The year started with a light pre-season with only the Long Beach Tournament and a UCLA scrimmage put under the Gauchos' belts before winter break. The team did well in these fixtures, finishing second overall in the tournament and leading a win over the Bruins. To prepare for their first league game, the team traveled up north early January to face UC Davis, a well established program with National wins in their history. The game instilled confidence amongst the team with a 34-10 win.
The Gauchos used this momentum in their first league games, a double header weekend against UCLA and UCSD. Saturday, January 27th, UCSB faced off against UCLA in a home match at Harder Stadium. The Bruins played a physical match, sending forward pods into nearly every phase on attack. However, UCSB came out on top with a 41-15 win and focused on recovering for the challenge of UCSD the next day. With much anticipation to square off for dominance as the ultimate beach UC, the team traveled down to San Diego the next morning. The Gauchos led the match and secured a 37-5 win against the Tritons.
On February 3rd, the Gauchos traveled down to CSU Northridge to face the matadors. Despite any potential confusion from both benches both shouting "Olé", UCSB stayed focused on seizing the gaps in the matador defense. UCSB was dinged for two yellow cards over the course of the match, leaving them a player down for a quarter of the game. Despite the player deficit, UCSB finished at a 60-33 win. The Gauchos continued their winning streak with matches against the Arizona teams. Arizona State University played their debut game at Harder Stadium where they lost 55-5. The following week, UCSB trekked to Tucson to defeat the wildcats 57-5.
The last game of the regular season ended with a showdown against GCU, who also stood undefeated in their rankings. In an intense battle in the rain, GCU came out the victor with a close final score of 12-19. UCSB used this loss to motivate their training leading up to playoffs, hosted at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. In this double header weekend UCSB first played against CSU Northridge and secured their spot to nationals with a 67-52 win. The next game marked the shortly awaited rematch against GCU. After multiple injuries succumbed from the tough weekend UCSB once again fell to GCU with a 17-67 final score.
The team saw a huge payoff towards their dedication in training by making it to National Playoffs in Stanford. Here they faced Chico and Stanford, two strong and well established teams. The weekend was successful in showing the team the level of play higher competitors performed at, giving the team goals and metrics to work on for the following seasons. The Saturday match against Chico ended in a 10-74 point differential. The Gauchos started Sunday's match strong, getting two tries against Stanford. Stanford closed the match out with a 61-17 win.
TL;DR- UCSB had an amazing season and worked very hard to make it to Nationals where they grew as a team and individual players :)
