1999 Season Recap

Tufts Scrimmage, Feb 28: The first game of the season. The highlight was our 8 point rally which won the game: going from 12-5 Tufts to 13-12 MIT. With almost a full squad in attendance, D@MIT put out a good first effort, although we are not yet the smoothly running machine we plan to be in a month and a half.
Harvard Scrimmage, March 14: We started out the game making Harvard work hard for yardage, and then giving it back to them with silly mistakes. Happily, things solidified during the second half and we started to experience some crude version of flow, endiing the game 13-6. Harvard played well, and we look forward to them being an even better team later in the season. As the first game outside this season, the wind was perfect: not too strong, but a steady presence. We were lucky to have the turf -- on the Ides of March a major snow storm hit the area. Hopefully, the farmer's almanac is correct both in its prediction that March would be a month of heavy snow, and its prediction that April and May will be drier than usual.
Terminus, March 20-21: Atlanta March 20-21. Of note is the good performance by Tufts.
D@MIT "To Hell" tournament: Due to bad weather, the tournament was cancelled. Amazingly, three teams (Smith, Amherst and Brown) were able to come up on Saturday for an informal scrimmage. Both Brown and Amherst were short on women, so most of the games involved mixed teams. The last game, MIT vs. Smith, turned out to be a good game involving two full teams. Final score: MIT 13, Smith 11. We used the tournament as an opportunity to introduce new players to various defensive strategies. During the last game, Smith consistently threw a zone defense, which gave us our first real chance of the season to practice zone O.

I am pleased to note that as a team, we did not play well. You may think this a peculiar turn of phrase. However, I say it because the hints of a great team are scattered all across our play. We just need to put the puzzle together. We can play beautiful ultimate.
Layout Pigout: The team went 7-0 at this tournament, as did Tufts. The battle for the Layout Pigout trophy has yet to be played.

We opened against Swarthmore. After twenty minutes of muddled playing, we finally got the hang of defeating their force middle and pulled away to win 10 to 5. Our second game was against Syracuse. We won this game 13-4, and witnessed our first female landshark. After a bye, we played Smith. It was clear that the stack drill we practiced during the bye was a boon to our offense — especially the timing of the first cut. Our defense was also working well: defenders were alert to opportune switches, and fearsome marking was in evidence. After a sudden string of quick scores in the second half, we finished the game 13 to 5.

On Sunday, we opened against Cornell. The roses were rowdy, rambunctious, and clearly having a good time. We were old, crotchety, and had arrived too late to practice throwing (a mistake). It was not always pretty, but we won the game 13 to 6.

The first round of the elimination bracket was against RPI. They had a brand new team, and we beat them 8 to 0. The second round saw us playing Swarthmore a second time. They were fired up, and had their men's team watching. Injuries and overexcitement damaged our handling apparatus, but dedication and team effort pulled us through to a 9-5 victory. This game was originally capped at 7. However, after shaking hands at 7-4, the game was recapped to 9 in order to re-align with the other games, which were running late.

In the semis, we were up against Cornell again. Cornell chose to forfeit, and play with their coach. We won the game 10-6, or something like that (not official). In a joint decision with Tufts, the final game was postponed. We roshammed for the trophy, and won with three rocks. Later in the week, we sadly had to give away the trophy in a 13-7 loss to Tufts. We played well, however, with an under-womaned but feisty team.
Yale Cup: Next week, at Yale cup, we played Yale B (twice), Columbia, Swarthmore, Brown, and Tufts. Of note: our win against Brown was a highlight, involving both dedication and cool-headedness. Also interesting (for us) was the speed at which the two first games of Sunday (M.I.T-Beezus 11-1, and M.I.T.- Swarthmore 13-5) were executed. This may be the first time in herstory that M.I.T. has quickly and efficiently won games. Unfortunately for us, the "quickly and efficiently" bit stayed around for the next game against Tufts, but not the "won games." We lost to Tufts 15-3. We all deserve a nice lick.
Sectionals: Brandeis showed up at Sectionals this year — a new ultimate team, yeah! They played with spirit, & we look forward to seeing them again. Games against Harvard & Wellesley involved a good amount of zone offense work, which made us happy. The only game we lost was to Tufts, with a score 9-7. Regionals, here we come!