After a hard-fought day one of sectionals, losing to BC on universe point, MIT placed 3rd in their pool heading into pool play. Grim Beaver rallied in tight games against BU and UMass: Dartmouth to secure the fifth bid to regionals. Time to dominate!
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In the first high-profile tournament of the year, MIT traveled to Atlanta, GA to face some of the top teams in the nation.
MIT took Ohio State to 9-9 before OSU managed to pull away. Rounding out the tournament, MIT played against George Washington, Georgia Tech, and University of Central Florida.
MIT returned to Hilton Head this year for more frisbee in the sun and on the beach. The team practiced plenty of zone, horizontal stack, and scrimmaging to get in shape for Terminus. Plenty of mini golf, team bonding, and even some socializing with the women's team happened over the course of the week.
MIT flew down to Statesboro, GA for the Georgia Southerns tournament near the end of March. Compared to the nasty Boston winter, conditions were perfect - sunny and warm. Grim started out the first day well, breaking seed by trouncing Mary Washington in pool play. This was good enough to advance into the bracket play for a bid at the championship.
Sunday's championship play started out against Georgia Southern, the host team. Georgia Southern brought its athletes and ran a tricky zone as the wind started to pick up. MIT played a hard fought game through the first half, but Georgia Southern managed to take the game away in the second half, 13-10. After being knocked out of the championship bracket, Grim Beaver played more of its newer players to get practice against the consolation game vs. North Park. North Park managed to pull through despite some sick D's and layouts by MIT, final score 13-10. After some stretching, Grim traveled over to Hilton Head for a week of spring break practicing and Terminus preperation.
Highlighting the TD Garden Games vs. WPI and Northeastern, more writeups to come
MIT and WPI made history by playing at TD Garden, home of the Boston Celtics on Saturday, February 12th. It was the first game of ultimate to be played at the arena.
The venue brought a definite change in play, the field was short and disc movement was quick. Thanks to the deathly Boston winter and a smaller indoor space, MIT hadn't spent much time playing on anything bigger than a tennis court. WPI brought some fire along with a significant crowd and went up quickly to score the first few points. MIT had several noticeable miscommunications on offence, often overthrowing outside the bounds of the stadium. A late addition to strategy of side stacking and poachier D brought MIT back into contention, until the game was called 40 minutes later, 14-12 in favor of WPI.
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During the final weekend of Spring Break, MIT Grim Beaver drove into Charleston for their final tournament before college sectionals. The team rolled its Saturday opponents by working through zone and man defence to work its way to a series of decisive victories. Though some of the first half games were hotly contested, Tech was able to pull its way through to win in the second half. MIT ended the day ready for the next round of play.
Tourney Sunday began with a cloud of gnats as the wind from the previous day had all but disappeared. MIT came out against a fledgling opponent for a relatively straightforward first game of the day. This put Tech against their first real challenge of the series, Kennesaw State, a team which could run big plays as well as a solid horizontal stack. After battling their way through a tough game, MIT went on to win 15-10.
Finally, this victory put MIT in the championship game against Wisconsin Eau-Claire, the number 1 seed in the tournament. In the game for "all the marbles", MIT came out with a strong offense, but Wisconsin's smart poaches was making it difficult for the cutters to find space in the lane. On defense, MIT was having a difficult time shutting down Wisconsin's squirrely handler moves, giving the opponent time to reset the disc at a high stall count. Wisconsin took half with MIT trailing by several points as the coaches and captains instilled some final words of inspiration. Tech battled back, earning a final break to bring the game to universe point at 9-9. MIT forced the turn and worked the disc to just outside the endzone, where a dish to Ethan scored the game winning goal.
After a disappointing first day which put MIT just outside of the championship bracket, tech rolled through their Sunday games to become the Southerns Chumpions.