After it was postponed a week due to not clement weather in New Haven, the Yale Coffee Cup tournament hosted Dartmouth's newly-selected Pain Train, as well as our very own Discomfort Trolley and 4 other teams (several teams that had initially been signed up dropped out after the tournament was rescheduled). Due to the small size of the tournament, the format was changed to a single day of round robin play, so we had 4 games Saturday and then we were done.
This writeup will be for the Pain Train's weekend--the "Disco Troll" will (hopefully) get their own writeup online soon.
SATURDAY: (surprisingly warm, with increasing wind throughout the day)
Game 1: vs. WPI (Worcester Polytech)
After a sloppy first point, the Pain Train pulled together and put together some very solid ultimate. The O-line was running smoothly, the D-line getting turnovers and working the disc, and overall Dartmouth Ultimate took care of business.
Dartmouth 13, WPI 4.
Game 2: vs. UConn X
Our second game of the day pitted us against UConn X (equivalent to UConn B I think), another fairly easy matchup for us. Our O-line was again running smoothly, and we were getting turns on defense. We were far shakier than we should've been in the red zone (near the end zone), however, which is clearly something for us to work on. In the end though, we were able to punch it in on nearly every point and cruised to victory.
Dartmouth 13, UConn X 1.
Game 3: vs. Yale
This game faced us off against a much more competitive matchup than our previous games had, but we rose to the challenge in the first half. The wind had picked up noticeably, which was causing both teams' throws to behave poorly and extended points enough that, combined with starting the game behind schedule, lead to the soft cap going on during half time (we were up 7-6, after starting on D and getting a break in the first half; a "break is the term for scoring a point which the other team started on offense). But we came out of halftime looking unfocused and sloppy and gave up two breaks almost before we knew what had happened. It was only at this point that Yale informed us that soft cap (usually adding 2 to the highest score and playing to that number) at this tournament actually meant only adding 1 to the highest score and playing to that, and just like that we had lost the game. While it was certainly a shame that it had happened like that, we need to be better about staying focused and keeping our energy up throughout an entire game.
Dartmouth 7, Yale 8.
Game 4: vs. Amherst College
Coming immediately off the Yale game, we were out of it for the beginning of the last game of the day, vs. Amherst, and our O-line gave up several breaks right off the bat. From here, we got rattled and were unable to recover any ground through the rest of the first half. A big problem of ours this game was man defense, as we seemed to have a hard time taking away simple in-cuts. Our zone offense struggled as well, either being too hesitant with the disc or trying to hard to get it upfield quickly. We regrouped at halftime and were able to settle down and get a couple breaks in the second half, but the damage had been done.
Dartmouth 6, Amherst 11.
All in all, it was a good first weekend for the Pain Train. We got some experience playing together, did some things well, and found other things that we need to work on--pretty much all you could ask for from a fall tournament. We'll be heading down to Brown in a couple weeks to see if we can improve on our first showing and head into the winter on a high note. And a thank you to Yale for hosting despite the setback of having to reschedule the whole tournament.
