In the fall of 1993 Gene Hoffman and Nash Foster arrived at UNC as freshmen. Both had played ultimate in high school at Charlotte Latin and they were ready to play in college as well. Since UNC didn't have a team, they set about creating one. Soon they met Mark Parris and Stefan Gottschalk, both still excited about playing with the rec.sport.disc team at Fools Fest the previous spring. With a bit of help from Alan Hoyle, they set about forming a team. The turn out was enormous and a team was formed. The team lost a lot of games the first fall, but they gave a lot of cheers, and showed improvement through the fall. Their first victory occurred at Fall Sectionals and soon others followed.
In the spring of '94 the team went to several tournaments, from the cold of UVA to the warmth of Ultimax and on to the high spirit of the 17th Annual Fools Fest. Darkside managed to win a few more games in those tournaments and continued to demonstrate the spirit and love of the game they had enjoyed from the beginning.
In the fall of 1994 the team enjoyed the return of the vast majority of the players from the previous year plus an influx of new talent. At the first tournament of the fall (Harvest Mountain Jubilee) the team came away with the consolation bracket championship. The fall also saw an injury depleted squad playing with no subs upset an Athens club team featuring players from Chain Lightning and Port City at the Southern College Classic. That squad also lost a lot of other games but spirits continued to run high.
The Darkside made its second trip through the college circuit with a goal of a winning season, a trip to regionals, and a second trip to Fools. We've even hosted our own tournament. The results had Clemson winning over all and UNC winning the consolation bracket. UNC didn't get to go to sectionals because of a unfortunate rescheduling that conflicted with our exams (whoever came up with the idea of Saturday exams should be shot!) but we did go to fools and had a great time!
UNC came back for the fall and a women's team has started. We had a scrimmage at UNC Sept. 9, then a went to App State for Sept. 16&17, and then sectionals in Wilmington the weekend of Sept. 30/Oct. 1. We also went to Ultimax and this time were runners up to the evil Duke team in the consolation bracket. So far in the Spring, Darkside has been to Ultimax again and again we were the runners up in the consolation bracket. We went to Serendipity and were 3rd place in the winners bracket (going 4-3 with losses to ECU and ASU (twice)). At the Funken Gruven tournament at William and Mary, we went 6-2 (5-1 vs college teams) and won the losers bracket. Then we went to Sectionals in Raleigh, and finished 6th and advanced to our first ever Regionals. We went 2-2 and finished tied for 7th/8th in the region.
During the summer, some of the Darkside and Pleiades people stayed in Chapel Hill and went to a few tournments. We went to one in Blacksburg, VA, scrimaged Occam's Razor, and went to some other tournaments in Virginia.
We came back again and have been going to other tournaments.
Most of these were originally written for e-mail distribution to the team. Take everything with a grain of salt.