Last weekend the moment had finally arrived for the first Mixed Competition day after the winter break, at the same time the last in the preliminaries. With 12 points, we possessed a rather good third place on our group leader board, below UA Sonics 1 and Stick2It 1, but well ahead of ESFC Nijmegen, who had obtained 6 points so far. We thus had a strong conviction that we would sustain our third place, which meant that we would be competing for places 7-12 in the play offs. Nothing could go wrong, we believed..or could it?

For what I believe might be the first time ever in the history of mixed competition for the Agents, we showed up well in time. While Joel warmed up by picking up Iris and our newest acquisition Ayra from the train station, the rest of us tested our skills on the foosball in the sportshall cantina. We were not too worried about our first match, which was against Hot Shots Nijmegen 4, whom we had beaten 14-4 in our first match against them. This time however, they caught us by surprise, and after two very exciting but also very enjoyable periods, they had a 4-2 lead over us. No matter how nice and sympathetic the team was –or how cute the sister of one of the players-, we could obviously not let them win this match, so during the third period we fought back hard, and finally achieved a 7-4 win.

Strengthened in our confidence by the result of the first match –and by Iris’s delicious and lovely pink cake- , we had high hopes for our second match of the day, against ESFV Eindhoven. Our first match against them had ended in a bitterly fought 8-7 win for us, but this match had not greatly improved the friendly relations between our respective teams. This showed during the match, when Eindhoven appealed to the referee for every knickknack. Unfortunately, the referees seemed to be on their side and even disallowed a perfectly legitimate goal by Iris on the grounds of ‘foot passing’. It has to be admitted that Eindhoven also played remarkably well all day, and a combination of their skill and our indignation and frustration led to the end result of 4-1 to them.

The third match of the day was the one nearly all of us had been looking forward to most, whether it be on the prospect of pushing certain players over the boarding, showing off our abs, or just on the grounds of wanting to play an exciting match against a friendly and enthusiastic team. We know we didn’t have much chances of winning, as the team we were playing, UA Sonics 1, had not lost a single match until that day and took first place in our group. However, we were not going to give in too easily and we fought for what we were worth. After the second period, the score was limited to a 6-3 arrears for us, but in the third period, Sonics did everything in their power to expand their lead to an end score of 10-3.