Nor'Easterns 2002

Date - March 31, 2002
Where - Falmouth, MA
Official Site - http://www.ultilinks.com/tournaments/capecod/
Pictures - Here
Team Members - Jay, Dan, Aman, Dave, Nina, and we picked up with two wonderful people, Ken and Jennifer.

The Rundown
Since the tournament was held on Easter Sunday, we had a little trouble getting interest from the team to go to this little tournament out on the Cape.  We ended up rounding up a total of five people (notice how they are the five who have no family anywhere remotely near WPI), and trusted the tournament director when he told us that there would be people at the tournament to pick up with.  With that tiny amount of information, we said "later" to all the panzies visiting their families and headed on down to the Cape.

When we arrived, we quickly discovered that we weren't the only team that was lacking numbers.  The number of teams in the tournament dropped considerably from the amount that initially committed, including four college open teams.  That meant that WPI was going to be a team.  All five of us.   We hooked up with a couple of people who seemed to have randomly showed up, Ken and Jennifer, who agreed to play with us for the day, which gave us seven.  We were set.  We were also told that we might be able to convince some of the people in the coed division to come play with us when they were on a bye.

For our first match-up, we took on Tufts B.  We lost to the B-Men at Club Sectionals in fall after a long game against Brown B, and we hadn't really been able to give them all we had.  So today we figured we'd throw everything we had at them and show them what Bullet Ultimate is all about (well, the five of us would at least, along with the help of Ken, Jen, and some random "cute" Wheaton College guys).  The game started out well as we took an early lead 6-4.  Tufts was able to get themselves back in gear and cruised to win the half 8-6.  After the half, though, the game was ours.  We took four straight points to make it 10-8, and finally won after soft cap was called with a score of 11-9.  We didn't expect much out of our team the first game since we'd never played with 30% of our team before, so needless to say we were thrilled, not to mention totally psyched.  Props must go out to the B-Men for having fantastic spirit and being one of the most fun teams we've played all year.

Next up was Wentworth Institute of Technology.  Both teams had only seven and agreed to go at it iron man.  WIT is apparently a pretty new team, but they played really well.  With a core of outstanding handlers, they were able to break through our defense to score.  We were not playing our best, either.  We had quite a few drops and our intensity was lagging.  After a tough game with a bunch of long points, soft cap was called and WIT finished us off with a final score of 13-6.

The last team in our pool (in fact, the last team in the open division) was Bowdoin College.  Back at Club Sectionals the Bowdoin Stoned Clowns destroyed us.  We had played a sloppy game and they capitalized and walked all over us, beating us 15-1.  This game was all about revenge (well not really but it sounds cool, right?).  Bowdoin came in to this game with a 2-0 record, so if we wanted a chance at the finals, we needed to win.  We picked up a Pete and Jodie from the Force Huck/WiPPs combo team, who were a great asset both in their ultimate skills and in the fact that they gave us two subs.  We came at the clowns with all we had, and we kept up with them point for point, even being ahead by a couple points along the way.  They threw some deep hucks at us, forcing us to alter our defense a little, but we adapted well and took half 8-7.  During the second half the intensity only went higher.  The game had quickly turned into a battle of turnovers, in that if one team turned over the disc, the other would score.  Bowdoin took a time out and came back strong taking an 11-9 lead, but we fought back and had tied it up 11-11, and again at 12-12.  After that though, we took the game over and clawed to a 15-13 victory.  This was one of the best games we've played, with a very high level of intensity and very few mistakes.

The biggest benefit being that we didn't quite make it into the final game and got to go home early to get some rest.  Since WIT, Bowdoin, and us all had 2-1 records, the two teams to make it to the finals depended on the point differentials in the games.  In all it was a great tournament.  One of the few times we've left with a winning record, and it was the closest we've ever come to getting to any sort of final.  Thanks go out to Ken and Jennifer along with all the other people we played with and against, we had a blast!

Results (2-1)
Game 1 - Win over Tufts B, score 11-9
Game 2 - Loss to Wentworth Institute of Technology, score 6-13
Game 3 - Win over Bowdoin College, score 15-13