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