2011 Season Recap: |
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The 2011 season is over and with it the most successful season in the history of Buffalo ultimate. It saw another great recruiting class come in, continued growth and structure from within the B-team and The Lorax women's team, and lastly the best series' finish in the program's history for the Green Eggs and Ham. The school year started with the most competitive tryouts to date. With the high number of returning players and plenty of rookies with great potential the decisions made throughout the fall were very tough, as everybody gave us their best during tryouts. During the fall the team played in Club Sectionals, split into 3 squads for the home tournament, Ohio State's Fall Brawl, and the UOA Big East Tournament at Pittsburgh. The fall season had its ups and downs on the field, but the team clearly showed at points that it had its most talented squad ever.
The team had a few weeks to practice and tune up some of the weaknesses that showed at Ultimax before heading back down south to Wilmington, NC to play in a UOA tournament and Women's College Easterns on our way to Spring break at Myrtle Beach. For the guys, the tournament was a wakeup call as the motivation was lacking at times and the offensive line struggled to find chemistry. It however served its purpose as we found out that we were just not talented enough to win games unless we brought the same intensity we had at Spring Ultimax. The Lorax, meanwhile, were happy to be playing their first tournament of the Spring in one of the top tournaments in the country, and were able to get valuable experience and watch some of the top teams in the country in action. Both teams were happy to spend the break having fun and doing much less practice than previously planned. While certainly not our intentions, it helped refocus the team after break and helped prevent burn out from committing too much time to ultimate. Needless to say, however, a fun time was had by all. The next tournament on the docket for GEH and The Expendables was IUP Nutbuster. A large tournament with not a lot of talent, GEH cruised before falling to douchebags from Carnegie-Melon (well, really only one of them was, but god was he ever a D-Bag) in a hard fought game that got capped early, 7-9. With it went Buffalo's best chance of winning a Spring tournament as Carnegie-Melon went on to win the tournament over a Duke team we had beat early in the year. Next up was a tounament in Rochester that nearly got scrapped due to rain, but eventually got reduced down to a 5 team round-robin due to losing fields. Unfortunately, the change in plans seemed to kill the team's energy, as we let teams keep games close that we shouldn't have and flirted around with losing a couple before rival Syracuse finally handed us a lopsided loss. Things couldn't have gone more differently at Sectionals however. Being hosted for the first time in Buffalo, thanks to great work by President Ben McPherson and ex-captain TJ Burns, GEH ran through the competition in pool play by allowing just 4 points on Saturday including a revenge-route over top seeded Syracuse in absolutely brutal weather. On Sunday morning, Buffalo would see a first when they squared off against perennial champions Cornell to decide who the winner of the Upstate NY section would be. In high winds, the teams traded for a bit and the game became a battle of attrition, however Cornell's depth and talent eventually won out despite a great fight in a losing effort, 8-13. On the women's side, they braved the conditions and earned a big win over Rochester, 9-8 on Saturday and then came out early Sunday morning to beat RIT in a wind battle, 6-4, to break seed in pool play. They then later that day dominated RIT 13-1 in the championship bracket and earned their first ever berth to regionals in just the second year since resurrecting the team. The Expendables participated in the college series for the first time ever, a huge accomplishment for the club, as they traveled to Ithaca for the developmental sectionals. It would get rained out on Sunday due to storms that were ravishing the entire east coast. However, they came away with their first series' win ever by defeating Vassar. 
With both GEH and The Lorax heading down to Princeton, NJ for Metro East Regionals, it was an exciting weekend for club. The women played in some hard fought games but got to experience regionals for the first time and see what it takes to be successful at that level. The guys came in as the fourth overall seed and the one seed in their pool, marking what a historic season it was for the team. In pool play however, the team would fall to Columbia, 8-12, and therefore have to play in prequarters Saturday afternoon against Princeton to earn a spot in the quarterfinals on Sunday morning. The o-line was nearly automatic as we cruised to a 15-10 win. Unforunately, the team would fall to NYU the next morning 14-9 as they proved to be the better, deeper team despite a valiant effort. Buffalo would then lose a placement game to Wesleyen where the team opened up lines to finish in 7th place. The club as always has its eyes set on its bright future. It leaves behind some pretty good players this year, graduating captains and another first for the program, first team all-region players, Zack Smith and David Ferraro, as well as Jason Stiffler, Colton Steiner, Nick Rogers, and transfer Robby Cola -- but it has returning players that are now moreso than ever capable of filling in their shoes and taking the program to new heights. In fact, I'm counting on it because like an aging, retired professional athlete I'm going to depressingly live vicariously through your own battles on the field because after 5 years of caring about this all too much its impossible to let go. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Signing off, |
