UPA South Open Regional: official schedule and scores
tournament home page: general info

The tournament is 16 teams, double elimination. The top 2 finishers advance to the UPA Championships (aka Nationals). Chain Lightning, last year’s champs, enter as the top seed.

Following is our projected schedule for this weekend, if seeds hold (of course, they probably won’t, and that sound is me knocking wood).

Starting at 9 a.m. Saturday:
Ninja Turtles (16) – Gainesville, FL

Saturday afternoon:
Grit (8) – Dallas, TX
El Diablo (4) – GA and SC

Sunday, 11 a.m., regional championship game:
Doublewide (2) – Austin, TX

Of note, El Diablo has given us hard-fought games each time we’ve played and Doublewide, while seeded below us, has a higher RRI ranking (the UPA’s rating derived from an algorithm considering all of the season’s scores to date) than we do. Earlier in the year we defeated Doublewide by 2 in our only meeting. Vicious Cycle (Gainesville, FL), last year’s runner-up and nationals qualifier, is the 3 seed. Nothing will be given away.

Another element into the mix: weather for the weekend in NE Florida looks to be in the low 80s but with rain splashed all over the forecast.

Chain will have almost everyone present, really for the first time at a tournament all season. Only college frosh Stubbs and Lindsley will be missing, but that loss will be countered by the recent return of veteran handler and erstwhile retiree, Brian “Corndog” Cornelison. Recent practices have seen the rise in intensity and level of play you hope to have as the leaves start to change, but how well we put it together in the heat of battle remains to be seen. Only 2 teams move on; for the rest, the road comes to an abrupt end.