The first rule of Ultimate Frisbee, according to Belmont High School coach Phil Lawrence, is to play in the “spirit of ultimate.”
“Spirit of ultimate” is loosely defined as playing to the best of your ability in a controlled, honest, fair, and trustworthy way. And while the Belmont team played their hearts out all season, adhering to the spirit of ultimate every step of the way, the spirit couldn’t carry them to victory.
Marking the conclusion of the season in a heartbreaking game, the team lost the finals by a point in the last minute of the very last play.
Belmont Ultimate is a high school club sport, though according to Lawrence, varsity status may be conferred in the future. Currently a club, Belmont’s team is known by the name Grilled Cheese, an homage to the time a member showed up with enough bread, cheese, and butter [and a camp stove] to make everyone a grilled cheese sandwich. One of the coaches continues the tradition, even making sandwiches at the state tournament.
Heartbreaker
The top-seeded Belmont team faced a number of obstacles. First, the finals were scheduled on June 1, the same day as Belmont’s graduation, knocking graduating seniors and members of the BHS orchestra off the roster. Several players were also injured, bringing the team down to nine players, a far cry from the usual 18 to 24 available in a competition.
To top it all off, temperatures reached 81 by midafternoon.
“It was pretty brutal going into it,” said junior Etienne Kueppenbender.
At first, things went well, Lawrence said. Belmont won the first game despite captain Mark Tytell sitting out to nurse a sore knee. Nine Belmont players ran the field under the beating sun.
“On a typical day, a player will run eight or nine miles at top speed, and if you only field nine players, they will run much more than that,” Lawrence said.
He said that by the time they reached the finals against Natick High School, the Belmont players were exhausted. Tytell, having rested the first three games, was on the field.
Lawrence said the Natick coaches negotiated for the game to be played longer than usual, 80 minutes rather than the usual hour. When the game hit the 50-minute mark, two Belmont players dropped out, leaving the team with seven and no substitutes.
“This was a very hard position to put a group of young men into,” Lawrence said.
“We were playing well; we were up 9 to 5, and the other team was playing aggressively,” said Tytell. “It was not the best atmosphere. We were very hot, had played all day with no subs, so we were getting really tired. That’s when they started getting points on us.”
At the 70-minute mark, another player was injured, leaving six on the field.
At the 80-minute mark, the score was tied, but Belmont lost at “universe point,” the final point that determines the winner.
Lawrence questioned whether the Natick team played according to the spirit of ultimate; in particular, he questioned a timeout that was called that didn’t offer the team enough time for to set up their defense.
“This is win-at-all-cost, unspirited play,” he said. “They forced a game of attrition and knew they would win.”
Despite appeals to the tournament director, Lawrence said the Natick team got possession of the disc and scored the final point, storming the field in victory.
“My players were crushed,” he said.
“We were obviously disappointed,” Kueppenbender said. “But overall, I was really pleased with how we performed. The team has grown a lot this year. Given the circumstances, I think we performed really admirably.”
Lawrence said as a coach, he let the team down by not demanding the other team adhere to the spirit of ultimate.
“I shouldn’t have let them play the longer game,” he said. “I should have told the other coach to talk to their team about body control, adhering to rules, and the code of conduct. I let the team down.”
Tytell, meanwhile, was philosophical.
“It was quiet on the ride home, but it’s been an experience we’ll all remember, and it brought us closer together as a team,” he said. “I’m looking forward to next season, taking what I learned from this year, applying it to next year, and doing even better.”
“We could have fought through it, it was just our lack of numbers that cost us the game,” added Kueppenbender. “Walking away without the title is not the end of the world for me.”