Written by Carly Kester
At HUX, Harding managed to remain undefeated against University of Central Arkansas (13-1), Missouri Sci- ence and Technology (13-5), Nebraska (13-6), Washington University (13-2), Hendrix (13-7) and Missouri State B-team (13-0 and 16-14 in the finals).
Senior cutter Tyler Samuel said the team has an objective it sets for every tournament,and it reached that objective at HUX.
“Our goal going into every tournament is to hold seed or to do better than what we are ranked,” Samuel said. “For us to maintain our goal this tournament, we had to win [the tournament].”
Junior handler Derek Cressy said one of the most difficult obstacles to deal with was the high winds during the final game.
“If you were going with the wind, it wasn’t that bad,” Cressy said. “That was oneof the biggest challenges. Not necessarily beating the other team, but not beating yourself and being able to play against the wind.”
Although the elements were against them, Cressy said the team went into the tournament knowing what they needed to do to win.
“We’d been told by the captains that we should win this one if we don’t beat our- selves and keep dropping it or throwing it away,” Cressy said. “If we play smart and play like we know how, weshould be able to win this no sweat.”
Apocalypse has a lot of rookies who have either never played Ultimate Frisbee or never started playing seriously until last fall, according to Samuel. However, he said they showed that they were able to hold their own against seasoned teams.
“Our rookies [the other] weekend really stepped up,” Samuel said. “I was really proud of how they did. A lot of these players have only been playing since last fall; that’s the first time a lot of them were introduced to the sport or have ever played seriously, and they stepped up in big games. They’ve come a long way since they started playing.”
HU Apocalypse’s next tournament, the Midwest Throwdown, is this coming weekend, March 5-6 in St. Louis, Mo.
