Okay, first off I would like to thank all of Fayetteville, and especially the FDA. They not only provided us with money for our tournaments, but have also always been there when we needed them to maybe come out to a practice to teach our more in experienced players, and also setting up scrimmages to help us prepare for incoming tournaments. So for all of that, Darkside thanks you. This is a write up of our season, and basically just re evaluates our major tournaments this spring including the Chicago Invite, Madison Mud bath, and our very own Regional; Southerns.
Let’s start off with the first tournament of the spring, and by far my favorite tournament this year. The Chicago Invite was held on March 19th and 20th in Naperville, Illinois ( About 30 minutes from downtown Chicago ). We were very fortunate with the weather at this tournament as we only experienced about 30 minutes of showers throughout the whole tournament, with temperatures in the mid 60’s, and winds not a factor at all Darkside was feeling very confident that nothing was going to slow us down. We were seeded third in our pool behind Holy Family Catholic, and our arch rival Hopkins. (Both of which finished in the top ten according to USA ultimate’s youth rankings) First game- Holy Family Catholic We started this game receiving the pull and had a lot of confidence in our offense considering we had Kaplan Maurer and Clayton Adams rocking the middle, and Sam Borgastadt and Abe Gambert being chilly at handle. We started Kaplan, Clayton, Sam, Abe, Ian, Larkin, and Cole. Our offense looked hot from the start has we worked it up wind with ease and were on the goal line within a matter of seconds. Clayton caught the disk and had Ian for a wide open cut but due to this being the first game the fields were very wet with due and Ian slipped and didn’t make the grab. Everyone on our team chuckling still Holy Family Catholic scored to break us and take the first score 1-0. They never looked back and we were defeated with our un chilly offense, and miss matched defense. We didn’t look very good, but then again it was our first game all season, and against the number 1 seed at the whole tournament. We were still very confident in our chances at this tournament. Holy Family wins 13-5. Second game- Hopkins This team ended up being the best team in the country by far, or at least tied with the club team “Seattle Fryz” Ignoring that, we knew we had a chance due to our teams rivalry, and history at last year’s tournament. Last year Hopkins was able to come back from a 6-2 lead by Darkside to win 8-6 in semis. But this was a new year with two completely different teams. We received the disk and were much chillier on this first point of the game to take the first point 1-0. Sam to Clayton for the score. We traded with Hopkins for a while to make it 3-3, but then Hopkins got an up wind break to make it 4-3. They never really looked back. Highlight from this game was Abe Gambert’s full field flick to Kaplan Maurer for the score. Kaplan Maurer also had a sweet forehand invert for a break score early in the game. Hopkins takes this game 13-5. Third game- Harry D. Jacob’s This team was the four seed in our pool and we really didn’t know much about them other than that they lost to Hopkins 13-2, and to Holy Family 13-1. We still knew that this was a very important game for our chances at championship bracket, and our star players knew that we had to put this one on our shoulders and lead Darkside to it’s first win. We did just that. The dynamic trio up field with Kaplan, Clayton, and Sam flowed perfectly. Abe had some great hucks to our middles including one to our newer players at the time Larkin Purkaystha who skied the heck out of a guy for the score. Final score, Darkside- 13 Harry D- 6, Darkside wins first game! Fourth game- Center Grove (Crossover) This team was very mean to say the least to us last year. They yelled at Sam and Cole’s mom, called us a bunch of elementary school kids, and most importantly they got their ass handed to them last year. This year was no different. We improved to 2-2 on the day feeling very comfortable about our finish in pool play. We were looking forward to tomorrow and all had our heads held high which is a very important factor when playing so far away from home. We won 13-4. CHAMPIONSHIP BRACKET First game- Neuqua Valley We all knew who they were and a lot of us knew their players from other tournaments or other Frisbee related things. You could say that we were friends but then again I think you could say we were enemies. We had one goal, winning the tournament and we knew in order to do this that we had to play at our best. First point, Abe hucks a perfectly thrown disk to Sam and we score. 