Well, it has been 5 years, but UofT has won the Canadian University Ultimate Championships again. For some of us, this win was almost 5 years in the making. Here's a brief re-cap of the weekend:
FridayWin 13-4 over Carleton
Win 13-3 over UofAlberta
Win 11-6 over McGill A
UofA was a total unknown. They had a fairly new team at Nationals this year, but it was good to see that they came anyway- some teams don't like traveling a long distance unless they are likely to win the tournament, but I think the experience was invaluable to teams like UofA and Saskatchewan-- or should I say Sask
etchewan. Carleton played below its potential. Exactly like UofT has done for the past few years. The curse of having a handful of experienced touring players and a lot of unexperienced green players. What turned the tides for UofT was that the majority of last year's UofT roster toured this summer. Between ROY, GT and Goat, we went from having 4 touring players to having 14. This made an obvious impact on the depth of our roster. Hopefully Carleton can season some of their players on either Firebird or Phoenix. I'll speak more about McGill A later, but they are probably one of the classiest teams in the game and they gave us 2 great battles.
SaturdayWin over Waterloo
Win over Western (Quarter finals)
Both of these games were closer than we had hoped as we played pretty flat on Saturday. Western gave us a good battle, as was to be expected. I think they are the team to watch out for in the next few years.
SundayWin 11-3 over Queens (Semi finals)
Win 12-8 over McGill (Finals)
After a meeting about some scheduling/seeding confusion, it was decided that UofT would play Queens in one semis, while UBC and McGill would face off in the other semis. We knew there wasn't an "easy" road to the finals, and we were happy to face Queens in the semis. There was a rich history between these teams this year and it wasn't clear to either team which was "on top". They had beaten us fairly easily in poolplay at Easterns. Then we ground-out a 1 point win in the finals at Easterns-- so needless to say, we felt some momentum against them, but it was clear that we needed to make adjustments. We had done exactly that and were looking forward to trying them out on Sunday. We applied a lot of pressure with exacting D on the first point. This was a really long point which pretty much killed everyone on the field. Come point #2, however, we were able to put on a completely fresh line while Queens kept pretty much the same line on. We got a few quick breaks and were feeling good. Then one of Queen's top receivers dislocated his shoulder on a layout and the wind was taken out of their sails. We went on to win the game fairly handily.
In the other semis, McGill faced an over-confident UBC. The combination of UBCs short roster, McGill's stiffling 4-man cup, and McGill's army-sized roster led to a 9-6 victory for McGill. Sweet victory for McGill. I predicted this win right after the captain's meeting that morning when UBC requested to play McGill instead of Queens (meaning semis were 1vs3 and 2vs4 instead of 1vs4 and 2vs3).
The finals saw us vs. McGill. We felt pretty good as we had beaten them in pool play on Friday. That said, McGill is a gritty, thinking team and we knew they were going to put up a great fight, which they did. They ran a 4-man cup which was a tough nut to crack in the windy conditions.
Their offense was led by excellent handling from Shaki and some relentless cutting by Sam Kennedy. We got a few breaks in the first half and felt good going into the half. Then McGill broke us right back after the half and we knew it was going to be a long battle. A few more breaks were had by both sides and points were traded. In the end, we got a few more than them and the final score was 12-8 for us.
Like I said before, this was 5 years in the making for some of us UofT guys. After losing all of the touring players from UofT in 2001, a long rebuilding phase started. Many thanks to Peter Jamieson and his excellent leadership, the team attracted a lot of talent over the past few years. This year was the culmination of the process and winning nationals was a great reward to all of us for our collective work/time/effort spent building the team. The win wouldn't have been possible without every last one of the dudes. Like I said above, it takes an army to win Nationals.
A note to any other teams that read this blog: How did you get the URL? Do you have a mole? an informer? is Inian selling intel for cases of pabst blue ribbon again? three things that really paid off for UofT were: 1) Having a solid core of touring veterans. Needless to say, having an experienced leadership is important. a lot of teams have this in place already- e.g. carleton, western, guelph (linky, the one-man gang); 2) Hard work. We practiced 7am-9am 5 days/week and held scrimmages vs. touring teams whenever possible; 3) Get your non-touring players touring. Whereas 3 years ago we had 4 touring players on the team, this year we had about 14 touring players on UofT. Last Spring we made a strong push to get dudes onto ROY, GT, Goat, or co-ed touring teams. A long summer of practices/touring made a huge difference to the overall level of skill. It's so nice to put on a fresh line of experienced players while your opponents are recycling the same 7 dudes each point.
Kirk.
Pictured Above: Top (Left to Right) Will Yan, Dante Reino, Adrian Yearwood, Marcius Extavour, Steve Tam, Malcolm Johnston, David Ng, Tim Chapman-Smith, Lowell Heppner, Tolya Vasilyev, Taylor Martin, Scotty Nichols, Kirk Nylen. Middle: Sasha Necakov. Bottom: James Fong, Nate Brown, Inian Moorthy, Alex Schneider, Peter Jamieson, Shawn Chua, Justin McComb, Norman Farb, Pat Dolan.
Bottom Left to Right: Norman Farb, Peter Jamieson, Pat Dolan, Dante Reino, Steve Tam, Justin McComb, Tim Chapman-Smith (behind), Shawn Chua, Nathan Brown (behind), Taylor Martin, Shimon Pokorny, Tolya Vasilyev. Back Row from Left to Right: Scotty Nicholls, Will Yan, Marcius Extavour, Inian Moorthy, Alex Schneider, Dave Ng, Adrian Yearwood, Kirk Nylen, Sasha Necakov, Malcolm Johnston, Lowell Heppner.
Pictured Above: Top (Left to Right) Will Yan, Dante Reino, Adrian Yearwood, Marcius Extavour, Steve Tam, Malcolm Johnston, David Ng, Tim Chapman-Smith, Lowell Heppner, Tolya Vasilyev, Taylor Martin, Scotty Nichols, Kirk Nylen. Middle: Sasha Necakov. Bottom: James Fong, Nate Brown, Inian Moorthy, Alex Schneider, Peter Jamieson, Shawn Chua, Justin McComb, Norman Farb, Pat Dolan.
Bottom Left to Right: Norman Farb, Peter Jamieson, Pat Dolan, Dante Reino, Steve Tam, Justin McComb, Tim Chapman-Smith (behind), Shawn Chua, Nathan Brown (behind), Taylor Martin, Shimon Pokorny, Tolya Vasilyev. Back Row from Left to Right: Scotty Nicholls, Will Yan, Marcius Extavour, Inian Moorthy, Alex Schneider, Dave Ng, Adrian Yearwood, Kirk Nylen, Sasha Necakov, Malcolm Johnston, Lowell Heppner.
