GET YOUR DRAUGHT FROM THE YALE CUP
APRIL 13-14, 2002

As an experienced and veteran ultimate player, I was wholly unprepared for Sunday to start at 8:30 am. I figured I'd arrive at noon during the middle of quarters and ease into a blossoming day of college ultimate. Instead I rolled the wagon in at quarter til' and everything was nearly over. Only two less-than-spectacular semifinals (they always are less exciting than quarters, aren't they? or is it that semifinals are more exciting than finals always? who knows) and the women's and men's final remained.

Thankfully, the Amherst high school team provided a welcome initiation to the tournament. Rumor spread from the HQ tent that they were offering up a great opportunity to purchase one of their fab ro-sham designed '00 discs for $4 if you won a ro-sham best-of-three with their thrower of choice, or pay $10 if you lose. Ever since my two hundred thou in Enron options became worth less than my 76 Volvo I've been a poor man, so I gladly took up the chance, threw all Rocks and Scissors (as did my worthy opponent) and won 2-0 to nab a great deal. Thanks Amherst!

That was probably the most exciting action of the day from my vantage point. But nonetheless let me relate to the nation what to expect from the Northeast this year.

I suppose the first notable event to occur on Sunday was an upset of 35-2 UMass by Dartmouth in quarters. "We have a lot of new guys who think we are better than we really are," says UMass, "hopefully this loss will wake everybody up. Our season really begins in two weeks." Which is sectionals for them, NE regionals to follow on May 5-6. Dartmouth seemed comfortable with winning against UMass, "it was a close game, we took half 7-6 and then we forced them to make a lot of throws when we went to a zone defense and we scored by hucking it deep," explained co-captain Mike Nowak.

Continued Nowak, "For us, Yale Cup is about playing for seeding at Regionals. We don't get a chance to see a lot of the top teams at sectionals and don't get a lot of respect coming from our section so hopefully wins over Harvard and UMass at this tournament will help our seeding at Regionals."

Dartmouth had beaten Princeton earlier in Pre-Quarters and by the time they faced up to Brown in semifinals they may have spent all their fire. Early in the first half they were very erratic; dropping a few passes or otherwise not making easy connections and then setting up very pretty huck plays or getting great man defensive pressure. You could tell they had a good team but they just weren't able to muster enough oomph to muscle out a determined Brownian Motion. Brown went up 4-1 and then 6-2 and were not really threatened after that, winning 15 to 8 or 9.

Let's skip over to the women's side of things for a spell. Like I mentioned above, I didn't make it to the show until quarter til noon, and semis for the men were beginning and semis for the women had just ended, with Regional rivals M.I.T. defeating Brown and Bucknell eliminating Salisbury, I believe. Perhaps this is a good a place as any to mention that Salisbury State University, from Maryland, seems to have changed its name to Salisbury University, still from Maryland.

Naturally I deduced that the Women's final would be staggered between the end of Men's semis and Men's finals and played on a nearby field, but that didn't seem to materialize as expected and after watching the two men's semis I discovered to my surprise that the women's finals had ended and MIT had won over Bucknell, 15-8.

"I don't know what kind of program they got there, but they keep getting good teams," commented someone from some sideline, referring to Bucknell. So who are they? Where is Bucknell anyway?

Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. One hour from Happy Valley. "In the middle of cows and corn," says Sara Gifford.

The Peace Frogs essentially started their recent run of two straight Nationals appearances only three years ago with a small group of dedicated players. Four of them from freshman year bonded tightly and form the molten core of the team in 2002.

"We're all pretty hooked, yeah," concedes five-foot-ten senior Katy Kagle, "We hang out with Ultimate players all the time and when we travel overseas we play Ultimate. Ultimate is our life pretty much."

The other three, Gifford, Betsy Anderson and Debra Lowry would likely agree. So they have a talented core of players -- what else will Bucknell bring to the table for Metro East Regionals? Besides their six main starters, the leaders concede that depth may be a problem for this team as they seek to incorporate freshmen and rookie players into the lineup. They tell me that in the Metro East, teams to beat are Penn State, Salisbury and Bucknell and that Swarthmore will miss Callahan winner Lindsay Goldsmith.

On the other side, M.I.T.'s Smite are a solid mix of talents ranging from sophomore CO-captain Nancy Sun to grad students such as CO-captain Cordy Crockett and wonder twins Chrissy and Kathy Dobson, who I think are juniors. In any case, this team is geared up and ready for Nationals after winning the Umass tournament and posting quality wins here at Yale Cup.

Their goal is "to win sectionals, win regionals, and then, you know, do good enough at Nationals," joked one of their players. Today they faced their stiffest test against Brown, winning in quarters 11-9, I believe.

Already this year this seasoned and well-coached team lost close games at Easterns 14-16 to Colorado and 9-12 to Oregon despite the tournament being their first of the spring for the team. Scariest part of all is that next year MIT will keep almost all of their players.

