Posted May 16, 2012 at 2:33 pm by Grant Farrington | Comments (2)
20 Days of Nationals and the 2012 College Tour are presented by Spin Ultimate
Standing on the sidelines near the east end zone for most of the backdoor final of the Georgia Tech versus Florida, I had a mostly unobstructed view of the game. Almost everything happening was within my line of sight and after almost two hours watching high level college ultimate, I realized my heart was beating through my shirt. Neither school is my alma mater. It’s been four years since I stepped on the college playing field. Yet this particular game was one of those instances that grabbed a hold of all players and spectators and produced tremendous emotional swings no matter who you rooted for. The story lines only fed into the mental frenzy: Georgia Tech hasn’t qualified for Nationals since before some of the current roster was born, Nick Lance is in the Callahan hunt and Florida has to go into hostile Atlanta territory to beat the hometown team. What culminated for Tech was more than just a win. The team exploded in a sheer embodiment of the triumph of victory.
Tech shouldn’t have been in this position: a two decade drought of the big stage as a result of some very recent near misses. The 2006 team should have gone, loaded with (at the time) present and future Chain Lightning talent but alas they happened to be in the same region as Florida and Georgia who finished 1st and T-3rd in the nation respectively. Had the current bid allocation rules been in place then, it’s easy to speculate that Tribe would have been a participant in Columbus. The 2010 team should have gone, having beaten Georgia already twice that season including a recent sectional crown victory with some spectacular match-up play between Lance and Peter Dempsey that left a stunned Athens crowd near silent. Though, when the bid was on the line in Tallahassee a few weeks later, Tech fell to Jojah in the game to go as the Dawgs continued their impressive Nationals qualifying streak by once again peaking at the right time.
This year, for the majority of the season, Tech was a bubble team at best, positioned tightly with Georgia and Florida in the rankings, which says a lot about the increased competition level among college open teams. An eleventh hour second bid burst the prospects wide open and an unfortunate series of injuries to Jojah meant that the team that earned the second bid was unlikely to claim it. The other prime contender for the ticket would be the Gators. Florida is, well Florida. They’ve been an elite team for almost a decade now and have seen several classes of elite superstars take over the college game and progress on to the club circuit. The fabulous critics of RSD have always been quick to point that “so and so has graduated so Florida is going to fall off.” Well, they haven’t and scoffs at the perceived game breaking inabilities when compared to Gehret and Gibson and Smith only fuel the fire that is the Gator squad.
Is this a good explanation of the feelings that made up the diehard folks attending the game at the end of Sunday of regionals? Probably not. But factor in that those diehards were by and large a very dichotomous group, save for some raucous hecklers from Tennessee. Florida Fuel had just qualified for Nationals themselves, which provided a hearty fan base for their ultimate family as well as slew of Tribe alumni and fans who took advantage of a local stage to hopefully see their team advance. Past college nationals champions Dustin Travaglini, Joe Crinkley and Alton Gaines stalked the sidelines for Florida while past club nationals champions and Tribe alums Russell Snow and Jonathan Monforti did the same for Tech. For an ultimate junkie like me, it was a great site to see. Tech would go on a run and draw large cheers from the crowd. Florida would go an equally impressive comeback in the second half which sparked excitement from the other half of the fans. All of the past years which led to the past months which led to this one game left everyone overcome with at least a little bit of sensory overload. Tech’s victory was not only a claim of a nationals berth, it was also a claim for all the invested emotion that both teams anted up through years of hard work.
So if Tribe ever wondered what comes next after reaching this point, they were certain to find out. For me, it was apparent on all their faces: smiles. Lots of them. Little things now had meaning, such as Ramu Annamalai pointing out to me, breaking from shotgunning beers, that he unknowingly kept a lucky penny in his shorts pocket the entire game. Jay Clark (jokingly) shrugging off his previous trips to the show with Tufts as casual and he’s used to this thing by now. Everyone embraced the stereotype that a bunch of nerds could in fact play a hell of a game of ultimate.
Is this the peak of the mountain? Yes, but it’s only one mountain in a lifelong range. There aren’t many scenarios that will spoil Tech’s trip to Boulder this year, but that means there’s a steeper slope downward next year. On the other hand, I was very impressed with Florida’s standout freshman Bobby Ley. He showed a lot of maturity and poise, not to mention spirit as well which bodes well for Florida’s future. For now, kudos to Tribe and their return to Colorado for the first time since ‘92.
Feature Photo by Christina Schmidt of UltiPhotos
Posted May 10, 2012 at 6:22 pm by Bryan Jones | Comments (1)
With Nationals approaching fast, we’ve started to get going with a little bit of coverage, but we have big plans leading up to the big show in Boulder. Our coverage really started already this week, and we’ll start things off on the men’s side with pieces on Minnesota Duluth and Central Florida. Maya Ziv will be leading things on the women’s side in the following days.
Interviews, podcasts, player profiles, and histories will be our focus. Be on the lookout for our daily pieces as we go all the way through the tournament.
Posted May 7, 2012 at 10:05 pm by Robyn Fennig | Comments (0)
20 Days of Nationals and the 2012 College Tour are presented by Spin Ultimate
Bekah Hickernell looks to swing the disc at Music City Mash-Up, Photo by Carolyn Sleeth
The University of Iowa’s women’s team, Saucy Nancy, has completely re-vamped their program to become one of the best in the college game today. In just two short years, the program rebuilt from the ground up to win the North Central Region in 2011, qualifying for the Division 1 College Championships for the first time since 2005. Saucy Nancy, the back-to-back North Central Region champions, has demonstrated that qualifying is not enough to satisfy the team in 2012.
