Well everybody, that’s all she wrote. RIFC lost 3-0 at Colorado Springs Switchbacks in the USL Championship Final. The loss ends a remarkable season for our beloved expansion club. And the win for Colorado Springs gives them their first championship. It was a painful result to take and this will be a difficult blog to write. But it is my duty to do so.

This blog is going to be different from the usual Postmatch Beacon for two reasons:

1. I really don’t want to relive every single thing that happened in this game
2. Timmy already did my job for me with this blog

In honor of Timmy betraying me stealing my thunder:

Player	Rating
Koke Vegas	4/10
Grant Stoneman	4/10
Karifa Yao	4/10
Morris Duggan	4/10
Frank Nodarse	3/10
Noah Fuson	5/10
Marc Ybarra	4/10
Clay Holstad	3/10
Zach Herivaux	4/10
Albert Dikwa	3/10
JJ Williams	3/10

Anyway, this is how we lined up in this one:

This is the lineup I predicted/called for in the Prematch Lookout. The only real discussion around the lineup was whether or not Jojea Kwizera would start. For me, I thought it would depend on how he looked after returning from international duty. From what I understand, he might have made it to Colorado Springs before the rest of the team. If that was the case, I understand the argument for giving him the start instead of sticking with this same 11 from our last game. But in all honesty, I don’t really think it would have mattered.

This is normally the part where I go through everything that happened in the game, but honestly I can’t be bothered to clip everything and relive it all. Again, thankfully Timmy already did that for me in his blog. But if you do really do want to relive this game, here’s the “highlights”:

I think you can point to several reasons why this game didn’t go the way we wanted. But for me the biggest one was us losing the midfield battle. I say it all the time, but games are won and lost in the midfield. And we were dominated in that area of the field. It was the most surprising thing for me coming out of this game. Ever since our “adult” midfield was introduced a couple of months ago, we’ve won the battle in central areas and hadn’t lost a game. But in this game, Colorado Springs gave us a taste of our own medicine. They often played through our press like we weren’t even there. And when we had the ball, we were rarely ever able to play through them.

Our inability to play through the midfield is what lead us to attempting more long balls, often at JJ Williams. JJ won a lot of his duels as usual but we would almost always lose the ball within the next few seconds. Literally nothing went right for us in this game. I think the easy thing to do would be to point out the elevation and the start time. While I do think those played a role, especially the start time, at the end of the day the players just didn’t seem prepared out there.

I’ve struggled with my emotions surrounding this result. On the one hand, it’s incredible what this team accomplished in their first season. But on the other hand, when I look back at this game, I feel like this:

It was just really frustrating knowing everything this team has done all year, how they’ve improved throughout the season, and how they were playing the best soccer they had all year at the right time, only for them to lay an egg like this in the final. For the playoffs as a whole, I felt like we needed to beat Indy Eleven. Once we did that, we were playing with house money. Beating Louisville City and the Charleston Battery back to back away from home was incredible. To me, those two teams were the best in the league. So coming into this game, while I knew it wouldn’t be easy, I thought that we would have a very good chance at taking home the trophy. That’s why this result and performance really hurts. But we must move on.

I’m going to end this one by recapping my trip out to Colorado Springs, because it was quite the experience. It began with Sarah driving me through the rain into Boston on Friday night to catch my flight to Denver. There were a few RIFC fans on the flight, including my now sworn enemy Timmy. The flight ended up being delayed and I honestly couldn’t even tell you when we landed. But Timmy had rented a car and along with Quadros, we headed to the hotel in Colorado Springs and arrived sometime between 2:30 and 3:00am. We were greeted by FQB in what I will only say was typical FQB fashion.

After just under 3 hours of sleep, and some morning Bloody Marys, we headed out to the tailgate. The team did a great job as expected. There was plenty to drink and a breakfast food truck right next to us. We marched on to the stadium, got to our seats, and anxiously awaited kickoff.

This is where I have to cut in and go on a bit of a rant. There were a few groups of Colorado Springs fans in our section. In my opinion, that is completely unacceptable. Away supporters need to have their own section. Based on everything that we here at Tide Talk heard over the past week and after the game, it sounds like tickets for what should have been an RIFC only section were put on sale to the public immediately after Colorado Springs won the Western Conference Final. It’s not really my place to criticize too harshly when I don’t know all of the details of what went on. And I don’t want this to come off like sour grapes because we lost the game. But if this really was the case, I just think it’s a really bad look.

We all hung out at COATI after the game, which was a food hall with some amazing food stands and drinks. I probably spent over 5 hours there lounging around, trying to recover mentally and physically. Timmy, Quadros and I then made our way to In-N-Out on the way to the airport. I would say it was decent and about what I expected. Our flight home was a red eye, so it was pretty quiet and relatively easy. I ended up making it to my house just before 7am and immediately went to get some sleep.

All in all, it was another whirlwind trip for me. My third in as many weekends. I never thought in a million years that I would be following this team around like I have these past few weeks. And despite the depressing result this last time out, it was well worth it. These are moments and experiences that I will remember forever.

Lastly, I have to say that it’s been a pleasure writing these blogs over the last 4 months. It’s been a great outlet for me to get my feelings and opinions out there. And being a member of Tide Talk has been such a joy, even when a certain fellow blogger and I are beefing (just kidding Timmy, we’re all good 👍). I’ll be back soon with some offseason content, along with my other Tide Talk brethren. Until then, as always, UP THE TIDE!