[TFDA] WoFoIt Makes Rug of Bears at 2006 Kudzu

Christian Schwoerke schwoerkec at yahoo.com
Tue May 30 11:52:57 EDT 2006


WoFoIt Regains Kudzu Laurels (Again)

In Sunday’s finals of the 9th Annual Carolina Kudzu Coed Classic, played at Cary’s SAS Soccer
Complex, WoFoIt overcame last year’s victors, the Bears, with a solid 15-12 performance.  Unlike
the Bears, who earned two two-point cross-gender scores, WoFoIt’s 15 points were earned one by
one, with a strong reliance on their deep bench of solid men and women handlers.

The Kudzu tourney this year featured a smaller field, with teams from the southern and northern
ends of the Atlantic seaboard conspicuously absent.  Nonetheless, the fourteen teams in attendance
were mustered into three pools, giving each squad a chance to play up to four games on Saturday. 
Teams and their original seeding, along with place of origin are listed below:

The Bears             Triangle, NC
WoFoIt                Triangle, NC
TBD                   Triangle, NC
Too Much Mustard      Triangle, NC
Hot Sauce             Asheville, NC
MAC                   Winston-Salem, NC
Surf & Turf           Morehead City, NC
Raleighwood           Triangle, NC
Flash Your Fat Hammer Towson, MD
Flow This             Clifton, VA
Ramshackle            Triangle, NC
Nekkid                DC area
Sugarbuzz             Triangle, NC
CHUF                  Triangle, NC

At the end of Saturday, SugarBuzz had jumped from its 13 seed to #7 overall with a strong 2-2
record in Pool A.  Similarly, Ramshackle compiled a 3-1 record in Pool B and jumped from 11th
place to #5 overall.  The Pool C upset was the top two teams (#3 and #4 TBD and Too Much Mustard)
switching places after a long, overtime game resulting in Mustard’s displacement of TBD, 18-16.

Final standings at the end of Saturday:

Pool A          Pool B              Pool C
Bears 4-0       WoFoIt  4-0         Mustard 3-0
MAC  3-1        Ramshackle  3-1     TBD  2-1
Buzz  2-2       Hot Sauce  2-2      Flow This  1-2
Surf  1-3       Raleighwood  1-3    Flash 0-3
Nekkid  0-4     CHUF  0-4

Saturday evening at the Upper Deck Sports Bar in Cary featured a party treat for tourney
participants, a chance to catch a premiere of local filmmaker Josh Long’s “For the Title,” a
mockumentary about two not-so-good ultimate teams vying for a local league championship.  The
sound system was awful, however, and much of the picture’s zany verbal humor was lost to Kudzu
players chatting, drinking, and eating.  More information on this movie, and information about
ordering a DVD, can be found at the following sites:

http://jcpenney.imdb.com/title/tt0769515/
http://www.forthetitlethemovie.com/index2.html 

Sunday’s elimination play pitted the top eight teams for the A bracket championship, with the
losers going on to earn the B bracket laurels.  Meanwhile, the top four of the remaining six teams
played to earn the C and D bracket laurels.

First-round results had Bears taking out Western Carolina’s Hot Sauce expeditiously, 15-5, while
WoFoIt dispatched SugarBuzz 15-2.  Number three Too Much Mustard (featuring current and former
Carolina men and women) dismantled Winston-Salem’s MAC 16-5, apparently earning a 2-point goal to
close the game.  The two Triangle teams in the 4v5 matchup were TBD and Ramshackle, with underdog
Ramshackle forcing TBD to work hard for its 15-11 victory.

In the first-round matches to determine the C bracket champs, Virginia’s Flow This swept over
Morehead City’s Surf&Turf, 15-6, while Raleighwood (comprising current and former NCState players)
dimmed Towson, MD’s Flash Your Fat Hammer with a 15-7 victory.  In the final matchup between Flow
This and and Raleighwood, the northern team overcame the depleted local team with a whopping 15-6
score to earn the C bracket championship.

