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From
the ashes...
The
Phoenix Rising (1997-Present)
| The
Early Years (1971-1979)
The Golden Age (1980-1990) The Youth Movement (1991-1996) The Phoenix Rising (1997-present) Articles from the Tufts Daily: March 9, 2001: "Men's ultimate team flies to 7-0 start" March 30, 2001: "Men's frisbee team scores Spring Break success" |
Fall 1996:
Aaron, Nils, Dylan and Stampy join the E-men. Tufts wins the Snowball Classic. In the second round game against Rutgers, Mark bobbles the pull but keeps from committing an embarrassing goal-line turnover by instead making an embarrassing layout catch of the pull. The E-men go 5-0, defeating Penn State 8-5 in the finals. Preparing for sectionals, Motorboat custom-designs a defense for Tufts' opening round opponent, DoG. While the GoD defense does not enable the E-men to win, it does help them score an impressive 7 points against the two-time defending national champions. In Tufts' lone win of the day, Motorboat fakes a backhand huck, waits for his defender to cover his backhand, THEN hucks a backhand directly into his defender. Motorboat recovers the disc by laying out to catch it. The E-men cruise to the finals of the 3rd annual Beanpot tournament. Along the way, Young Lee pulls his hamstring. Matching up against Harvard in the finals, the E-men take a 13-11 lead. Following a controversial pick call, they surrender 5 of 6 points and the Beanpot championship (again). The E-men return to Purple Valley. Their first invitation in years is mostly due to Mark’s foresight in paying off the the tournament director the year before. E-men alums playing for Twisted Youth lose in the finals of the Halloween tournament. The E-men get more bad news when University police take note of students drinking from a keg of beer on a field they were not authorized to use, requiring Mark to draft a formal letter of apology to the athletic department to keep from having future field privileges revoked. Spring 1997:
While leaving the Tufts campus for spring break in Florida, Boku yells "Sucka!" thru the car window at promising freshman prospect Ash Weaver, who is not joining the team on the trip. Ash does not attend another ultimate practice; he is last reported to have joined the track team. The E-men open their outdoor season in Miami without Motorboat, who spends the week in Somerville writing his thesis. Boku pulls his groin. The E-men capture the college division by beating Duke (coached by Dan Ackerstein), the only other college team to participate in the tournament. Spring break in Clearwater proves a much better location than Daytona, if for no other reason then because the sand is softer than cement. At Terminus, the E-men beat Columbia in their only regional game. Claudius and Yanoush prepare a post-game cheer that helps thaw chilly relations between the teams. The E-men send their B-team to Rutgers because most of their starters decide at the last minute that they are unable to go away for the weekend. The worst excuse is offered by Mike Bender, who insists that he cannot play on Easter Sunday. Shecky reminds him that he is Jewish. Young Lee announces that he would like to be called "Jacey" because he thinks "Young Lee" doesn’t sound American. Tufts opens at the Yale Cup with wins over Yale B, Dartmouth, and Williams. Jacey sprains his right ankle. Boku recovers from his nagging groin injury; his stat sheet for the day would include one layout block, one throwaway, and -- on his second point -- a re-aggravation of his groin pull that would keep him out the remainder of the year. Mike Bender's defense and Seth Mann's uncanny ability to get open keep the E-men in their game with Cornell, but Tufts narrowly loses. Tufts loses less narrowly to Yale in the team's only other regional defeat of the regular season. An April Fool's Day blizzard forces the cancellation of Claudius's tournament intended to benefit Project Soup. The collector’s item "Push out the Jive" shirts remain very popular. Tufts is seeded #3 at sectionals and coasts to the semi-finals against Brown. The E-Men score the first 4 points before Brown's offense awakens. Tufts' patient zone defense forces a Brown turnover; Motorboat immediately picks up the disc and turns it over, angering an exhausted cup of Boo, Mark, and especially Claudius. Against Brown's zone defense, Pere dumps the disc. His decision is roundly questioned both because he has dumped it 20 yards into the end zone and because no one was there to catch his throw. Motorboat miraculously completes an ill-advised cross-field 40 yard hammer to Tuna. Harvard and Tufts trade points in the finals. Sven makes a stylish goal-line layout block but then drops