CARLETON MEN WIN NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP

CUT, the A level men's Ultimate squad can finally lay claim to being the best in the nation. After years of falling short to strong programs at U.C. Santa Barbara, Brown University and others, Carleton found a way to end their season with a win in the Finals of the National Championships.

CUT (Carleton Ultimate Team) joins sister squad Syzygy at the top. Last year the Carleton A-level women won Nationals for the first time. Now that CUT has joined them a prophecy has been fulfilled for Carleton's nationally-recognized Ultimate programs.

CUT Ultimate began its quest at Carleton in 1986 when Al Duerr ('89) founded the team. Since that time, the team had been to ten straight Nationals without winning a Championship.

The victorious year was especially gratifying for Carleton's top receiver Alex Nord ('01). Nord convincingly won the Callahan Award for Ultimate's Player of the Year, eclipsing the nearest candidate by a two-to-one margin.

"My respect for Alex is neverending," says senior defnesive co-captain Nick Rech, "I feel that for the past 3 years he has been the best player in the nation"

But the prestigious Callahan wouldn't have mattered much if Carleton hadn't won the tournament, "It felt great to win knowing that it was combined with the team's victory. Having them both is great," Nord explained.

Carleton opened Nationals (held May 26-29 in Boston) with a scare. Seeded 4^th, they faced a determined 12 seed in University of North Carolina-Wilimington. With a long tournament ahead of them, CUT rested some of their top stars in the game and paid for it. UNCW took a 14-10 lead in a game to 15 before Carleton captain Derek Gottlieb re-inserted seniors Nord, Brody Felchle, and Matt Dufort to rally and tie the game at 14s. Despite Carleton's athletic superiority, UNCW stayed tough and took it to 16-16, next point wins. It looked like CUT would have a chance to win when Nord made a layout endzone block, but the disc stayed in the air and a UNCW player came down with it and the game, 17-16

But in the end, it may have been CUT's tournament strategy that won it for them. UNCW, wearied from the exhausting win, lost their next two matches while Carleton won both of theirs, including an important intra-regional showdown with 5^th seed Wisconsin. Carleton placed first in their pool and earned a bye to quarterfinals.

In quarterfinals CUT defeated feisty Cornell 15-11, setting up a grudge match with top-seed, top-ranked UC-Santa Barbara, a team with only one loss all season. UCSB has long held a psychological edge over Carleton, firmly established by Santa Barbara's 21-18 win over CUT in the 1997 Nationals Finals held in Blaine. The enmity between the teams is transparent, but spirited CUT has never emerged the victor in any battle with the Black Tide.

"There's a lot of fear couched in hatred," says Nord, "We didn't want that."

Instead team leaders Nord and Sam O'Brien ('02) settled the squad down, "We told the team to relax, take a deep breath — we didn't have to play a perfect game to win. The UCSB match turned out to be fundamentally our best game."

Carleton played confidently and comfortably and beat their long-time rivals 15-10 to earn a return trip to the finals. Again CUT's cool strategy worked, "I had more fun in that game than any other I have played" said Nord afterwards.

The UCSB win also lifted the spirits of the 40 or so Carleton alumni that made the trip to Boston. Players like Allon Katz ('97), Josh Wilhelm ('00) and Eric Lonsdorf (95) told the team that beating Santa Barbara had "purged some ghosts."

With that win came a sort of reverse deja-vu. In the finals Carleton faced Colorado. Colorado has never defeated Carleton at Nationals, including losses at the 1999 Championships in Boulder and last year's Nationals where CUT eked out a gritty, controversial 16-15 win in semifinals.

CUT remained focused. "It was good to have 19 players from last year's Nationals," explains O'Brien ('02). Last year's squad lost in the Finals, making this return trip that much easier.

Colorado opened up with a two-point lead early in the first half, but soon CUT found their groove and tied the game at 5s before striding to half up two, 8-6. That slim advantage withheld the onslaught from Colorado's host of runners, rock-climbers, and 6'10" Mike Madzinski.

The point that sealed the win came at 12-11. A deep huck to Nord in the end zone took a wild turn. Alex was boxed-out by Colorado's best player and was forced to be creative. Tracking the disc perfectly, at the last minute he leaped up and over the Colorado player, catching the disc with his body twisted horizontally five feet in the air above the ground. Unfortunately the distance back to reality was too much. He held on to the disc but landed hard and suffered a mild concussion. ((note: see attached picture of Alex making this grab))

That single, amazing play deflated Carleton's opponent. The game ended at 15-11 with CUT holding the Championship Trophy at the end of the day.

"This year, we struck gold," says Reich. "it was an ongoing challenge that ended so sweetly."

Alex Nord gives credit to the atmosphere on campus, "The scene at Carleton has been able to support the kind of energy needed to make a great Ultimate team."

Graduated seniors Felchle, Nord, Dufort, Reich, Gottleib, John Litell, Doug Cox and Daisuke Fujisaki have ended their careers at Carleton in the best way possible.

This was written for the Carleton Voice, the Carleton on-campus magazine, and I am pretty sure Charles Kerr put me in touch with them like he did with Brown the year before. Over 60% of the school's students play Ultimate so it was quite surprising when the magazine made the decision NOT to run this piece. Evidently, the reasoning was that since Syzygy had won Nationals last year and the magazine failed to acknowledge them, it would be unfair to cover the men. I guess that makes some sense, but it is still lame. They paid me a kill fee to spike it.

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