June 4th and 5th, 2005.
By John Sandahl
UPA state Coordinator
 

    This was a year of growth for the Minnesota High school league.  For the Fourth year in a row record numbers of teams and players participated in the state sponsored league and tournament.  But simply adding teams was of little consequence around these parts.  We're all used to the growth by now.  It's almost become predictable.  But this year was different because this year the growth came as a result of our first ever Girls division.

    Girls playing in MN has been a staple of our league.  Each of the first three years we forced teams to grow this number by including more girls on the field.  Last year there was enough girls playing that the league decided to add a separate girls division to the league and state tournament.  And while the number of girl’s teams was rather modest – (seven in the league – four at state) the number of new underclassmen female players was unbelievable.  of the 7 teams, almost 3/4ths of the players were sophomore or younger.   This bodes well for the future of girls’ ultimate in MN.  In addition, two MN girls’ teams (Powerhouse Cretin-Derham Hall and new team South High) traveled to the western national championships in Seattle Washington and picked up some invaluable experience.

    Two of the girls’ league teams combined with their high schools open squads because of lack of numbers and Eden prairie joined up with neighboring Hopkins girls to cut our field to 4 teams.  CDH looked to be the favorite with a strong semi-finalist showing at westerns and a very deep team.  Hopkins/EP and Cathedral had battled all season back and forth and their match up seemed to be the ticket to a date with CDH in the Stadium on Saturday afternoon.  Rounding out the field was the ever spirited South team (2005 westerns and MN state spirit winners) who bring a team of 12 freshmen and sophomores (along with one senior and junior captain) to the tournament.  South didn’t get many wins this season, but watch out for them in two years!

    The game that mattered here was the Hopkins/EP vs. Cathedral game.  winner gets to play in the stadium.  Rain had started about an hour into Saturday’s play and continued on and off for the whole day.  By all accounts this game was a tie-braking slugfest and both teams had emotions flaring up at times.  Hopkins team is run through two or three handlers (Baken and Shira being the main two) and they play a possession game not unlike their open schoolmates.  Cathedral on the other hand wants to out work and out hustle you.  They rely on wearing their opponents out with fast break plays and quick strikes.  The score (10-9 in favor of Hopkins/EP) was just as instructive.  Hopkins handles outlasted the Cathedral lungs and punched their ticket to finals.

    The finals (Played in Beautiful Clemens football stadium) was nothing if not exciting.  CDH relies on their Senior captain and playmaker Patty King to make all the big throws.  CDH has good team speed and generally likes to bomb it whenever possible.  Patty King has the green light whenever she wants it and uses it liberally.  They have the confidence of a team that knows they are going to win.  Somewhere along the way, someone forgot to tell Hopkins/EP.
Hopkins (along with the core of sophomore athletes from the Eden Prairie squad) went down by two or three goals early.  then decided they had nothing to lose.  Among furious cheers from the large group of Hopkins fans (Hopkins parents always show up in force!) the girls raced back to within one point 6-7 and kept it closer than CDH would have liked.  Long points had eaten the time up however and the long strike capability of CDH seemed to overcome the possession game of Hopkins.  CDH puts the finishing touches on the game when up 9-7 (capped at 10) PK launches her forehand towards one of her favorite targets.  One solid convincing catch later CDH is the first ever Minnesota High School League Girls state champion.

    News from the Open side on Saturday was that seeding's held where they were supposed to despite some random placing of teams.  Twenty teams were expected but when 3 had to drop because of low numbers the teams left to fight it out were in some potentially weighted pools.

    Finals Favorite and last years semi team Hopkins had an incredibly strong season led by a core of juniors who have played together for 4-5 years (in school and camp).  Unlike past Hopkins teams however, this team relies not on height but on precise timing and very solid breakmark throws.  None of their starters is much over 6 feet and the core is all around 5’8”.  But they’ll beat you to the disc and bust up your D with their around flicks when you think you’ve shut them down.  Hopkins had a ludicrously strong season never giving up more than 6 points a game.  They also made the semifinals of a VERY competitive Eastern national championship after beating a very athletic Madison WI, team.  This tournament seemed to be theirs for the taking.

