1. Stanford
2. NC State
3. Texas
4. Colorado
5. UC-Berkeley
6. Carleton
7. Iowa
8. Washington
9. Dartmouth
10. Purdue
11. Brown
12. MIT
13. Cornell
14. Texas A&M
15. Rutgers
16. Northwestern

1. Stanford
2. Washington
3/4. Texas
3/4. Colorado
5/8. Iowa
5/8. UC-Berkeley
5/8. Brown
5/8. NC State
9/10. MIT
9/10. Cornell
11/12. Dartmouth
11/12. Northwestern
13/14. Texas A&M
13/16. Carleton
13/16. Purdue
15/16. Rutgers

All of the action can be followed via real-time updates on the Score-O-Matic website. Additionally, the official coverage of the tournament is posted on the tournament website. What follows here is my own interpretation of the weekend, limited and biased as it may be.

Friday's pool play held only two upsets during the course of the day: UW beating Stanford 15-9 to swoop the number 1 seed and Iowa taking down NC State 15-8 for the 2 seed. UW came out fired up for this regional re-match and built up an early lead by capitalizing on unforced Stanford errors. Stanford was playing without much energy while UW played the best game of its season up until that point. Miranda Roth was a huge target for her team, as expected, with Erin Gallager making big plays as a thrower and receiver. Carla Fowler also played extremely well, especially on defense covering Lauren Casey. The Iowa-NC State game was not as good a game to watch as the wind had picked up for the last round and both team's completion rates were affected. NC State's Molly Doyle, in particular, looked deep time and time again, although Iowa adjusted its defense to guard against the huck. Iowa's speedy receiver Kris Tiedt was tough for NC State to contain and she and Kathleen Costello caught a number of scores from thrower Tammy Kampfe.

Of course, there were also many other exciting games and points played even though the outcomes went according to seed. In fact, the most exciting game of the day was between Dartmouth and Colorado. The 9th seeded Dartmouth was up on 4th seeded Colorado for most of the game and it looked like Princess Layout had the win in the bag. However, Colorado came back to tie the game at 14-14 and then went on to win 16-14. MIT also made a valiant effort at upsetting the one seed in its pool. Despite Stanford being ahead by four at half time, MIT tied up the game at 11's before Stanford pulled ahead again to take the game 15-12.

Saturday's pre-quarters also yielded some barn-burners. Brown edged Carleton out in a close game that was capped at 16-15. Brown made this the second year it squeaked out of pre-quarters against a higher seed (last year upsetting Virginia) and Carleton did not qualify for quarterfinals in probably the first time in the team's history of attending Nationals. Based on the other teams that made quarterfinals, the pre-quarters between MIT and UC-Berkeley turned into a contest for the last strength wildcard bid for next year. MIT lead 13-11 and both sides were playing zone defense. MIT was playing a box-and-one type zone on Kath Ratcliff, which generated some turnovers throughout the game. However, the rest of the Cal team stepped up to the plate in the last stretch and Rebecca Rundle got a key lay-out block in the cup that seemed to inspire confidence and fire up her team. Soon, it was 14-14, game to 16. Berkeley managed to put in the next two points, ending the game on a full-extension lay-out by Rebecca Rundle.

Quarterfinals saw Colorado beat Brown and Washington beat NC State without too much trouble; the scores were 15-5 and 15-9, respectively. Stanford remains one of the few women's team in the history of Nationals to win its quartefinals game after playing in pre-quarters. Stanford took an early lead against Iowa and widened the gap during the rest of the game. Iowa seemed a little tentative at first, while Stanford's offense was clicking: Stanford scored 10 of its 15 points with no turnovers. The last quarterfinal match-up was between Texas and Berkeley. The weather in the beginning of the game was a little wet and windy, and Berkeley went up 7-3 using its effective zone defense. Once Texas relaxed a little and started swinging the disc, it was able to score and came back to take half 8-7. The second half saw Berkeley continue to play zone defense, but Texas was on a roll and shut Cal out to take the game 15-7 after a 12 point scoring run.

