Championship Weekend!

We had a very good tournament! The Speeding Sheepdogs of Wisp, Scout, Zio, and Jean-Luc set a club best time of 18.419 seconds during the Dream Team Challenge on Friday! Zio set a personal best time of 4.108 seconds (including pass) during an earlier run and almost did it again with a 4.110 during the club best run. We had numerous runs in the 18's as the afternoon wore on. Katie did well in adjusting to passing with a fast dog the more races we ran. Officially, we took third place in our division, but we had decided beforehand that we were running for time and not points. We did not rerun any faults other than false starts.

We went undefeated during the first day of Championship racing on Saturday, going 4-0 in our matches. Burst was still having issues with passing in every match, but Meekah was able to come in and save a couple of matches that had gone down to the fifth race. (best 3 of 5)

Zio had a spectacular crash in the first match of the day Saturday that took out three jumps and knocked the fourth sideways. He still managed to do a decent turn and grab the ball. Of course there weren't any jumps to return over after the destruction. He wasn't injured and continued to race all weekend.

The Off and Running team of Cody, Deuce, Luigi, and Jean-Luc went undefeated and took 1st place in division 7 of the regular tournament Saturday. Michele and Cody recorded a perfect 0.000 start during one of the later races which I believe is the first one for Full Speed Ahead. Connie has also achieved a perfect start, but I believe it was while she competed with Dogs Gone Wild.

Sunday wasn't nearly as good for our Championship team. Burst went outside the lane again on a pass and got tangled in the timing light's cord. She injured her leg or shoulder and Meekah had to complete the remaining races. We lost the first three matches of the day before beating the eventual Division 5 champions, High Fives, in our last match (their only defeat). Our 5-3 record was good enough for second place after a tiebreaker.

Off and Running brought home another 1st place in the Sunday regular tournament and set a team best of 21.012 seconds. Cody had another perfect start with Doug running him for Michele.

Next year will have us racing in division 4 initially. I have no doubt that with some of the faster dogs coming along in training, we will be running in the 17's by summer time.

Zio's Crash is below.