Bisexual Chocolate made the most of its opportunities. Team Miralax did not.
That was the story from the Bubble on Wednesday evening as Bisexual Chocolate scored 35 unanswered points in a 35-6 defeat of Team Miralax.
Not only did the victory complete an undefeated season, it also resulted in the third-consecutive Co-Rec championship for Chocolate.
"It feels great," Lindsay Davis said. "What makes it so great is that we’re like a family. Being in this together and winning this together, it really makes it worthwhile."
The game swung in the champions’ favor with a key series in the second quarter.
With the game tied at 6, Miralax had the ball first-and-goal at Chocolate’s 7. After a pair of incomplete passes and a fumble, Miralax was unsuccessful on a fourth-and-goal from the 14-yard line.
The ensuing Chocolate possession finished with a 9-point touchdown pass from Jenni Fitzgerald to Reed McManigal. Fitzgerald’s desperate pass under pressure somehow fell into McManigal’s hands on a play the quarterback described as "luck."
"We had talked about it before the game. I had asked her how far she could throw," McManigal said. "We had 6 yards to go, and I said out loud so [the defender] could hear ‘We just have to get to the 50.’ When I got to the 50, she pump faked and then [the ball] just went."
The play gave Chocolate a 15-6 lead and the team never looked back.
Chocolate intercepted three of Miralax quarterback Christopher Arp’s passes during the rest of the game.
Two of the interceptions gave Chocolate field position inside Miralax territory, resulting in 15 points.
Despite Miralax intercepting Chocolate quarterback Travis Sweet four times, the team was only able to muster 6 points.
"We dropped a lot of balls, so the execution wasn’t there, and we turned the ball over in some key situations," Miralax’s Chris Aldrich said. "We didn’t convert when we needed to. That cost us the game."
Chocolate’s victory truly was the result of a team effort. The team used co-rec rules to its advantage by frequently involving its female players to score three nine-point touchdowns.
Sweet was able to make up for some of his offensive mistakes with great defensive pressure. His two sacks, along with two sacks from Fitzgerald, was the result of pressure that Miralax couldn’t handle throughout the game.
"That’s one really big difference between this team and a lot of other teams is that its pressure is twice as strong," Miralax’s Christina Gaard said.
The loss was only Miralax’s second of the year, but both were to Chocolate. That was something quarterback Arp couldn’t handle after the game, as he declined to comment.
"It’s definitely frustrating," Gaard said after the game, noting her team’s only three losses in the past two years have come at the hands of Chocolate. "Someday, we’re going to get them."