Back in the B bracket semis, Ramshackle launched a series of 2-point hucks to overwhelm their
SugarBuzz opponents, 15-9, and MAC played to the cap to win 14-9 over Hot Sauce.  The B bracket
finals pitted local Ramshackle with mid-state rivals MAC.  In a mutually-agreed-upon shortened
game, MAC’s greater cohesion proved the undoing for Ramshackle’s pick-up origins, giving them the
edge to become the B bracket champs with a 11-8 win.

Elsewhere the D bracket games proceeded with DC’s Nekkid overcoming Maryland’s Flash Your Fat
Hammer, 14-12, and CHUF edging Surf&Turf, 15-11.  Winning the 11th place finish at this year’s
Kudzu was CHUF (Chapel Hill Ultimate Frisbee), a squad of high school players, who with good
athleticism and skills beyond their years, outran the older, savvier but much more fatigued Nekkid
squad 15-5.

Returning to the A bracket semis, Bears was matched against TBD, with both teams displaying great
athleticism and offensive daring.  The edge went to the Bears, whose completion ratio for the
bigger throws was greater, earning them a 15-9 victory.  Meanwhile, WoFoIt never gave Too Much
Mustard a chance, and they rolled 15-5, earning themselves an additional half hour of rest before
the finals.

WoFoIt’s 20-person roster was chock-full of stellar players, several from the area’s leading club
teams, Ring of Fire and Backhoe, including Jon Proctor, Tuba, Josh Berkowitz, John Boling, Beth
Stagner, Katie Harris, Mel Proctor, Lesley McCormack, and Sharon Tucker.  Others on the squad are
strong players on their respective club teams, including Rhett Russ (LCN), Chris Shepard (Donkey
Punch), Brian Zeurcher (Boneyard), Mark Britt (Boneyard), Garrett Dyer (Olio), Ryan Smith (Olio),
John Kitchens (Olio), Martha Jolly (Olio), Claudia Barrett (Sweet T), Karen Pepe (Sweet T), and
Joey Connelly (Wolfpack).

The Bears’ 19-person roster was also full of good players, though their captain Alan Hoyle had
been sidelined the entire tourney with a calf injury, with many of its stars grown long in the
tooth.  Luminaries who matched up well with the strong lines presented by the WoFoIt team were
Ring’s Chris Hinkle, Augie Kreivenas, Tim Brooks, and Pat McNally; Gorilla Foot’s Adam
Silberstein, TJ Cawley, and Rebecca Silberstein; BackHoe’s Amy Morrison; and Sweet T’s Mimi Phan,
Liz Mahannah, and Beth Gifford.  Rookie Sam Carol, from Savannah, GA, provided intensity and fire
whenever needed, while role-playing duties were filled by Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, Jeff
Faulkner, Victor Maneilly, Jenny Cornejo, and Christian Schwoerke.

The game was close in the early going, with one-point goals traded throughout the first half. 
When WoFoIt made the second of its two-point runs in the first half, taking the score to 6-5, the
Bears answered with a two-pointer to take the lead, 7-6.  But this was to be the last point for a
while as the Bears gave up two opportunities to take half, then allowed two additional scores by
WoFoIt at the start of the second half, giving WoFoIt a hefty 10-7 lead.  The Bears finally
recovered and scored to come within two points, 8-10.  A series of points were traded till WoFoIt
led 13-10, at which point the Bears connected again on a two-pointer to come within one goal,
12-13.  In the final two points of the game, the Bears gave themselves opportunities, but could
not keep possession, enabling WoFoIt to scoop up the turnovers and work the disc methodically into
the endzone for the final scores, winning 15-12.  

Box Score:

WoFoIt:   1 2   3     4   5 6   7 8 9 10   11   12    13    14 15
Bears:   1    2   3 4   5     7          8    9    10    12

Two photographers (Alan Hoyle and Samuel Adams) have posted pictures from this tourney at the
following sites:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanhoyle/tags/kudzu2006/
http://www.scadams.com/galleries/disk/kz06/0527/index.html 
http://www.scadams.com/galleries/disk/kz06/0528/index.html 




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