BOLT took the field in beautiful Columbus, Ohio last weekend to test their skills against some strong Midwest ultimate teams at CWRUL. Calm winds and soft, muddy fields led to plenty of hucks, hammers, and bids.
BOLT began with a win over a tough Wright State team, with both D-lines contributing key breaks to build a 7-3 halftime lead. Thomas had a huge catch on a bladey huck and Sarrin scored his first career goal on a tight throw to Gene. It was all holds in the second half as Captain Rubin scored six times for the 13-11 win.
Up next was Rochester who gave BOLT quite the fight. Solid handler play from Jon Lee led to key holds, but after going up 5-4 on Jake Clady bookends, BOLT failed to capitalize on a few key opportunities and trailed 5-7 at half. They brought a tough zone out of half and some execution errors on our end led to a 6-13 loss that felt a lot closer than the score indicated.
In the afternoon, Jack Burtis’ parents brought us gastronomic reinforcements (thank you!) which boosted BOLT’s energy levels considerably. Against Wooster-B, we scored a turkey in each half for a 13-4 win, punctuated by Paul Klatt laying out for a disc in a puddle, Dan Sours scoring his first career goal and throwing his first career huck, and Luke Spencer being open on literally every single reset.
Saturday ended with a high-profile match-up against Vanderbilt, in a rematch of our schools’ NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament game a few weeks ago. Unlike Nathan Taphorn and friends, we couldn’t pull out a win, falling 5-13. A few highlights include Kenneth breaking some kid’s ankles and leaving him covered in mud, Dan Sours getting four Ds on one point, and Rubin fighting through an arm tackle to throw Arseniy a goal.
Sunday brought a lot of growth and some close games for BOLT, competing in the 17th place bracket. Our first game started off hot against the host team, Case Western Reserve-B. Both D lines fought hard to earn breaks before captains Richards and Rubin went deep on back to back points for goals early in the second half. Jack Eichenlaub and Andrew SaLoutos kept the disc moving after shutting down their guys on defense, and continuation cutting from Song and Sarrin led to easy goals. We couldn’t keep it up though, as CWR went on a three-point run to close out the game and we fell 12-13.
We played next against Allegheny. Shu broke out for the D line, scoring three times following solid work defensive work from Average Joe (TM), we took the game 15-6.
Our last, and most competitive game of the tournament was against Dayton. Jack Burtis and Luke Mansour had back to back skies over piles of defenders for the first two goals, and Arseniy got bookends for a clutch early hold. The Average Joes D line survived a 20+ minute, 10+ possession point to take half with clutch Ds from Kenneth and Bruce and all around incredible team defense and intensity. The second half featured much of the same, with Ben Laning roasting his defender for free uplines and incredible downfield pressure D from Song and Gene, but Dayton turned up their energy and broke three times in cap for the universe point win.
While the results didn’t go our way, BOLT learned a lot from our experiences and had a lot of fun throwing Frisbees at our friends. We will take the fields next at Great Lakes Developmental Conferences in Byron Center, MI on April 22-23. Follow along with the action at @boltultimate