CUT WON'T SUCK

The first thing on everyone's minds; does Carleton have the firepower to repeat as champions?

When Brown won in 2000, it was widely regarded that the team wouldn't be as powerful in 2001 without the twin Callahan winners Fortunat and Justin Safdie. When NC State won in 1999 they too graduated a huge contingent of offensive and defensive stars. Only East Carolina in the early 90's and the two threepeat Championship teams of UC Santa Barbara in the mid and late 90's retained enough talent. Can Carleton do what rival UCSB has done?

I went straight to the source. Sam O'Brien has been one of the captains of CUT since his sophomore year. He has been one of the architects of this Carleton team and knows what it takes to win. What does CUT have in the bag for this year?

"Everybody's gone. We have nobody," says O'Brien. "But we did recruit this one player. Came out of nowhere. About 6'4", red hair, sick catches. He's going to be huge. His name is Alex."

Alex Nord is back for an unprecedented fifth year at Carleton? Um, no.

Alex Masulis is the man at Carleton, and he will be huge. Even if he isn't a ruddy six-footer.

"Yeah, I heard Alex was ripping it up with Sub Zero at Nationals. He's a young leader on this team who will make a difference."

More than that - Masulis is an incredible athlete and extremely difficult to guard. Ask around the club circuit and they'll tell you. He wasn't just ripping it up at Nationals, Masulis was making a name for himself. He was unstoppable.

The only problem other teams might have is identifying which 5 foot 7 handler on the team is Alex Masulis and which one is Sam O'Brien. They guard each in practices and they both play on offensive and defensive points. They are fast and quick like hobbits, Frodo and Sam, and they both have rings.

But Carleton has always been about the whole team. They are still one of only a few major collegiate programs that don't break the collective team consciousness by nominating a Callahan candidate. But that doesn't mean that the Nord Question isn't the one that everyone keeps asking about.

Everyone wants to know: How will you replace Nord now that he's graduated? How can the team be anywhere near as good without Nord? Is it true that Nord hasn't paid his Carleton team dues?

"We're still going to try and find Nord in the endzone a lot. We think he can make some great plays for us on the sideline," explains O'Brien. "He's still our favorite target. And it is true that he's eligible to play, but not until he pays his dues."

Sam may be confusing the memories of Alex Nord with the realities of sophomore Chase Sparling-Beckely. He's another six-plus footer who played in the off-season with Sub Zero, the Minnesota club team that placed fifth at Nationals, and rumor has it that he owes a case of Stout to the team captains, Garrett Westlake, AJ Huang and Matt Hahn. But again there's that question of team -- O'Brien was reluctant to single out specific players who will be major factors in CUT's upcoming season. You just have to know that this team will be ready to defend its title this Spring.

There are several reasons for this. First of all, the Carleton team that you may see at an early tournament like Easterns is still a tryout squad, a team of aspirants mixed with the core members of the offensive and defensive squads.

"At Easterns, everything we do is above and beyond not having upwind throws. Its great -- you can learn what to do and how to improvise. But our complete team isn't ready until a month or so after Easterns."

For the record, CUT lost eight seniors to graduation, including Nord, defensive captain Nick Reich, and prime time players Derek Gottlieb, Brody Felchle and Matt Dufort. But they also retained the services of last year's freshman class that had four Junior Nationals players, including Greg Huntington and Jimmy Chu who won Junior Nationals in 2000 with Seattle. This year CUT welcomes two more Junior Nationals players to its team. Carleton doesn't rebuild, it reloads.

On the field, O'Brien still preaches the specialization of skills that got Carleton so far. In the past, all CUT players were expected to be able to handle, to go long, to make sick skies for goals like Alex Nord. But under the guidance of Nord, O'Brien, and others, the program was turned around to focus on individual skills, with everyone contributing in their own unique way to the success of the team.

"We're working the same system, if we work hard enough we're pretty confident that we can win," says O'Brien, "Every other team is starting over again. We can't treat this season any differently."

Another persistent issue I asked O'Brien about was Carleton's place in the rankings. With CUT getting a start to its season so late, they will typically lose games early and end up lower than expected in the computer ratings.

"Our attitude is that we can't think about the ratings because we get knocked down a bit every year. We are just going to go to tournaments and play."

It shouldn't matter in the end whether they go into Nationals ranked 4^th, like last year, or first, because they will have to beat all the top teams in the nation anyway.

So the answer still remains: will CUT repeat as champions this year?

"We have a chance, and we'd like to thank our mothers and God for giving us a chance," says O'Brien. "We're just one team. Working together. God bless us."

This was written for the College Ultimate Reporter, an excellent magazine project started by Charles Kerr with help from myself. I first met Sam in 1997 when I covered High School Nationals and he was playing with the ragtag Minnesota Juniors team.

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