Utlimate Frisbee team heads to tournament
Landon Olson, sports writer The Utah State Ultimate Frisbee team will open its spring season this weekend at a tournament in Santa Barbara, Calif.
The tournament will be hosted by the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is the first tournament of the semester. USU is sending both a men’s and a women’s team to compete.
The Santa Barbara tournament is one of the largest in the West, including approximately 30 men’s and 20 women’s teams.
Schools like USU will face stiff competition against schools like Stanford University, the University of Washington, the University of Oregon, the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of California at San Diego. At the end of last season, UC San Diego was ranked No. 6, Stanford was No. 5 and UC Santa Barbara was fourth. USU was ranked No. 64 out of the 208 teams listed by the Ultimate Players Association, the player-supported organization for Ultimate Frisbee.
The tournament consists of two rounds. Pool play will take place on Saturday, and depending on how well a team plays, it will be placed into one of two brackets for Sunday. Each team will play five games Saturday. Sunday’s play will be double elimination, with each team playing a minimum of two games, though if a team keeps winning it may play up to five.
“We have a really young team with new people, but we have a lot of speed and some good defensive players,” said USU Frisbee captain Dustin Smith.”We are going to be playing some of the top teams and that is going to break us in real quick, but I am really optimistic about our chances.”
USU will take 13 men and 10 women to the tournament.
Traveling to tournaments is expensive, Smith said, but the university provides some money and the rest is raised or provided by the team. Also, missing classes is usually not much of a problem and professors have been very supportive, Smith said.
The next tournament the team will play in is in San Diego on President’s Day. It is the biggest tournament in the West and attracts many Eastern teams, Smith said.
Other tournaments this spring include one in Colorado in March and one in Connecticut in April. Later in April, the team will play at Idaho State University. If it wins against the Bengals, it will have an opportunity to go on to the regional tournament. The winners of the regional tournament will compete in nationals.