the next disc thrown to him. Harvard's Terry backpedals and jumps for a floating disc; Tuna makes a play on the disc and flattens him with an elbow to the head, a moment which is captured beautifully on video and replayed countless times. Terry gets to his feet and remarks that he is using every ounce of his willpower to keep from punching Tuna. Mark subs out on what he doesn't realize is game point after one of his trademark layout/face-plants. Harvard wins 15-13. Evidently, Claudius and certain other short-haired members of the E-Men decide that each member of the team should shave his head if they make it to Nationals. Mark is not informed of the decision. Tufts is seeded fifth coming into regionals. Day 1 features lots of rain and an ugly win over Rochester, followed by an ugly loss to Yale. Day 2 of regionals opens with victories over SUNY Albany and UVM. Tufts leads Harvard in the game-to-go-to-the-game-to-go-to-nationals much of the way, but allows Harvard to tie the score at 8. With a hard cap at 9, Harvard commits a quick goal-line turnover, allowing Claudius and Motorboat to connect for the game-winner. The game-to-go-to-nationals is against Yale, who has already defeated Tufts twice that spring. The E-men take a 1-0 lead but suffocate under Yale's man-to-man and lose the half 8-4. Seth Mann is wide open 20 yards in front of Motorboat, who instead throws the disc to where he felt Seth should have been (the end zone). Tufts closes the gap to 8-6, but runs out of gas and loses the final spot for nationals. Fall 1997:
Spring 1998:
Summer 1998: E-Men send 10 people to Albany but a broken hand by Yanoush and stitches for Ritalin leave them low on numbers and they don't win a game. Fall 1998:
Spring 1999:
Sectionals proves the pinnacle of the season, as Tufts finally wins against teams they are supposed to beat like MIT, full of grad students but not full of points. Also, BC dies much easier this time, setting up the epic final against Harvard. After the bye, and a magnificent pizza heist from Dewick by the freshman, the game is on. Harvard's hated minions, including numerous last-year students whose college careers are slowly winding down without the benefit of having attended nationals, are ready to overlook the upstart E-Men. The Dukes of Harvard fight their way to an 8-6 halftime lead. But it is not to be. Psycho's amazing sideways layout, forever captured in photographic form for Elephant Men posterity (if someone had saved it...), starts an amazing comeback. Jaw-dropping d's from freshman phenoms Neil "Pubes" "White Trash" "Pinkhat" "Pallaprick" Pallaver and Junior, as well as great offensive play from Stampey, Roofies, Dylan, and Funboy, energize the team like a powdery mountain of sweet, sweet cocaine. The second half is punctuated by the jubilant bleets of Alex Bush's bagpipes, and Tufts finishes the game with an astounding 9-2 run, for a 15-10 win filled with everything but spirit. Oh well, you can't have everything. Especially if you're Harvard. Harvard beats us later at regionals, but the damage is done...Harvard's low seed ensures them of a long path through regionals, which leads to their running out of steam in the game to go, a loss that is perhaps facilitated by extensively organized heckling on the part of the E-Men. Tufts' regionals are played consistently, with wins over BC, MIT, and Wesleyan; and a close loss to Harvard. The second day, from near the bottom of the losers bracket, proves too hard a fight for a team that, while athletic, is in no way deep, with only about 10 guys allowed on the field. Tufts loses to Williams 15-9 after taking half 8-6 in the game to go to the game to go to the game to go, but stays until the end to cheer on whomever's team Tom Bok isn't playing with. And we vow to be in that game the next year. Fall 1999
Also returning is a core of seasoned veterans: senior twins-separated-at-birth Stampey and Roofies, Funboy, VaG, and others, as well as newcomer and Mountain Club presidente Sam Oberter. The E-Men start the season with a close win at sectionals over eventual national champs Brown (lacking two Callahan winners), and state total dominance of the mid-atlantic region with a win over Haverford at Rutgers after killing all opponents. They reach the finals at Brown with resounding wins over Cornell, Dartmouth, and Williams; to lose to Brown in a game where our lack of true experienced depth is the only thing between us and another upset. The Curse of Purple Valley remains, with losses to national powerhouses like Amherst, but the party is an unmistakable Tufts' victory, with the legendary starting duo of Stampey and Roofies finishing most boatraces before they start. Our Beanpot record is 8-0 until the finals of the tournament, where we lose in a poor effort against Harvard with a beleaguered Coach Dick making a cameo appearance. Spring 2000
