Southeast Regionals Day Two Recap
Bids to nationals galore!
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To answer your first question, no, there was no other fight (to my knowledge) during gameplay today at Southeast Regionals. However, six teams punched their tickets to nationals, and some excellent ultimate was played. Here’s your recap for day two’s action.
Your Southeast Bid Earners Are…
Women’s:
Phoenix (Raleigh)
Men’s
Chain Lightning (Atlanta)
Ring of Fire (Raleigh)
Raleigh-Durham United (Raleigh/Durham)
Mixed:
Space Force (Huntsville)
‘Shine (Nashville)
Across the men’s and women’s divisions, all four teams that earned a bid to nationals kept their bid, and across the weekend, that was never really in danger of changing. Phoenix gave up 18 points in seven games and won the regional final 15-3. They are the class of the region, and it isn’t particularly close. Their o-line was broken once all weekend. So don’t worry. They have something to work on for regionals next year.
Logistically, it is astounding that Atlanta, Florida, or anywhere else in Southeast ultimate cannot field a women’s team that can keep a game respectable with Phoenix despite the flagship North Carolina team’s title aspirations. I think it’s worth engaging with the teambuilding dynamics/numbers problems on the women’s side of our sport at some point, too (possibly in a future piece?).
There’s a larger middle class of teams on the men’s side, but while RDU lost a hard-fought semifinal to Chain, they cruised in the backdoor bracket, winning 15-10 and 15-9 over Boneyard (Triangle) and Alliance (Alabama) to cash in their bid.
Alliance was a bit of a surprise participant in the game to go, however, capping a good showing this weekend with a comeback from 8-2 down against Cash Crop 2 (Chapel Hill) to win 15-14, then knocking out Florida Untied (Ocala) 15-10 to make it to the third place finals. Cash Crop had some injuries and chemistry issues that doomed any chance of getting another shot at RDU after yesterday’s tight 15-12 game.
However, RDU is clearly the most talented, disciplined, and well-coached team in the region behind the big two favorites. It will be a serious challenge for a group elsewhere in the Southeast to form a team that can claim or steal that possible third bid.
In the regional final, with pride and possibly some seeding implications on the line in San Diego, Chain beat a Ring team that had a bit of an up-and-down weekend by their standards 14-12—the cherry on top of an excellent weekend for Chain.
In mixed, despite all the noise and wacky sectional results, we were still one game outcome flipping from the two bid earners holding onto their bids. Space Force absolutely wiped the floor with ‘Shine in the regional final 15-8 in a game where their FMPs tore up the deep space, and their o-line had maybe two turnovers until needing three chances to score the last point.
Toro (Durham), the other bid earners, worked their way through a seven-game weekend thanks to losing in the second round of the upper bracket, beating Murmur (Athens) by a handful of breaks, and winning a thriller over FlyTrap (Wilmington), who in turn beat Storm (Charlotte) on the other side of the lower bracket.
However, by the time game time rolled around for the game to go, the two extra games Toro had played, including multiple universe point games in the lower bracket, appeared to have really taken their toll as ‘Shine passed down the beatdown they’d received from Space Force to Toro, stealing the second bid to nationals.
The host state, North Carolina, and the Triangle area specifically took three of four bids available across the men’s and women’s divisions but yet again failed to send a mixed team to nationals, in what feels like a resource allocation issue to be completely honest.
Space Force looked very good all weekend long and were deserving champs, beating both teams in the game to go throughout the weekend. And ‘Shine, despite some shaky moments against Murmur on Saturday in the upper bracket semifinals and their struggles against Space Force, effectively utilized the favorable draw from the one seed to save legs and find consistency when it mattered the most against Toro and secure their spot at nationals.
The real tragedy of the division (from a neutral perspective) was missing out on FlyTrap playing ‘Shine in the game to go since multiple people confirmed they weren’t sure if they wanted to go to nationals, meaning a FlyTrap upset could’ve set up some very silly shenanigans. Although much of the noise around the team at the complex was about Jack Williams and Sean Keegan playing for them this year, FlyTrap had a solid team around them and was a fun underdog to root for.
Games of the Day (At Least The Ones That I Saw)
The highest level of ultimate I saw played today was the men’s semifinal between Chain and RDU. The game started 2-0 to RDU on breaks, Chain came back to take half on serve 8-7, RDU would break again to go up 11-10, an immediate response made it 12-11 Chain, and the eventual regional champs would finish the game on a 3-0 run and win 15-12.
It was a very clean game for both teams, but with multiple lead changes, which was very good for the spectators. Not only were the players incredibly talented, but it’s clear both teams were extremely well prepared for this game by their coaches and leadership teams. They were committed to their systems and styles of play and to each other as teammates. It was an excellent game to watch live.
The other highlight game I spent a lot of time watching was the Toro vs. FlyTrap game, which was the mixed lower bracket final or game to go to the game to go. Toro started out up a break or two early but FlyTrap hit them in the mouth out of half to take a late lead.
FlyTrap was receiving the pull at 13-13, but Toro finally got their second-half breakthrough and scored, and would win 15-14 after two more holds ended the game. It was very back-and-forth, an elimination game, and both teams seemed incredibly happy to chuck discs in the air to their playmakers with very little invitation. It was especially fun because the regional final next to it was so lopsided too.
Rapid Fire Thoughts and Highlights
Eventually I will take a look back at the rapid-fire thoughts from days one and two and do a deeper dive into anything that catches my attention, possibly if a Regionals deep dive comes out later this week, so stay tuned. But it was another big day, and here are the things that stood out, serious or otherwise.
For the second day in a row, I saw a team try to roll a pull out of bounds and just botch the whole thing. Today, Toro tried to roll a pull against FlyTrap and just yanked it out on the fly near their own end zone
Once again, there are not nearly enough observers. A men’s game to go (Ring vs. Untied) had no observers because three other games were deemed more important. That was probably the right call; that game ended 15-8, but if we can’t get the numbers to have every game observed at regionals, we really should have enough to do every game to go.
Imagine the scene: three games to go to nationals. Winner takes a bid, loser’s season is over. Imagine having them all next to each other so they feed off each other’s energy and intensity. Now imagine having three of them spread out across the complex with open fields between them and far enough away from each other that you cannot figure out what is happening at one, without leaving another. We had the second setup and it was sad. Spectatorship needs to be revamped!
Someday, this one will get a larger post: the player-coach relationship in club ultimate is off. The balance of power is out of wack. If teams want to treat this sport seriously and competitively, they need to find a coach who will take the vast majority of the responsibility for scheming, managing the game and tournament situations, and calling lines. It’s fine if they don’t. But I’m assuming they do if they are at regionals. The teams that looked and did the best this weekend generally had established coaching staffs that did just that. The one’s who didn’t, didn’t.
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About the Author
My name is Noam Gumerman (he/him). I am from Chapel Hill, NC, and studied Journalism and American Studies at Brandeis University. I am a journalist by trade and have been playing ultimate for over half my life. I love nothing more than combining those two interests. Contact me for discussions, feedback, story suggestions, and more on Twitter (@noamgum/@breaksideulti now too!) or email (noamgumerman@gmail.com).