I’m a freshman on Colorado State University’s Men’s Ultimate Team, Hibida, and here’s Pres Day weekend from my point of view:

We hit the vans (two 15 passengers) at 10:30pm on Thursday night and a short 18 hours later we were greeting the sunshine and humidity of Southern California. We are a young and inexperienced team, and for many of our players, myself included, this was our first actual college tournament or first tournament on Hib. Our team is athletic and we would use our intensity to carry us into games.

Our first match up on Saturday featured Cal Poly-SLO, who earned their way into the tournament through the qualifier. They were definitely under seeded and hungry. Our team came out fired up, but you could tell that it was our first game of the spring, and we had several miscues and sometimes a stagnant offense. We ended up taking half up a break, but the second half turned into a dogfight. We not only traded points, but also traded breaks. SLOCORE was led by the handling prowess of #82 (Joel Anton) and #44 (Tim Okita?), they consistently broke our marks, launched huge zone breaking hammers, hit receivers with big arching hucks, and could give and go to generate offense. SLOCORE would bring it to universe, but we were able to hold seed and take the game 13-12. Cal Poly-SLO is a great team, they had all the pieces and I can’t wait to see what they accomplish the rest of this spring. I’ll be rooting for them.

Our second match up was against a rested Brownian Motion team who was coming off their first round bye. Brown was the two seed of our pool and I knew they would be playing at a high level. They had two WJUC players (Eli Motycka and Sam Lehman) who I had prior experience playing with at a talent ID camp after YCC in 2013, both of them are studs. Brown came out against us ready to go, they knew their limits and played consistent offense. They had a cutter with a red hat that was making huge plays all over the place, massive bids, huge skies, and I believe it was #7 (Ryan Brown?), he was also leading their sideline presence. Props to #7. In the end we just didn’t have the intensity to play with Brown, they took the game 7-11. Brown was a solid team and I’m sure they will be able to cause some mayhem in the New England region this year.

Our third match up was against Cal-Berkeley, Ugmo, who was also coming off their bye. Cal was the team seeded directly above us and beating them would punch our ticket to the championship bracket. We came out flat, we practically gifted them 6/7 of their first half points. We had a couple handler miscues, a pull that went out about 10 yards from our end zone, and kindly decided to not cover their deep cuts. It’s not saying that they weren’t making plays, they had fantastic offensive flow; breaking the mark when they needed to and always finding the open cutters. They had one player #10 (Khoji Sugioka?) who played phenomenally against us, making the throws, scoring the goals, and getting the Ds. Cal took the lopsided first half 3-7, but we would get the break train rolling in the second half and tie it up at 11-11, forcing universe point. We pulled to Cal, and about 15 yards from their end zone they turned it. This was our shot to make the bracket play, and complete our Saturday goal. I pick up the disc and our Captain #3 (Noah Brown) initiated a cut from the front of the stack and took off downfield, I threw a flick to his right shoulder and he turned to look with his left. The disc ended up down, and Cal picked it up and hucked it to Khoji, and would punch it in with a break throw, ending our Cinderella story before it even began. Props to Cal for doing us proud and crushing it the rest of the weekend though.

Our final match up on Saturday was against the #2 overall seed, Oregon, and they were also coming off a bye (reoccurring theme here). Sadly our team had lost before the game had even began and the effort just wasn’t there. We were just running through the motions, and it seemed Oregon was doing the same but just a lot better. We ended up breaking Oregon for the first point of the game 1-0. It stemmed from a Dylan Freechild drop, but that would prove to be our only lucky break (see what I did there). It was a lot of fun running around with the big boys, and definitely showed me that the ceiling of elite college Ultimate is closer than I realized. As our English exchange student (Iain McConachie) said, “They just do the basics 100%.” As Oregon reached their game point, our coach (Tim Kefalas), decided to throw out the all freshmen line. We went out and scored on a layout catch by Bijan Imansepahi, and then would pull it to Oregon and break them on a huck run down by Bijan. 50% of our teams points being scored by a freshman in the final 3 points. Oregon would punch it in a point later and take the game 4-13. Oregon is a great team, maybe the best, and I’m glad they were able to put the doubters to bed and win Pres Day.