    The rest of the Finals contenders – Armstrong, CDH, EP, Cathedral and South all found themselves with a tougher road.  Basically they’d have to beat each other up for a chance to play Hopkins in finals.   

    Saturday play started with a host of rain and mud.  Hopkins worked their pool without incident playing their 10th grade and middle school lines liberally and still scoring. 

    CDH, last years champion had what looked to be the easiest road ahead after a strong quarterfinal appearance in westerns and a pool made up mostly of newer teams.  But CDH had lost two of their top players to injury and family vacation and though they snuck through on Saturday unscathed, Mounds View and Como park (two newer teams) gave them a real run for their money. 

    Eden Prairie and Cathedral (as the 4 and 5 seeds) had a tough grudge match to play and looked to be pretty evenly matched given recent records and games.  Unfortunately, Cathedral couldn’t hang with EP’s athleticism (returning their number one player from injury just in time for state).  Then Cathedral lost a close game to St. Paul Central in what was apparently an extremely close and heated affair.  Both teams wanted to make it to the elimination rounds and only one would be likely to make it.  EP rolled Central to make their pool look more uneven than anticipated.

    In the other close pool Armstrong and South looked for a rubber match.  Both teams know each other well having played in one semi final of state last year, and several times this year.  They also managed to become fairly friendly after sharing a bus to Seattle together and their game on Saturday would determine who had to play Hopkins in Semis and who would avoid them until finals.  it was a close game of runs in the first half.  South down 4-2 put on a run to take back the lead 6-4.  Armstrong’s four-man cup then started forcing some turns and gave South more trouble as they gave the disc away too many time.  Endzone scoring is so crucial in ultimate and especially in bad weather where a big punt-like huck and play zone can be tremendously devastating, and South just couldn’t convert.  as the weather worsened so did the South’s spirits and they went down 13-8ish.  Armstrong takes the easier (Hopkins-less) road to finals. 

Most of the rest of games were fairly predictable. smaller teams got out run by the bigger ones and newer teams had to take their lumps to learn how the game is played.  One thing that was not anticipated was the great play of the two out state teams Northfield (2005 Open State spirit winners) and Bemidji.  Northfield came to state after last years State quarterfinal experience looking to make some noise and they wound up in the Armstrong and South pool. They did however play well in all their games and put the rest of Southern MN world on notice…they will be the team to beat in 2006.  Bemidji, playing in their first tourney ever played with an unexpected amount of enthusiasm and athleticism. Getting wins against a couple of solid B teams (EP and Cathedral) and also handing Edina (albeit with a roster of 9) a 13-1 pasting.  And by the way, Bemidji played the whole weekend without shoes.  How about that for tough Iron rangers.

    Sunday’s prequarters matched teams that had little chance of making the finals (save perhaps Cathedral and South) but gave newer teams another competitive game to put in their tool box. 

    Prequarter winners Cathedral faced Hopkins in a 13-4 Hopkins win that probably wasn’t that close. Armstrong (who knows how to use their cleats to their advantage) handled Bemidji easily.  Sibley, a huge new team from southern St. Paul has played well all season only to match up with a CDH team that they already played twice during the regular season.  they kept it close but lost going away 13-8.   The big game however was the EP vs. South tilt.

    Eden prairie can line up seven athletes that would be a match for some college teams.  They are not tremendously experienced fundamentally but - with 6-8 receiver Andy Zilka and wonder kid Carter (back from his knee dislocation) plus three other big athletic looking guys and a handler (Jeff?) with a big useful scoober and a license to throw it at any time - they can be a real force.  South, on the other hand, relies on the all around game of Dan Schmit and his band of throwers to move the disc. 

