bpope’s blog

Last weekend, Las Vegas played host to the biggest ever tournament in college Ultimate frisbee.  (For those of you out there asking the obvious question: yes, frisbee is a sport.)

The tournament itself was held just a few miles from the strip in Henderson.  It started on Friday, February 6th and ran through Sunday.  We began Friday with four games in pretty windy weather.  We won our first game of the day, then went on to lose the second (to Colorado State).  The next two games of the day brought victories, both were hard fought, so we headed home (but first to Olive Garden!) pretty happy.

Saturday continued the windy weather that we had from Friday, but it brought a lot of rain, too.  The day started out bleak, as BC broke for a couple of early points.  Our D-line fought back though, and we took half before rolling on to win the game.  By the second game of the day we were soaking wet and the fields were all muddy.  We played, and lost to, Colorado State again.  That spelled the end of the day for us, but fortunately that meant we could head back to the much drier hotel.  Saturday was also a cultural experience for much of the team: a trip to In’n'Out Burger (yes, I ate two double-doubles and it was amazing).

Our loss on Saturday meant that we were no longer in the running for the Championship bracket, so we had a round-robin pool instead.  These three games meant lots of time for the rookies and less experienced players to get in.  Personally, I got about the same playing time I had the first two days because I’m not a rookie, but I’m also not a team all-star.

Unlike previous years, the veterans got much more playing time early in the tournament than the rookies (hence the winning record).  This put us in a pretty competitive position as far as the tournament went, but led to much of the team not playing a whole lot.  Many of the rookies got playing time on Sunday, which was pretty good, but the team was large and there almost weren’t enough points to go around.  Basically, we’ve got lots of work in the months ahead if we’re going to make our goal of getting to Nationals.

Check out a few pictures from Friday in the galleries section, too.