The Height of the Empire...
The Golden Age (1980-1990)
 

The Early Years (1971-1979) The Golden Age (1980-1990) The Youth Movement (1991-1996) The Phoenix Rising (1997-present)

Fall 1980 Qualifiy for the regionals for the first time. at this time, regionals was 8 teams, 2 from each section. in our section, it was boston aerodisc (spiritual predessesor to rude boys/titannic/death or glory) featuring nick donohue (i think he was there by then. i don't think moons was, yet). they lost in the finals of nationals eventually. we had to play bu in the game to go on wednesday night the week before regionals. Fall 1983 - First college easterns ? predecessor to college nationals, not the invitational in wilmington. lost to umass in the semis by 1. umass featured jeremy, ek, barney, hoko, buzz ellsworth, dube, etc etc. that qualified us for the real easterns. there, we lost to princeton by a few, lost to michigan by 1, lost to the hostages (perennial open nationals) by 1, and beat eric simon's team. (yes! yes! yes! yes! it was fucking GREAT (in retrospect, of course. at the time, we just wanted to kill sombody because we were about 4 goals away from going undefeated and winning the pool) Fall 1984 1st college nationals. we qualify by beating jeffie's weslyan team in the game to go. we then go winless and tie for 9th at nationals. Fall 1985 we get croaked by uvm at regionals. Justin 'handball' Seto recruits Brett 'smooth' Ruth, Jeff Feldman, and Joel Shapiro to start up the team decimated by graduation Paul 'eric' Sackley, Rick Pretzfelder, Mike 'Tina' Turner, Dave 'Bert' Bertonazzi, Craig 'the calm one' Slater, and others. Fall 1986 Jeff 'no subs ever' Brown arrives at Tufts after choosing the school because of its strong ultimate background. Justin happy to meet a freshman with a forehand, will later regret the forehand. Jeff meets Justin "open wide" Seto, Brett "smooth" Ruth, Joel Shapiro and Jeff Feldman at the first practice. Finds out that they are pretty much the entire team. Despite his roommate's soon-to-be consumed ridicule, Mike Jaffe joins the team because "he's a hippy and Ultimate is a hippy sport".Gary 'donut' Lippman claims "ultimate is lame" after seeing his roomate Mike 'this is a hippie sport' Jaffe playing with the team. Spring 1987 After months of begging, Jeff's hall mates from Bush, Damon Spitz and Brian Dunn, agree to play. 8 people travel to Dartmouth and lose every game. Lots of free styling in front of Bush and Mac-lines outside McPhie. Fall 1987 - Big recruiting effort among friends and freshmen creates a strong and motivated core. Craig 'the calm one' Slater's brother Cliff 'the ghostwriter' Slater arrives with great fanfare. Thomas 'the monster' Cole provides the proper Californian perspective. Gary "I didn't get cut from the soccer team'' Lippman eats his words, along most other things, and joins the team. Team travels to Ultimate Affair and goes winless. It's a major character building experience. All through that fall the hapless E-Men become addicted to the sport. Out of the consolation rounds early, the E-Men stay to watch the final rounds, driving onto fields in pouring rain. Spring 1988- In the spring, the e-men begin their tradition of traveling south for spring break. The Great Rent-A-Car Wars (stink bomb=victory) and the Disney Escape are considered the early signs of the team's potential. On that trip: the E-men watch Stanford win the Miami tourney and realize just how good college ultimate can be. They also witness "the horns" for the first time. Back in Medford, the E-men continued to play everyday on the Carmichael quad. At night, mostly midnight, they improve their throws by putting themselves through the psychological treachery of golf. The hothead leadership of the team rarely finished the course, opting for a short walk home instead of facing the challenging Ballou hole. (Speaking of hot heads, cuts were performed in not the most conventional of ways. See The James Affair.) The sectional results that spring ('88) came as quite a surprise to the e-men. When asked to explain these results, Mike Jaffe simply proclaimed: "Dude." Victories over highly touted BC and MIT helped the E-men to an undefeated tournament and the section's number one ranking. At regionals though, that number one ranking didn't mean a hell of a lot. The E-men were out of their element. Given a choice of pools, the naive E-men chose naively. Their only criterion for choosing was taking the pool with only 2 other teams in it instead of 3. Strategist Damon was overheard saying, "I've heard UMass is pretty good but who's Cornell? I mean look at that army of red posers doing laps." In their first game, the