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