The semifinals pitted Colorado against Washington and Texas against Stanford. CU and UW had not seen each other at full strength this season and both teams like to move the disc quickly and strike for the endzone. Despite the valiant efforts of Colorado's core of Carolyn Matthews, Alex Snyder, Anne "Pogo" Pogoriler, and Shalini Lo-Nam, UW's utilized its depth and came out with the W, winning 15-11. One highlight of the game was probably when Pogo footblocked Roth, only to have Roth lay-out for the disc to maintain possession. The other semifinal saw Texas and Stanford play in an upwind-downwind game. Texas scored the first point on a Callahan goal and then scored the first upwinder. However, Stanford answered back with its own upwind goal and scored upwind once more in the first half, playing patient zone offense that swung the disc effectively. Texas seemed to have more trouble penetrating against Stanford's zone, and was caught in the back of its endzone a number of times. That said, Cara Crouch and Amanda Berens were clutch handlers for Texas who kept the disc moving and were piviotal in the team's zone offense. During the second half, the wind picked up even more and Stanford scored upwind a final time, after a point that had upwards of 20 turnovers. The teams also traded Callahan goals on downwind points in the second half and Stanford ended it at 15-8, eliminating Texas at Nationals for the third year in a row.

The party on Saturday night had the unfortunate set-up where only people over 21 were allowed in to the main area. While it's understandable that the tournament could not serve alcohol to minors, it seemed a shame that most of the tournament had to try and see the podium from behind chain-linked fence when the Callahan winners were announced. Cara Crouch took top honors this year in the Callahan voting on the women's side, and Josh Zipperstein won the men's award. To see the rest of the finishes, check out this page.

The finals were played in a local high school stadium where the video cameras and loudspeaker lent an official air to the game. In the team's first ever appearance at Nationals, it was a tremendous feat for Washington to make it all the way to finals. Of course, four of the team's leaders are National champions in the club division (KrisAnn Schmitz, Carla Fowler, and Miranda Roth with Riot and Erin Gallagher with Shazam) and that big-game experience was crucial for leading the team in this finals game. On the other hand, this was the 9th time Stanford has been to the finals of Nationals in the last 11 years and 9 of the players on the team this year won the championship two years ago in Austin, Texas. Still, UW had beaten Stanford in pool play just a couple days earlier and this re-match was all but guaranteed to be a close game.

Early in the game, Washington played a four-person cup trapping zone that often had a Stanford thrower facing a circle of imposing UW players. However, Stanford's patient zone offense and the break mark throws of Lauren Casey, Jess Guh and Crystal Cook forced Washington to revert to playing person defense. Stanford lead 2-0 before UW closed the gap to one point at 6-5. Stanford seemed to have more trouble against UW's trap force defense as the team wasn't able to get off its dump and swing as reliably and instead threw a number of turnovers into Roth's poach. Stanford lead 8-7 at half time but UW tied the game at 8-8. Stanford then went on a three point run to go up 11-8. Despite a number of crowd-pleasing lay-outs and skying grabs by Roth, UW was never able to narrow the gap to less than two points. As two of the major contributors of the game, it was fitting that Jenny Burney threw the final pass to Hannah Griego to end the game for Stanford 15-12.

Interestingly enough, Stanford was only able to get one D block all game on hucks to Miranda Roth going deep and she often caught the disc despite double coverage. However, Stanford was more effective in containing her near the disc with the quick defense of Hannah Griego who got a footblock and lay-out D on the 2004 Callahan winner. I don't know why UW didn't send Miranda deep more often, especially as the long throws of Erin Gallagher seemed to be as close to perfect as they come.

All told, it was an exciting finals game to watch. Not only were there a number of great defensive plays on both sides, but the offense was also pretty to watch: a combined total of 13 no-turn points during the course of the game, and only a handful of multiple-turnover points. Additionally, there were waaaaaaay less calls than the men's final, which reportedly had up to 82 stoppages of play.

Congratulations to Stanford Superfly. Rumor is that Stanford is only graduating three players next year and returns most of its starting seven, so they should remain the team to beat for at least another year...

Here is the hype article written by Lindsey Hack for the official website of the tournament.

Also, read about some predictions posted to the newsgroup rec.sport.disc.

Check out the head to head records of the sixteen teams going to College Championships on the Score Reporter website.