At the 2018 Music City Tune-Up, the men’s ultimate frisbee team (3-1) placed second in Pool B, going into the second day of the tournament. But the team never played the second day, due to “the field being too wet to play on,” according to Vanderbilt Ultimate.
In the first game, the Wizardz squared off against No. 7 seeded Vanderbilt Armada. At halftime, the Wizardz led Armada by one point. Then, the Wizardz went on to beat Armada by two goals, 9-7. In this game, junior Colby Parker said he was struggling, due to it being the first game.
“But after playing I just got it out of my head and started playing well,” Parker said. “I tried to focus on not playing to not lose the game for us but to win the game.”
Against Armada, Parker had eight completions and 100 passing percentage. In total for this game, the Wizardz completed 90 passes with a 92 passing percentage. In comparison, the Wizardz had another game with a 92 passing percentage which was against the No.2 seeded team Alabama-Huntsville Nightmares.
In this game, the Wizardz came off of a win against Middle Tennessee, 10-6. Then, they squared off against the Nightmares, in a rematch from the 2016 season. The team came away with another upset win on the day, beating the Nightmares 9-7. Sophomore Justin Hess, one of the players to watch this season, scored five goals in the game and also had three Ds.
After winning against the No. 2 and No. 7 seeded teams, captain Nathan Hershberger said his team was “feeling good after those wins.”
“We were in the driver seat for the majority of both of those games,” Hershberger said. “Really big wins for the team.”
One of the most spectacular plays on the day came against the Xavier Blobs. In this game, Parker made a deep cut and went for the disc. This was Parker’s thought process during the moment he went deep.
“The guy that was guarding me was guarding me in and I felt pretty confident I could beat him in a 50-50, so I cut deep and just focused on getting distance,” Parker said. “I heard the up call and looked and saw I had a good amount of space between my defender, but the disc was coming pretty fast so I knew I couldn’t slow down. Towards the end, I was glad because I felt like it was going to be easy to catch just keep running and run onto it but then it dipped all of a sudden. I literally thought ‘Oh no’ and I was not going to not catch it. I just instinctively laid out and I was able to catch it.”
Three other Eastern Plains Conference opponents were at this tournament. Purdue Undue Ultimate (3-1) finished second while Southern Indiana Fusion (2-2) in third place in Pool A. The Kentucky Kult (3-1) tied for first place in Pool D with Alabama Yellow Hammer and Georgia State Underground.
The Wizardz will be back in action for the Indy Invite tournament on March 24-25 at World Sports Park.
Link to Highlight video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4oq9EPG4j4
*Video made by Nik Risser*
Patrick Murphy 