Oberlin Ultimate Brings the Heat to Versailles

“There is beauty in the pursuit of truth,” someone once said. Or maybe not, but that’s the point. The point is that last weekend on Sept. 20 and 21, the Oberlin Flying Horsecows, cleverly disguised in two different forms as Team Farenheit and Team Celsius/Kelvin, competed in Club Sectionals, the first tournament of the year for the men’s ultimate team. Versailles (ver-SAY-uhlz), Ohio was the location of the East Plains sectional contests, which pitted old-man club teams in the height of their season against fresh-faced college squads several months away from their spring seasons. All came to duke it out for spots at Club Regionals and subsequently Club Nationals.
In past years, the Horsecows have usually sent two squads –– an A-team, filled with experienced vets, and a B-team, composed mostly of rookies and underclassmen. But this year, the team split into two vaguely equal squads, the aforementioned measures of temperature: Celsius –– the lanky, tall team; and Farenheit –– the short, scrappy team.
Farenheit, led by senior co-captain Nate “Coyote” Marsh, was the younger and wilier squad. Fº was ranked third in the C pool, not too shabby. Eager to prove themselves a competitive team, they started the day battling perennial rival the University of Dayton, also known as Ghetto Force. Dayton quickly got off to a sizable lead, taking advantage of the team’s inexperience. By half-time the score was 7-2, a sizable deficit. Unwilling to give up, the team rallied back in the second half going point to point against Ghetto Force, but could not close the gap, and lost 13-8. “Yeah, that sucks, like inhaling a cherry or cashing a bowl on your favorite hippy pants,” first-year Silas “Cletus” Cole said.
Celsius, a brash and overconfident bunch of scalawags, were led by senior co-captains Rich Raz and senior salt machines Adam “Marvel” Marvel and Jacob “JKD” Kramer-Duffield. Seeded third in their pool, Kelvin’s first contest pitted them against Black Lung, who were a veritable salt mine to Oberlin’s shaker of Morton’s. The wily old veterans, however, were not to be underestimated, having finished a surprising fourth in the previous year’s sectionals. As the captains of the team pointed out in pre-game warm-ups, they had been playing ultimate for longer than most of Celsius had been alive. Then they put on another layer of Ben-Gay. At nine in the morning. Unprepared for the devious ways of Old Lung, Oberlin quickly fell behind 4-0. Celsius did bring it back and played basically point-for-point for the rest of the game, but spotting a lead proved deadly and the team fell 12-8 in a time-capped game. First-year scoring sensation Brian “Paul Pitcher” Kenny remarked as the game was wrapping up, “…and I said, yeah, but what do you expect me to do with all these crab suits? So then it got ugly.”
With a second-round bye, the metric measurement of temperature boys went over and watched their illogically-measured compatriots, Fº, play a game against Cuyahoga Sheet Metal, a club team made up of many familiar Cleveland area players. This game showcased the squad’s continual improvement as they worked it almost effortlessly through CSM’s salty zone defense. The team rapidly adjusted to CSM’s defense, taking advantage of stand-out play by sophomore transfer Jesse Lynch, and first-years Ted “Sandman” Olds and Will Dominie keep them in the game. Unfortunately, mental errors and overall lack of spunk threw the team back in the hole, losing 12-6. Sophomore Bryan “Wolly” Woliner was heard to say “Fuck it dude, let’s go bowling.” Amazingly, bowling didn’t really work out.
Celsius prepared to take on a club team loosely affiliated with the College of Wooster, Rampant COW (cow, get it, College of Wooster? Ha ha ha). Seeded fifth in Kelvin’s pool, this was a must-win if the team hoped to play into the upper bracket on Sunday. After a dominating beginning, Oberlin let up the intensity and coasted over a couple of rough spots for a 13-6 victory. Speaking of the seniors’ sloppy play in the Rampant COW match, Marvel summed up the frustration with the simple lament, “Corn flakes, get me the corn flakes!”
The next team to face the “American standardized units of thermal energy within a system” was Case Western University, the Fighting Gobies. Even with heavy rotation and lackadaisical effort, Oberlin won handily, 13-7. Winning his first game ever, first-year Jon “Gilly” Gillam, excitedly remarked, “Bling-bling, how about that?”
