Sectionals (Day One):
We met at 6:45 this morning and piled into John Lai's car, Zuck's car, and
my Suburban.  Missing from the squad today were Brian Jin (MCATS), Chuck
Lei (MCATS), Willie Evarts (family), Teddy Sherrill (mono), Mike George
(out of town), and Evan Sprecher.  Both the trampoline and dancin
Santa came along but didn't make it out of the Suburban.

We made it to Goddard State Park in Warwick, RI in just over an hour,
quicker than expected.  There we found a hilly fairway which was to become
our fields.  We parked on the sidelines of our pool's field which seemed
about the right length and width, but had a series of mountains and
trenches in the middle of it.  Thankfully no one got hurt.

After a warm-up, our first game of the day came against Brandeis-B.  We
had trouble getting pumped up for this one and it showed when we came out
on defense and turned the disc over about 8 times on the first two points.
From there, we quickly found our rhythm and cruised to a 17-0 victory.  We
did a good job of efficiently capitalizing on their turnovers.

We got a bye in between our two pool games, and with the first one ending
pretty quickly we had like 3 hours before our next game.  This time was
spent watching and cheering on the B team's valiant try against Brandeis
in their pool.  I'd talk about it more but I'm sure Skoren has 10 pages
mentally written about this game already.  The "O Prime -- Prime O" cheer
makes a successful debut.

We come back to our treacherous field and play a bit of Schtick to warm up
for our game against the 2 seed in our pool, Wentworth.  D line takes O
line in two games.  We come out well against Wentworth and fast-break on
transitions effectively.  Somewhere before half they punched one in and
then got a break on us for their second point, but that was all we would
yield.  Nice work by freshman Dave "1 up" Lipson here marking the 1-3-3
and creating a buttload of turns.  We take the game 17-2 to earn a spot in
the semis.  Quote of the game came from Steve Kolthammer who, when we were
figuring out who was going to guard Wentworth's girl, said "well it looks
like they've only got six on the field so we should double-team her."

We watch the end of the BU-BC game to decide who would play us in the
semis, and BU cruised.  For the semis, we moved one field over to a much
flatter field that was only 50 yards long.  Oh well.

Having beat them twice and lost to them once (all of them hotly-contested
games) in the fall, we were expecting sectionals this year to be a
three-way race with Tufts, them, and us.  They've had a whole bunch of
injuries and eligibility issues, though, that has really hurt them.  Most
notably their big man, Holzer, is out of eligibility, and their main
handler Jasper tore his ACL a couple of weeks ago.  Other problems include
a heart condition, a guy being in the navy, and one of their guys falling
into a neverending pit.

Anyway, a haka fired us up for the game and we came out swinging.  Our man
defense was stingy and they had trouble figuring out our clam.  We took
four breaks right away and kept the pressure on in the first half.  Great
work by everyone who played on the dump stopping their post cuts.  This,
combined with tough downfield D ate them up and we took the right shots
when we had the disc.  A sweet put from Dennis Chira to a streaking Manoah
Koletty took half 7-3.  We kept the pressure up in the second half, taking
the semis 13-5.  We cooled down while watching the other semis, Tufts over
MIT by a pretty big margin.

Tomorrow we play Tufts for the sectional championship at 2 pm.  We haven't
won the section since 2002.  We ended the day today on a good note and
we'll have Mike George, BJ and Chuck back in the mix tomorrow.  Should
make for an exciting game.  We'd love to see anyone and everyone out on
the sideline of that game cheering us on.


Sectionals (Day Two):
Quick update because I've spent the whole weekend thinking about ultimate
and none of it doing schoolwork:

Despite our meeting-time being 11 AM, more than 4 hours later than
yesterday, we had problems with people waking up on time.  I won't name
names.  After sorting it out, we got to the fields in time to see
Harvard-B tied with BU  (their A team) 5-5 in a tight game.  The game
continued to be back
and forth the whole time, with BU finally getting a break in the second
half and winning by a couple.  It was great to see the B team playing so
well.

Then, we got ourselves warmed up and ready for Tufts.  It was a really
nice day, in the 60s with only a bit of wind.

We started going downwind on offense.  We came out rusty and they got two
turns before hucking it for the score and the break.  Our offense
continued to have problems flowing and soon Tufts was out to a 4-1 lead.
Finally our offense worked it up to put our D on the field, and they took
over.  With some great zone and a series of Ds and forced turns, our
defense stormed back to take the next 4 or 5 points and go up a break.
They quickly broke back to even the game at 7s (I think maybe our offense
gets a bit cold when our D team has been on the field for so long, but
I'll gladly trade that for 4 break-points in a row).  They pulled to us
and we marched it downwind for the goal and the half.

We had the momentum going into the second half, having gone on a 7-3 run
since being down 1-4.  I think we even got a break right out of half but
they soon broke us back.  Up 9-8 and pulling to them we got a quick turn
on their upwind endzone but failed to convert.  They took it down the
field on our zone, eventually punching it in and tying it at 9s.

The soft cap went off during that point, meaning it would be game to 11.
0-0, game to 2, Tufts pulling upwind to Harvard.  Relatively big sidelines
at this point with a lot of other teams having finished their games.
We called our string:
Chuck to Will Chen to Jack to Kolthammer.  Chuck caught the pull, hitched
it to Will, hit me on an in-cut, and Kolt had about 5 yards of separation
on his guy going deep.  I put him just shy of the endzone, but a quick flip to
John Lai put it at game point, Harvard.

We came out on them forcing flick.  My pull went out the back of the
endzone (i really need to lay off the juice).  On the first or second
pass upfield pass, Mike George was right on the heels of his man and
forced a drop at around midfield.  We took the fast break opportunity and
got ourselves on the goal-line.  Manoah caught a swing pass in the
backhand corner of the endzone and, trapped, high in the stall count,
found Grant D'arcy streaking past his man and catching the sliding goal
to take the section and likely the 2 or 3 seed for regionals.

Lots of great plays this game but I couldn't tell you which point they
came on really.  Great zone defense played and great offense played by our
D line.  Kolt had a huge game, skying big for a goal and shutting down
Tufts' best cutter, highlighted by a huge layout block somewhere in the
first half.  Our zone offense looked pretty good but still could use some
work.  Having Willie back for regionals will be big for our O team.  Will
Chen threw a huge blade while trapped in the back-corner of the endzone,
hitting eric 40 yards away in stride and opening us up to take the 9-8
lead.  There were more big plays and big throws that I'm forgetting.

Most of us stuck around to play some goaltimate and watch the 2/3 game, as
Tufts fell to MIT by a few points (after they beat them pretty handily
yesterday).  We grabbed dinner in Providence then went the rest of the way
back to Cambridge.

Many thanks to Ken Weinstein '03 and Mark Zuckerman (HLS) '06 for giving
us rides, supporting us, and being good people.

We've got two weeks til regionals in Rhode Island, the big show.

Jack