E-Men proceeded to get crushed by Cornell. But in their second game they almost beat UMass. They fell by 2. And that was it. Season over. (Cornell went on to beat UMass in that last pool game. But the next day, at the end of the tourney, it was UMass who went on to Nationals, not Cornell.) Fall 1988- The E-men returned in the fall of 1988 with passion and devotion; the juniors unanimously turned their backs on a semester abroad. And Alec "small dog" Ewald could be seen sticking his head out of Carmichael wondering what the hell this new sport was all about. Justin designs X-Men Like E-Man Disc with flying elephant in the center and 7 Dancing Elephants around the outside. No Cliff elephant particularly admired. At the Ultimate Affair, the E-men opted for division II. They wanted to do some winning (remembrances of last year served as motivation). And win is what they did. And then came the finals where Cornell reared its ugly head. Full of arrogance, Cornell had opted for division I. They fared poorly. But since they were a college team they somehow managed to get dropped down to division II for the finals. It's as if they wanted to steal the E-Men's trophy. But, in a game full of travels but no travel calls, the E-men outplayed and beat the evil buds. First true appearance of the "look-away" hammer. Fittingly, a Rossi to McAlary look-away hammer won the game. Pumpkins were distributed liberally. In general, the team rocks on the strength of the Crack Monkey Damon-Jeff-Damon-Huck to Brett or Brian strategy of offense. In fact, the team is not sure how they do what they do, but fortunately, they do it well. Possibly the key to the team's success at this point is depth. Matching up with all the teams talent just proves too tough for most average Club teams and almost all inexperienced college teams. The team ranks are filled out stalwarts Rich "Of sound Mind" Robinson, Patrick "Phi Slamma Jamma" McAlary, Mark "HammerHead" Rossi and a cast of others. The E-men, playing each game better than their last, went on to win the northeast division II regional with only a partial squad. Spring 1989 - That spring, the E-Men, with flights on Eastern Airlines, drove south for spring break. Epcot didn't hold a candle to Disney World. That spring saw the addition of Rich "shorts and gloves" Berger to the team. It was a little like a fascist takeover except for the fact that if you did something good during practice you'd get a cookie. Berger brought some nice philosophies to the team and a more conservative approach to the game. That spring the E-Men only lost three games: once to Cornell (in their only match), once to Columbia (though they beat Columbia twice), and once to Penn (out of region). That spring was also the first time anyone in the Ultimate community had heard a call contested with the phrase: "This is my chest, these are my feet I was IN" (B. Smooth, 1989). Because of a three-way tie going into regionals, the intelligent and strong-willed regional coordinator ranked the E-Men number one. Columbia was two and Cornell was a bitter, and whiny, three. Some on Cornell remain bitter today. After winning all their games on Saturday the E-Men played UVM in the quarters on Sunday. UVM was late in arriving and Rich "tight shorts" Berger was losing circulation to his brain. And somehow UVM beat the E-Men by a couple. Their thirty-year-old bruiser was somehow outjumping everybody. It was an embarrassing loss for the E-Men but it was double elimination tournament. The E-Men then played MIT. Corky scared Alec but that was about it. Easy victory. Then we went over to play Cornell. Here it was, the head to head match-up to prove who should have been ranked where. And more importantly, who would be going home. But it wasn't even a contest. We took the half 8-2 and never looked back. We were now in the backdoor game to go. UVM again. UVM was pretty cocky, especially when they went up 2-0 on us. But then we took the half 8-2 and again, never looked back. Until Mus streaked. Then all heads turned. At nationals we played some pretty good games but only won one, against Kansas. The crucial turnover in our first game against the eventual champion Condors came at 14-12 Condors. Damon "it slipped" Spitz had it near the goal line and threw a cross-field pass out of bounds. Sorry Damon. The crucial turnover in the second game against Penn came when the score was tied, next point wins. Brian "how's my hair" Dunn caught a huck and then dumped it to no one. The third game against Columbia was horrible. We were demoralized and didn't have any heart. And Mus sprained his ankle bad. The next day saw us compete heartily against a mean and nasty