone on the team. He decided to show up last night.
He didn't ask anyone about the first match and threw my wife out. She has a serious mental block against playing in a 2-2 race and that is what she ended up in when paired against another SL3. She was pissed and could not get her head in the match. She battled and it took FOREVER. She was able to win the first game, but with some very ugly tables she just couldn't get the next two.
Already in the hole against the #2 team in the division, the other team put up their best SL5. Our captain actually asked me if I was good and said otherwise he was going to put a SL7 on him. I had been playing terrible, but knew we shouldn't waste a SL7 on this guy, and if we did I wasn't going to get to play. I have been the strongest player on the team all season,so I said I would do it.
BRUTAL is the only way to describe the match. I played absolutely terrible. Every shot was a challenge. I lost the first game and by the end of it I was already exhausted. I battled. I tried to play smart, and I got a few lucky breaks with my opponent missing a few that he shouldn't have. 11 innings, and a combined 8 safeties, later I finally won game 2. My shooting didn't get much better, and thankfully my luck stayed the same. I stuck with it and worked my ass off to pull out a shocking 4-1 win.
We won the next match (SL4 vs SL4) and then our "captain" played their captain, who is one of the best SL7s in the area and got skunked 5-0.
The deciding match rolls around and we have to throw out either an SL2 who has been improving but is incredibly unpredictable or an SL4 who said he was shooting like crap and had no confidence. We threw the SL2 and they put a good SL4 against her that beat me the last time I played her. Our girl didn't get a game, but played her butt of and did everything she could.
Our season is over. As a team we didn't do well, but we saw good improvement out of every single player and we had a good time. I finished the season 8-4 and bumped from an SL4 to a SL5, so I'm happy with that.
This team won't be back next session and my wife and I are switching over to in-house so we can play 8-ball and 9-ball without it being on back-to-back nights. This Monday/Tuesday thing is killing me. I'm too old to be out this late (I'm 38.)