In the NE, it seems the teams up for contention may be MIT, Brown, Tufts and Williams. Unless I am missing or forgetting someone, which isn't unlikely. Yale has a good, young and fun team and I can guarantee that you will see them be a more powerful squad next year. This year they could upset an incautious opponent.

Ok, so in the other men's semi, Tufts rousted and defeated the Buds 15-9 or so. Cornell seemed very out of sync. Many at the tournament were surprised to see Cornell get dusted in semis because apparently they rolled a lot of teams on Saturday and have been strong all season. Not to mention that four-year winning streak against Tufts and the Yale Cup 2001 trophy back home.

In the finals, wow, what can I say. When your team can't score on 17 straight possessions you would feel fortunate to only lose 15-10. That's what happened to Tufts. But they weren't feeling lucky, that's for sure.

The game started off like it should have ended. Both teams have nearly identical lineups. Some top senior stars surrounded by a cadre of runners. Neither team has much height, no one over 6 foot 1 on either sideline. But there is some speed both ways and some ups, no doubt.

Tufts has these two seniors, Neal Pallaver and Mike Zalisk that can take over a game. Great throws and ups and they play excellent defense. Add in Ariel Santos, John Willomer and a couple of other fellows and they have a complete, all-around, senior-laden team. Using speed and a few precision hucks, they went up on Brown by two at 7-5. Then the wheels fell off.

Brown has a bunch of players you wouldn't necessarily be able to identify. There's Hap, sure, the country knows Harper Alexander. But there's also rock-steady seniors Jeremy Schwartz, Kyle Weisbrod and Lafitte among others, and these college veterans were key contributors in 2000 when Brown won Nationals. But there's this freshman just tearing it up for them too, Josh Ziperstein. In his second year of playing Ultimate after starting his senior year at Amherst high school, Zip has quickly emerged as a game-winning X factor for Brown.

He's very quick on the field and has a knack for playing big when the stakes are high. Down 1 at 4-3, Zip gets D'd up. Tufts has the disc starting on their own goalline and he's marking the thrower. With cat-like reflexes he gets a hand block and Brown scores easily to tie.

All throughout the game this firecracker Zip was making plays and keeping the Brown team intense on the field (not afraid to make a lot of calls, these Brownian Motion folks run a little hot under the collar).

So its 7-5. Tufts goes up two after Ariel Santos hucks away a throw to Zalisk but gets it back with a D block and the score. It was a big play for them, and then they hit a lull. It was almost as if all the juice ran out of their collective system. Brown scores, 7-6. Tufts received the disc and my god they should have scored. They had a bunch of chances, really. They just looked not quite together all of a sudden. Like two teams were playing out there instead of one. Brown takes the third turnover and scores and Zip spikes the disc. Tufts walks back to the line, receives the pull, and uncorks a very pretty pull play huck and it's a goal for the half, 8-7.

They pull to start the second half and come down in zone. They get a turnover and a great play from Mike Zalisk, laying out for an overthrow. They go up 9-7. Then Brown scores 7 straight points and its over.

Tufts called time-outs, ran plays, tried to strop the "low release break mark throw" and they tried a bunch of things to no avail. They could do nothing to get in sync on offense. Zalisk and Pallaver seemed tired and no one effectively stepped up to make plays. They weren't dropping discs, they just were not connecting. Their offense became a shambles, they had no good cuts and no deep looks. Everyone started playing tentative at once and the field shrank to the size of a racquetball court.

And that's how it ended. Josh Weisstuch finally broke the drought, with a placement pass to the endzone but after that Brown scored 15-10 to win the Yale Cup.

"Gosh it feels good to win a tournament – we haven't won a spring tournament since Nationals 2000," spoke Brown coach Nathan Wicks afterwards.

*****

Things to note: Harvard CO-captain Dave Callan broke a bone in his leg at the tournament this weekend and is out for the season.

Idaho State wins the distance award, twice. Not only did they fly from Pocatello, Idaho, but they also flew into LaGuardia airport in New York, meaning they still had an hour and a half drive to New Haven. Idaho State came out on a recommendation from their friends at Utah State who came to Yale Cup last year and found it a good and competitive tournament and an excellent chance to meet some of the teams from the Northeast. ISU players confessed a small amount of jealousy regarding Ultimate in the college-laden Northeast. All these teams! And such a short distance from each other! It's unfair!

But they were not impressed with the extra curriculars of NE Ultimate. The Idaho State guys contended that the party was ill-equipped with too few boatraces and a smallish setting. After traveling 2,326 miles for one weekend of Ultimate, you better believe that these guys deserve a good party!

Thanks to Matt Prince and Jen Christiansen for hosting the tournament.

This was written for the College Ultimate Reporter but never ran because we failed to complete the issue.

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