A big part of this graduate year of mine was the rare opportunity to play a 5th year of collegiate ultimate. Collegiate ultimate, as governed by USAUltimate, actually has strict eligibility rules that essentially mandates that players can only get 5 years of eligibility, starting from the day they first play in a USAUltimate sponsored event and continuous. This means that if you play all 4 years of college, take a year off and then go to law school, you can't play as a law student. You do wonder how much this is a factor for certain people. I know someone who played ultimate at Colorado, one of the top teams in the country. This year I saw that he was a law student playing at Cornell, also one of the top teams in the country (and going to Nationals), as well as a top law school. He seems to be in a situation that is both tremendous for his academic and athletic life, which makes me inclined to believe that ultimate was a significant factor in his decision to choose schools. For me, it was certainly a factor, an added bonus that made the the lure of staying school all the more attractive. I definitely wasn't going out of my way for a 5th year, and I'm certainly not a good enough player to justify that, but it was a nice reward. And incredibly, my 5th year exceeded all my expectations, taught me more about ultimate, athletics and myself, capping my college career better than I could have possibly imagined.
I don't want to or need to recap the season, but there are two stories worth telling. Coincidentally, they both took place on the same field, the great turf fields at the University of Delaware.
I need to start off by saying I've always been interested in the mental aspect of sports, ever since my own mental struggles essentially caused me to quit tennis. I think the mental aspect of
sports, or really any sort of pressure-filled endeavor, is pretty relatable to most people. In athletics, I always had the most difficulty with moments where I had too much time to contemplate what I was going to do, such as free kicks in soccer or serves in tennis. That's one reason I'm in no rush to play golf. I love however when sports allow for instincts to take over, when you make plays without even thinking about it. Ultimate is mostly a sport of fast-paced instinctual response. However just like tennis, a poor play can linger in your mind and really dog you if you let it. Sometimes, the nature of the game is such that you make a bad pass and then don't have a chance to redeem yourself for quite some time. It took me years to learn to avoid dwelling on these mistakes, and to just go back out and play as well as I can. But I made a lot of progress over the past year and felt very confident in my mental game entering a tournament at Delaware this past fall.
I think it was a semi-final game against Shippensburg (a random rival). We were down 12-11 in a game to 13. Ship was pulling to us and we expected them to throw zone. I was handling on this crunch time point and elected to receive the pull. The pull fluttered in the wind so I chose to let it hit the ground, rather than risk dropping it. However at the last minute it flattened out and suddenly I decided to reach forward and grab it and get a throw off before they set the zone. The disc was nearly ground level by the time I reached out and before I had a chance to second guess my decision, I was staring at a disc that had most definitely bounced off my hands and hit the ground. I had dropped the pull, a cardinal sin in ultimate, and on game point for the other team no less.
Despite all my focus on preventing mistakes from affecting my play, I stood there catatonic. Nobody on the sidelines could believe what just happened. Several of my teammates were already cutting to get ready to receive the disc. Shippensburg was quick on the uptake though and yelled to get into offense. Everyone on our team scrambled to find a man to cover and I tried to do the same, but everyone I kept going to was already covered. In ultimate, when you make a mistake on offense, you really can't think about it because you have to immediately play defense. Yet here I was, catatonic and unable to find someone to cover. Finally I saw the other team's main handler go to pick up the disc, and I ran to cover him. He was at least 6 feet, that is to say a whole 5 inches taller than me, and was within 10 yards of the end zone. If he got a break throw around me, the game could easily be over and I'd be the scapegoat, twice on this one point. It took every ounce of my focus and intensity to force myself to not think about the drop, to just focus on guarding this handler. He immediately did go for a backhand break, but I sidestepped right with him and hyperactively flashed my hands all over the place, and he had to turn and dump it. I sprinted with him, terrified to let him score on me. The handlers swung it to themselves for what felt like an eternity, but didn't get any closer to the end zone. My guy caught it again and this time went for a high release backhand. Somehow I reached my hand up as high as I could, and I think he only meant to fake the throw. But somehow, some way my hand hit the disc and maybe he accidentally released it, but the disc came out and sputtered straight to the ground. We both stood there, shocked, and I half expected him to call a foul or a strip. But he didn't, and I yelled "TURNOVER" and sprinted into offense. I let someone else pick up the frisbee because I was pretty terrified of committing another turnover. Shippensburg set up their zone and our other handlers worked it up the field. I was at the far sideline, half hoping I wouldn't have to handle the disc, half steadying myself for the possibility that I'd need to make a pressure throw. And the disc did come to me, but I looked off more risky options and made the simple throw back to the main handler. We made some more low risk throws and the cup grew impatient and tried to stop those throws. The disc comes back to me and I look back to the main handler. The Shippensburg defense moved to prevent that throw and succeeded. Suddenly I saw a crossfield opening to hit the handler on the other sideline. It was a throw I had misfired many times in my life but I didn't think about that, I just reached back and flung it all the way through the zone. The other handler caught it and quickly had open men downfield. That throw had broken the zone and we marched upfield and scored. When our captain Pete caught the disc in the end zone, I remember running right behind him and then falling to my knees, so grateful that my stupid error hadn't cost us the point and the game. We won the next point, the game and finished second in the tournament.
