This series of posts concerns the creation, by one Mike Zargham, my roommate for 3 years at Dartmouth who not only is one of my best friends but also introduced me to a number of my other close friends, of Mike's Ultimate Team. During freshman and sophomore years at Dartmouth, while most of our Dartmouth teammates were getting to know each other, Mike was taking full advantage of the awesome ultimate social scene to get to know people on other college teams at hat tournaments, leagues, and tournament parties. Mike did such a great job of this that by sophomore summer he could assemble enough friends to form a team to attend a mixed tournament near his home town of Troy, NY, and thus was born M.U.T. in June of 2005 at Ow My Knee in Albany, NY.
The first incarnation of M.U.T. included representatives from Dartmouth, Cornell, Wellesley, Vermont, Chicago, and Amherst. Most of us were rising juniors, though some were rising sophomores or seniors. If memory serves me correctly we stumbled in our first game to a very beatable team, then lost to a good team, and then discovered we all knew how to run a sick 1-3-3 zone and hosed our next two opponents by at least 10 points each. Our first game Sunday was a similar romp, and then we lost by a respectable score in the quarters to eventual tourney champ and rising mixed power house Slow White. Equally important as our early success was the attitude we carried into our games. Everyone wore a skirt on Sunday. We played Twister during timeouts. We challenged our opponents to swords fights for the pull. We had hula hoops and a big stuffed dragon. It was more about fun than ultimate, we just happened to be good at ultimate too.
Members of that original M.U.T. team that were in attendance this past weekend at PADA MOSH include myself, Mike, Seth, Ralph, Tyke, and Fishie.
We had so much fun together that M.U.T. reconvened again that fall to play in Dartmouth's Frozen Disc of Death. I was at Geology Field Camp somewhere out west at the time so I wasn't there, but I believe results were similar with much fun being had and a similar .500 record.
With me back on campus in the winter of 2006 and dating a fellow member of M.U.T. (one of at least 7 current or former couples to be a part of M.U.T.), we pulled together a small crew to play in the indoor 4 Corners tournament in Burlington. I had completely forgotten about this until pulling my thoughts together to write on this subject, as my only memory of playing in this tournament was not doing well and getting really angry at myself for doing something stupid. But this event is important as it included an epic snowstorm drive to get to and from and marked both the first time Socks and Mackey played with M.U.T. and also the last time M.U.T. would lose a game until this past weekend in Philadelphia. Coincidence? Mackey will tell you it's not.
