I get knocked down, but I get up again

The Hellfish were at it again with our 2nd fall tournament of the year. This time the tournament would be "Michigan Open Sectionals." For this tournament the Hellfish brought these people:

Derek Bezeau
Spencer Young
Bob(N)
Steve S(n)
Jason K(n)
Logan B
Luke(n)
Alex T(n)
Mokeefe
Gordon
Jamie
Phil Nichols(N)
Coley
Harras
Christian(Saturday)(n)
Simon(Saturday) (N)
Alex Heidtke(Saturday)
Jason G(Saturday Only)

We brought 10 veteran players and 8 new players to this tournament. On a side note we still had 5 veterans and 10 new guys on our roster who were not available for this tournament.

The tournament started on Saturday with the Hellfish playing against a very respectable Hope ultimate team. We started the match with a lot of sloppy play, dropped disc, and bad decisions. Hope took advantage of our mistakes and scored on many of our miscues. At half time the score was 7-2 in favor of Hope. We had to explain to the new guys and veterans that the game should be much closer if it wasn't for all of our dumb mistakes and unforced errors. We took the field in the 2nd half with more confidence in ourselves. After some hard defense and smarter play we were only down by two with a score of 8-10. We traded points for the rest of the game and ended up losing 10-13. But this just means that we won the 2nd half 8-5. I was very happy with how everyone stayed composed and fought back to make it a close game.

Our next game was against the number 1 seed Corkjuice(East). Corkjuice was a much more experienced and talented team than us but we did not let this stop us from competing. When the game was all said and done be put up 7 on Corkjuice and we were happy with that.

Our next game was against Senior Discount. Every player on Senior Discount probably had more experience than our whole team combined, because of this reason we could not take them too lightly. We knew going into the game that we would have more athleticism, and speed over them so we used these things to our advantage. We were constantly fronting them and forcing them to try to beat us over the top, which they had trouble doing much of the time. After a decently close first half(7-4) the Hellfish went wild in the 2nd half and ended up winning 13-5.

The last game on Saturday was against a fairly young and inexperienced Aquinas College. We went into this game with a lack of intensity and Aquinas exposed this with a lot of hustle. We ended up taking half 7-5 but we were still upset with the lack of heart on the field. The 2nd half began with much more intensity by every player. Certain guys on the team began to layout for anything close, which is awesome to see. The game ended with the Hellfish winning 13-8.

After the tournament on Saturday the whole team went to TGI Fridays to indulge in some delicious $5 Jack Burgers/Chicken Sandwiches. A couple of the guys decided they would save their money by going to Wendy's where they still spent about $5 for a lower quality meal. Good job saving your money guys!

Everyone then went their separate ways to clean up and rest for a couple of hours. But the night was not even close to being over for 10 different hellfish. A friend of the team who lives in Kalamazoo offered his apartment for us to hang out and party at for the night. After about 15 rounds of flip cup, 2 disc races, a beer chugging race, and a game of thunderstruck the whole team was starting to feel pretty good. It was about this point in the night that a dance party seemed like a good idea. Everyone in attendance sang a long and danced to a variety of songs for the next hour or so. After a little while, we all eventually decided at about 1 am that it was time to go to bed.

Sunday began bad when we found out one of our players phone was not working, and we had no clue where he was at. We figured he would find a way to get a hold of us, so we left for the game fields. We arrived on the tournament site at exactly 9 AM, which is exactly when our game was supposed to begin. Luckily our opponents were having worse problems than us finding their teammates and they did not arrive till about 9:15 am.

At about 9:30 our game against a very experienced Steel Head team began. This team was composed of many older guys who have been around the game for a very long time, and still had a lot of athleticism. We started the game great by breaking them twice. But eventually they found their legs and started fighting back. At half we were down with a score of 8-4. When the 2nd half began, we really had no intensity or legs, and they were playing a very respectable game. We ended up losing with a final score of 15-7

Our next and last game was against a very big Calvin ultimate team. The average height of Calvin was most likely 6'2. But we had one very big advantage over them, and that was our speed. At about this moment our lost player showed up to the game field at the perfect time. The arrival of this player ignited a spark to our whole team. We started the game using a horizontal stack. We flowed amazing with short passes, and give and goes all the way up the field. We started the game with three straight points. At this time both sidelines were completely electric. This was by far our most intense game of the weekend.

