USU ultimate finishes no. 13 at nationals

MILWAUKEE — The Utah State men’s ultimate team finished No. 13 in the country during the program’s second-ever appearance at nationals. The Aggies won two of their five games, beating Michigan and William & Mary.

“It felt really good to match up with some of the best colleges in the country,” junior Tony Mounga said. “We definitely held our own.”

Submitted photo by Cullen Clark

Ben Hoffman celebrates against Texas at the 2022 USA Ultimate D-1 College Championships.

Despite playing fewer games than teams that went further in the bracket did, the Aggies had two players lead the competition in personal stats.

First-year student Ben Hoffman led the tournament with 32 goals, nearly twice as many as the athlete in second place.

“You just know when someone is top tier, when they’re elite, and Ben’s kind of hit that point,” senior captain Bracken Wright said. “Even when we were at nationals, playing the best teams in the country, we could still trust that Ben is so good that he’s just still going to perform at the highest level and score on anybody he wants.”

Senior captain Garrett Martin topped the leaderboard as well with his 25 assists.

“Sure, the stats are cool, but that doesn’t matter as much as our team’s outcomes and our team’s progress,” Martin said.

Even in the Aggies’ losses, they kept things close.

“A lot of the teams we played, it was down to the wire, you know — the last couple of minutes really decided it,” Mounga said. “Even if we were losing, we fought back and made it a game almost every time.”

Utah State got off to a rough start in their first game of pool play against Texas. They trailed 10-5 before they launched a comeback that tied the game at 14. The Longhorns were able to respond and won 15-14.

“They ended up losing to everybody else in the pool worse than we did,” Mounga said. “I felt kind of bad that that was our first game. I felt like we could have definitely beat them.”

The loss stung because it seemed like a must-win for Utah State to be able to move on from pool play.

“That one ended up mattering a lot, because that was kind of the one we had circled to win to make the [championship] bracket,” Martin said.

In the rest of the tournament, Utah State continued to come up just short against top teams. They lost 15-11 to the eventual second-place team in the nation, Brown. The Aggies also fell to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo 15-12 before they collected their first win over William & Mary 15-10.

After pool play, the Aggies were one point short of qualifying for the championship bracket; however, they scored well enough to play for 13th place against Michigan.

In their final game of the season, the Aggies beat the Wolverines 15-11. For the Aggie seniors, the win marked the end of their collegiate careers.

“I wish I could play college forever,” Martin said. “But it’s also what makes college so special, that you don’t get to do it for that long.”

“It was hard at the end of that game,” Wright said. “It’s really bittersweet because it’s the greatest accomplishment of my ultimate frisbee career and also just the end of a really cool era.”

Submitted photo by Cullen Clark

USU men’s ultimate team at the USA Ultimate 2022 D-1 College Championships.

After the game, the Aggies gathered in a circle to talk about the season and give seniors the chance to say farewell.

“It’s a hard thing to describe,” Martin said. “I kind of just told everybody how much it meant to me, how much I cared about this team and the direction it’s going and how proud I was to see the program in a better place than when I got here.”

Utah State players heralded Martin, who was essentially their player-coach, as the leader that helped push the Aggies to this point.

“Without Garrett as a player would hurt a lot, but without Garrett as a coach, we’re useless,” Wright said.

Martin played six years for the Aggies, including the normal five years of eligibility, plus one because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He joined a team that struggled to make regionals and helped turn it into a team that is competitive at nationals. Martin emphasized how proud he is to leave behind a team he thinks will be successful for years to come.

“To be able to do that, and leave the team in a spot where I feel like they’re going to be good for years, is a really exciting thing,” Martin said.

Looking back at the last few seasons, it’s easy to see the upward trajectory of the Utah State ultimate team. Last season, which was delayed to fall 2021 because of the coronavirus, the Aggies qualified for nationals for the first time in history. In this season, they won their region and played much better at nationals.

“Last time in the fall, we very rarely got above 10 goals,” Martin said. “This year, we scored above 10 every single game, no matter who we played. Overall, we were a much more competitive team, even though we didn’t actually close out the wins in all those games. We were in every single game, all the way through, until the end.”

The back-to-back nationals appearances and close results against top teams have established Utah State as a solid ultimate team.

“It’s less of a fluky ‘Oh, good for them’ and more of an ‘Oh, they’re here now,” Martin said.

The Aggies plan to capitalize on their success well into the future.

“This is just the very beginning,” Wright said. “I think this team is only getting better and I think that we’ve kind of set the floor for what I expect out of Utah State in the coming seasons.”

Featured photo submitted by Cullen Clark.