Southern College Classic - Athens, Ga. - Nov. '94

Tournament report

Straight to invididual highlights


Whew. What a weekend. Our initial cast included these 9: Jay Barry, Andrew Certain, Carter Dougherty, Geoff Haisty, Alan Hoyle, Tim "Tiger" King, Mark Parris, Santosh Rao, and Cliff Reihnhardt. Before I go into the details I just want to say what a great host Trey Gibbs, the tournament director, was. He provided us with a place to stay Friday night (we all were either on beds or couches because he arranged for his roommates to stay elsewhere). He had asked us if we might be able to camp Saturday night because Auburn was coming and needed a place to stay but none of us brought caming equipment. So, we arranged to get a hotel room for Saturday night but Trey had already made arrangements to move Auburn to another house so he asked us not to stay at the hotel. So, we had a great place to stay again. He also had a party with a band, make your own burritos. What a deal for $75!

So, 7 of us stayed at Trey's Friday night. Geoff and Alan were arriving later and staying at a friend of Geoff's. It wasn't until we got to the fields Saturday morning that we learned how late. Geoff and Alan left Chapel Hill at 11 and after a flat at 2am and waiting to get into a 24hr store that was closed from 2-2:40 for cleaning, managed to continue on to arrive in Athens at 5:30 am.

At the captain's meeting we found we'd be playing Tocoaa Falls in our first game. They were a brand new team as I discovered when rules were being explained to them at the captain's meeting. They were a nice bunch of guys who were happy to abide by our calls as long as we explained the rules to them. "No, you always have to wait for us to set up our defense before you put the disc in play. :-)." Seriously, they were fast and had decent skills but had never played an organized game before. We put a zone on them and they actually gave us some trouble with their 1 handler, 4 popper offense. After getting ahead 3-0, we gave up a few points to go to half 6-3. In the second half we kept practicing our zone and gave up a few more points for the final victory 11-5.

In our second game, we faced Auburn, who had just lost to the Athens club team 11-8 after being ahead 8-5. Apparently Auburn's morale wasn't low enough to affect their game as they put us away 11-2.

In our next game we faced Athens, who had just beaten Ga. Tech (and earlier, Auburn). One darksider was heard to say "We're doomed." The fact that Athens had 3 players that have played at Nationals, and 2 that have been to worlds seemed to be discouraging. However, after we scored the first point we seemed to forget all that. Soon, we were up 3-1. However, it was at that point that Santosh broke the rules. I had explicitly said that no one, especially a player staying for Sunday (only 7), was allowed to get hurt. Snack lunged for a disc and heard something pop in his ankle. The nerve of that guy!! So, Snack was on the sideline with ice on his ankle and we had one sub. A point or two later, Tim decided to jump on the band wagon and went out of the game with his knee bothering him. No subs. Somehow, this seemed to give us focus though. And no, I don't think it was just that we got rid of Tim and Snack. :-) We took the half 6-4 but we were well aware that this team had rallied twice before. We managed to hold off their assault though, using a good mix of working the disc and Alan finding Geoff and Cliff deep. At 10-7 it looked like we were in a position to take the upset. Athens scored the next point but we were still looking good. We were tired but still had a time out and agreed to work it to midfield and then use our timeout to set up a play and get a rest. Carter got it at midfield and called the "T". As we were setting up a play we saw the Athens team seemed to be showing each other the kind of cup they were used to playing. We had been playing man-to-man up until then but it looked like a zone was coming and we were right. We swung the disc with success and worked the disc downfield effectively but a turn over lead to a quick score for Athens. 10-9.

On the pull, Athens came with their zone again. Once again, we worked it effectively, but Athens forced the turn and a score followed by a beautiful show of spirit as one of the Athens players spiked the disc. Guess he wasn't used to catching the disc. 10-10. The (ah-em) gentleman announced "Game point." After politely reminding him that the game was win by 2, cap at 13, we moved down the field to receive the pull.

This time our patience paid off and, rallied by Auburn cheering us on, we worked the disc the length of the field for the score. 11-10 good guys. So, we pulled to Athens. Athens went for a long pass to a receiver streaking for the endzone. Fortunately the pass did not have a lot of altitude and I managed to deflect it as it crossed over midfield just enough to send it out of bounds. Once again we faced the Athens zone. We managed to break through the cup and a series of short passes ending with Andrew to Jay gave us the 12-10 win and there was much rejoicing. We gave the Athens team a somewhat lame cheer but 2 of them answered us with this gem:

Oh what joy, oh what fun.
We had darkside on the run!
But our fun, it did not last,
because you bastards ran too fast!

Our offense just seemed to click in that game, helped in no small part by the fact that the Athens team was exhausted from their earlier rallies. However, they did turn around and take an 8-2 lead on Georgia before losing.