The next story is from this year's Conferences tournament (formerly known as Sectionals). Conferences is the first of three tournaments determining a national champion. This year in a restructured format, 6 teams would advance from our Conference towards Regionals, and only the winner of our Region could get a ticket to Nationals. Due to the restructuring, a funny consequence was that our conference only had 9 teams. Reaching Regionals, which had once been considered an exceptional achievement, was now a complete joke.
So we approach the tournament with the mindset that we would try to win it. Georgetown never won a tournament during my 5 years, so I was pretty eager to go out with a win. However, Saturday of the tournament was rained out. We drove up to Catonsville that night and started play on Sunday at 8am. We rolled over our first 3 opponents including a resounding 8-3 smacking of arch-rival George Washington. However, after a bye, we switched fields and played terribly against a decent Towson team. Losing by two points, we then watched in horror as our best player Mike Drost came close to getting a d but ended up getting his shoulder pulled out of his joint. He headed to the hospital with a dislocated shoulder and we lost that game.
Luckily our record that day automatically gave us a top 4 finish, which meant we would make Regionals. Unluckily, Saturday's washed out games would be made up the following Saturday, which fell smack in the middle of our Easter Break. We were the only school that had an Easter Break and half of our team would be scattered throughout the country. Our team had many discussions and ultimately decided to field a team and encouraged anyone who could play to come play. I actually flew home to Boston and drove down with fellow Bostonian Matt Kerrigan and stayed the night at another teammate's house in New Jersey. 11 of us assembled on the turf fields of Delaware again for an opening game against the host. Now 11 is plenty of players for a pickup game, but for high level college competition, it is an almost embarrassingly low number. The intensity of the game demands at least two full lines of 7 players, and most teams usually bring 18-22. But 11 was a good number for us that day because it essentially meant as much playing time as we wanted. Several of the players present that day didn't normally get too much playing time, so we relished this opportunity. We also knew that there were no expectations on us, and every score we got, every turnover we forced would be a huge victory and build our confidence.
With Mike Drost watching from the sidelines in a cast, we came out with a lot of energy and played Delaware even to 6-6. Then while catching a score, Matt Kerrigan bumped into his defender and popped out his shoulder. It was pretty unbelievable seeing two dislocated shoulders in as many days, and a huge loss for our team. With Matt at the hospital, we barely scored a point and lost badly to Delaware in the second half. I particularly remember playing poorly that half and felt completely frustrated that I was putting in so much effort with so little results.
Next up was a rematch with Towson, who was keenly aware that they were facing nearly half the team that they had beaten just the previous week. Now playing with 10 players, we came out with both vengeance and desperation, the likes of which you read about in historical battles where a vastly outnumbered force successively defends themselves. Towson probably never saw that coming and quickly went down 3-0. From there we never let them back up. Our team played as hard on defense as they possibly could and somehow made as good throws and catches as we were capable of. Everybody was out there making highlights. One of mine was a strong crossfield hammer that I threw to Alex Bodaken for a score that left Towson shaking their heads. I think around 11-7, Towson gave up and decided they wanted to go home, their regionals berth already secured. We won that game going away.
Finally we faced Maryland, with fairly low stakes on the line. The winner would finish 2nd, the loser 3rd and seeding at Regionals would perhaps slightly change. Mike Malloy had finished the Towson game with bad cramps and talked the Maryland team into shortening this game to 11 points, instead of 15. With one great upset victory in hand, we did not come out with much fire this game and predictably found ourselves down 1-3. On the following point, I played with some sharp knee pain and took things quite gently. As such, my man blew right by me on defense and caught the disc near the goal line. He threw a break throw around my absurdly weak mark to a wide open cutter in the end zone. The Maryland cutter then committed one of the worst drops I have ever seen in ultimate, flubbing that soft throw into the ground. I stared in disbelief, before deciding to pick up the frisbee and try hard. Though we may have been jogging through the motions, I felt that Maryland had insulted the game of Ultimate with that awful drop. We marched that disc downfield and made a nice score that fired up our whole team (now down to 9). With our intensity back up, the game became fun again. It seemed that every score we got was a sheer act of defiance, and we impishly kept trying to cheat death. I wasn't playing scared of making mistakes, but excited to bring our team to yet another unlikely point. When we had a chance to tie the game at 4-4, Malloy came back to play and we became convinced we would win this game. I think from there we took half at 6-5, and just rolled through to 10-5, capitalizing on Maryland mistakes like never before. After Maryland fought back for two points, we marched downfield on offense again. From the handler position I cut deep but found too many people in the end zone. Coming back in I caught the disc near the sideline, 15 yards from the end zone. Turning around, 3 people cut towards the front corner of the end zone. Looking away from that mess, I saw Alex Bodaken in the end zone again, maybe a yard off of his man. I was in the same position to throw a hammer as I had last game, and as I started my motion I think Bodaken actually shook his head. Too late. I fired and despite our team's collective terror, Alex jumped up and caught the pass. We had won the game, and I had hammered the nail in the coffin on my sectionals career.