Spring break and the Stanford Invite also prove to be successful, at least as a learning experience. Tough games are lost to national powerhouses like Cornell, Carleton, ECU, and UNC-Wilmington, but the best thing to come of Spring Break is the deepening of Tufts' lines. Eric "Egon" Hersh, Eeeean, sWillner, and Wench all bring their games to new levels, leaving Tufts' 6 deep at every position and able to last through long tournaments. Yale Cup, as Walter says, was "Somewhat cathartic..." Looking back, most of the E-Men still don't know what to make of that weekend. It is a success from some views, as we came within 3 one-point games--with Rice, Yale, and Middlebury's genetically-enhanced goons--of winning our pool and making it far into the playoffs, but generally bad in that we don't make it out of the first round of playoffs. The fact that it is snowing an inch an hour on April 2 doesn't seem anything less than fitting, and the ride home is a long one. The team could have gone two ways. Anyone with a historical understanding of Tufts' ultimate would expect a late-season collapse at this point, but instead it is like the team was on the brink, like they've been brought down from the peak so many times that the orgasmic release is nothing short of spectacular. To make a long story short, Tufts goes on to win 17 of its next 19 games. To tell the long story, Tufts rolls through Layout Pigout at Haverford, finally passing perennial kidney stone Cornell 13-10 in semis and faltering only against the Middlebury and its four 6' 5" mutants. Sectionals is a roll, with no team scoring more than 7 on Tufts, and the best contest probably given in the first half of the E-Men/B-Men quarterfinal, where the halftime score is 7-4 before a final of 13-4, and where a number of freshmen had the games of their short careers. In regionals, we show all the marks of a good team, beating URI and Harvard quickly enough to walk to adjacent fields and watch the second half of the games of our next opponents. The Wesleyan game is the exception. Wes takes half, 8-7, after a first half full of spectacular layouts and a an athletic deep assault that had every E-Man on the field dying. The game is close throughout, with some heated calls near the end, including a possible revision of the experimental rules by Stampey. This game Tufts finally has the last 3-point run after Wes brings it to 12's, but the game is one that could've gone both ways. It is really only the incredible heart of players like Stampey, Funboy, Mannius, and Dylan playing Crack Monkey at 12-12 and punching it in on marathon points that decides the game. We are all excited for the finals against Brown the next morning. In retrospect it's kind of like your dog wagging its tail when you're going to the vet to have it put down. Brown is a full strength superteam, better than they would be at nationals, with all their best players healthy. We stay with them to 3-3, then they stop dropping the disc and run away to a 15-4 win that seems so much closer. We face Middlebury in the game to go. Many would swear it to be divine intervention, as a freak cloudburst in an otherwise hot and sunny afternoon intercedes just as it appears Middlebury is about to go up 5-3. We win 15-9 when, after a season of being the nerd giving up his lunch money to the big bullies, Psycho, Ritalin, and Brophy suddenly figure out how to shut down their deep game. Nationals starts with what some would consider the best game ever played by the Tufts E-Men. Facing the 6-seeded UNC Chapel Hill, the offensive bombshell Tufts has been sitting on all season (some would argue since 1990) explodes. Seth Mann has more layouts in this game than possibly the entire rest of his career, and our experienced-but-short deep corps brings the hucking pain to the unsuspecting UNC players. With the score tied at 14's, hard cap at 15, UNC plays a perfect offensive point, and a few throws later the game is over, as well as any hopes of moving up in seeding. Facing Carleton, who two days hence would face Brown for the National Championship, we get run pretty badly, but then crush Winona State. In the playoffs, we are seeded to play Stanford, including Mike "my bones are like pretzels" Zalisk's older brother, just coming off an injury of his own. We come out flat, then outscore them in the second half for ceremonial purposes, losing 15-9. Tufts thus enters what is (was) known as the "day of hell" for prequarters losers at nationals--four games in four rounds against amazing teams. No one's allowed to talk about our next game. Suffice to say we lose by one point -- again -- to a school whose name rhymes with "dice" -- again -- after numerous valiant comebacks on the strength of the almighty Crack Monkey; then lose to 16th seed Notre Dame: finally beating Santa Cruz, the only team more pissed off about their bad luck that day. The only highlight of the day is probably the north-south culture clash of Coach Dick versus Mike Gerics; heretofore referred to as "discboy." It should be noted that discboy later wrote a favorable review of us, perhaps the only nice thing ever said about Tufts on r.s.d. Fall 2000
