The Claremont Colleges Men’s and Women’s Ultimate Frisbee teams traveled to UC San Diego last weekend for the annual President’s Day Tournament. Thirty-four men’s teams and 16 women’s teams competed, coming from as far North as Washington and as far East as Connecticut.

Going into the tournament, the Claremont women were ranked fourth out of eight teams in the "Lewinsky Pool." On Saturday, Claremont faced the top three teams in their pool, Oregon, University of Colorado-Boulder (Kali-A), UC Santa Barbara, and number five Humboldt. Oregon and Kali-A showed to be much more experienced teams than the relatively young Claremont team, and both won 13-2. Claremont then played Humboldt, trading off points in the beginning of the game, but then pulled ahead and contained their opponent, beating them 13-4.

Their last game on Saturday against UC Santa Barbara proved to be the most exciting game of the day. Claremont raced ahead to an early 3-0 lead. However, Santa Barbara changed their defense from man to clam, a type of defense that incorporates part zone and part person-to-person. The inexperienced Claremont team fell 7-3, but made a huge comeback tying it at 9-9. After trading points, Santa Barbara pulled ahead to a 12-10 lead and eventually won the game 13-11.

"Santa Barbara is one of the top teams in the nation, and with such a relatively young team, we played really well against them. Their new defense was what got us, otherwise, I think we could have won. What bothered me the most about the game though was the annoying megaphone they used. Definitely bad form and poor spirit of the game," said Whitney Weitzel CMC ’01.

Claremont was scheduled to play the bottom of their pool on Sunday which included Whitman, UCLA and UC San Diego-B. However, due to heavy rains the night before, the games had to be moved to alternate fields, which did not have enough room for the number of teams that came to the tournament. Claremont and the other teams that drove were asked to leave while preference was given to those teams that flew to the tournament.

"It was disappointing that we didn’t get to play on Sunday," said Shelley Kunasek PO ’01, "because I’m sure we would have won all three games. Plus, it would have given our less experienced women more of a chance to play. Almost half of our team had never played in a tournament before this weekend and it was awesome how well we played, although the scores don’t always reflect it. In any case, I think we all had fun."

Kunasek, as in the last tournament, racked in the most assists with seven, while scoring four times. Leading the scoring was Torrey Shelton, PO ’02 with seven goals and three assists. Other strong players were Rebecca Prechter SC ’02 with four assists and three goals and rookie Amber Croyle PO ’03 with three goals.

On the Men’s side, Claremont was ranked third out of five teams in the "Washington Pool." They played three tough games and took three tough losses on day one, losing to Idaho 13-7, University of Washington 11-5 and University of Colorado-Boulder 11-5.

"During the first game against Idaho, the team took a big loss, loosing handler Josh Tulkin’03 to a wrist injury for the rest of the weekend. However, we stepped it up and continued to play hard despite that we only had four substitutes left," Josh Seamon ’02 said. Fortunately, the day ended on a bright note with a win against UC San Diego-C 11-3.

After day one, the tournament directors reconstructed the men’s pools and Claremont was seeded 15th out of 16 teams in the A bracket. Unfortunately, this meant that they were playing top teams, including three of the four teams that would eventually make it to the semi-finals on Monday. Claremont lost to UC Santa Cruz 11-6, Stanford 11-0, UC Santa Barbara 11-5 and UC-Berkeley 11-4.

"Six of the teams we played against this weekend finished in the top eight of the tournament, with the exception of Idaho and UC San Diego-C. We just got an unlucky draw, but it was definitely good experience playing top teams," Sven Moller ’02 said.

Offensive standouts throughout the weekend included Jake Wolman ’03, Jeff Hartline HMC ’00, Seamon, and Nick Breznay HMC ’02. Defensively, Moller, Breznay and Andre Verner ’02 played extremely well. Rookies Matt Barber CMC ’02 and Zach Walters HMC ’03 had some key offensive plays.

"I was really happy at the level of play we managed to be at for the entire tournament. Everyone demonstrated they could play hard, and well against very good teams, Seamon said. "I was particularly impressed with how we were able to repeatedly set up the zone on the fly."

The men will have their next game this weekend at UCLA while the women will be traveling to Stanford the weekend of March 4-5.