Sports

Andover Receives Spirit of the Game Award at NEPSUL Tournament

Despite losing three of its four games in the NEPSUL tournament, Andover Ultimate was awarded the Spirit of the Game Award last Saturday.

The award is awarded to the team that receives the highest spirit-score average. After each game, teams award opponents a spirit score based on the opponent’s knowledge of the rules, their ability to self-officiate and their overall sportsmanship, according to the athletics page of the Andover website.

“[Andover] Ultimate takes pride in our spirit of the game, and it showed last Saturday. We play against some tough teams and often found ourselves behind on the scoreboard, but that didn’t stop us from playing our game, and playing it right. I’m proud of our team for winning the Spirit of the Game Trophy, the highest honor in Ultimate,” said Jack McGovern ’15 in an email to The Phillipian.

Andover defeated Deerfield but fell to Northfield Mount Hermon, Chase Collegiate and Hotchkiss to finish the tournament in fourth place.

“We often found ourselves on the wrong side of our defenders, constantly being beat up the short side with the forehand flick. This is pretty common throughout the entire tournament for us and is definitely something we need work on,” said McGovern.

McGovern continued, “As for the positives, we made great success playing against zone defense all across the board. We learned a lot as a team from playing against all zone defenses we encountered, and we were much better players by the end of the day.”

On Wednesday, Andover fell to Acton Boxboro 4-15.

Andover hopes to win its final game of the season on Thursday against Andover High School.