UW makes finals despite poor conditions

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BURLINGTON, WA
Nov 11-12, 2006
BY: Miranda Roth

Last weekend found all 15 women's teams dodging the sun successfully in Burlington, WA. Cultimate hosted the tournament as the three pools of 5 battled through wind, rain and cold. The Western Washington women, split in two squads, upset Reed, Whitworth and Gonzaga while the University of Puget Sound (UPS) also pulled out a surprise victory against Gonzaga in pool play.

Hightlighted Player Pictured at mixed club NW Regionals 2006, sophomore Alyssa Weatherford (Western Washington) is a clear leader on her team this year. Her composure with the disc helped Western X make the semifinals against UW at Sundodger. Read more about this young player on the rise in her IC Ultimate player profile.

The rest of the tournament held to seed, putting all teams but the top-ranked club Team Coyne in prequarters. Because of the odd bracketing of a 15 team tournament, stronger teams ended up playing each other earlier in the day than expected - highlighting a quarterfinal matchup between regional rivals Oregon Fugue and Washington Element. Sunday was far windier and colder and the fields were oriented straight upwind/downwind. Element won the flip and started off on the board and scored an early upwinder. Fugue held tight and regained the break, but could not get another. The game, saturated in turnovers, ended before half in the cap with UW winning by 1. Meanwhile, Western Washington Chaos X pulled a very surprising victory out against northwest regional powerhouse UBC Thunderbirds. I was unable to watch this game, but there were rumors of a small UBC squad (who is not returning many players to begin with) that was without its main handler, Kira Frew.

The semis pitted Lewis & Clark against Team Coyne, who won fairly easily and UW against Western X. In a long grueling game that barely made it to half, the Element girls pulled it out, more against the weather than against the other team. Both teams had trouble working it upwind but UW was able to get an upwinder and won the game by 3 in the end. The final between Team Coyne and Element was not played because of weather and driving time for some people and Team Coyne was crowned the club champion and UW the college champion (UW had lost to Team Coyne the day before 13-6, after remarkably going up 2-0, so this seemed fair).

Even in the bad weather, many teams were still playing lots of man-to-man defense, perhaps because it is still so early in the season. Some teams (Oregon and Western particularly) showed 4-person cups and many teams are bringing a flat stack as their primary man-to-man offense. Juniors players Chris Norton and Shannon O'Malley are huge pickups for Oregon and UW, respectively. Young returners like Alyssa Weatherford (Western) and Claire Suver (UW) came up particularly big (and improved) in the strong winds.