Last Sunday the second day dawned for us in the play-offs for place 13-18. Our goal was still to win the play-offs and thereby end 13th overall in the competition. After one day of play-offs, our position was fairly good: with 6 competition points we held second place in our group, just below UA Sonics 2. The matches scheduled for the second day were against Stick2It 2, UFC Utrecht 4 and WUV Stick Together and we were determined to win over all of these teams in order to defend our second place.

As our first match was scheduled only at 13.00 o’clock we all had a well-deserved lie-in. Unfortunately we were playing in Nijmegen, so that the lie-in was limited to roughly half an hour in comparison to weekdays, but still, it enabled us to arrive for our first match well on time, wide awake and ready to kick some ass. However, it soon turned out that our opponents, Stick2It 2, were slightly wider awake than we were, for after only 2 minutes they were leading 2-0. This seemed to be the wake-up call we had really been waiting for, and we soon fought back and evened out the score. But then we got awarded a penalty shot against us and by the end of the second period we were trailing behind again. Still, we felt that we were in fact the better team and that this was a match we really should win, so during the third period we fought with all we had in us. This paid off, as we scored three more goals, and thereby settled the final score at 4-5.

In our second match of the day we met UFC Utrecht 4. Our last match against them had ended in a 4-2 win for us, so we were hoping for a repetition of this success. And indeed, we took the upper hand in the game quite soon and after the first period we were leading 2-0. During the second period Utrecht managed to score two smart goals back but we protected our lead and after some pretty goals (including a lob across the whole field by Joël) we drew ahead further, eventually deciding the game at a 2-7 result for us.

The third match looked to be rather more difficult for us. We were playing WUV Stick Together and though we hadn’t played them before, we knew them to be a fairly tricky opponent. But, strengthened by some sunshine, Ayra’s delightful apple cake and an inspiring game of table tennis, we began the match with fresh courage. The first period of the game was extremely exciting and our teams were quite matching in strength. The referees however clearly liked our team best and had such a strong confidence in us that they felt they needed to award all free shots to our opponent in order to make it a fair game. At times this was slightly frustrating for us but it also intensified our determination to win. At the beginning of the third period the score was tied 3-3, but then it seemed that Stick Together was beginning to sympathize with our mission to win the game. They scored 2 own goals and together with one proper goal for each team this fixed the end result at 6-4 to us.

So all in all this was a highly successful day for us. We defended our second place on the leader board and as long as we can keep up this winning mood our chances in the play-offs are looking quite promising. It seems we perform best under pressure, and we will have a chance to prove this next time, as we are then meeting UA Sonics 2, who are currently heading the leader board, again. We will go all out to win that game – and of course all our other games – and come first in the play-offs.