Team HUapocalypse

This weekend I went to my first Ultimate Frisbee tournament with the Frisbee team here at Harding (HU Apocalypse). The tournament was in Memphis which is about two and a half hours away from Searcy. We (there were about 11 of us) left on Friday Evening at about 7:00 and drove to Aaron’s house (of one of the guys that’s on the team) who lives in Memphis. We stayed there Friday night and got up and drove to the park where the tournament was, at about 9:00. The games started at 10:00am.

For those of you who are not familiar with Ultimate, here’s a quick overview on how it is played:
The field is 70yrds by 40yrds with 25yrd in-zones. The game itself is a mix between soccer and football and played with a disc (Frisbee). There are seven people on a team and the object is to catch the disc in your in-zone to score a point. Games are played to 15pts. You cannot run with the disc although you’re allowed three steps if you’re running when you catch it. The goal is to maneuver the disc between the players on your team and work it down the field and into your in-zone. If the disc touches the ground or is blocked or knocked down by the other team it’s a turnover or just a “turn” and the other team gets to take the disc from there. No picks are allowed. The person guarding the player with the disc is called the “marker.” The marker starts counting as soon as the player gets the disc (called the stall count). If the player with the disc does not throw the disc before the marker counts “ten” then it’s called a “stall” and the disc is turned over to the other team. One of the neat things that is unique to the sport of Ultimate is that there are no referees. Everything is called and decided by the players on the field. Fouls, picks, stalls, turns, ect. are all decided by both teams on the field. If a call is contested by a team and it can’t get worked out by the players on the field then the call goes to the person on the sidelines that had the best view of the play in question. Over all, it is a very fast paced game that requires not only stamina, but also the ability to handle the disc and work as a team to score points. I love it!!

So as I said, we arrived at the fields at 9:00 and found out we would be playing five games that day. We would be playing to 13 points with a hard top (time limit) at 1hr and 15min. Our fist four games were to be back-to-back. Knowing what we had to face, we started our fist game. The game went very well and we won, 13- 6. Still pumped up from the last game, we disposed of the next team, 13-5. So on we went to game 3, starting to feel effects of running solid for the past 3 hours. After a pretty evenly matched game we again came away the victors with a 13-10 win. Our fourth game, we started getting tired. We were up against one of the best teams in the tournament and we were dragging. After a hard fought battle we came away with a humiliating 3-13 loss. After that game we finally got an hour-and-a-half break. We got something to eat and came back to play our final game of the day at 5:30pm. But even after a break, we couldn’t pull it together. We lost again with a score of 5-13. That night we all crashed hard on the floor of Aaron’s house.

The next morning after a short church service with the team, we went back out to the park for our final game before seeding. To make a long story short, we lost that game as well (2-13) to make our record 3-3. Because of our record we got 4th seed and ended up playing again the team we had just lost to. :-( If we could pull it together, we had a chance at second place for the tournament. The first half of the game went much like the game before, and we were down 3-7 at the half. After halftime, the game changed. With a couple critical turnovers, we made a run and at the next timeout had narrowed their lead to 2 with the score 7-9. But it wasn’t enough. The opposing team rallied together and finished us off 8-13 placing us fourth in the tournament.

While this may sound very depressing, I’m actually thrilled at how we played and the things I learned at this tournament. The time I got to spend with the other guys on the team was great as well the lessons we learned about working as a team. We know what we need to work on in practice now. In the future, we will definitely be a force to be reckoned with. :)