Nietzsch Factor, the men’s ultimate frisbee team has been going around the country, winning championships and the envy of other teams throughout the season.
The latest flatball action for Nietzsch came this Sunday when they secured a spot in the Northeast Regionals by overpowering Roger Williams 13-6 and blowing out Connecticut College 13-3. In Sunday’s Southern New England semifinal game against Yale, Nietzsch Factor built up a commanding 7-2 lead at halftime, but ended up losing the game 12-9. It certainly didn’t break their team spirit, cockiness, or ability to continue winning.
“After going up 7-2 at half, I single-handedly tanked the team, and we eventually lost,” said Seth Crockford ’04. “Other than that, we have been deemed ‘cocky, obnoxious assholes’ by Brown, and some anonymous kid on the internet keeps saying that we’re all a bunch of dicks.”
NF was the second seed in the twelve-team sectional, second only to a Brown team they never ended up facing. Before Sunday’s loss to Yale, Wesleyan won four straight games on Saturday, demolishing Trinity College, Brown University B, Connecticut College, and Roger Williams.
On Sunday, Wesleyan’s B team forfeited the final game of pool play to the A team, which gave each team some extra sleep. Everything was set for a rout of Yale, and Wesleyan had a commanding lead after a rather sloppy first half of play. Yale apparently stole Wesleyan’s game like they stole Wesmatch, as they came out scoring five unanswered points in the second half to tie the game at seven. Eventually Yale won the game by three points, as Nietzsch Factor looked slow and unprepared in the second half.
“We went into the game knowing that we were going to win, and even when the game was over, I really didn’t believe we’d lost,” said Dave “M’Nac” Lievens ’04. “We have better skills, and are more athletic than they are. They just tried a lot harder than we did in the second half. It was the most devastating loss of my four years with NF. I was really scared that we wouldn’t bounce back and would play slap-ass ultimate and throw away our season to a chump team in the backdoor bracket, but we played more than well enough to win the rest of our games.”
The loss sent Wesleyan to the backdoor bracket, and Yale to a thorough defeat by Brown. In the backdoor bracket, Wesleyan made easy work of Roger Williams before going on the play Connecticut College with a Regional berth on the line.
“Concurrent to the beginning of the Conn game on was the arrival of NF’s most honored and mysterious supporter, Ben Usadi ’92,” Lievens said. “Benji shows up randomly at some of our practices and tournaments. He was captain of NF in 1992. We don’t really know what he does or how he supports himself, he seems to just go from place to place playing Ultimate. Last I saw him, he was mulling cider in the woods during a coed tournament at Hampshire in November, and then I looked over at the sidelines, and there he was, just taking in the game, like he’d never left.”
The arrival of Usadi sparked Nietzsch Factor to a lopsided win over a semi-tough Connecticut College team. More importantly, it earned them a spot in the upcoming Regionals where Wesleyan expects a repeat of their performance at High Tide in Savannah, Georgia, when they completely dominated competition for the first week of spring break. A top two finish at Regionals would send Nietzsch to the sixteen team Nationals in Seattle at the end of May.
“Wesleyan’s Nietzsch Factor is notable among Frisbee teams for its cocky attitude, athleticism, and laid-back moral superiority and wit,” said Chris Lake ’05. “Of particular note is Spring Break 2004, where, with the female team’s help, we went through ten kegs in three nights and won the tournament. On our most recent trip, we defied the chalking ban, covering the cul-de-sac in pink, green, yellow, and blue chalk.”
Nietzsch Factor will now go from defying President Bennet’s chalking ban to destroying the Regional competition in Newport, Rhode Island on May 8-9.
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