Last weekend was the Third Annual Ultimate Frisbee Tournament for Presbyterian Seminaries. Over one hundred seminarians showed up from Union-PSCE (Richmond), Union-PSCE (Charlotte), Princeton Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Columbia Theological Seminary and Virginia Theological Seminary. Each year it continues to become a bigger and bigger event. This is the third year Union-PSCE (Richmond) has hosted the event, and they do a fabulous time each year, from the food, to housing, to tournament scheduling, they do a quality job.
I have played for Princeton the past two years. The first year my team won the championship, and last year the team I was on came in second place. Yet this year I played against Princeton and played for Columbia. Columbia was definitely the underdog coming into the tournament. The first year they lost their first two games and were out. But this year was different – we had a great team, including some real special talent. We played our first game against one of the three Princeton teams and won 10-7. Our second game was in the rain against Union and we won 14-3. Our third game was against another Union team and we won 13-6. It was an incredibly strong showing and we were excited to head into the championship versus the best Princeton team. Prior to the championship game, their game scores (they were also 3-0) were 17-2, 17-3, 17-5. We went into the championship game not knowing what would happen.
And we scored the first point. After that it was a point-by-point game. We went back and forth with Princeton until it was 4-4. It was a great game – probably the best I’ve seen at the tournament. I remember the first year the championship game was really not very difficult – Princeton pretty much dominated Union. However, this year it was a very close game. We all matched up pretty well, and had a lot of fun playing. Despite some massive amounts of heckling I was receiving from Princeton friends, I was able to keep my head in the game (thanks Josh and Zach).
We eventually got 2 points down and just couldn’t score. We had some missed opportunities, some poor throws; Princeton caught at least one in the endzone off a bobble, so…who knows how it should have ended up. But I got the final point in the endzone to make it 6-5 (Princeton) and then the game was called.
Columbia came together and played some really great frisbee last weekend. And our team had a lot of fun. Going from being pretty much last place to losing to Princeton by one in the championship game is pretty damn good. So, great job Columbia! If you want to see some great photos, all from the championship game, check out this photo album.
Photos courtesy of Jay Hill | Photo Album