The 4:00 REDEMPTION MATCH – Jacksonville Steel vs Orlando Aces
6:30pm North Conference Finals – Tampa Bay Brigade vs SWFL Sharks
Race 1. Partner forward –
After falling behind in the first two quadrants, multiple faults called on the Brigade on the dumbbell pistol thrusters (non supporting foot touching ground early) allows the Sharks to surpass the Brigade and take the race.
Score – Sharks 2 / Brigade 1
Race 2. Mirror –
The Brigade took an early slight lead and held it to the win. In the 4th quadrant, the male Shark dropped the barbell prior to the female finishing her reps and the team was required to run back to the start line. This did not affect the outcome as the Sharks still finished the race under the cap.
Score – Sharks 3 / Brigade 3
Race 3+4. Female echo –
Both teams were efficient with the strength based movements, but struggled on the bodyweight movements. The Brigade failed multiple reps on the med ball muscle ups but got through them, while the Sharks stalled completely on them in both races leading to non completions and 0 points in both.
Score – Sharks 3 / Brigade 7
Race 5+6 Male echo –
The efficiency on the deficit free standing hand stand pushups proved to be a huge advantage for the Sharks and they used it to win the first male echo. On the second, however, the final rep of the medball muscle ups was failed multiple times allowing the Brigade to catch up from the HSPU advantage and take the second male echo.
Score – Sharks 6 / Brigade 10
*** a 4 point advantage at this stage is a huge lead, especially with the ladder coming up as the Brigade is the dominant team in the League at the Ladder race***
Race 6 Ladder –
The Sharks took a surprising win in the Ladder due to a couple of misses in the 4th quadrant by the Brigade. The spread being 4 points (less than 10) means that the Brigade was able to retain a point, while the Sharks received 2 for the race.
Score – Sharks 8 / Brigade 11
Race 8 Jack and Jill –
Mistakes were made by both teams and the referees creating a very unique scenario and making the outcome of the race very complicated to sort out.
The initial run of the race led to a fairly substantial win by the Sharks which would have resulted in a score outcome of 2 for the Sharks and 1 for the Brigade in that race.
However, an illegal alternate players (coming off the bench) participated in the race for the Brigade. When a player comes off the bench in the match, the race umpires must be notified of that player entering, who they are replacing, and whether it is a wildcard alternate or not. The Brigade failed to do this and the result of that violation is a 0 for the race, regardless of the outcome.
To make matters more complicated, the Sharks performed the last two movements of the race in an illegal portion of the GRID. The rules of this race dictate that all hand stand walk performance take place in the outside half of the lane to allow adequate reference to the hashmarks for the need to restart the performance in the event of any kind of failure. The entire body is not allowed to cross halfway mark of the lane indicated by the dash marks at each quadrant line.
The League also made a mistake in this race as the Referees are supposed to correct the players in the event of an element being performed in an illegal location. Because of this the Sharks were not given a chance to correct the mistake mid race as they should have been.
All of this means the Sharks did not perform the race within legal rules, but because the Referee mistake was involved the race would normally need to be re-run to find the winner.
The result was that the Sharks had to re-run the race, by themselves since the Brigade could not get points from the race. All they had to do was finish the re-run version of the race (the final two elements) under the shortened cap. Which they did.
Score – Sharks 10 / Brigade 11
Race 9 – Female Triad
The race was won cleanly by the Brigade.
Score – Sharks 11 – Brigade 13
Race 10 – Male Triad
The race was won by the Sharks by 32 seconds. It was noticed that one Shark player began a legless rope climb early (as the last rep of a bar muscle up by a teammate was not quite complete) but it was ruled the difference would clearly not have affected the outcome of the race.
Score – Sharks 13 – Brigade 14
Race 11 – Sprint Relay (Winner take all)
The race lead went back and forth multiple times with faults by both teams. Ultimately the overhead squats were finished at nearly identical times and it came down to a foot race. The League had 4 referees and a camera (actual footage below) in place to discern the winner in the event of a close race.
The following is a statement by the Commissioner as to the nature of the judgement call process:
“All 4 referees (myself included) were in agreement that they looked to cross at the exact same time. None had a suggestion as to which crossed first based on what was seen in real time.
The camera was in great position, so at first, we felt confident we could consult the film to find the winner. Until the film was viewed. Since the Sharks player was falling forward, the trailing portion of their body was what crossed last and what we felt was at the same time as the trailing portion of the Brigade. Since the player happened to cross so close to the camera, only the top portion of his head became visible for a flash. There was no way of indicating when his body crossed the line. We had no choice but to re-run the rulebook-determined portion of the race which was the last 4 elements to determine the ultimate winner.”
The Brigade took the re-run on another close finish and the ultimate match win to face the Southern Conference winner in the Championship match.
Tampa Bay Brigade ( 4 – 0)
SWFL Sharks (2 – 2)
Orlando Aces (2 – 2)
Jacksonville Steel (0 – 4)