1-0 us. 2nd point, we get a nice d from our zone and then set up our offense. Sam was trapped on the sideline at a high stall count when he throws it up towards the end zone. Kaplan runs and fully lays out grabbing the disk, and barely getting a toe down to stay in bounds. Darkside is on a roll, is pumped up, and most importantly up 2-0. We traded a lot from there and we took half 8-7 (Championship bracket games are to 15) Darkside pulled out of half on another roll to break them, and get the up winder to make it 9-7 us. Neuqua goes on a run to make 9-9 though, and with soft cap in place the game is 11. Neuqua get’s a d and works it up wind to make it 10-9. Now starting to worry began the longest point of my life. Turn after turn, after turn, after turn is the way to describe that point. We finally broke their zone and got it up field when Sam caught it and had Kaplan up field for another 10 yard gain when one of Neuqua’s players laid out to get the d. Neuqua then works it up and is on the goal line. One of their better cutters makes a run for the goal but Kaplan Maurer has an insane lay out to try and contest it. Kaplan call’s a strip and the disk is sent back. A few swings later and Neuqua punches it in for the win. Devastated, crying, demoralized, worthless, never playing ultimate again are just a few of the things that popped into my mind after that game. We were still in the tournament and had a chance to win 5th place. However we were still upset about the last game and had no chance. However a second half run against Madison West did make the score a lot closer. Final score- 13-9 bad guys. We then played Pine Richland for 7th place. We decided that we were not going to lose this game and we really wanted to salvage this tournament and show that we are a great team who will be returning 9 players next year including 5 seniors. We won the game against Pine Richland very easily by a score of 15-7. We had a lot of fun that game, and I think we proved to ourselves that we were a lot better than some of the teams here may think. We felt good, and sad at the same time. The car ride home was a hard one, but we knew that we still had a lot of work to do. With another tournament just a month away, we couldn’t hang our heads on this one. The season had just begun..
2nd tournament!! Madison Mud bath!! This tournament was held on April 28th and 29th in Madison, Wisconsin. Darkside goes to this tournament with only 9 guys. That might’ve been the worst decision that we have ever made. Not only did we spend a ton of money on the tournament itself, but we went up there without our full team and our expectations were still to win the whole tournament. Well they were still realistic. Our 9 guys included Kaplan, Abe, Clayton, Sam, Ian, Naseer, Cole, Carlin, and Adeeb (He wasn’t even on the team, we just picked him up because we really needed another player). We were the number 1 seed in our pool including teams such as Memorial, Monona Grove, and Cathedral High School. First game- Memorial This was the home team, and despite us only having 9 players, we still had all of our more experienced and more athletic players so we really were not worried about this team. We saw them in action in a few games at the Chicago Invite and knew we could handle them. Ian Shaffer had some sick lay outs in this game and surprisingly he really led us to our first victory at the tournament. Darkside wins 13-5. Darkside is 1-0. Next we had a bye, and that was definitely the worst hour and a half of my entire Frisbee experience. It was sleeting, and raining, and snowing at some points. Temperatures were crap, and the wind was insane. However we found a dug out to keep warm in, and all of Darkside pilled on Ian for warmth. We were having fun. Second Game- Monona Grove This team was also at the Chicago Invite and their finish there helped us determine that they really weren’t a team to worry about. We were right. However most of our team could not feel our fingers so we were wondering at the start of the game if the northern team might have the advantage being more accustomed to the bitter cold climate up north. We were wrong. Darkside cruised to its second victory by a score of 13-1. Darkside is very confident at this point and has already begun to look past its final opponent Cathedral…. Big mistake. Third Game- Cathedral High School We had never heard of this team coming into this tournament so we were very skeptical. Starting the game we liked our chances and felt that we matched up very well. We started the game horribly, and quickly found ourselves down 4-1. Countless turnovers by our handlers, and Darkside early on was in a pickle. Middle Kaplan Maurer really led this game and was really the only player on the field that seemed to have a feel for Cathedral’s defense. Kaplan, alongside with his other middles Clayton and Sam who proved to be very solid despite the wind fed it to Kaplan quite nicely. Solid d by our role players such as Naseer, and Cole led Darkside to take half 7-6. Feeling like we hit our groove, Darkside and Cathedral trade a few points coming out of half to make it 8-7. Darkside then gets an upwind break on a sick sky by Kaplan Maurer who then throws it Carlin for the score to make it 9-7. Darkside is very confident that they have Cathedral on it’s heels and will be able to win this game. Darkside runs another zone defense against Cathedral that throws them off guard to force another turn. Darkside works it up despite many violation calls made by Cathedral. Darkside is on the goal line when Kaplan cuts for the goal and pan cakes the disk. He falls on the ground due to being off balance and clearly made the catch. Cathedral calls the disk down. After a great argument made from Kaplan and Clayton that a pancake is a catch and you can fall on the ground, and it is still a catch the stubborn Cathedral dousche decides to make us send it back. We have no choice but to oblige. Clayton get’s the disk and again throws to Kaplan but a great defensive effort in the end zone gives the disk back to Cathedral. That b.s. call was the game. If he wouldn’t have called it, Darkside would’ve been up 10-7 and had all the momentum. Whereas since he did call it, Cathedral drove down the field to get an up wind break to make it 9-8. We ended up losing this game on hard cap 11-12. But I’m pretty sure that the soft cap horn went on when it was 9-8 but on one told us because we were on the farthest field. If that was the case then we would’ve won 11-10. This game made me so pissed off, and really made me question how the north treats ultimate and it’s most proud rule of spirit of the game. That’s what it is all about, and it is rarely demonstrated amongst these northern teams. 