Texas team. This game's problem was Rich "these guys are mean" Berger. Handling in the zone, he dropped at least three easy dumps. I think the Texans got to him by calling him a fag or something. And then, finally, came Kansas. Whippee! Then came the finals (Stamford vs. Santa Barbara) where we somehow managed to be more than just spectators. Mike "Fungus" Jaffe helped us focus on and really enjoy the game. Marc "Hammerhead" Rossi might have had too much to eat as he, foaming at the mouth, warned us with infinite wisdom not to "sip the fat." Fall 1989 The next fall nothing really happened. We were just waiting for the all-important spring. (Probably because one of the top players was healing a broken collarbone). New recruits who would someday prove to be important to the team included Terry Helwig and Jason Salgo. Spring 1990 The E-Men once again went south for spring break. But the Miami tourney did not go as well as they would have hoped. With one-handed, upwind, goal line drops, they were back to losing in the consolation games. Against a team that called itself Bad. But all that changed when the E-Men arrived at the first annual College Easterns in Wilmington, North Carolina. After a "smooth" day at the beach, they hit the tournament with not many grand expectations. Especially after an ugly first game victory against a nobody team. But then the E-Men cruised in the pool, absolutely crushing SUNY-Purchase in the last game of the day. On Sunday everybody at the tournament thought that Wilmington was going to meet ECU in the finals. But the E-Men had something to say about that. After beating an MIT team with Corky, Tross, Coop and their grad school buddies, the E-Men went on to beat UNC-Wilmington in the semis by more than five goals. And then, in the finals, after falling down 4-1, they stormed back and handily defeated ECU to win the trophy. Big talk of the E-Men at nationals abounded. They even had groupies lead by Davis "the commentating monk" Davis. We won 100 discs - the "by all means" disc is born. But did this tourney get to the E-Men's heads? Back in the northeast, many E-Men took the next week off. They understandably needed to nurse their injuries. So only a small squad went to play the tourney at Wesleyan. They played well but lost to the dobbins' coached purchase team in the semis. In the two other tournaments that fall, the E-Men again lost to Purchase, once in the finals and once more in a muddy quarters at Purchase (the E-Men had lost to Harvard in pool play?). That poor showing in the mud was but only a foreshadowing of what was to come. At regionals, Purchase was ranked first, the E-Men were second and Harvard was third. Those were the teams expected to go on to nationals. Everything went fine on Saturday. We met SUNY Albany on Sunday morning, sans Jeff "remain calm" Brown - out with a shoulder injury from the previous day. With the scored tied at 12, Jeff "I'm fine" Brown entered the game on D, got a diving block on the 2nd throw, and the E-Men went on to score the next 3 to win 15-12. Members of the SUNY Albany team still tear at the thought of that day. Really, they do. And then we faced Cornell in the game to go. Cornell had not traveled to tournaments that spring so we did not know what to expect. The fields were very muddy but we were confident knowing that we had more players and a deeper squad. But that didn't mean much because they had John "the marathon man" Hilas, apparently a 9th year senior. We started out slowly going down 4-1 and never really got our footing until the second half. We battled valiantly but never did manage to overcome the early deficit. We were on a great run when we got yet another block. It was a point block in the zone (Jeff Brown). But it was caught. A shoe string layout catch by Blondie. And with that some of our psyche and intensity deflated. But even having lost to Cornell we were still in the hunt. Except for the fact that Purchase had also unexpectedly lost a game and it was them that we had to face next. We went up early. They played zone and crushed us. We forgot the zone and 1 on cribber. He could throw farther than us in the wind. Two losses in a double elim tourney = sucks. Not making nationals was a crushing blow to the E-Men that year. And to make matters worse they had to drive incredibly slowly on the way back to Boston because of some kind of broken down vehicle.

Next Section:  The Youth Movement (1991-1996) The E-Men party till they drop, building a reputation both on and off the field for a never-say-die attitude Previous Section:  The Early Years (1971-1979) Tufts Ultimate comes to life and endures childhood in the swingin' seventies