Let’s bring this blog up to speed:
After winning the back to back titles in the Great Lakes Region, Illinois Ultimate turned its sights towards Natties in Madison, WI. The weekend of Nationals Illinois went 1-5. The number doesn’t look good, but the effort and heart Illinois showed did not go unnoticed. Chris Hidaka summed up his feelings very nicely, “This is a nationals I want to remember, I don’t want to remember 2009.” I guess that is improvement, but by no means were the younger boys of Illinois content with a 17th place finish.
The team went home and spent the summer and returned in the spring locked cocked and ready to rock. A bunch of awesome rookies introduced themselves to the program, and those that have stayed have shown a lot of promise for the future. This class of rookies played a large role in a Whitesmoke XV! championship as well as 10th and 12th place finishes at No Wisco. In my opinion the future of Illinois Ultimate is in very good and capable hands. It is not inconceivable to believe that every 2010 rookie will play large roles for this program in the next couple years.
On October 23rd The Illinois sent a team to Rivalry Reheat in Ann Arbor and Glory Days in Lowell Indiana.
GLORY DAYS
Apparently the weather was atrocious. Returners on this team compared in to a warmer 2009 Chicago Invite. It was raining sideways on Saturday and the games were dramatically upwind downwind all weekend. The team put up a fight all weekend but was never able to put out a W. I didn’t attend this tournament and really don’t know too much more about it. However I did hear someone mention that this tournament should be good motivation to work harder and become a better team, and to that I say cheers!
Highlight: Rob Dreier’s pep talks “Let’s get a point guys.”
Lowlight: Jacob Nelson hammer pulled and it went backwards.
RIVALRY REHEAT
Ann Arbor is a whore, just kidding, but seriously. This tournament was a great idea by MagnUM. They invited 5 teams to join them and their B team for a weekend of hard hitting ultimate.
Illinois didn’t start until 12:10 on Saturday (Thank you Ollie). So the team woke up at 9:30 and had a nice little team meeting where we all just shared our feelings.
First we played Grand Valley State. They were a very spirited team to play and all in all I believe it was a good experience getting our feet wet as a team and starting to identify our identity. Unfortunately Adam Wright suffered a weekend ending injury to his right knee. I was playing at the moment and had my back turned to the play. I turned and automatically thought that the Iron Horse would just get back up, but after seeing him dragged off the field I felt a small piece of me die. The team put this tragedy behind us and took care of GVSU.
Ohio University was Illinois’ second test. Ohio had an impressive ability to catch pretty much anything. However the depth of Illinois’ roster was the driving force behind our victory of Ohio.
A rematch of the 2010 Regionals Championship game highlighted the next round. Michigan State took the field against Illinois. Both teams were very focused and kept the intensity high the whole game. This time Illinois came out on top and attempted to ride this into the next round.
Basically the reason we came to this tournament was to play MSU and UM. With MSU down, we set our sights on MagnUM late on Saturday. This game was not very good. MagnUM brought their usual intensity and I believe they overwhelmed the inexperienced depth of Illinois. They took us out of our game, capitalized on our mistakes, fast broke us, and pretty much threw whatever they wanted. There were several points where they might have only thrown breaks all the way down the field for the score. The captains kindly informed us that this was not okay.
We went to dinner at Chili’s that night, (Sean Hill aka the Snackman decided he was too cool to come with).
Papi, Kennedy, Wego, Adam and myself all tried to GChat Walden with the phrase “Sul say’s hi” (Sul did actually say hi), we were excited to see who he would respond to first. This was our silly way of testing his love for us. As it turns out Walden’s Sith powers are stronger than ever, he simply never responded to Sul and left us all hanging. Out smarted again!
SUNDAY
We woke up and played two uneventful games against Eastern Michigan and Michigan B. Illinois took care of business and killed some larva, as they amped it up for a second dance with MagnUM.
ROUND 2 V MAGNUM
We brought the intensity, we kept it hot for the whole game but we just didn’t pull it out. This was a much improved game, like night and day. We had observers for this game which turned out to be interesting to say the least. Kennedy decided to “some guy” once, but Michigan recovered it before it hit the ground. So “some guy” went upline and Kennedy laid it (I like to think because I told him to). Anyway Michigan people thought “some guy” got stripped, Illinois people were jacked up about the D, and the observers thought that their view from about 20 yds away was good enough to make a decision on a very close call (screw ref’s ultimate needs slow motion replays). A little jacked up Kennedy tells us to throw our hats on the field and says “I guess I’ll just have to get another D” and hand blocks “some guy”, three D’s on the same guy, on the same point the perfect hat trick…and he called it, WOW! Kennedy then finished the point by being an offensive force and scoring it. The whole team went crazy we were pumped and ready to take on whatever MagnUM threw at us. The intensity we drew from Kennedy never died, but a few mental mistakes and continued struggling on the marks separated us from Michigan this weekend. They played well and continue to look like one of the premier teams in college ultimate, but that does not mean it’s okay to lose to them. Hopefully the next time our paths collide we will put tons more pressure on them.
Highlight: Kennedy’s hat trick
Lowlight: Adam Wright’s knee
Rookie number ceremony is this weekend. The big question on everyone’s mind is who will take number 31(Reggie Miller is the greatest basketball player of all time)? Also who comes out with #8, the Suleymonster of yours truly?
MLC in 3 weeks.
