After suffering slow starts throughout the season and two very close losses on Saturday at NMH, Andover Ultimate bounced back on Wednesday to trump Concord-Carlisle high School 15-7. To seal the win on Wednesday, Dylan Gully ’12 faked a forehand to get the defender to commit and then flung the disc behind his back to an open cutter on his other side. The key to Andover Ultimate’s success on Wednesday was experience from its last two back-to-back games against NMH and Hotchkiss. After battling a tough NMH zone defense on Saturday, Andover adjusted smoothly on Wednesday to Concord- Carlisle’s man-defense. Although Andover began all three of its games slowly this week, the team managed to clinch the win against Concord-Carlisle after the score was tied at halftime. “I think this game we were really focused and came into the game mentally ready to play,” said Rem Remmel ’14. “We started off slow, which we usually do, but we were able to pick it up and take control. Coach [Scott Hoenig] was really stressing the fact that we needed to focus and get ready for the game way before, even on the bus, like mentally prepare. I feel like that, visualizing what we needed to do, imagining playing well, really affected how we played, and we did better than we usually do.” On Saturday, battling harsh, windy conditions, the team fell to Hotchkiss 5-8, and barely slipped to NMH 6-7. “[Hotchkiss and NMH] were both good teams, so I wasn’t too concerned with the result of the games, and I thought we played well. There were a lot of opportunities [for us] to learn, and as far as zone offense goes, we played some pretty good defense, and we’ve been working on that today [Tuesday]. I was pretty pleased,” said Hoenig. Piper Curtis ’13 said, “I think it was good for us to get up against good competition, because we haven’t had much of that yet, so it showed us that we really have to work hard in practice. We’re doing lots of running, lots of conditioning, and it’s our first time doing zone drills, so that was really good. To sum up Andover’s early season results, Brandon Wong ’12 said, “This is the first time that we’ve played Hotchkiss and NMH earlier in the season. Usually we play them during the ending games of the national championships, so it was nice to see them earlier.” “I think what’s unique to Ultimate is that every year you start with a lot of kids don’t necessarily know how to play the game, so you have to start from scratch every year, and so more or less it’s sort of a battle of how quickly and how well you can improve throughout the season, and in past seasons that’s something that we’ve prided ourselves on. I think that’s something that we’ll continue to do this season,” said Wong. Andover Ultimate looks forward to a five-game tournament this Saturday.
