Thoughts.

We sure as heck didn’t see them coming. They had just the right combination of players , defense, and deep game to take us out of our element and play to their strengths, and they took the second bid to Nationals after Brown., beating us in semis and the game to go.

Brief game-by-game recaps below.

Saturday
Vs Yale (pre-quarters)
Nothing too out of the ordinary here, we rolled to a 15-7 or so win. We got off to a bit of a slow start, and Yale got away with enough deep looks to keep us from getting too comfortable (though I think they would’ve done a lot better if they had opened up their deep game further–they more or less were trying to play good, fundamental ultimate against us, which is all well and good except for the fact that we play better fundamental ultimate and they had no chance without mixing it up somehow).

Vs Tufts (quarters)
Tufts had just come off a tough win over Amherst, who was surprising to watch–somehow they came out of nowhere to upset UMass last year, and they did it again this year, too. They’ve got a couple of guys who aren’t quite ballers but watching them play, they worked their asses off out there against Tufts.

At any rate, we’re playing Tufts. Tufts ended our season in backdoor semis last year, but this year we hadn’t lost to them once, with a blowout win at Yale coming off of a 9-0 run on our end there (as well as we did at regionals, Yale may have been our best tournament thsi season). We go into this game completely unintimidated by the elephant men, and after some early points shredding their zone D our own zone forces ill-fated hammers (and good hammers, too, that were dropped–for a team that threw so many hammers, you’d really think Tufts would have caught more of them) and we take a pretty decent lead. Tufts, to their own credit, did not go quietly into the night, giving us a bit of a scare with a late run–Skip, their stud cutter, was getting open at will on all of us and really put the team on his back for a bit. We had some hotly debated calls in this game–we haven’t really gotten on in good terms with Tufts for a couple years at least, and similarly in this game we had an instance where the coach just exploded over an up/down call. Unprecedented, he just completely flipped his shit. I couldn’t help but laugh watching a grown man go red in the face while nobody, and I mean nobody else, was anywhere near as fired up over it, not even the players involved with the play.

We wound up putting them away late to win a close one by a few points–by this point the wind had picked up enough that zone D was difficult to beat over-the top, and with Tufts playing tight we had to set up and take our shots deep to stay on top.

vs Williams (semis)
Our first of two meetings with Williams. The field had a pretty well-pronounced crosswind with just enough upwind/downwind to make the direction important. Williams had beaten MIT in the previous round, who had improved a ton over last year to surprise with the 3 seed this year. I was surprised Williams beat MIT, but in contrast to Tufts, Dartmouth and Williams get along as well as any two teams possibly could. Must be the shared sympathy for another small, but athletic, New England school trying to keep up with the big boys.

We came out hot; Williams was trying to work the deep game but couldn’t gel, and we opened up an 8-3 lead going into half. We were feeling good, but Williams adjusted out of half, giving up entirely on trying to throw man D against us–our straight stack man O was utterly unstoppable all weekend–and instead forcing us to trade in considerations of how to set up and beat our defenders for considerations of how to set up and hit our poppers and wings in a windy zone. I’d say Williams was around as successful with its deep game as it was previously, but our zone O was not as efficient and gave them many more chances to end their possession on one throw. If there’s one thing Dartmouth has never done well in my time here, it’s consistently make the play on deep looks defensively–you can chalk it up in part to us just being a smaller team, or whatever, but Williams would take their shots, many perhaps ill-judged, but wind up getting away with them anyways. Our zone D was stifling, but they could stall for long enough to set up the deep looks and they started to fight their way back.

Even with them battling back, we still had the lead and the chances to end it, up 14-13, but it all changed on a single play–a pass upline to the open dump for the goal, caught by a last-second gust of wind, and the catch bonks. Williams immediately hucks it deep in transition to cover some 60 yards and scores to force overtime. One ill-fated scoober caught for a callahan and a tough last D point later, and Dartmouth goes from looking at the finals on Sunday to looking at 3 must-win games to try for the 2nd bid instead.

Sunday

vs. Northeastern (backdoor semis)
We came out strong in this game. Bolstered by solid sideline support in what seemed to be a battle of cheers as much as it was a battle of players on the field, our combined might outweighed the raw potential of Will Neff and Camden Kittredge. Our O was gelling very well in this game, we shredded their zone authoritatively (the wind was lower Sunday) and when they threw man there was little they could do to stop us. Neff and Kittredge had their moments of glory, both with some amazing plays on O and D, but our superior depth shone through in the end. 15…9? I’m not sure, but we won handily.

Vs. MIT (backdoor finals)
MIT had surprised this year, developing a couple rock-solid handlers to complement the pickup of DoG stud Kevin Albert (sic?) as a cutter. Add in some solid coaching (including Lakshmi Narayan ’06, a super-stud for the women last year) and you have a recipe for vaulting MIT from a regional afterthought to a force to be reckoned with. MIT had just come off of a hard-fought win over Harvard in the other backdoor semi, proving that their upset of Harvard in sectionals wasn’t a fluke.

We started out playing well enough, strategy-wise, we just had some early slip-ups–bonked throw here, ill-timed drop on our own line there–that put us in an early 4-1 hole. We took a timeout to regroup, and went out and kept playing the way we knew how–and we outplayed them the rest of the way. They ran their O almost entirely through one stud handler and one stud cutter, with a respective semi-stud for support handling and cutting, and as we continued to amp up the pressure on their studs and forced their role players to be playmakers, they began to fold and their studs began to tire. This was one of the best games of the weekend for us. the late-morning start time meant that it was convenient for everyone to come from campus to watch and cheer us on, and we fed off every bit of energy the crowd supplied as we battled back, took the lead, and sealed the deal along with another shot at Williams and a crack at Nationals.

vs. Williams, again (2nd finals)
So we ran up against Williams again, who had dropped the 1st finals to Brown 15-6 or so. We played our asses off. Less wind meant Williams was still more willing to chuck the disc, and they were reasonably more successful than the previous day–we didn’t jump out to an early lead this time. We had plenty of chances with the disc–their O was by no means unstoppable. Williams, to their credit, came out like a team on fire and D’d us up more than once. That said, there were definitely times in this game where we got away from our strengths–namely, valuing the disc, and more importantly, using the dump-swing to work both sides of the field, and it cost us. We were down 13-8 towards the end, and battled back to 14-11 before they got the final goal to end our season.

Much props to Williams for surprising everyone with a great run at the right time.

Going into the year, making nationals was not one of my goals for the team, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it’s a bit depressing to think about now after all the progress we’d made. I had just started to briefly, maybe, just a little, entertain the thought of what it’d be like to make it. But man, Williams. Williams! Who knew? Anyway…it has been a great year.

My goals did include wanting Dartmouth to “kick ass” and wanting to personally “kick ass,” (yes, I know that such a broad, amorphous goal is not a prime example of good goal-setting) and while I wish I could’ve done the latter a little bit more–the dislocated finger was immensely frustrating for me this weekend in so many ways, physically and psychologically, and I couldn’t dominate like I wanted to (though playing at all was in itself hugely rewarding)–I can without a shadow of a doubt say that Dartmouth Ultimate kicked ass, and kicks ass, and I can’t wait for the Pain Train to leave still more teams with sore cabooses in the years to come.

The team is so much more than one player or one play. The notion of being a part of “something bigger than yourself” is readily apparent when I look at what we did this year. I love Dartmouth Ultimate.

Update: Pictures can be found here, among other places. Personal highlights include: