USC Men's Ultimate

It turned out to be a great weekend for Ultimate in San Diego as the Ghettobirds played the last tournament of the fall at UCSD.

We played our first game against Arizona-B at the bright and early time of 8am, and we got off to a blistering start. We took the first 4 points, which were highlighted by a sick Callahan from Kyle. As an Arizona player dumped the disc in his own endzone, Kyle came storming in from out of nowhere to catch it centimeters off the ground for the score! Brian Ball also had a nice deep forehand to Jas for a score. However, Arizona came back and we held a slim 6-5 lead at half. But after halftime, we came out with the energy we displayed in the first few points and won handily 11-7. It was the first time in a while that the Ghettobirds had won the first game of the day!

Yet, we seemed to have a little bit of a celebration hangover when we played Redlands in our next game. Redlands is a team that has given us trouble in the past, but it is also a team that we should beat everytime. We knew that they would throw it into unimaginable places, so we would have to run hard and stick with our guys. Their main player, Snake, made some great plays early with throws and deep runs. We quickly found ourselves in a 6-3 hole at halftime. We knew we were better than these guys so after halftime, we came out fired up and took it to them. The line of Chandler (Mutombo), Grant, Kenny, Kyle, Jas, Ginger and Alan got some great D’s and closed the gap to 6-5 before Redlands scored on a fluke throw to make it 7-5. We hung tough for the remainder of the game, and came as close as 11-10 but we spotted Redlands one too many points at the beginning of the match and lost 12-10.

Our next match was against a familiar foe in UCLA. We played their Y team which consisted of one of our former players in Steamy Dan Oettinger. It was a tightly contested affair the entire way. Grant and Dan had a solid one-on-one matchup going throughout the entire match, but UCLA was able to pull out the win 11-7.

After that, we got a nice 3 hour break in which we used to get some lunch and watch the Hellions (the USC Women’s team) play. They did well going 4-0 in their first day which was terrific. They looked good and should be a national force to be reckoned with this year.

We came back rested and ready to go against UCSD-P. Again, they got out to a quick lead but we battled back after halftime. The wind had picked up a little, so they put a zone on us and we could not figure out the 4-person cup that they were running. However, after a few turnovers, we were able to swing the disc back and forth and break through the zone. We won the 2nd half 6-5, but ultimately lost the match 1o-7 to the team that ended up winning our pool.

Our last game of the day was against Irvine Nightlife- a team we beat 2 weeks ago. As a theme for the day, we gave them some early points and battled back. Kenny had one of the sweetest catches of the weekend as he laid out full extension for a disc thrown by Kyle into the end zone. Once we come out with the necessary focus, we will be great. But that just takes experience. We were in most of the points, getting it close to the end zone, but turned it over too many times. We demonstrated that we could play with all of these teams which was a very positive thing to take out of the day. We fixed our mistakes and although we lost 11-5 to Irvine, we played better than the score indicated.

Afterwards, we continued a team tradition by going to Kristy’s MVP Sports Bar about 10 minutes from the La Jolla fields. We always love when Kristy, the old, Asian lady who owns the bar, comes out and paddles her patrons. It’s an experience unrivaled anywhere, and plus we got to watch some good college football games. We all went to bed with the great feeling knowing that we didn’t have a game the next day until 12:30. What a rarity.