East Ultimate makes its presence known at Madison Mudbath Invite.
photo courtesy Dante Velez
17 hours of driving to Madison, Wisconsin from Denver, Colorado to attend the Madison Mudbath: one bus, several kids, not enough snackage, and most definitely not enough sleeping time.
Any way you slice it, though, East High School’s Ultimate Frisbee team came to play. As the number two seed in our bracket, other teams knew it was so. With such stellar programs in attendance as Hopkins Ultimate, the Number two ranked team in the nation, it certainly was a genuine learning experience for the team as a whole.
For those of you that have never played ultimate frisbee before, let me give you a general summary of how it shakes down. Ultimate frisbee is played with seven players on each team on opposing sides of the field, and is played on grass or turf with the proportions roughly that of a soccer field. Each team’s goal is to make it to the end zone without committing one of the various fouls. Games are played to 13 or 15, with a hard cap and soft cap being used when games drag on. Players can not run with the disc but are granted three momentum steps after a catch. At any point in time if the offensive disc is knocked out or hits the ground it is an immediate turnover. That is ultimate in a very rough nutshell; if you ever want to know more I would recommend starting our very own team here at Thomas Jefferson. Now on to the rest of the story.
The first day of the tourney presented various epic moments and a few ultimate shortfalls, with the team going 3-1 in game play, and our only loss coming to the Number one ranked team in our bracket, COMO from St. Paul, Minnesota. The solitary loss created an opportunity for us to be knocked out of further tournament play, so the fourth game came against Intimate Ultimate. The 3-1 team – hailing from Minnesota as well – was an opponent from the bracket opposite our own. This game that might have defined the weekend was a hard-fought, point-for-point event with a team that helped increase the sport’s sense of camaraderie, and it came down to the last point. We had plenty of chances, some diving catches, diving swats and such, but Intimate always seemed to fight back. Winning on a short-field score after a game that seemed to last forever, East would live to fight another day.
One thing Head Coach Joe Durst always reiterates in practice is, “In tournament play, Sunday is the most important day for all teams. We cannot be the team that comes out tired and not ready to play. Sundays define the season.” Unfortunately, this would not be the tone by which we rang in our Sunday of tournament play, falling 13-1 to Hopkins, again the Number tow ranked team nationally, and 13-6 to the host team James Madison Memorial High. However, 3-2 for the weekend was not such a bad record, and it ended up helping us achieve a fairly high ranking out of 16 teams.
In the last game against the host team, Madison Memorial, we went down deep 6-0 fairly quickly. Already a blowout, we were just not coming out to play, but this would be my chance to step-up. A long toss that went errant over someone who was too short to catch it either way, a nice 100% sprint from yours truly produced the first point of the game, though I had to dive and collide with a mud-pile to achieve it. I certainly got my mudbath for the weekend.
A weekend of hard-fought battles, team bonding, lack of sleep is a weekend that defined my senior year. We entered the tournament as a team, but exited the tournament – maybe without a win – but with a brotherhood equally reliant on one another to produce. The State Tournament may be this weekend, we may have been prepping for this the entire season, but the Mudbath in Madison gave us the greatest gift of all: preparation for State and skills for life. Truly a weekend I will never forget.
