The 2018 spring season is well underway, and Darkside has accumulated a impressive resumé so far.
The season began at Carolina Kickoff, Darkside’s home tournament in late January. Despite Chapel Hill being hit by a freak snowstorm that dumped 10 inches of snow just 3 days before the event, Darkside accompanied by family, friends, and competitors alike rallied together to clear the fields just in time for games to begin. An altered format was used in order to maximize the games each team would play, which culminated in several night games being played under the lights on Hooker Fields. Shoveling hundreds of pounds of snow proved not to be an issue for the squad as Darkside completed the weekend with an unblemished 5-0 record.
Continuing the theme of weather related schedule changes, Queen City Tune Up, a tournament Darkside co-hosts with the Charlotte Ultimate community would be limited to pool play plus half of quarterfinals on Sunday. A wintery mix of rain and slush would ultimately end the weekend early wrecking havoc on the field conditions at the Ramblewood Soccer Complex. Darkside had won out on Saturday and was up 6-4 against UMass at the time of cancellation.
Not to be outdone, rainy conditions would force the Stanford Invite to be moved from Fremont, California (situated just outside of San Francisco), all the way out to the always lovely Stevinson, California, more than an hour and a half inland in the Central Valley. A simple venue change seemed rather mundane to this year’s Darkside team in comparison to the other weather conditions we’ve dealt with this so far. Darkside went 3-0 in pool play, and after dispatching Brown in the quarterfinals, found ourselves matched up with the gentlemen of Oregon EGO in the semis. After what would prove to be a thrilling game, Darkside would emerge victorious 15-14 after breaking upwind on DGP. Carleton CUT awaited Darkside in the final. Darkside would end up beating CUT 15-8 and would repeat as back-to-back Stevinson Invite Champions, the last victory coming in 2014.
Looking ahead, Darkside is the #1 overall seed at Eastern’s this weekend, with the highlight of our Saturday schedule being a rematch of our Nationals quarterfinal game with Wisconsin.
To keep up with the daily goings on of the team as well as score updates be sure to follow Darkside on Twitter (@UNC_Darkside).
Until next time,
Peace, Love, Darkside