4th game- Denver East (Played on Saturday but still the first round of Championship Bracket) Clayton Adams and Sam Borgastadt really demonstrated their leadership in this game as they tried their absolute best to rally our 9 guys to play this game and give it our all. I really wanted to win this game, but my body seriously just wouldn’t move. Only having 9 guys proved to be our Achilles heel in this game as the score really didn’t reflect how these two teams match up. On any given day I believe that with our full team that we would beat Denver East 9 times out of 10. We lost this game 13-3. 9th place bracket! We decided that we did want to salvage our ranking, and improve as a team and win the 9th place bracket. Well we did just that. We rolled Monona Grove to start by a score of 13-5. Abe Gambert, Ian Shaffer, Sam B. and Clayton Adams really led our team to this victory. Next game against Mounds View was really no different. Darkside won behind our best players and solid performances from Ian Shaffer, Carlin Purcell, and Adeeb Haroon. Abe had the highlight of the day in this one as he threw a sick full field huck to Sam for the score. We never looked back as we won 13-4. The final game of the tournament was for 9th place and against the home team Memorial. We knew that this would be a different game considering that it had more on the line, and they had quite the audience. This was their turf, and we had to respect that. That doesn’t mean that we were going to lose. We set out on the day with a mission and we were here to fulfill that mission. Highlight from this game is when Abe had a huge huck to Kaplan who skied a guy nearly 6 inches taller than him. The Memorial guy called a foul, and the disk was sent back. Abe immediately did it again and Kaplan did the same. Kaplan then threw it to Carlin for the score. Darkside never looked back. Darkside wins 12-7. Darkside learned a lot from this tournament. Never bring only 9 guys to a tournament. You will lose. But we did win the spirit award which was a huge plus and really ended up making the whole trip worth it! Arkansas State tournament I think it is only right that I mention it. We won the whole tournament without allowing a point scored on defense. This really proves that we are an elite team, and that there are some really bad teams out there.
Southerns- Regional’s (Biggest tournament of the season) This was the grand daddy for us. The biggest of the biggest and we knew for a fact that we had a chance to win the whole thing. We were the Third seed in our pool and seeded 5th overall, and we understood that considering we did very poorly at our previous tournaments. We found out that Sam wasn’t going to be able to make this tournament due to obligations regarding graduation. We were pretty upset about that, but still knew that we had a chance. We also only had 10 people for this tournament, which was still better than 9 (the number we had for Madison) First game- UNC “University School of Nashville” (Best team at the tournament) This game wasn’t a very intense game, and was really filled with laughs and great sportsmanship from both teams. Right off the back we were able to see that the south prided itself more on Spirit of the Game than the north and we were loving it. Our still aggressive play set us apart from some other teams from the start and we were in a great position to be there come finals. We ended up losing to UNC on universe point 9-10. We weren’t very upset and actually felt very confident that we were going to do quite well considering we just lost to the best team here by 1 point. Morale= high Second game- LC Byrd This team was a very in experienced team who had lost their best player in the first game to a broken leg. They really had no leadership and we rolled to gain our first victory on the day, 13-4. Third game- Lakeside High School (Atlanta) This game was a lot closer than the score may tell. The score was really tight at half, but Darkside was really led in the second half by fantastic play from it’s middles including Levi Finn, and Clayton Adams. Kaplan and Clayton were switching in and out at handle to try and save their legs as we knew from experience could pose a problem later on in the tournament. Darkside wins 11-6. Fourth game- Brookwood Brookwood was seeded 2nd in our pool, and is definitely one of the better teams at this tournament. After playing two easier games, we knew that we were definitely going to be tested as this game would most likely be for championship bracket. Brookwood had around 20 players including a player that tried out for the junior USA national team as well as our very own Abe Gambert. We knew that he was going to be the key in this game, and we defended him accordingly. Our zone defense was very important in this game, but when we were forced to play man, Kaplan, Clayton, and Abe all cycled on their best player. Brookwood took half 7-5, and