Unfortunately, we burned out in the Athens game and then had to face Ga. Tech. A few points into the game, Cliff had a cramp. Ga. Tech wanted us to use our TO since we had no subs. Fortunately, Tiger was feeling a bit better and returned. A few passes later, in the same point, Jay went down after a collision and Cliff had to come back in for him. A few more points and Cliff went out for good. Sheer exhaustion did him in. Cliff is usually begging for more playing time but on this day he had his fill. We suffered through an 11-4 loss, simply glad to have the day behind us but facing big questions about Sunday. Cliff and Tiger were leaving Saturday night anyway (so it was ok for them to get hurt. :-)) but Santosh was still in pain so it looked like we were only going to have 6 on Sunday. We briefly considered just leaving Saturday night, but decided that we weren't interested in that idea. Instead, we went back to Trey's and let him know our plight.

Trey told us he would try to get us some subs. After dinner at the mean bean (a great burrito place) we showered, loafed, and went to the party. After a couple more burritos, and watching Georgia tie Auburn in some strange game involving an ellipsoid shaped ball we decided we were ready for bed.

Trey had told us some of the guys with Athens were going to pick up with us as they were not elligible for the single elimination tournament. However, the guys Trey talked to never showed but one other, Jack, did. Also, the Tocoaa Falls team had not advanced so we picked up 4 of them (Blake, Scott, Chris, and Matt) to give us *4* subs. We tried to quickly explain to them how a stack worked, what we wanted them to do as deeps, and how to play points in the zone. We were facing Georgia in a final pool game. We lost Geoff Haisty on the first point of the game after he stopped a huck while playing deep in our zone defense. Georgia handled us pretty quickly with an 11-2 victory. Of course, this was a team that went 3-2 at Nationals last year so we weren't too upset. We had thought that would leave us playing Georgia again in the semifinals but it would also have left Georgia Tech playing Auburn in back to back games as well so Trey switched it with 1 playing 3 and 2 playing 4.

Georgia Tech didn't seem too happy to be playing us again. Apparently they thought we had run them hard in the last game on Saturday. We decided to make every effort to do just that, sending the Tocoaa Falls guys streaking deep at every opportunity. Georgia Tech had also added their coach to the line-up and had a pretty serious huck threat as a result. We managed to rotate defenders on him and contain the huck but Tech was still able to move the disc pretty effectively. Then, they went zone. Alan and I cycled short passes with Andrew Certain popping for us as we moved the disc down the field quickly before Alan threw up a hammer ("Oh no!") for the score ("Nice Throw!"). This was due largely to the fact the Georgia Tech zone had no middle-middle and two left points.

Georgia Tech fixed this problem and kept coming with their zone. We were pleased to be facing zone since we felt like we were pretty effective against it, but despite consistently being able to move at least 2/3 of the field we always turned the disc over and ended with a frustrating and disappointing 11-2 loss. After being eliminated we cheered Ga. Tech and presented Trey with a long-sleeve Darkside shirt for giving us so much for our $75.


Individual highlights:

Alan Hoyle
At one point this weekend I described Alan as the anchor of our offense. Of course, someone replied, "So you mean he's dragging us down?" No. Alan probably threw 1/3 of our passes and may have been the only person not to score, probably because he threw most of the scores. I also think Alan probably hustled as much as anyone both on offense and defense, always cutting hard and always on his man. I think he was excited because we told him to huck a lot. Oh, btw, new definition of an "Alan": stopping the game with an equipment time out (right after a turnover to the other team) to tie your shoes. He did it at least 5 times.
Cliff Reinhardt
Played every position and ran until he dropped, literally. He was consistently making great deep cuts and doing a really nice job popping in the Athens game. Of course, he did leave Saturday night, that bum. Thanks for coming Saturday Cliff.
Tim "Tiger" King
Good solid cuts from the deep position. Nice catches and defense on high throws to the endzone.
Andrew Certain
Stepped up to play handler a lot and gave us consistent, reliable play. He was also very involved in our zone offense, playing popper and handler effectively. Threw the game winner in the Athens game.
Jay Barry
I kept waiting for him to drop. He was running as hard as anyone, especially on defense, making a lot of nice defensive plays, especially in the endzone. Also, some nice second cuts to give us flow up the field.
Geoff Haisty
Tough defense as always and a lot of great catches in crowds in the endzone.
Carter Dougherty
Solid middle play and handling against the zone. He also wanted to point out that he didn't feel like he got burnt badly all weekend and that it was largely due to the wind sprints.
Santosh Rao
Only played 2.5 games before hearing his ankle pop. He was playing deep well and helping out occassionally at handler before getting injured. I don't remember a lot from the first two games.
Mark Parris
A god among men. Single handedly won 3, no, 4 games. Actually, played as his own team to fill out the pool schedule. If you're still reading this you are obviously avoiding work. Get back to work or better yet, go play ultimate!

Back to the main history page


Last Modified: 21 March 1996 back to Sunsite