A Washington Stealth Fan Blog
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These have been in my queue all week, so I better get it out before I start talking about the upcoming games.
Last weekend was the NLL All-Star game in Portland. We were there! Portland is where I’m from, so I was able to go home and see the family for a night and then go to the game on Saturday. It was great to be at the game, I went early to attend the Skill Competition event and of course the crew of people that sit in the seats behind me are all my old teammates from college and club ball. Portland is that small.
The afternoon started at 3pm with the preliminary round of the Skills Competition. They did Agility, Accuracy, Hardest Shot and Trick Shot. Every All-Star was able to compete in any of the four competitions that he wanted to.
First up – Agility. Speedy Steve Toll is amazing to watch. The poor guy looks like he can’t walk a straight line, but when he needs to run, everything is moving in the right direction and fast. He won the prelims for the East. For the West it was John Gallant and Josh Sims in the finals. They were tied after going through the cones and at the scoop the game together. Gallant had a step on Sims and Sims went over Gallant to try and check the ball away, which he did. Sims’ ball also came lose, going forward from them. Gallant’s ball went down. Gallant picked up Sims’ ball cool as a cucumber and went down to finish the course while Sims was left without a ball and out of the finals. Steve Tool won the finals and maintained his name of “Speedy” and he has the championship to prove it this year.
Second was the Accuracy prelims. There was no consistent rhyme or reason to the contestant shooting. They have to put the ball in three little holes. Some guys aim for the holes like it is a regular shot and zing it in. Others do a softer and more aimed shot. Geoff Snider won this competition, he didn’t shot the ball as hard as possible, but didn’t lob the ball in either. It was a touch competition, I saw the best players in the world get shutout by the little piece of wood with three holes in it. So Snider put in two I think, and did a good job wining that competition in his first appearance.
The third competition was the hardest shot. The two finalist here really stood out above the rest of the field. These were the East and West finalist. John Grant Jr. from Rochester and Josh Sims from Colorado. In the prelims Grant shot 100mph that just missed the goal and then 99 that counted. Sims clocked in at 96 to start and 99 to win the West. Then in the finals a Grant was maligned because he had either rolled his ankle or had it stepped on, so he was gimpy and hit hurt his shot. Sims on the other hand was healthy and all warmed up. He cranked out a 102mph shot compared to Grants which was in the upper 90s. So Sims won the hardest shot competition.
Finally, the Trick Shot Competition. This part is a blast, because the players get really creative and you can see some amazing stick skills. I can’t remember all the competitors, but the highlights stuck with me. In the prelims John Grant Jr. did his stick shot with an unstrung stick. He cradled the ball on the sidewall, bounced it a couple times as well and then bopped it up once more and batted the ball in off the side of the head. Then he went and threw the stick in to the crowd. Then at halftime I was dumb and wondered where the unstrung stick was (duh, he threw it in the crowd). Then the announcer said that all the Trick Shot guys advance and will compete at halftime, which was cool. Because all the competitors were worth watching again. The finals were really good, Casey Powell and Dan Dawson did the best job by far. Dan Dawson won it in my mind with his first trick shot. But the announcers that Portland had emcee the Skills Competition were HORRIBLE. After Powell and Dawson were clearly the best of the Trick Shot they had them go a second time to separate a winner. This benefited Powell, he’s got a whole routine of trick shots. Dawson looked stumped to come up with a 2nd trick shot, let alone and 3rd or 4th as the emcees made them keep going multiple times. That was good, but a little painful because Powell and Dawson were like, “What? Huh? We’re not done?”. In my book Dan Dawson won that on the first round. CP won on the subsequent rounds.
Finally, the Skills competition summary is all wrapped up.