Ultimate team wins four, drops two in first tournament
The men’s ultimate club team of Georgia College was on the road last weekend to play its first tournament of the semester. The team played four games on Jan. 22 and two on Jan. 23 and finished with a record of 4-2.
The tournament took place in South Carolina next to Clemson University at Nettles Park, where 20 college club teams battled for first place.
File photoMembers of the Georgia College men’s club ultimate team practice in November. The team competed in its first tournament of the Spring Jan. 22-23 in Clemson, South Carolina, finishing with a 4-2 record.
Any college with a club team is registered with USA Ultimate. USA Ultimate gets its ranking system by dividing all registered teams into two separate divisions, Division I or Division III.
Since Georgia College has fewer than 7,500 enrolled students, the team plays in Division III.
“There’s only one governing body of Ultimate, USA Ultimate. Any tournament we go to is sanctioned by them,” co-captain Peter Crupie said. “We report scores to them and they keep track online of every college in the country that has a club team, which is anywhere between 500 and 700 registered per year. There’s not really divisions that you play in, you just play whatever teams go to each tournament.”
In the first game of the tournament, the team faced the No. 1 seed, Eastern Carolina. Both teams battled hard for the win but Georgia College suffered a heartbreaking defeat by a single goal with the final score of 12-13.
After their tough defeat against Eastern Carolina, the team played their second game on Saturday against Clemson-B.
When both teams stepped out onto the field, Georgia College took control of the game and dominated Clemson to earn their first victory of the tournament with the final score of 13-4.
After defeating Clemson, Georgia College continued for its third game of the day to face Emory. The team kept the energy going from their previous win as they took control and defeated Emory with a final score of 13-5.
Taking the field for a fourth time in one day, Georgia College played its final game on Saturday against Furman University.
Continuing to play aggressively, they dominated Furman and managed to extend their winning streak to three games with a final score of 13-7, giving them a tournament record of 3-1.
“Our greatest strength in the tournament was that we had a lot of depth,” co-captain Blake Hannah said. “Everyone on our team rotates positions really nicely, we can all play every position.”
After playing four games the previous day, the team returned to Nettles Park on Jan. 23 to face Auburn. Although they fought hard, Georgia College was not able to take control of the game and they were defeated 9-15.
“The toughest challenge of the weekend was have to face large schools like Auburn and Eastern Carolina because schools like that have more than 20 guys on their team which gives them a much bigger talent pool to choose from,” Crupie said. “It is just a challenge to get a good amount of good players and put them up against 20-25 guys with teams that swap players every point where as we have 8-10 guys that play that play pretty much every point.
After their loss against Auburn, Georgia College, in their final game of the tournament, was put up against Emory for a second time.
They did not let their loss to Auburn affect them and managed to defeat Emory for a second time with the score of 9-5, making their final tournament record 4-2.
“I was really satisfied with our first tournament results,” Crupie said. It was also great because a bunch of the younger guys got to see the level of competition there’re going to be up against and seeing that lets them know they have to get up to a certain level, and the vets see what the competition is like this year and what needs to be done.”
Since the ultimate season, hosted by USA Ultimate, starts in the Spring and goes from the beginning of January to the end of May, Georgia College hopes to play in four or five more tournaments before the semester comes to an end.
“The team is coming together very well, we’re having good hard practices and everyone is really committed and dedicated,” Hannah said. “We just need to to get out and do a lot of running so that we can play hard defense in the tournament. Ultimate games are really tough of you’re not in shape, so we need to do a lot on conditioning so we can make it tougher for the good teams to score.”
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