My collegiate career is over.

Soon enough I’ll be leaving this school, separating from my friends of many years, and moving on with my life.

What’s it all for? What’s it all about? I struggled with this thought on Friday. We had already made the national tournament., only the second time our program has done so, and going into the year we never really had any concrete goals outside of peaking at regionals–and what a peak it was! Two of the best, most emotional days of ultimate I’ve ever experienced. The energy was palpable. We had bunches of alums, friends, family (my parents got to watch me play ultimate for the first time in the regional final), all rooting for us. It’s the sort of atmosphere that makes me happy to play this sport, to know that the work and effort I’d invested could be made manifest in such a way.

We won the region…and then? What? More ultimate. As Socks put it at one point, it’s like having a really good friend over to visit, you have a great time seeing them, and then the time comes for them to go…and after leaving in the morning, you get a knock on your door that afternoon–your friend is back, he missed his train. While it’s still really great to have them there, it’s just not the same. This was how I went through practice the week after regionals. Closing in on the dance itself, we had a team meeting, generally got on the same page of loving the chance to play with each other and be the Pain Train in its current form one last time, and I had a bit more vigor and a bit more excitement for the sport as we left for Colorado.

But Friday came, and I was flat. We opened against Carleton–very good, talented team–but I got caught flat-footed and beat to the open side more than once. For goals. Where was the fire? The desire to put it on the line for my teammates?

I was still missing it against Colorado. I’d gotten a bit more will to play and work to show on the field, but the focus was missing. I cheered on the sidelines, but that was mostly just going through the motions.

We finished against UCSC after a bye. We won this one, but did I really bring anything more than I did to the previous two games? I had more opportunities to play harder, so in aggregate, yes, I played harder. It was good to win, but I could have just as easily lost that game, in terms of investment in the result.

I still don’t have a good answer for how I felt.

But then, Saturday came. Arizona. What a game. I spent most of the game covering Joe Kershner, whose name you might recognize as the top of the heap in this year’s Callahan award. Really great guy, totally deserving. First point of the game we introduced ourselves to each other, and exchanged some words over the course of the game. Dude knows how to ball, but I do too, which made it a lot of fun on both sides of the disc. Getting to run him around on the turns was great–probably half of my elation from playing this game stems from my being a cutter for almost all of the game.

An amazing game to play in–my new best game I’ve ever played in (supplanting my sophomore year vs. Brown in teh quarterfinals at NE regionals–that still remains the tightest game I’ve ever played in, Brown hardly turned it over all game thanks to the unstoppableness of C-Mo). Certainly a game that I was happy to end my career on.

…but then we had two more games. I was pretty banged up from the ‘zona game (bashed my knee on a bid early, and it’d been swelling up on me since), and combine that with the 5-minute break between games (going to 17-16 meant we were well past cap), and we came out flat. I only played a point in this game (though I got to finally throw the skirt on, now that we were out of contention). We were within striking distance but let this game get away from us pretty quickly.

After that, it was Delaware, and after a bye we had a lot more energy and rolled in this game. I played a few more points in this game, including the game’s final point–in a clam set, the final play of my collegiate career was a layout D, which I caught–however, given that the Del player was not anticipating my laying out for the D, he did not have time to get out of the way, and crashed into me (I was laying out perpendicular to his direction of motion–I almost never make these sorts of bids for exactly this reason). I took a (collegiate) career-ending injury, and Socks then came on to throw a breakside score for the win. A pretty fitting end for both of our careers, I’d say.

A lot of fun, is how I’d characterize it all. Really, nationals is like any other high-level college tournament–you show up, you play hard, you go home. This is the simple truth of ultimate. Why do we continue to seek glory in this piece of plastic? Well…why not?

This team is moving on already. We have our spring banquet tomorrow (which is way too soon), and after that, I’ll literally have nothing left. It’s pretty sad. You can insert a cliche about taking solace in the progress of the program, but really, there’s not too much of that sentiment right now, just nostalgia. Sitting back, reminiscing, and enjoying the memories.

I’ll likely keep updating this blog for at least the next while, but given that I’m going to be out of competitive ultimate for at least the next year (I’m teaching English in Japan), there will come a time when the new content ceases.

In the meantime, I plan to pour out the essence of my ultimate self here, various skills and teachings that I’ve acquired over my four years here. So, look forward to that I guess.

Signed,
Maaaaaaaaaaaaatt Mackey

Related posts:

1. Nationals Coverage
2. Post #150! 7/19-20: Ow My Knee, or: "Hey. Just so you know. We’re really good at ultimate."
3. Mars