At halftime we were up with a score of 7-5. The 2nd half was no different than the first. There was an abundance of layout D's, huge skies, and long huck's from both teams. Eventually Calvin tied the game up at 10's a piece. Calvin started zoning our team, and a lot of our new guys, and some experienced guys were just not ready, and could not adjust. When it was all said and done Calvin had wone the game by a score of 15-12.

To sum up this weekend, the Hellfish finished with a record of 2-4. To the outside eye this does not seem impressive at all, but to our team this was a nice accomplishment. We took 8 new guys to their very first tournament, and had 4 returners who had not played any competitive ultimate this summer and still competed with almost every single team. This tournament was another big step in the right direction to achieving our goals for the end of the season.

Derek "Beez" Bezeau

Practice and Team hang out time

The team has officially been together for 3 weeks now. Each time we practice we become better and better. It is amazing to see the rapid improvement from new players and even older players. Today we had our first inter-team live scrimmage. I was unsure of how this would work out at first. But everyone played absolutely stellar. There were no patterns of continuous turnovers; there were no signs of lazy players; and there were no signs of complete lack of knowledge out of anyone. The game finished with a final score of 15-12. The dark team was down by as much as 7 at one point but fought back hard to finish the game only down by 3. There were a lot of good things to take away from this practice, but we all know we still have A LOT to work on to accomplish our goals.

After practice 8 different players had to go home for various reason but 19 players were able to go out to eat at one of our sponsors, Tower Inn. We all had a great time hanging out with each other. Some of my personal favorite parts were when the waiter brought out Saganaki (twice) and the whole table yelled OPA loud as we could directly after words, when I burned my thumb on the Saganaki(which is flaming cheese) directly after the waiter put it on the table, when we all sung Alex Theiss happy birthday, and when Brian and I were tapping our glasses to be stupid and everyone stopped to listen to what we had to say(sorry for crying wolf Alex Heidtke).

Overall it was a great day, that left the feeling that there would be a lot of good things to look forward to for the rest of the season

Here is the whole gang that went to Tower Inn:




Derek "Beez" Bezeau

Chicago Heavyweights

After just one practice the hellfish were ready to take their game to a bigger stage. The stage would be the tournament "Chicago Heavyweights" which had 40 open teams from all around the country. Although the hellfish were seeded 40th out of 40 teams we had high hopes that we could do much better than that. The team we brought was a cast of 15 different players. Out of the 15 players, 3 were new to the team(1 of which was brand new to ultimate), 11 were eligible players, and 4 were ineligible alumni. Here is the cast of players we brought to this tournament:
Michael Volkman
Goerge Lucero
Simon Vazquez
Jason Ganiatas
Logan Braun
Aaron Fredendall
Derek Bezeau
Chris Conlan
Brian Harras
Alex Heidtke
Mark Bordua
Kris Coley
Michael O'Keefe
Michael Gordon
and help from Dave Fumo

Our first game was against Test Tickle Me Elmo. TTME seemed to be a pretty athletic team with a lot of knowledge of the game. The whole game was a close battle with each teams trading points back and forth. When it was all said and done the Hellfish had lost the match 13-11. Our next match was against the X-MN out of Minnesota. This game seemed to be a tougher match up than the previous game. While the score may show we got stomped,(13-3) we actually had many opportunities to score where we just did not capitalize on. Our next game was against Rebel Madness who was based out of Minnesota as well. We were able to flow pretty nicely and force a lot of D's in this game. The final score ended up being 13-7 in favor of the Hellfish. The last game we played was against DingWop who were based out of Minnesota as well as the others. This was a game that we let slip out of our hands due to stupid mistakes and unforced turnovers. The Final Score of this game was 13-9.