Saturday night Hib hit the beach a little disappointed with our performance, but it was a learning experience. With a change of offensive identity we were ready for the rest of the weekend.

Our first match up on Sunday put us against Columbia, who was seeded only one slot behind us in the tournament. They were just coming off a universe point loss to Vermont and only had a minuscule break before they had to jump on the field again to play us. Columbia was a smaller team thats offense was run through only a handful of guys, using quick give and gos to generate openings. We couldn’t slow down their offensive flow and we traded points into the second half. But Sunday was the day, the day that our deep threats went off. Freshman David Miller, Junior Andrew Spada, and Senior Marshall Rawley were catching everything and there were monster skies everywhere. Soft cap went off when the score was 12-11 and the game was to 14. Hib would end up winning the game with a break for the final score of 14-12. We never felt like we were out of control of the game, but the score reflects the talents of Columbia’s give and go offense.

Our second match up was against Vermont who was seeded fifth overall and seemed to be having a rough weekend. By this time our team had worked out all our offensive kinks, and even our D-line’s offense was rarely turning it. We ended up taking half either 7-2 or 7-3, and our intensity and sideline presence was thundering. I’m sure teams could hear our 911-Dispatch and breadcart chants across the complex. Since our flow was working so well, we took this as an opportunity to get some of the younger and more inexperienced guys (As in the youngest and most inexperienced) and those guys took full advantage of the playtime. Joey Leduc scored his first college ultimate goal, Bijan got layout Ds all over the place, and Cole Turner was chasing down some monster hucks. We couldn’t miss and ended up taking the game 15-6.

Our final game on Sunday was for the semis of 13th place, and was against Whitman who was seeded sixth overall. This game was pretty much summed up by what a Whitman player said, “I don’t want to run anymore.” Our high intensity game was just running circles around many of the Whitman defenders and we started the game with a break. That break set the pace. We had guys making plays all over the place, starting with a David Cuellar bookends, and ending with a David Miller insane layout grab on a low huck tailing away from him. We ended up taking the game easily, 15-6.

Sunday evening the ocean mist/fog rolled in and Hib decided to skip the beach and just go relax at the hotel. We had completed our goal of winning all our games on Sunday, and confirmed our seed break.

Monday morning was a rematch between Cal Poly-SLO, who had fought their way back to the 13th place game. Some say that the hardest thing that you can do is beat the same team twice. Not to mention we had several injuries to key players, missing 6 players including 4 of our experienced handlers. As I was warming up for the game, I wasn’t completely motivated, my soreness and fatigue making me think I’d rather be watching than playing, but then my coach came up next to me as I was lacing up my cleats and he said, “ready to play? You’re the guy. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! Get warming up!” I turned the switch on, and no more internal questions were asked or doubts were said as I started going through plyos. With all our injuries, playing against a hungry SLO team, you had to think that things looked bleak for us, but that just wasn’t the case. Our intensity was the highest it was all weekend, and people were screaming as loud as they could all the way down the sideline (several of our players are still recovering their voices now). We came out firing early and got the break train rolling! We would take half 7-2 or 7-3, our offense was unstoppable. Then after half Cal Poly came down with a zone, and without many of our zone breaking handlers, they began to slowly claw their way back into the game with breaks. Then slowly our young guys began to figure it out and a couple points later we would shred the zone, breaking it easily 2 points in a row. I had a big outside flick that was caught by David Miller and it broke their zone wide open, after that point they elected not to run zone anymore. Our young guys had earned their respect. We ended up taking 13th place, by beating Cal Poly-SLO 15-11.

Overall it was a successful weekend. I was able to see the ocean for the first time, and we learned a great deal about what our team needs to work on. We’re young and inexperienced, but our ceiling is high and our intensity should push us to reach that ceiling. Hopefully we’ll be able to make some noise this Spring! Thanks UCSD for inviting us and putting on such a great tournament! Go Hib!

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