The NC State men’s club ultimate team, Alpha Ultimate, finished in second place last weekend at the annual Bank Run Tournament at Northeast Recreational Field Complex on the campus of UNC-Charlotte, according to senior captain Michael Lee.
A lot of young players, including freshmen still trying out, spent substantial time playing to showcase their abilities which lifted Alpha Ultimate to two top-four finishes between its two team entries, according to Lee.
“Because it’s such an early season, everybody’s still trying people out,” Lee said. “I think our sophomore class especially played really well this weekend, which is good to see because there were so many new freshmen last year, so that sophomore class stepping up and making plays is going to be crucial to our success in the spring.”
The 16-team tournament featured a number of schools that were split into two teams, like Alpha was, and some teams that didn’t represent a college, like Triforce, which was the high school all-star team that won the tournament.
Lee said NCSU X (one of the two club ultimate teams) was initially knocked out in the semifinal match by Triforce, then combined with NCSU Y (the other team), which was undefeated all the way up to the championship game. Triforce topped the X-Y team in the championship 13-10, and NCSU X had a 2-1 record in pool play before tournament play started, with its only pool play loss to Triforce.
Overall, the two teams combined for an 8-3 overall record over both days, only losing to Triforce. NC State beat teams like Davidson, Duke, UNC-Charlotte and Charleston, but the best win was a 10-9 thriller over UNC-Wilmington in the quarterfinals, according to Lee.
“We got a good win against Wilmington,” Lee said. “They were split too, but we played well … That was definitely a good win early in the season. It feels good to beat them, because they’re probably one of our bigger rivals.”
Lee and the coaches had the young players take most of the minutes in this tournament in order to see who played well in game situations to help finalize the roster, Lee said. Some players Lee commended for their performances included freshman Daniel Ferriter and sophomores Robert McAllister and Davis Fields.
“[Ferriter] was really composed when he had the disc,” Lee said. “In Frisbee, we’ll have a mark, which is just somebody guarding you, and they’re trying to prevent you from throwing to a certain space on the field. He did a really good job of moving the disc laterally across the field, regardless of the defense, and was constantly one of our main facilitators … He was smart on offense and defense, and he wasn’t flashy, but showed he could hang athletically with whoever he was matched up against.”
As a season-opening tournament, and with some of its senior players sitting out, club ultimate played well, but of course, there is always more to work on. At practice, the team walked through some basic strategy, but Lee said the captains are ready to implement other parts of the game to push its play to the next level.
“We’ve only been teaching offensive principals, and I think overall, the systems we’ve taught are pretty good,” Lee said. “We need a lot more work punching it in near the endzone, so our endzone set needs to be explained more … Next week, we’re going to go pretty hardcore into the fundamentals of man-to-man defense.”
With its roster finalized, Alpha Ultimate’s next challenge is the Brickyard Brawl, a tournament that the team is hosting on NC State’s campus Oct. 19-20.
