On Sunday April 14, the Lamar ultimate frisbee team concluded their season placing fourth out of 12 teams at the South Texas D-1 College Men’s tournament in Austin.
Originally seated tenth for pool play, Lamar dominated the first three games of the tournament on Saturday. Battling weather delays and mph winds, Lamar came out with three wins against University of Texas San Antonio (9-7), University of Texas El Paso (7-2), and University of Texas B- team (9-3).
“UTSA was a strong opponent to compete against on day one but the high winds and strong defense tipped the scales in our favor,” League City junior, Shalin Patel said.
Lamar used the high wind speeds to their advantage and used a high-pressure “cup” defense to starve the other teams of any ability to make deep passes to score and focused more on forcing a large quantity of short throws. This tactic is used to ensure that more throws means more chances forces drops and defensive turnovers.
“The wind was close to mph and a frisbee can’t be thrown more than five feet in those conditions without it flying away, but we somehow managed to come out with a win,” Patel said.
What seemed an endless game of offensive turnovers between UTB and Lamar, a constant back and forth battle against the wind made for an almost comedic game to witness. The raging winds caused massive light poles to sway at the UT athletic complex, whisking frisbees away over the fence or simply forcing throws straight into the ground. This normally fast paced back and forth game struggled on slowly for every point.
“On Sunday we started out 4 - 1 in our bracket which put us up against some incredibly tough schools that are much bigger than Lamar,” Bridge City senior and club president, Daniel Oliphint said.
Sunday was a very different story compared to Saturday. Fairer weather and an opening “bagelling” win — where the opponent doesn’t score, against the University of Houston (11-0) gave Lamar hope to move on to regionals, but a much tougher set of matchups proved otherwise. Lamar suffered their first loss to Texas A&M (2-11), a loss to Texas State (3-11), a much-needed win against University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley (11-1) and the final bagelling loss of the season against Texas A&M again (0-11).
“It was a long day and Lamar fought hard against these teams, but we came up short and were one spot away from advancing to regionals,” Oliphint said.
Lamar’s strong defense and quick offense made incredibly quick work on Saturday and partially Sunday, however Texas A&M and Texas State were two entirely different monsters. The lack of high wind speeds forced Lamar to change defensive tactics, but Texas A&M and Texas State’s superior offenses blew through Lamar’s defenses, leaving Lamar one spot shy of advancing.
For more information about the ultimate frisbee team email lamarultimate11@gmail.com.