2011 Conference Champions

The first ever Illinois Conference was this weekend in Rantoul. Vets of the Illinois program remember Rantoul fondly. It is commonly known that the four winds of the world converge on Rantoul. The forecast called for rain but fortunately it held out through our first round game against ISU.

The Illinois team is pretty familiar with the faces of ISU and was pumped to get their first shot at Stanley the Gnome since Whitesmoke. The Dline ripped open the game to 4-0, from there the olines traded into half. We had a nice chat about the ridiculous number of turnovers we had in the first half but really to no avail. The Dline got one more break, thanks to Dane's turkey call, on the game and the oline didn't falter, the game ended on cap at 12-6.

SIU Full Tilt was next on the schedule. A team we were a lot less familiar with. As the game started the heavens really began to open up and the rains came down... I mean sideways. Standing on the east sideline was brutal with the rain coming straight at your face. The game started despite the conditions and SIU grabbed their first o point. From here Illinois opened a 6-0 run, that was capped off with freshman Crayon scoring, and eventually settled into half with a 7-2 advantage. The second half was all dline. Mark caught a Callahan, aka an Autochevron, Sidrys caught a floater over everyone and Chevtom lived up to his name.

The final game of the day was Chicago, a team that features two Illinois alums, Coach Zubair and player Kurley. Fortunately the game was over without much difficulty. We went on a 7-0 run to take half and coasted to a 13-7 victory leaving the fields to chants of R-A... N-T-OUL.

Sunday morning we got a bye thanks to the TD reorganizing things due to the ridiculous Saturday weather. Sunday had lighter wind, sun and no rain. It felt like the best conditions all year. We opened against Northwestern who we had played at Huck Finn when they were missing some big players so this time around we expected a much different game. Colin Reid opened the game by putting the oline on his back and making a big layout grab 1-0. A nice catch by JR and some great D by Kennedy gave us a 4-0 advantage. AJ Nelson played well and helped Northwestern stay in the game as we traded into half 8-3. The second half brought our cleanest ultimate of the weekend. Sul skied people with ONE HAND!!!!! Dane had a sick pair of bookends, and DMac got the wind knocked out of him for the game winning catch.

Eastern Illinois was on the plate for the Championship. This was Eastern's second year in the series. They thought a zone would be a good idea, it wasn't. We opened a 2-0 lead, traded to 4-2 and then closed out the half 8-2. Eastern was pumped coming out of the half and tallied a 4-0 run bringing the game to 8-6. The oline cleaned it up, and the dline made it worthwhile. Eastern didn't seem to go away as they threw another one. Halvies made a great throw to Papi on the next o point, and then Gibby did some things to help the Dline get the game to 12-7. We traded with them from there, the oline had some good moments especially Halvies throwing things and Austin catching an upline as he called his shot. With the score 14-9, the Dline wanted to take the Championship point and did.

Team dinner at Dos and it was official. Illinois Ultimate wins the first Illinois Conference Championship!

Alumni Weekend

With the series on the horizon, Illinois Ultimate Alumni made their way back to campus for the annual Alumni game. Last year the Students stomped down on the Alumni and the Students mentality was that this year would be no different.

The Alumni that showed up were a competitive group, with several players still active in the game and a large majority of them wanted to win the game.

Sid strategically decided to start going upwind on offense, and the Oline fortunately punched it in setting up the Dline to cash in on a down wind break. Up 2-0 and with last year on our minds it almost seemed as if Illinois already thought the game was in the bag. A few points into the game the Complex Fields closed and we moved from our nice field into the Arboretum which had already seen a long day of hat tournament beat them up. The Alumni maintained focus and managed to put together 5 breaks in the first half.

Half time was pretty awesome. Our Dline came out of half with four straight breaks to put it on serve and soon after took the lead back from those old guys. We were receiving on 13-11 when the Alumni broke the Oline for the 6th time, and a few points later put the game on serve at 14-14. The pendulum swung all the way to universe point at 16-16.

Universe point with the Alumni...awesome. The previous night I had told Walden I expected the game to be about 15-5. The Alumni won the game as soon as they made us run hard, no matter what the final score was the fact that we had to use more than 90% of our energy to beat them was frustrating.

True to form we moved the disc pretty well for a few passes before turning it over on a shot to the endzone. Joel unloaded a deep shot to Charlie and the Alumni pulled the W, making the overall series 1-1.

Even though losing was infuriating and I attribute our loss purely to us being stupid, I feel the Alumni deserve some props for working the whole game and playing pretty well.