most of Darkside including myself was pissed. We were playing pretty good, throwing descent hucks, playing good defense, the luck was just not going our way. Tim Caffrey rallied us, and basically just asked us how bad we wanted it, and if we have balls. Well, I guess we have some big cohunes on our team because we rallied to make the score 8-8. We then scored 2 straight to make it 10-8. Hard cap was then in play, and we basically just let them score. Final score 10-9, DARKSIDE. Last Pool game was played on Sunday before bracket play. But before this game, our new brothers from the south “Brookwood” came over to us to wish us luck and congratulate us on making it this far. This was a very cool experience for me, and all of Darkside. We then all got in a circle, arms locked and sung Amazing grace. Pure perfection. Game 5- Carolina Friends I guess we made some friends this game, or then again Kaplan might’ve made some enemies. Darkside went up early in this game and took half 7-6. It was a lot closer than anyone on Darkside or probably Carolina figured. We weren’t tired; we just were making dumb mistakes and were definitely getting down on our selves. The game was tied at 8’s when the hard cap horn blew. As many of you know we weren’t very good when it came to very close games, and ultimate points. But despite that we knew that we had to kick it into gear and get a d. Carolina worked it up and then a very disputed pick call called on Kaplan resulted into an argument. As Kaplan was beginning his argument, the player threw the disk and it was not caught resulting in a turn. Darkside then worked the disk up the field and finally got the disk to Kaplan for a nice break. Kaplan called time out as Darkside was about 30 yards from the end zone and winning the game. Tim Caffrey really didn’t have a special play for us to run, he just said let Kaplan, Clayton, and Abe work it up and everyone else get to the side. This really made me laugh, but regardless of the humor to it, It probably was the best plan for us to score. Kaplan went to check the disk, and as he did began our three man offense. It worked beautifully, and eventually Kaplan threw a high release back hand to Clayton Adams for the score. Everyone going crazy you could say that we had a great chance at winning the tournament due to our high morale’s and great playing. Final score, Darkside wins 9-8 Semifinal- Independence (Flight) This team was really powered by the same 7 or 8 guys the entire tournament so they were definitely feeling fatigued as well as us. We used our high morale from the last game to take half 8-3. We definitely felt that we had the game, and that we were just a few points from finals. That was a thought that has never really crossed my mind as an ultimate player. Maybe we got side tracked, or maybe it was just our sloppy play but quickly flight gained some morale back from us to make it 8-6. Starting to get a little weary now we made more mistakes, and not even our coach Tim was able to calm us down. The game was quickly now 8-8. We had no idea what to do, and just couldn’t settle our nerves. We knew hard cap was approaching so we tried our very, very best to gather together and get one last point. We weren’t able to do that and an Independence sophomore threw a pretty good forehand which was caught in the end zone by one of their bigs for the score just as the hard cap horn blew. We were devastated, I myself was balling tears. I couldn’t believe that that had just happened. I will never forget this game, and from now on I can only use it as a motivational tool, and as a learning experience. The UNC coach came to talk to us after the game was over. He told us that we were a great ultimate team, and that we are easily one of the best teams here. He said that we only came here with 10 guys, and still almost kicked everyone’s ass. He told us that we were going to be amazing next year, and had the opportunity to compete with every team in the country. I think that it was easy to tell that all of UNC was glad that they didn’t have to play us again, and that they were able to roll to their first Regional Championship. We had to play for 3rd place, but no one really cared and we really just let them win. Final score of that one, Grady -13, Darkside-8 The highlight of this tournament goes to Ian Shaffer. He managed to throw a disk 50 yards directly out of bounds in the Brookwood game, and he also managed to race one of the fastest people that I’ve ever seen from Grady. He lost, of course, but did give it his all. We got 4th at this tournament and were very disappointed with our finish. But the barbeque, southern hospitality, and our overall play and closeness of games made us decide that we are going to attend more and more southern tournaments.
We really hope to win this Regional next year alongside all of our other tournaments. It’s just going to take a lot of work, and effort on our part. Do we really want it? Do we really want to be the best? We’ll find out this off season as we continue to train for next year. This was the best, and greatest Ultimate team ever assembled in my mind. So much fun! I really look forward to next year, and all it has to offer. Final Notes- Thanks again to all of our sponsors, and the FDA for all that you do for us. We really appreciate it, and look forward to your participation in our next season. Until then, stay classy Fayetteville
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