CalHeat SF Bay Area Team Handball Club

Women's Final Standings:
1. Chicago Inter
2. Lady Condors
3. Houston Firehawks
4. New England Freeze
5. Carolina THC
6. Smurfs
7. Army

Chicago Inter : Condors 28:15 
Houston Firehawks : New England Freeze 19:11 

Men's Final Standings:
1. NYC THC
2. Houston Firehawks
3. NYAC
4. Los Angeles THC
5. ATH United
6. Cal Heat
7. Condors
8. Army
9. Chicago Inter Red
10. New England Freeze
11. Florida Hurricanes
12. Knight Air
13. Chicago Inter Blue
14. NYC THC II
15. Carolina THC
16. Seattle Speed
17. LA Team Handball II
18. Polish Folklore
19. Minnesota Team Handball
20. Victorious Secret

New York City THC : Houston Firehawks 37:34 (in Overtime)
New York City AC : Los Angeles TH 1 26:12

Smurfs Game Results:

Smurfs : Condors 16:24
Smurfs : Army 24:16 
Smurfs : Houston Firehawks 15:14 
Smurfs : Carolina Blue 19:20

The Smurfs had a very rough start into the tournament against the Condors. The team needed to find itself first, but once it got comfortable the lead of the Condors had already grown to almost 7 goals. Which proofed to be too much to recover from. However during their second game against Army and especially during the third game against a very good Houston team they showed their full potential and were able to beat both teams. The Semifinals were in their reach since Condors, Smurfs and Houston were all equal on points, victories and losses. But unfortunately the huge loss in the first game against Condors tipped the scale in favor of Houston and Condors to advance to the Semifinals. Which left the Smurfs with a 6th place in the end after a close 19 to 20 loss against North Carolina. 

Cal Heat Game Results:

Cal Heat : Houston Firehawks 19:19 => 25:24 after Shootout
Cal Heat : Inter Chicago Blue 26:16
New York City TH : Cal Heat 31:15 
New Yok City AC : Cal Heat 26:19
Cal Heat : Condors 23:20
Atlanta TH : Calheat 22:19

The early playing time of 6:00 AM Pacific Time proofed to be a bit early for Cal Heat in their first game against Houston Firehawks. It took the team a while to wake up. Houston also seemed to be a bit sleepy and therefore the game was controlled by many easy technical mistakes and easy missed shots on both sides. However Houston recovered first and was able to build a 3 to 4 goal lead. This lead lasted until the last 4 minutes of the game, when Cal Heat finally turned on the heat and was able to tie the score literally with the buzzer. A shootout needed to be applied to find a winner. The first 5 shooters of both teams scored. Then Cal Heat went to score again while Houston did not and Cal Heat was the winner. 

The second game against the home team of Inter Chicago Blue was a total different story. This time Cal Heat was awake from the beginning and jumped to an early lead of 9 to 3. After that Cal Heat lost their way a little bit and Chicago was able to shorten the lead to 10 to 7. This caused Cal Heat to switch into a higher gear and starting to increase the lead again. In the end an easy victory of 26:16 came out and Cal Heat qualified for the Final round of 8. Where it landed in a very competitive group with the last National Champion of New York City, the record National Champion and arch rival of Garden City (NYAC) and the former 4 time National Champion Condors. Only the winner and runner up of that group was to advance to the Gold medal game and Bronce medal game respectively.  

The first game of Saturday against the heavy favorite of New York City TH proofed to be even more difficult than the early game the day before. Especially since this game started even earlier with the tip off being at 5:00 AM Pacific Time. Cal Heat was sleeping very deep while New York looked very fresh and determined. The result of this was a very ugly first half, where Cal Heat was not able to penetrate New York's defense at all and New York was able to score fairly easy. The score at halftime was 16 to 3 for New York. At the beginning of the second half Cal Heat finally woke up and looked equal to New York for the rest of the time. Which resulted in a second half score of only 15 to 12 for New York. However the overall score was a dissappointing 31 to 15.

The second game later in the day against the arch rival of New York City Athletic Club, former Garden City, saw again the real Cal Heat. From the start the whole team was alert and focused. An aggressive 5:1 defense kept the strong player of Garden City in check and the incredible goal tending let the opponent to become almost desperate. Two very easy missed fast breaks and some easy mistakes in the defense at the end of the second half kept Cal Heat from finishing the first half with a 4 goal lead. Instead they had to settle for only a 1 goal lead. Unfortunately the intense and agresive playing of the first half took some toll on Cal Heat and the pace of their game slowed down. Also caused by some injuries of their players. Garden City used this to grab the lead, while Cal Heat started to struggle to keep scoring in front and to keep Garden City from scoring in the back. In addition slowly but surely some fatigue started to set in. Easy shots were missed and the large bodies of Garden City could not be stopped anymore by the defense. Therefore in the end Garden City took the game 26:19.

Bruised up and still nurturing their injuries from the second game Cal Heat entered the last game on Saturday against Condors. A very interesting game developed, where both teams were equal throughout most of the game. The lead went back and forth for a while until Cal Heat established a two to three goal lead with 10 minutes to go. During the last 10 Minutes the Condors were only able to cut the lead to one goal. But Cal Heat kept cool and finished the game with a 23:20 victory, which secured the team to play for the 5th place the next day.

The last game on Sunday against Atlanta was again set up very early at 6:00 AM Pacific time. In addition 4 players of Cal Heat were not able to play due to injuries and the rest of the team looked as well pretty tired after 3 very intense and hard games on Saturday.  All this was very visible from the beginning. Although Atlanta was not at their best game either, they managed to get an early 7 to 3 lead. This seemed to recall the last reserves of Cal Heat and the team started to battle back strong. So that Atlanta was only able to hold on to a narrow one goal lead at half time. Cal Heat kept pressuring in the second half and was able to establish a 3 goal lead just 10 minutes before the end. However some very questionable decisions by the referees during the last ten minutes and Cal Heat running slowly out of gas helped Atlanta to regain the lead. Cal Heat tried to fight back again heavily during the last two minutes, but it just wasn't to be and Atlanta took a 22 to 19 win.