First point of the game South (usually a Zone team) comes out in a person defense and after a nice mark on the EP handler by Kurt Melby, Carter is forced to come under to reset the disc.  the pass goes up and Schmit lays out a perfect ho-block to start off the game.  Two passes later South has a lead and the momentum.  EP counters with a couple big scoobers and the teams’ trade the lead throughout the first half.  It should be noted that Andy Zilka made a great self-call on a foul that surely would have been a South goal.  Props to Zilka for showing his state and the fans what self-officiating should really look like.  South ends up running away with it in the second half after a few EP drops/turfs but perhaps they knew that the winner of this game faced a Hopkins squad without fear.

    Semi’s pitted Armstrong vs. CDH and Hopkins vs. South.  Last years finalists had to play on one side and the Semi’s losers from last year (Hopkins/South) on the other.  Armstrong was in control the whole way and save for a meaningless run by CDH at the end of the second half Armstrong wins 13-4.  Instead the final was 13-8.  No matter, CDH without John and Paul (no relation to his eminence) were not the same team.

    Hopkins and South wasn’t much closer although South was within two or three for most of the game. The beauty of Hopkins team is that they are so efficient with their offense, they don’t really have to work and so they can just keep coming at you on D.  Any time Hopkins scored two in a row they would put on their 10th grade and under line (with a few 7th and 8th graders) and though the young guns didn’t do much damage on the scoreboard, they did accomplish their job of wearing out the South starters.   Final score was 13-9 but more importantly, any hard feelings between the two teams during previously games had gone by the wayside.  Both teams had very obvious and genuine respect for each other and their efforts, not to mention South having pushed Hopkins further point wise than any team in the state this year.  For the second time in two years, South had to play the best team in Semi-finals and came up short, and for the second time in three years, Hopkins had a date with Destiny.

    The final in the stadium was a bit different from last year.  Unlike CDH and Armstrong from the previous year, both Hopkins and Armstrong know each other well.  Both these teams are made up of kids who all learned to play together at a camp in Western Wisconsin. 

    Armstrong, In the finals for the third straight year finally made it to finals with their whole roster.  Yoni Serfaty, Jon Masler and the rest of the starters from Armstrong were all healthy and well rested as they took on Hopkins, unlike the year before when they were obviously drained after a close and emotional win over South in the Semis’  They looked poised and ready for action.  And even when they went down early they didn’t panic, keeping the Hopkins boys within striking distance.  They would patiently work the disc till they got a height mismatch and they exploit it.   

    Unfortunately for Armstrong, Hopkins was a machine.  Finely tuned, battle tested from easterns and ready to taste the victory.  Justin Kaminsky, Yossi Kakou, Lau, D. Fructer, and Shock all under 5’10 worked the disc without too much trouble and played within themselves.  Only a few uncharacteristic throwaways (or forces to mis-matched downfield receivers) kept Hopkins from opening a bigger lead.  The game would be played to 17 and as the Hopkins boys pulled closer you could feel the wind coming out of the sails of Armstrong’s tall and fast line up.  They just didn’t have the strength to overcome Hopkins efficiency. 

    But then something changed.  Hopkins put in their senior line up at 16-12 and somehow the Armstrong boys found life.  Three relatively quick scores later it is 16-15 and somehow Armstrong can taste the end. Hopkins receives the pull (with their mostly Junior starting line this time) and marches it to half field where the Armstrong defenders dig in.  there will be no under passes given to Hopkins at this point and at one point Yoni of Armstrong gets a ridiculous layout D that somehow goes right to a Hopkins handler.  the crowd gasps.  Then someone on Hopkins throws it out of bounds.  More gasps from the crowd.     But Yoni gets a little over greedy with the firs pass and it sails over his receivers head.  This is all that Hopkins needs and five or six passes later the disc floats into Kaminsky's hands and Hopkins is the first two time Minnesota State ultimate champion.

    The Machine that was Hopkins this year does not look to slow down next year since the majority of their team leaders were Juniors, and it will be up to the rest of the league to catch up to them.  In the meantime, many players from this tournament have been asked to play with the MN Youth Club teams at this summer's Youth Club Championships.  Watch out US ultimate, Minnesota is going to make some noise!