The season begins as so many at Devens, where the E-Men are under-seeded at Fall Sectionals and forced to fight their way from 9th place through every team ahead of them. Brown finally stops them in the 7-6 game, in a defeat that comes as a huge surprise against B-Mo, who have lost everyone who was anyone from the championship team, and have superstar senior Moses Rifkin picking up with some team named DoG. Tufts storms back at the same place for the inaugural New England College Challenge (NECC), put on by BUDA. Tufts beats Harvard, Yale, and Middlebury, all by ridiculous scores, like 15-6, to run to the finals. Williams is kind enough to take care of Brown for us, then to play us for the championship. The game is first of many epics on the year for the E-Men, with neither team ever leading by more than 2. We even entertain the paramedics enough to convince them to stick around for the end of the game, with the sun long gone. Funboy is huge in the final points, throwing numerous upside-down scores. You see, though many E-Men had the talent to throw hammers and scoobers, only Funboy had the balls. 13-12 Tufts for the first ever NECC. That's it, though. The rest of the season includes much pain -- two quarterfinal losses to Cornell, and inexplicable losses to Williams and Harvard. Don't know why Cornell hates us so much, they do beat us every time we play them, but the situation isn't helped when Rids throws a clump of sod at Sideshow. Fuckin Cornell. The Purple Valley party is a pathetic show, with the loss of Stampey and Roofies painfully apparent. On the up side, Sam "Wolverine" Oberter teaches most of the team the finer points of getting open, and Nugspeak becomes the parlance of our time. Reflecting this and his diminutive size, Simon Kates earns the nickname "Nug." Also, we get to party with the very "skilled" Williams women at our home tourney, where Brown once again bags on us in what is becoming a tradition. Winter 2001
Spring 2001
Spring break starts with Terminus, where the E-Men win their power pool and eventually make it to semis, losing twice 14-5 to Duke who have us on a leash all spring. The tournament is considered a success when VaG finally beats friend Chris's JoJah team. Highlights included two stirring victories over NC State, and Jon sWillner's goal-line block at double game point against Florida. The rest of the week is unusually productive. String break is christened during a hallucinogenic kite-flying experience on the beach in Clearwater, and joey begat double joey begat adrogenous pat begat johann begat the pasta offense. Practice features freshmen and juniors vs. seniors and sophomores, which turns out to be headcases (plus Cock) vs. non-headcases (plus sWillner). I won't say who wins, but the game leaves us pretty confident about next year. A flame ignites above Verbal's head as he bequeaths to Ariel the words "Mickey Marbles" and then begins babbling in tongues on the causeway into Clearwater. Easterns sees us in a power pool for the first time in a while, placing second by beating Stanford (another first) and UC Berkeley. UNC Chapel Hill again surprises the hell out of us, winning 14-11 right after trailing by 5 at halftime. Funboy perfects his scoober. Again, Cornell politely asks us to leave the tournament with a defeat in the prequarters the next day which is a game with spirit?! Round about this time, the B Men are placing first among all B teams at the first Beasterns. They also pick up the nicknaming staff. Elliot becomes "Dad" and Ben becomes Bruiser. Phil spears two white whales, becoming the man, the legend, Ahab. Rain makes the rest of the season go away until Yale Cup. Pool play is a bit rocky, with Coach Dick making minor adjustments to the game and his hat all day. BU fancies itself an ultimate team and complains about our (read: Neil Pallaver's) physical play in knocking their Callahan out for the season. We hear he played very well in sectionals two weeks later. We own Middlebury as they are too stoned to figure out that if you throw to Keegan in a crowd of seven defenders, Keegan still catches the disc. During the