The Ultimate Frisbee Club hosted and competed in a four vs. four player tournament Sunday, April 14. Three of the six teams in attendance had players from the school and the school’s primary team, Tetraphobia, only lost one game.
The tournament consisted of five rounds of round robin gameplay. Club president and Tetraphobia team captain senior Georgia Hansen reflected on the first game of the tournament, which her team won 15-4.
“Our first game was a fairly easy game,” Hansen said. “We used it to get set up [with] what we were doing for offense and defense and just build some synergy with the team.”
Sophomore Grady Wilson, a member of team Mill Valley 3, played against Tetraphobia in the first round. Despite his team’s loss, he felt good about the way the team played.
“I mean, we got cooked, but we scored four points,” Wilson said. “Our whole team was just freshmen except for me: I’m a sophomore. They’ve been playing for maybe half a year, so I’m really proud of them.”
Going into the second round, Tetraphobia was matched against the first of their two most challenging opponents: Big Dumpers. Tetraphobia team member sophomore Will Schieber expected the team to do well, despite their opponents’ experience.
“Shawnee Mission Northwest and Big Dumpers, they’re kind of scary,” Schieber said. “They’ve been playing for longer than us and most of them are older than us but I feel like we’re expecting to hold our own against them. We played against Big Dumpers last spring, and they completely destroyed us. I think everyone’s hoping that we’re going to do better because we’ve had a lot more time to practice, so we have a lot of good synergy between us.”
What they thought would be a close game ended up being a testament to the team’s improvement over the past year, as they were able to get a good flow going early on, according to Hansen.
“We thought it was going to be a really close game, but we did super well,” Hansen said. “In the first half, we played very well against them and we managed to win 12-7, so we’re set up pretty well.”
For the school’s other two teams’ second game, they were matched up against each other. Spinjitzu ended up with the 10-4 win against Mill Valley 3.
Spinjitzu team captain sophomore Andrew Heideman was proud of his team’s win this round.
“I was happy that we were able to get at least one win and I saw a lot of improvement from everyone on our team,” Heideman said.
The third and fourth rounds followed, with two more wins for Tetraphobia and losses for the other two Mill Valley teams.
Going into their final and toughest round of gameplay, Tetraphobia knew they had a challenge in the Shawnee Mission northwest team.
“[Shawnee Mission Northwest] has a lot of strong players,” Schieber said. “They’re probably our hardest competition.”
Despite scoring six points, Tetraphobia lost the game, ending the tournament in second place with a 4-1 record. Although they lost, sophomore Zachary Chang saw a silver lining to the team’s fifth game.
“I think [one positive] was the team spirit right after halftime, especially the strategizing,” Chang said. “Pulling through on that one point felt really nice.”
Even though they had some tough rounds, Hansen ultimately thought the tournament was a success for all three teams from the school.
“I thought the tournament went really well for pretty much every team,” Hansen said. “I saw a lot of good playing out there. I saw a lot of people who were really showing off their skills.”
The final standings had Shawnee Mission Northwest in first, Tetraphobia in second and Big Dumpers in third. Spinjitzu and Mill Valley 3 ended up placing fifth and sixth, respectively.
With so many of the club members playing in the tournament, most of the behind the scenes work was done ahead of time. Hansen explained that running such a smooth tournament would not have been possible without the help of Lloyd, volunteers from the community, her family members and the school administration. Hansen describes the tasks she had to complete when planning for the tournament.
“There was a lot of planning,” Hansen said. “We have an entire folder in our Google Drive dedicated just to this tournament. We had to get people to sign up. We had to make team rosters. We had to make a schedule. We had to write out some rule pamphlets and be able to print those off so people would know what they’re doing. We had to schedule based on which fields were available and I had to get event insurance.”
Despite the competitive spirit at the tournament, it was primarily a learning opportunity for all those involved. Chang was grateful for the opportunity to learn from his opponents at the tournament.
“I’m so glad we got the opportunity to play with these guys because normally we just play with ourselves and everyone’s play styles can melt together,” Chang said. “Seeing different play styles like Big Dumpers, how far they throw, or just how refined Shawnee Mission Northwest is great. There’s so much to learn.”