Pat Stephens broke Papi's ankles, and roasted almost every matchup he had, Zubair's super sniper bombs were still locked cocked and ready to rock, Charlie was a tough threat deep, Joel Koehneman was poaching on a ridiculous number of incuts. Walden's give an goes were pretty much unstoppable, Jim Haan looked like he never had a knee injury, and Goose's desire to win definitely leached into his teammates. Everyone else who showed up played really well, and I thank them for taking the time to rock our dojos.

2011 Alumni Roster:

Joel Koehneman

Pat Stephens

Stupca

Goose

Walden Nelson

Matt Kurley

Kyle McKinley

JonO

Pavan

Jim Haan

Charlie O'Brien

Paul Ripsky

Zubair Abdulla

Paul Holze

The Road Ahead

End of 2011 Regular Season USAU rankings came out today. Based on their Algorithm we are number 26 in the Nation.

To qualify for Regionals the Illinois Conference has 6 bids:

Division I Regionals
6 bids: IL (1175)
3 bids: EPL (1051)
2 bids: IL-III (460)
2 bids: MI (1117)
1 bid: EGL-Dev (182)
1 bid: EPL-III (61)
1 bid: MI-III (242)
0 bids: IL-Dev (n/a)
- waitlist: MI, EPL, MI, {IL, MI, EPL, IL-III, MI-III, EGL-Dev, EPL-III, .

To qualify for Nationals the Great Lakes Region has 1 bid:

Region	Total Bids (20)	Auto Bids (10)	Region Str Bids (4)	Team Str Bids (6)
North Central	4	1	1	2
Northwest	4	1	1	2
South Central	3	1	1	1
New England	2	1	0	1
Southwest	2	1	1	0
Atlantic Coast	1	1	0	0
Great Lakes	1	1	0	0
Metro East	1	1	0	0
Ohio Valley	1	1	0	0
Southeast	1	1	0	0

Huck Finn 2011

Huck Finn was our third of three tournaments in a row. We rolled up to the nice fields on Saturday (also B Smiths birthday) and cleated up for our first round game against Northwestern. A little pregame stalking informed us that Northwestern was missing a couple of their captains. Our D line took care of this game and we rolled up a nice lead and won 15-5.

WashU had a couple of studs, and a very good match up for Dane. Dane made some big plays on their stud, Sul grabbed a callahan and both sides of the disc played well to win the game 14-11 on hardcap.

Wisconsin was the game I personally looked forward to the most. They are a great team that always finds its way to Nationals. Seeing how you stack up against the Hodags is pretty applicable to the rest of the field. We had a phenomenal start going up 5-2, and eventually 6-3. After that the oline misplaced some of its swagger and Wisco roared back to take half. Coming out of half Walden made some coaching adjustments and the Oline was back on its feet for the rest of the game. Unfortunately Wisco was too far ahead for the Dline to close the gap and Wisconsin won the game 14-11.

After the other power pool had a three way tie for second we ended up playing Ball State in the cross over game. Going into the game we anticipated them seeking revenge for last years Sectionals. Both Olines held to 5-4 and then finally our Dline busted it out and broke twice to 7-4, then they put the game back in the offenses hands 7-5. Ball State had some fast guys and were winning the gun and run battle. From there both offenses held till 12-10, when Ball State broke to 12-11. After being broken for the first time in the game the Oline and Dline refocused and swagged its way to a 15-11 win.

We spent Saturday night at DMac's house. Personally I was expecting Pee Wee's playhouse...I was quite disappointed. His Dad whipped up a pretty great dinner and his mom kindly informed me that Dan has NEVER been in the Marines.

We drove to the new fields on Sunday morning. Immediately it became apparent why the TD got two fields for this weekend. A nice little incline made going downwind the same as going uphill. The flat area of the fields were littered with sticks and ankle rolling contours which cleared up any questions as to why we were playing on the hill.

We opened the day against OSU. They stomped on us for awhile. Finally Joe Sidrys had a great point where he caught everything in the tough wind, and Kennedy eventually boosted it to him for the upwind/downhill break to make it 4-6 Lead Belly. The Dline rolled for a while till we took half 7-6. We never looked back from there and eventually won the game 11-9 on hardcap.

Semis verse Minnesota spelled a lot of trouble. They took half at 7-3 before we knew what hit us. Much of the same put Minnesota winning the game 13-6.

We were scheduled to play Ball State for third, but both teams agreed on a tie and the TD said that was fine. That ended our regular season and we hit the road for home.

