here's the offical recap of yale cup 2001.  i know it's late, and most of
you already know what happened.  yes, pictures have already been developed
and put on the web.  but for all of you still fumbling in the dark, here's
everything that happened.

things truly got off to a good start.  for one thing, the tournament
wasn't cancelled!  for another, a dangerous situation didn't happen when
excess car space meant skinner didn't have to drive.  and we all made it
on time ready for pool play saturday morning.  our first game was against
rochester, a bunch of dudes wearing purple shirts, who sported an offense
where the closest man in the stack usually made the first cut.  that was
too bad, because they didn't complete many long throws against us.  a good
warmup game for harvard ultimate, with the final score 13-4.

next up was the boys from utah state.  that's right, they came all the way
from the utah mountain timezone region to try their luck against the
harvard red line.  and they were pretty psyched to play, going up 3-1 to
start the game.  i don't actually remember too much from this game, but
things apparently worked themselves out, and we rode some strong second
half play to win 13-8.  following that was a friendly mid-day contest with
yale b.  highlights for the game included the debut of our all-jewish
team ... and ok, our all non-jewish team as well.  also the tall team
(including shankar of course), and the short team.  let the record show
that the jews and the shorties had much fewer turnovers than the non-jews
and tall guys.  final score, 13-2.

finishing up the day was a game against williams, the 2 seed in our pool,
and the game we'd been waiting for.  we started a little flat after yale
b, falling behind early.  then ratner made a huge grab for an upwind
score, jumping straight over his defender to make the catch (we have a
great picture of this on the website).  that really changed the momentum.
our defense got more manic, our cuts got sharper, and we took half 7-5.
a few more upwind scores let us pull away in the second half, and we
finished up 13-9.

to celebrate, we almost went for a game of mini golf, which would have
been really fun.  but instead, we went to a restaurant that had malt
liquor from thailand (!) ... and good thai food too.  other nighttime
action?  there was an ultimate party, the women from tufts showed up, and
... a story to be continued perhaps?

anyway, a 4-0 finish was good enough for 4th seed in sunday's single
elimination bracket.  we started off against texas, a team with a coach,
lots of energy, but not quite the skills to match.  final score, 13-6.
which matched us against brown in the quarters.  this one was a battle.
lots of running, a bunch of turnovers, but unlike brown-harvard games of
the past, it was clear from the beginning that we were the better team.  
we played great chilly ultimate to hold our second half lead, and finished
strong for a 13-10 win.

we were pretty beat from the brown game, but started out strong against
middlebury, our semifinals opponent.  this game had the worst observer
i've ever seen, and he slowed the game down a lot.  but it didn't affect
our game, as we went ahead early.  as usually happens in big games though,
there was a comeback, and we found ourselves down 11-10 in the game to 15.
keegan from middlebury was dominating for awhile, and things didn't look
so good.  but up to the challenge, harvard ultimate went on a 5-0 run to
end the game, and take our place in the finals.

the cornell-tufts semifinal was still going on, and most of us took a
break on the sideline to see what happened.  dave however coached and
cheered cornell, heckled tufts when necessary, and may have even played a
point or two ... anything to get cornell into the finals.  it worked, and
the doylestown, pennsylvania rivalry game was on.  the game began with
cornell forcing middle, and it really gave us trouble.  a bunch of turns,
a few layout scores by cornell, and some fatigue on our part left us down
8-3 at the half.  the comeback that followed was really nice to see.  it
would have been easy to give up a little, seeing how well we had already
played over the weekend, and also that cornell isn't even in our region.
but we put together several solid points in a row ... shankar in
particular had a few great deep looks for scores ... and we found
ourselves down only 12-10.  unfortunately, we spent our energy on the
comeback, and we couldn't quite make the final push.  final score, cornell
15-12.

a great tournament.  great playing by everyone.  but it's only the
beginning.  get psyched for sectionals, regionals, and nationals!!