elimination, we destroy Wesleyan, then meet Fuckin Cornell. We go up 2-1. The next point is the longest point ever played. It almost approaches the length of a typical point in a women's game. Pallaver makes an amazing toe-in, over-the-shoulder catch for the score, but at 3-1 we are already wasted. Cornell scores six straight bracketing halftime, with at least 4 bullshit catches on stall 9 hammers and hucks. Down 12-6, the starting line goes back in for a final stand, and reels off 5 in a row. Cool. Moment of truth: Verbal gets a block on the Cornell goal line on the point that would've tied it at 12's, but then sWillner and Funboy outfake each other on the dump two throws later, and the run is over. We lose 15-13. Sectionals is the usual two days of bullshit followed by one game worth playing. The game worth playing is (as usual) against Harvard. We play perfect O for the first half, going up 8-5 on a couple upwind breaks. The game has questionable spirit at points, but that is to be expected. The Junior-Psycho deep connection and the Funboy-Rids endzone hammer connection are both on, and we never let them get an edge in the second half, winning 15-11 and earning the 1 seed for regionals. At regionals, we cruller BUFO, the bagel interrupted by an endzone huck catch at Tall Matt's laying-out fingertips. Dartmouth gives us a game, then Williams gives us a game for about 6 points then allows us a 12-1 run to end the game 15-5 to go to nationals. The final the next morning is a sick game against Brown. Funboy has three layout D's in one point, and Pallaver has two big D's and two huge catches for goals from Jr. in the last 3 points in a 15-13 E-Men win. So the E-Men go into their second consecutive nationals seeded 7th overall, in what is seemingly the easiest Pool. Thunderheads gather when Junior blows his knee in practice three days before Nattys. That makes two. We come in talking about our first-ever regional win and being seeded higher than the E-Wo, then Texas A&M says "Shut uppa yo mouf" with a 15-13 victory filled with all the skill and intensity of WWF -- nay, WCW -- amateur night at Ben Stein's house. So, having been defeated by a team getting its nationals cherry popped, the 15th-seeded team from the South -- from the South! -- we manage to bounce back and lose to a Michigan team legendary for choking in pool play at Nationals and having its worst season in recent memory. Eliminated from playoff contention and not feeling the Schwartz within us, our much-anticipated game against two seed Colorado goes right to the wire, 15-5. Silence for a night. The next morning, two or three E-Men come out to play and prove ourselves worthy of a nationals bid by beating another team. Despite their steadfast refusal to break a sweat, Duke capitalizes on a stream of dropped catches you could set a clock to, whupping us like city-boy yankees should be whupped if a whupping is called for. As if to prove his bayou upbringing, Tall Matt turns in yet another great game, foreshadowing greatness to come (no pressure), continuing as one of few good apples in the rotten -- nay, overripe -- orchard that is the Tufts 2001 nationals performance. The 15/16 game is met with some emotion other than anger; but desperation proves no better at winning games. The E-Men come out hard against UNC-Chapel Hill, with big bench contributions from the usually quiet Cock, VaG, Roga, Tall Matt, Ariel, and Eeean; whose major weaknesses appear to be related to the fact that they are consistently ineffective when taken out for entire halves/games. 0-5 in any tournament = last place. In Nationals, it means that our region blames us for one fewer Nationals Bid for at least a year, which I'm sure Swarthmore and Winona State appreciate. The E-Men head into a summer peppered with phrases like, "What the hell happened to you guys?", "How the hell'd you manage to beat [insert Stanford, Georgia, NC State, Harvard, Brown, Florida, ... Brandeis]?", and "You mean Tufts was at Nationals?" However, looked at from the pre-Nationals standpoint, Tufts had just about its best year on record. After regionals, Tufts had compiled a 25-6ish record, losing games to only four teams (Duke, Cornell, UNC, Carleton), and going 13-0 against New England teams en route to a first-ever regional title. Semis at Terminus and Yale Cup, 2nd in a power pool at Easterns, a third straight sectional victory, top-12 ranking the entire year. After Nationals, all agree that we wouldn't have traded it for anything. |
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The E-Men party till they drop, building a reputation both on and off the field for a never-say-die attitude |
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