2011 Regulard Season Record: 18-7

Regular Season Top Ten Highlights

With the regular season done and the Series ahead of us I thought I would look back to my favorite moments of the year.

10. Terminus: Tom "Chevtom Truckwick" Rudwick gets the only lay out D of the weekend in his first tournament back from a long injury.

9. Free State: Andy "K-Train" Kilinskis leaves the tracks to go upstairs against Iowa for a heart pumping sky score.

8. Huck Finn: Suleyman "Sully Goose" Ahmad grabs a Callahan against WashU.

7. Free State: In his first tournament with Illinois, Dane does what we all hoped he would do...skied everyone in sight.

6. Adam Wright makes his return. After 157 days of being out with an ACL injury Adam Wright completed his first practice on March 29th.

5. Huck Finn: Sean "Snack "Beaver" Man" Hill catches his first college ultimate goal and snacks on the disc to cheers of om nom nom nom.

4. Free State: Neal Phelps limits his man to two touches against Iowa.

3. Huck Finn: After being down 5-2 against Ohio State, Ryan "Kennedy" Smith fires up the engines to lead the team roaring back to take half 7-6.

2. Free State: Nate "Gibby" Gibbons manages to lay out more than 20 times in 8 games. Bringing a ridiculous amount of passion and energy to the D-line.

1. Centex: In the revenge match against Kansas, Andy "K-Train" Kilinskis snatches a Callahan on top of everyone.

Part 2 of the Club Experience

One thing I learned about the club tryout process is that it takes weeks. Often, you’ll travel to one or two tournaments before you know if you made the team or not. Now I know the process in college takes quite a bit of time as well; however, in college, you’re guaranteed to play with the B team as long as you keep coming to practice. In the club process, if you don’t make the team, you need time to find another one.

Since I took a year off from competitive ultimate, coming back to it through the tryout process re-aggravated a number of old injuries. Despite my rigorous lifting, sprinting and plyometric work, nothing quite prepares you for the shock of playing for hours at the top level. As such, I had a difficult time balancing my health with demonstrating to the captains that I can be a valuable asset to the team. It was nice that the captains were fairly approachable and didn’t seem the type of people to hold an injury against you, but they still have a decision to make based solely on what they see from your performance.

Luckily, my injuries were slight, and I knew how to wrap them up and tough it out. As you probably already know, I was offered a spot to play with Beach Front Property and took it. I did want to mention that the ultimate scene in Chicago has grown considerably in both size and talent since I graduated. When playing club with Illinois, I always had the attitude that the second tier Chicago teams just took anyone who didn’t make Machine and were beneath our level. That has changed.

If you thought balancing classes/college life and ultimate was difficult, balancing work life/home life with ultimate is a challenging experience. It’s easy to blow off or sleep through classes the day after a late practice or tourney, but it’s a much different story when working in the “real world”. I’m sure my experience would have been different if I lived in the city and close to our practice fields, but I did not.

For Saturday practices, I drove an hour each way (and that was without traffic). For practices during the week, I worked late, caught a ride to practice with a teammate and then ended up taking a late train back to the burbs after practice was over. I tended to get home around 1am and then had to be up at 6am to head back to work the next day (and that was sleeping in). Now, 5 hours of sleep is plenty for me to function normally; however, coming home at 1am when your wife goes to bed a 9:30 has a whole other set of “issues”.

As an accountant and former treasurer, I’d be remiss if I didn’t discuss the finances. Team dues and other expenses are also slightly different at the club level. I still paid a team fee and the cost of jerseys, which actually came to considerably less than what I paid for college dues and jerseys. However, that difference is easily made up with having to pay for my own travel and lodging versus having the team fund cover those expenses in college. We still engaged in carpooling, room sharing and house crashing to cut down on those expenses, but there’s only so much saving a person can do. Also, team scheduling can have a big effect on traveling expenses. For example, I know that Machine’s tournament schedule encourages flying which can easily run you a couple hundred each flight.

Adjusting to a new team often means adjusting to a new role. I played a lot of defense in college, and I tended to get a decent amount of playing time, especially pre broken leg (a.k.a. before I got “Lamped”). On Beachfront, I became more of a “utility” long. I’d play either O or D and usually got 3-6 points of playing time per game. I’m not going to say whether I thought this was good or bad; just that it was different. In going from the college to club level, expect it to be “different”.

One of the great things about this game, is that you can play it for life. I would encourage all of my readers to keep playing the game in some capacity. Whether you’re a perennial at club nationals or a heckler at the summer league championship, this game will always give you new friends, will always teach you new skills and will never cease to be fun.