September 24th and 25th was the official date for the Southern Illinois University Ultimate Frisbee Tournament at Carbondale, Illinois. This was my first tournament this season playing with my college team, Mass Hysteria from Western Illinois University. Driving from WIU to SIUC took me at least four and a half hours. It took even longer knowing that I had at least one bad tire.
At the tournament, the team and I played in a pool round. Our first game was around 11 o'clock, and we played against a team that looked new and had random people playing just for fun. This team didn't have any official team jerseys, but they enough players for a full lineup and some substitutions. There were 12 people on my team out in the hot heat for two days playing this game with other teams. I was very excited to play after not playing for months. The team and I started out very strong. Personally, I had some really great lay out defense and thought that I improved.
In the second game, we faced against a more organized team that had official team jerseys. As a matter of fact, this team was so big they registered two separate teams. These guys were more complex to match up. We lost to them unfortunately. The third game we also lost. The fourth game that we played though was the most fun of the tournament.
The next day was when the games got more serious in rankings. Our team focused more on having fun than anything else. In our first game, we lost, but we still had fun--this is what I believe makes Ultimate a great sport to play, The next game that we played, we played against this team from Lincoln Christian. They told us that this was their first tournament in years. Some of of the players were new to the game and needed help. While playing, I reminded them about using the stall count, and my teammates were helping them out with other fundamentals about the game. In the end, we ended up winning the game and a couple of new friendships. We wanted to give as much help as we can for that team. In the final game, we lost. We also played against a former teammate of mine that I have played with over the summer. It was very exciting to play against him and his new team against mine.
I'm really happy for what has happened at my first tournament with Mass Hysteria. I'm also very excited as to the future tournaments and having the new players learn new things and improve their ability to the sport of Ultimate. Go Mass!