Saucy Nancy was highly criticized last season for playing an extremely tight rotation, with few rookie players making it into the lineup. This season, Saucy’s focus centered on building a strong program to sustain itself into the future. With the 2011 North Central Region Coach of the Year, Mikey Lun, at the helm, Iowa has been able to expand offensive and defensive schemes to create a variety of looks. “As a team, we try to be flexible about roles, but everyone has found a niche. We’ve seen teams running more and more hybrid defenses – a testament to the growth of college women’s ultimate,” says Lun. “Admittedly, I was naive to that last year before meeting Oregon in quarterfinals at Nationals. We have a lot more sets now, preparing for as many situations as possible.”
Chelsea Twohig gets low to continue to Liza Minor, Photo by Carolyn Sleeth
Since the team has developed more options, we see a very different and much deeper team in 2012. The expansion of the playbook has created many opportunities for every player to contribute on the field. “Everyone has stepped up. Out of the younger players, Anna Pritchard, Jenny Graham, and JoJo Petersen have gone from getting a one or two points a game last season, to being some of our best playmakers,” explains Lun.
Another issue plaguing Saucy in 2011 was emphasis on regular season performance. The team arguably peaked in mid-March at Women’s College Easterns last season, only to be passed up by other teams at the College Championships at the end of May. Lun discloses, “Last year was huge for us as a building block for this year. Obviously, getting Nationals experience was invaluable for all of our players. However, we were rarely challenged in the regular season last year and probably peaked too early because of it. Because the goal was just to qualify, the emphasis was never on peaking at the RIGHT time.
“Our main focus has been to see the big picture. We’ve been less worried about our regular season performance and more about improving throughout, peaking postseason,” describes Lun. This change in mentality has definitely shown in the Iowa results this season.
Liza Minor gets up for the score at North Central Regionals, Photo by Carolyn Sleeth
Though the team performed well in the early season, taking second to Iowa State at Midwest Throwdown and winning over Iowa State at Music City Mash-Up, Iowa had a pretty rough outing at Women’s College Centex. Even though their results were lackluster, Lun says that Centex was the team’s favorite tournament of the season. “Centex was easily our worst tournament record-wise, but it was the turning point of our season. It helped us identify our weaknesses in preparation for when it really matters.” He adds, “This season we knew that we couldn’t rest on our laurels and had to keep improving and working on different schemes.”
Lun sites the lack of mental game as a huge reason for the inability to finish games at Centex. “Mental toughness. We know that games will be incredibly competitive. We had 3 universe point losses in a row on Sunday of Centex. We led in all 3 games. Those losses accentuated the importance of finishing games and bouncing back after tough losses” he says. Saucy had a great opportunity to practice mental toughness at the West North Central Conference Championships in Cedar Falls, Iowa. In gale-force winds, many games were determined by the flip. Iowa was able to bounce back from a pool-play loss to Carleton in the 2nd place game, securing the 3rd seed overall heading into North Central Regionals.
Saucy’s focus and determination was tested on the first day of regionals. In the cold, rainy, windy conditions in Northfield, Minnesota, Saucy played well against Marquette and was challenged in two back-to-back games against Minnesota and Wisconsin. It was not until the Wisconsin pool-play game that we saw what the team was truly capable of. Lun describes the game, “The last time we had played them they drubbed us 15-5. We had also introduced a lot of new things between Conferences and Regionals, so there was still some uncertainty going in. Wisconsin came out hot. I felt fortunate to only be down 6-8 at half. We were able make some half-time adjustments and went on a run to win 15-10. Coming away with a victory gave us some much needed confidence heading into Sunday.”
After winning Pool B, Iowa earned a bye into semi-finals, where they re-matched against Conference rival Carleton. Saucy came out on fire and controlled the tempo of the game. It was clear that they were on the road for victory, and did not look back. The team executed well throughout the rest of the tournament, cinching the North Central Regional title again in 2012.
When it comes to Boulder, Saucy Nancy looks forward to the top-notched competition, “We’re looking forward to competing against all the best teams. Gotta beat the best to be the best.”
Saucy Nancy 2012 after winning the regional title, Photo by Carolyn Sleeth
Posted May 6, 2012 at 6:10 pm by Bryan Jones | Comments (142)
Joaq Nagle and I sat down for a quick 5 minute crack at seeding, and decided we should start the hotly anticipated discussion.
First off we’re using format 17.1.3 in the format manual to determine the pools. After that we just did quick run through. Enjoy the debate!
- Oregon – Explanation, no.
- Pittsburgh – See above
- Carleton – Surviving King Joffrey’s wrath
- UCF – Hard to place these guys, don’t want an NC regional rematch
- Wisconsin – semis at Warm Up, Stanford, and Centex
- Tufts – Won QCTU, Semis at Centex, Semis at Easterns
- Luther – 3rd in the NC
- Minnesota- 4th in the NC- good regular season
- California – Won the Southwest, win over Colorado
- Colorado – Won the South Central
- Texas – Second in the South Central, good results
- North Carolina – Won the AC, H2H over Michigan
- Michigan – Won the GL
- Washington – 2nd in the NW
- Ohio – 2nd in the OV
- MSU – 2nd in the GL
- GT – 2nd in the SE
- California-Davis – 2nd in the SW
- Cornell – 1st in the ME, win over UMD
- Minnesota Duluth – 5th bid baby
Pool A: Oregon, Minnesota, North Carolina, Michigan, Georgia Tech
Pool B: Pittsburgh, Luther, Texas, Washington, Davis
Pool C: Carleton, Tufts, Colorado, Ohio, Cornell
Pool D: UCF, Wisconsin, California, Michigan State, Minnesota Duluth
And now you tell us why we’re wrong.
