Glory Days

Day 1
The week building up to glory days offered some terrible practice conditions. Wednesday was possibly the worst day of the year; 50 degrees, 30 mph winds, and freezing rain. Thursday was only slightly better, 55 degrees and 20 mph winds. Even though the weather was less than ideal we still had pretty decent numbers and looked to improve on what I believe was our best tournament showing ever, No Wisco. A few vets and myself spent a lot of time discussing some of our weaknesses from the previous weekend and we wanted to work on these for Glory Days. These weaknesses included getting the disc off the line with dump swings, cutter motion from the line, and improving defense. With Zach running practice on Wednesday and Mike on Thursday we believed we were set for another strong tournament.
Pool Play- We entered Saturday as the top seed in our pool of four. Our first game was against Xavier University, a team we had never played before or so I believe. In the beginning of the game we came out flat. Fortunately for us we had better depth and high end talent to quickly build a small lead and maintain it throughout to win 13-9. Our next opponent was Southern Indiana, a team we had seen and played tough at our home tournament only a year before. It became quickly obvious that we were a better team. We emphasized tight man defense while spreading around the disc and eventually winning 13-6. The last pool play game came against Hope College, another team we had played tough in previous games. With only 9 guys on their roster Hope looked exhausted early and we took full advantage of this going up and early. We continued the run and gun style offense and took the game 13-4 to win the pool. One more test, a crossover game, stood before us before reaching the championship bracket. In the crossover against Ohio Wesleyan we wanted to win and win big. We had talked about playing down to our opponent’s level in many different instances and wanted to execute our game plan for the full game. Taking half 7-1 and eventually winning 13-2 showed that we are capable of winning large while getting contributions from a ton of players.
While we went undefeated on day 1 everyone was well aware that we saw very little competition. Our scores showed almost complete domination but from an internal stand point our play was far from flawless. Cutters had double and sometimes even triple cuts. Cuts were set up weakly or not even set up at all. Handlers were content with the disc on the line and hucking on stall 7 or 8. On defense many in-cuts were uncontested. Marks were loose and constantly broken. While it is impossible to have perfection, against the competition we faced, near perfection could have been demonstrated. Games like these are when we can work on areas of the game which need work. We all know that we can huck the disc consistently and score against lower caliber teams. Instead, work on swinging the disc from sideline to sideline, setting up hard in cuts with good deep fakes, and being in an athletic stance on the mark. If we want to be a top tier team, games against lower level teams need to be times to sharpen up weaknesses in our game.


Day 2
After our day 1 success we were awarded a day 2 first round bye, our first ever. We were matched up against a very talented Indiana team. Reaper came out with some fire and went up 3-1. Unforunately this is where the flame seemed to die down. Our sidelines started lacking, as well as our fundamentals such as holding a force and denying unders. Indiana went on a 7-2 run that thoroughly demoralized our team and was quite a reality check. It was gut check time. We fought hard the rest of the game with our sidelines being active, most of the time. The difference of points was too much to overcome though and Indiana beat us 13-10 as hard cap came on. Following a tough defeat that eliminated us from a chance at 1st place we knew it was still no time to check out and be lackadaisical: 5th place sounded better than 8th. The game ahead of us was against Purdue X, who we knew should be a solid team from past experiences. We came out with some fire, presumably from our loss to Indiana and jumped out to a 5-0 lead and continued to annihilate them 15-6. The 5th place game was against St. Louis University. They had wanted to play a shortened game because of their upcoming travel home and so a game to 9 was agreed upon. We had very loose lines and everyone had plenty of playing time. This was a good game to see what our younger guys were capable of and allow them to build: and build they did. Josh Kluessendorf, a 2nd year player, threw a flick for a touchdown and showed his defensive ferocity with his mark. Nick Allen, a rookie, also showed some good work by catching two scores and hustling everywhere on the field.

All in all, Reaper Ultimate went 6-1 and took 5th place out of 48. We had some flashes of brilliance and of folly. Fundamentals such as holding a force and shutting down unders definitely need improvement. Handler motion is another thing that showed improvement from weeks past but can always get better. Most importantly, playing within ourselves as well as never letting down on fundamentals will make us a force to be reckoned with not just by teams equal to us, but teams that are more highly touted. We have the talent to be a team who can play deep into day 2 of tournaments and make some noise. It all will come down to the work we put into this winter. We have a long winter ahead of us. It will be up to us what kind of team we want to be. What are you good at? What can you improve upon? How are you going to be able to contribute to our spring season? Put your game underneath a microscope, don’t be content.

Mike & Steve