After the tournament, everyone on the team went to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch Michigan beat Notre Dame in the final seconds of the 4th quarter. There was high-fiving all around the tables and everyone was pumped, except Mokeefe (but nobody really cared). After dinner time everyone want back to the Hotel Room to get cleaned up. For the next few hours everyone just sat around and hung out. But about 11:40 at night someone decided they wanted to go to Wendy's, which was right around the corner. The whole team decided they were up for a late night trip, so we all barged in to Wendy's at 11:55 when they were supposed to close at 12, needless to say, some of us may have received spit in our food. Finally after all the late night fun the team decided to go to bed and get ready for the morning.

Sunday morning came with the sound of an alarm clock going off an hour pre-mature(Thanks Simon). Finally after hearing about 10 different phone alarms go off in the next hour the team decided to wake up. The team was supposed to be on a schedule, which we were already running behind on, but the continental breakfast was too much to pass up. After eating waffles, fruit, cereal and yogurt for about 30 minutes to long the team decided it was ready to leave. We showed up to the fields at 3 minutes before game time, which gave us more time in the parking lot to mess around(Who actually shows up to a game on time anyways??). We finally got to our field at exactly the same time our opponents were getting there(I guess they go by the same motto we do). The team we would be playing was Disco Tech, which is actually a team that is in our college sectional. Disco Tech definitely had a lot of new players and were not very experienced. We were able to play our game once we got warmed up and rolled on to a 15-3 victory. The last game of the tournament we would play was against Joyce which was based out of Columbus, OH. Joyce was a pretty athletic team but they were definitely not out of our league. The first half was pretty equal with each team trading points. By the second half of the game the hellfish lost their focus, intensity and legs and ended up losing 15-11.

For the first tournament of the year, the team was very happy to finish with 2 wins and 4 losses. Out of the 4 losses, 3 of them could have been victories which we thought was a good sign for the future. At the end of the weekend the captains picked our two MVP's for the tournament(MVP's are obviously not captains, or alumni). The captains decided the MVP's would be Michael Gordon, and Kris Coley. Each of these players showed a lot of heart, skill, athleticism and determination which is exactly what we were looking for from our players.

Now we are excited for the future and the chance to play against other college teams for the rest of the season.

Derek " Beez" Bezeau

The beginning to fame is here

At last the college season has begun. A new season means anything can happen. The slate is clean and for now our team is completely undefeated against opposing college teams. The end of last season left a bitter taste in everyone's mouth, and we all have been working hard this off season to become the best team we can be.

The season started off with a meeting composed of all our returning players and one new player. During this meeting we primarily discussed what we wanted to accomplish for this season. Every person had a chance to say their individual and team goals. Individual goals ranged from getting better throws,to becoming more athletic, to being a better defender, and everything else in between. But everyone's team goals were very similar. I can sum up everyone's team goals in two sentences. This years team wants to be able to compete in every tournament and wants to have a shot of winning every tournament. This years team also wants to be able to move on to regionals. These two goals will be stuck in everyone's mind throughout the whole season. Everyone knows what they have to do to make these goals possible, but I strongly believe that everyone is willing to put in all the work to succeed.

A couple days after the meeting the first practice was finally upon us. If this was already not great enough enough, it was also a supposed to be a perfect forecast. On this day it was sunny, 75 degrees, and very little wind. The scene was set for an ultimate day. I was hoping to see around 30 players for this practice. But the closer to the start of practice the more surprised I was with how many players kept showing up. Once practice started we had almost 40 interested players who seemed pumped at the opportunity to play some ultimate. After the team threw around and stretched we did a couple of drills to expose athleticism and determination in new players. And let me tell you that we found a large amount of these things from this years class of recruitment. We saw new guys run 4.5 forty yard dashes, we saw new guys jumping and skying people in the air, and we saw new guys lock down opponents on defense. I would definitely say in my four years of playing in this program that this is potentially the most athletic class I have seen yet.

Derek " Beez " Bezeau