IU-Y Lights Up Woodlawn

IU-Y 10 - IU-X 12

Our first game of the tournament was the classic IU-X vs IU-Y. My team, IU-X, paired a lot of talented rookies with a plethora of rock-solid vets. Aidan’s team, IU-Y, took on an underdog mentality coming into the tournament and featured a lot of D-Line vets and sizeable rookies. The game started off with a string of holds, so I’d like to give some shoutouts to players who played well.

Rookies Evan “Bananas” Bananis and Evan Hauser helped facilitate the offense for Y, grinding unders and scoring on the front cone at will. Junior Danny “Hung” Messe has typically played D-Line for the Mama?s but unleashed multiple flick hucks scores in the first half for X. IU-Y got (what I believe to be) the only break of the first half, leading 7-5 at the break. In the second half, veterans Aidan Ball and “Bambi” Vetne really took over for X. They ran out of their throws and got the disc back more times than not. Additionally, rookies Colin “Cigs” Dybdahl and Ben Rimington impressed me a lot. They both boast a 6’+ frame, showcase excellent timing and technique on under cuts, and remain calm yet confident with the disc. The rest of their squad put mine under intense pressure and converted after Ds. Rattling off multiple breaks, X took control of the game and won 12-10.

IU-Y 13 - Cincinnati-X 11

This game was my favorite of the tournament. My team was energized coming off the bye and came to play. We started the game off on defense but applied pressure through tight layouts and went up 2-0. Energy dipped into half, and I believe we were down 2 or 3 points. We came out gunning again in the second half and broke a few times to tie it up at 8s or 9s. Then a string of holds tied the game at 11s. Clearing deep from the force side rail, rookie Winston Yu-Hang Wang turned back towards the disc and found it floating over his teammates raised hands. He ran it down, clap caught it at the waist and immediately launched a backhand to graduate Jack “Jimbo” Tyndall for a score. The whole sideline cleared as Winston, on his first ever day of organized frisbee, had just secured a crucial hold for us against our biggest Corn Cup rivals. Fired up after the score, our defense got a D and marched the disc into the redzone. With the stall rising, rookie Shai Jahanbini threw up a floaty flick to the back corner, caught by junior Pulkit “Trip” Tripathi. Stall was called, and the disc eventually went back to Shai.  After it was tapped back in, Shai threw the disc to the same spot, and Trip made the same catch. Ball game. A second half comeback against Cincy-X meant we controlled our own destiny going into Sunday.

IU-Y 13 - Ball State 5

This game was like any other against Ball State. We got up by a few breaks early and controlled the game throughout. We incorporated our rookies into bigger roles and played our own game, eventually taking a 13-5 win.

IU-Y 12 - Cincinnati-Y 13

Although we knew this game would be much more competitive than the Ball State game, we still tried to give our rookies a lot of reps against good competition. I don’t remember the exact script of the game, but it was very close and intense all the way through. A few things didn’t go our way, and we eventually lost on UP.

Overall, hosting a tournament in Bloomington was a ton of fun. We had a huge pool of rookies this year, enabling us to form 3 rosters with 50+ total players. I was proud to see the jumps that returners have made, both in performance on the field and leadership off the field. Every rookie improved a lot over the weekend, absorbing information on the sideline and applying it on the field. The Calamity Janes were also able to form a sizeable roster and host a one-day tournament including a handful of competitive teams.

IU-Z Holdin' it Down

Gravy and I coached our third IU corn cup team IU-Z. We started our tournament on Saturday at our off campus field site playing Ball State, Rose Hulman, Center Grove, and Cincinnati-Y. Our team’s O line was centered around me, CJ (our absurdly fast junior cutter), and Chris (a fellow senior handler). Our D line was quarterbacked by Cougar (junior D line handler), and Sam Greenfield (Junior D line Cutter). We switched out the remaining players from line to line as both part of our tryout process for the A team and also as a chance for those players to get experience on both O and D. We comfortably won our first three games, getting plenty of breaks and relying on our insanely complicated and hard to predict offensive strategy (Rodman hucks it to CJ on the first throw.) If that isn’t a bit of foreshadowing for the rest of the season I’m not sure what is. It’s kind of hard to resist hucking it when you have someone who is twice as fast as everyone else on the field. On the defensive side, Sam especially stood out with his ability to get open and move the disc. 

Our 4th and last game of Saturday was against Cincy-Y who had a pretty similar mix to us of veterans and rookies. We knew going into it that Cincy was going to be the hardest match and because of that we got off to a blistering start taking half 7-2. Sadly, after a bit of rain and some loss of focus and intensity we somehow managed to get broken about 6 times in a row and lose the lead. We ended up losing to Cincy on Universe. The Cincy game did however bring us the first rookie that I want to highlight in David (Nickname Goliath pending…) David is a Bloomington native with a track background. He came out on Saturday with some great D, a ton of run through blocks, and some crazy grabs throughout the day. Expect to see him on some D lines this year and getting big in the deep space.

After going 3-1 on Saturday we started Sunday with a Cincy revenge game of sorts playing their other team that had their captain and Alleycats O-Line player Jake Wahl. This time we decided not to choke away our half time lead and took the game convincingly with a 13-9 win. It’s now that I want to highlight the biggest revelation of the weekend, our absurdly talented, mama?s nepo baby Drew Galle. If you don’t recognize that name, Drew is the younger brother of our late, best iso cutter in the world, Jack Galle. Jack just qualified for club nationals this past weekend with the mixed team Space Force after playing a standout US Open and Pro Champs with Machine. As coach Connor Pretty puts it, Drew is basically just a sophomore year Jack. If you get them mixed up I wouldn’t blame you. Anyways, Drew scored 7 goals in the second Cincy game. If that doesn’t tell you what you need to know I’m not sure what will. Let’s just say y’all will be hearing a lot more about Drew in the months and years to come.

Our last game of the weekend was against IU-X, and to be completely honest it was both a bit of a throwaway and somehow the most competitive game of the weekend. Both of our teams were really struggling for numbers so Jack who was in town on Sunday cleated up in Bambi’s(5th year and centerpiece of our team’s culture) place. Our team also lost CJ, so it was definitely a bit of a challenge. Jack decided to go older brother mode on Drew and shut him out of the game for the most part. The game ended up going to Universe where IU-X won. I was really proud of some of the rookies including Colin on IU-X who came down to guard me and is certainly going to be a great defender in the future.

Overall I was really happy with how the team did and how we improved as the weekend went on. Going 4-2 isn’t bad at all for a xyz tournament, especially when those two losses were on UP.