The New York Women, touring with just 17 players under their social alter ego of "Empire City Blues", beat Boston and Philadelphia in pool play, and then Keystone in the semis to earn the team's 1st ever appearance in the Women's Premier Finals at the Saranac tournament...

Pool Play:

v Boston - Win

v Philadelphia - Win

Semi Finals v Keystone - Win

Finals v Beantown - Loss

PHOTOS FROM ACTIONPHOTOS.COM

Weekend Write-Up From Buss:

Let's see - the TP Bandits struck again
It was REALLY hot.
Jodie was a great headmaster - head on flipflops many times were quite amusing.

We showed up without a hooker and only one prop. There were many humorous conversations and voting as to who would do it, and we decided it would be whomever was the last to the field. Rosalie said many times she wanted to do it. We got three girls from Hamilton to join us, one girl from the new Brooklyn rugby team, and we made Fontaine play with us instead of Penn State.

We played a forward heavy Philly in the first game...just as some perspective - Kate Pope played outside center and Angie Marfisi played inside center. I don't remember the score but we won like 3 tries to one. We got lucky on one play - FARKS kicked the ball out of the end of the tryzone and somehow they gave us a 22-drop.

Boston was next - they were as organized as I've seen them in years. Their backline was FAST and they had some great counter attacks. It was a close game, but we won - again, I don't remember the score - sorry!

After a two hour break we played Keystone who may have underestimated us. We offered to just boatrace them instead of playing - we were 100% serious. They wanted to but said their coach wouldn't let them. They had good continuity and their forwards were tough. We battled it the entire time. I think we were surprised when we had like 5 min left and said "i think we may win this game" - I know that Heidi and I both thought that.

Saturday night was good - all the respective condos cooked dinner and we joined in with the boys for some games and entertainment. Some of the women became a bit nervous when Cody Eckstein was standing on the roof...but all was ok. Many of the women retreated to the women's condo for a funny game of scenarios - nobody wanted to make it too long of a night because we were in the final. But a few girls made it out on the town and stayed out a bit late! :)

Sunday -Beantown - they brought their A-game as usual. Their forwards were really good and our forwards just couldn't match them. We played pretty good defense - the first half was dodgy - but the second half was AMAZING. The second half was scoreless until the last 10min of the half - a penalty try was scored against us - ask Tonka what she feels about that...and the reffing was, um, suspect. After the good second half we regained some of our pride, took second and our winnings were two 36packs of bud light - G-squared was proud. Heidi hurt herself in the final and di parkhurst came in to scrumhalf. Maura hurt her knee in the final and Heather from Princeton (hoop) - took over #10. We had playing in the final game (not from NY) - a prop from Marfu U23, Di, Hoop, prop from brooklyn team, Trip (from Furies) and I think that's it...definitely a miss mash of people....Tonka had concussed herself the previous day and was not playing.

Sunday night was all fun - most people stayed - a trip to a couple of bars, dancing - and Parks paying Caitlin $15 for her hair tie cause she was so hot. She clearly did not remember that until the morning....

All in all - a really fun weekend per usual! :)