Fire vs Rise Western Rivalry Match Decided By Inches

It was a hard fought match that went down to the wire, but Coach Sarah and the San Francisco Fire fell to a tough Phoenix Rise team 18-16 in week 2 of the 2016 NPGL season.  The match literally came down to a matter of inches as the teams, tied 15-15 going into the final relay (AKA Race 11), sprinted to the finish line with Phoenix's Danny Nichols crossing the finish line just inches ahead of San Francisco's Cam Pernich.  You can read the NPGL's match re-cap here, and we've pasted a portion of the article below:

Two teams with a 1-0 record met Tuesday night to try to position themselves for a postseason berth. An almost classic rivalry dating back to the first season of GRID, the Phoenix Rise faced off against the San Francisco Fire in a battle for Western Conference domination. The teams did not disappoint, with victory coming down to the final element in the final race — an 18-16 win in favor of the Rise...

... The match got underway with a pair of Fire wins. A fault set Phoenix behind early in Quadrant 1 of Race 1. Danny Nichols and Jessica Phillips made up time and brought the race to dead even but left one rep on the table as Nichols left the hash box to cross the finish line before Phillips had finished her final rep. This gave San Francisco the win and the point.

Race 2, the Mirror, was a back-and-forth pitched battle through 40 thrusters for the finish line. Phoenix had some trouble in Quadrant 1 but the Fire’s Tyler Cummings was faulted in Quadrant 3, allowing Phoenix to move into Quadrant 4 first but the victory was not to be. Blaine McConnell got nine reps in but was unable to hit the 10th rep without a reset, which allowed the Fire to capitalize on the slow-down and finish first. At the end of two races, the score was 4-2 San Francisco.

“We’ve been up multiple times in the first two races and we’ve had teams come back,” said Phoenix Head Coach Mike Lee. “So I just told these guys, ‘We’re in it now, so let’s get started.’  We knew the Echoes were good races for us and we knew we had some opportunities to gain some points.”

In the Women’s Echoes, the Phoenix women roared back with a win in Race 3. Entering Quadrant 4 with a dead-even number of reps, Laura Poling, Hagiya and Phillips destroyed the snatches at the end to give Phoenix the win. However, an official challenge regarding Sarah Hopping Estrella’s rope climbs led to a replay of the final two elements of Race 3, and again, the crowd watched a near rep-for-rep replay of the race. Once again, Poling, cheered on by Phillips, banged through the reps so quickly that San Francisco couldn't keep pace and once again, the Rise woman hit the finish zone first....

-Pat McCarty (NPGL)

The Fire will take on the Miami Surge on Saturday for their regular season finale, with the winner moving on to the Western Conference playoffs.  You can read details on how to watch the archived SF Fire vs PHX Rise match on GRID TV and the network re-broadcast on NBC Sports Network in September by clicking here.

Time to bounce back SF Fire!    

WOD for 08-24-16:

6 Rounds, Start Every 3 Minutes:

3 Strict Muscle-ups

6 Deadlifts @ 245/175 lbs

9 Box Jumps @ 30/24 lbs

100m Sprint

Want to dial up the intensity? Run faster.