The Claremont Colleges Women’s Ultimate Frisbee team traveled to Northern California for the Stanford Invite March 4-5. With 17 women, the team is the largest it’s ever been. Mixed with experienced, intermediate and first-time tournament players, the team played exceptionally well against a tough line-up of competitors.

On Saturday, the team played Brown-A, British Columbia, and U.C. Santa Barbara. After a slow start and loss to Brown, 15-3, the team picked it up against British Columbia. In the first half, Claremont matched British Columbia nearly point to point. British Columbia pulled ahead 8-5 at the half and carried the momentum to win the game 15-6 (and went on to win the tournament on Sunday).

Finally, Claremont faced-off against long-time rival U.C. Santa Barbara. Down 7-4 at the half, Claremont picked it up to lead 9-8 going into the last five minutes of the game. However, by throwing a tough zone defense, U.C. Santa Barbara fought to tie it at 9-9 and then went on to win the game 10-9.

On Sunday, Claremont began the morning in pre-quarters against University of Colorado as rain saturated the fields and high winds picked up. Many of the points lasted over 10 minutes, and Colorado prevailed with their experience playing in rough conditions, winning the game 13-3.

Claremont then went into the B-Bracket and played another long time rival, U.C. Davis. The team played harder than ever, laying out in the mud and making hot grabs. Davis threw a lot of swill and Claremont capitalized on that, taking a quick 5-0 lead, and never looked back. After two hours of playing in the cold rain, Claremont won its first game of the tournament and the first game ever against Davis 11-3. Co-captain Shelley Kunasek ‘01 attributes the crushing defeat to her lucky yellow underwear.

Unfortunately, the rain continued and although Claremont had more games, the team decided to head back on their long drive.

Offensively, handlers Kunasek and Ellen Lin ’01 dominated with 12 and 8 assists, respectively. Deeps (translation: wide receivers) Sarah Staller ’04 and Shana Faulkner CMC ’01 made great end zone cuts (translation: got open) and scored 14 points combined. Mids Oceana Laberto-Egan PI ’04, Torrey Shelton PO’02 and Becky Prechter SC ’02 were key players moving the disc up the field. Jenny von Reis SC ’03 and Amber Croyle ’03 were key defensive players forcing many turnovers.

In the first Ultimate Player’s Association national college rankings for the season, Claremont came in 22 out of 52 ranked teams. Lin commented, "We should be much higher than that, but many of our scores have yet to be reported so the rankings are currently inaccurate. We’ve done really well against teams ranked ahead of us and that will help move us up next week."