Celsius next marched into battle in the day’s hardest game, against rival and mostly OSU-composed Madcow. The game featured a serious improvement in effort over previous contests, as the Kelvin remained competive through the first half, which went 7-4 for Madcow, and played a closer second half than the 13-6 final would indicate. Stepping it up in this contest were junior Mikes Hamm and Degnan and first-year Wilson “Principal” Skinner, who all provided solid offensive efforts to complement the frenetic defensive efforts of sophomores Clark “Cesare” Ainsworth and Noah “That Guy” Hoskins-Forsyth.
Coming off the uplifting Case win, Farenheit next went up against Age against the Machine, a group of old old Cincinnati club players, many missing teeth and any sense of self-respect. Although old and slow, they were smart and sneaky, which gave them an edge that our inexperience could not surmount. Fº lost a disappointing 13-6.
Bitter junior Dan “Gohan” Scott asserted, “If I didn’t have 1300 mg of donkey tranquilizer coursing through my veins, I wouldn’t be having a such time good.” The defeat was the last game for Fº on Saturday.
Celsius’ last game pitted the team against a Dayton club team featuring the handling talents of Dumbface McStupidhead (note: not his real name), who seemed to have a most tenuous grasp on what the object of frisbee is (hint: to have fun). Kelvin ran play early and took half 7-5 in a game that could easily have featured a much larger Celsius lead. The team, exhausted by a day under the unforgiving sun and out of shape from a summer of beer and sausage, was visibly stumbling as the second half began. They gave up three straight points to the old men and fell behind, 8-7. It looked as though not only were the hopes for the game quickly slipping but also the prospect of competitive Sunday play was fast disappearing. Following a timeout, the team gathered all they had left –– heart, all heart –– and demolished Dayton with a combination of smart handling (courtesy Raz, Marvel and JKD), ferocious defense (courtesy Ainsworth and first-year “God” Steve Kleinman) and unstoppable long play (courtesy Degnan, Hamm, Marvel and Raz). The old men had no answer, and Celsius gained a spot in the upper bracket on Sunday.
Composed of perennial Ohio club all-stars and most of last year’s dominant Heartland team, along with a slew of Ohio University alums, Burn had outscored their opponents by 46 points in four games on Saturday. The insouciant Kelvin Kows were undeterred, and on the first point succeeded in going deep to Hamm. Infuriated by the young upstarts, with the game tied at three Burn put on their A-game and held Oberlin scoreless for the rest of the game to advance to the sectional semifinal.
An early morning forfeit by Wooster easily doubled the team’s wins. The next game was against Dayton club, a team of mostly older club players. This was the closest game Fº would play all weekend. Dayton, unaware of many fundamental rules, was a quite salty and an unpleasant team to play against. Dayton won the half 7-5 and then fell behind 11-10. Fº’s fragile lead was not to last; Dayton pulled ahead in the waning points and defeated Fº 13-11. The next game was another forfeit, this time by Denison. Thus ended Fº ‘s run, giving them a solid 11th place. Fº did however, win the Spirit of the Game award, given to the team which exhibits the best sportsmanship. Sophomore William “Miller” Miller said, “That’s cool, it’d been cooler if there was a naked chick included.”
Given that both Lung and Age against the Machine were to receive automatic bids for regionals in the masters division, both forfeited their games in the middle bracket and Oberlin faced off against Dayton’s college team, Ghetto Force, for the fifth place spot. Oberlin and Dayton have a storied history of competition, with OC having beaten Ghetto Force for a bid to College Nationals in 1999 and again sending them home from College Regionals in 2000. So it was with no shortage of history that the teams faced off this Sunday in Versailles.
Celsius came out of the gate hard and at times seemed ready to blow Dayton out of the water, but a stiff wind and a Dayton affinity for cleaning up the garbage kept the game close. First-year Skinner put it best when he said, “Those guys are so good at picking up trash, it’s a wonder they’re all not in the mob. Say, you ever seen “The Sopranos”? That’s a pretty sweet TV show.” Oberlin took half, and kept a cushion of several points through the second half, eventually taking a 12-10 lead and pulling out the victory 13-11.
Following the end of regulation play, some from Celsius and some from Farenheit came together in a truly inspiring show of unity to play a game that meant nothing against Age Against the Machine. Beautiful like a sunset, the tournament too faded into the horizon and into the haze, haze, haze of memory.

Seniors Jacob Kramer-Duffield, Nate Marsh and junior Dan Scott are members of the ultimate frisbee team.