|
Last Updated: 05/04/2005 01:23:27 PM -0700
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Spring Thaw started in 1992 as the result of Roger Raine’s effort. In 1993, Cindy Fisher and Mike Lyle continued the tradition. Since 1994, Mike Lyle was primarily responsible for the organization of the tournament until about 1998, when I (Jeff Jones) took over with much help from my wife, Connie. Chris Alvarez has provided a long history of disc and shirts with his own hand drawn designs (many of which provide the graphics for this web site) for this event. This expanded history is a work in progress. If you have information about any of these past years, please send them on to me. 1992 Some Boulder team wins. 1993 A last minute pickup team of Springs players brought home the most coveted prize ever to be offered to the winners of this tournament: a Spring Thaw 1st Place cap. The only players I can remember on this team were myself (JJ) and Roger Raines. 1994 Where are these guys from anyway? 1995 Texas Red Hots took the cup by beating Pira Haku in the finals. 1996 Pira Haku took the tourney.
1997 The start of Dan Stern’s two year reign at Spring Thaw. Sweet Mamalade beat Pira Haku in the finals. 1998 Dan Stern and Sweet Mamalade win again edging out Orca from Denver. Orca took Pira Haku in a tough semi-final game in which Pira was up at game point.
1999 Beer On Ice was unstoppable as they went undefeated through the tournament. Beer On Ice defeated Pira Haku in semis, while Bad Larry defeated Something About Mary. 2000 PEZ (made up of Old and in the Way <last year’s UPA Master champs> and top female players) went 9-0 to take home the Cup. The talent this year consisted of 21 teams vying for the trophy. A Pool After Saturday’s pool play, all number one seeds held except for the home town favorite Pira Haku and Ho’ Cakes. Pira Haku took second with a lesson in Ultimate from PEZ who won the pool without much effort. Absolut Ultimat won the B pool with solid athletic play. Sunday started with a sixteen team, single elimination, playoff. Four games to the cup. The only upset during eights and quarters was Pira Haku beating the B pool #1 seed, Absolut Ultimat. This placed Pira Haku, once again, against PEZ in one semi-final; while Bad Larry and Beer On Ice battled it out in the other semi-final. Pira Haku managed to start out better against PEZ this time around with a huck game that kept it tied up to 4-4. PEZ stepped up the action to close the half at 8-5. In the second half, PEZ strength was felt and they closed the game at 15-8. In the Bad Larry and Beer game, it was heated and close up to the end with Larry just edging out Beer. The weather was breezy and overcast. Finally, PEZ met Larry for the Cup and opened up a 7-2 lead in a game to 13. Larry was not going to settle for a blow-out and closed to within 1 point at 8-7. But PEZ, once again, stepped up the pace and finished with a score of 13-?9?. 2001 Ryno’s Revolution took top honors this year for their first Thaw victory. Ryno has been a perennial COED powerhouse in the region since 1999. A Pool 1. PEZ – 2. Ho Cakes – 3. Drive Through Liquor – 4. Air Force Ultimate B Pool 1. Bad Larry – 2. Absolute Ultimate – 3. Jaeger Monsters – 4. Mixed-Up (Kansas) – 5. Shamelessly Irresponsible C Pool 1. Ryno’s Revolution – 2. Spongiformes Zombies – 3. HALO – 4. Lickety Split – 5. Tim Brown All-stars D Pool 1. High Plains Drifters – 2. Otis – 3. Pira Haku – 4. Disc-Claimers – 5. Country Mike’s Big Breakfast After Saturday’s pool play, Ho Cakes lost seed in A Pool to Drive Through Liquor; B pool held seed; Ryno and Halo advanced from C Pool; and High Plains Drifters held with Disc-claimers advancing by upset from the D Pool. On Sunday, an A bracket and B bracket were setup to allow all teams to play to an A and B pool winner. A Pool
B Pool
2002 This year’s tournament proved to have the highest caliber teams to have ever participated at Spring Thaw overall. Two teams from last year’s Coed nationals – OTIS and High Plains Drifters which both finished high (5th and 6th I believe) at Nationals! Ryno came back to defend their title as well. Saturday play was a bit windy but really nice overall. In the A pool, La Familia upset Drive Through Liquor to take 2nd place while Ryno went undefeated. In the B pool, Drifters, Haz-Ops and Ho’ Cakes split with 3-1 records; Ho’ Cakes won with +1 differential, Drifters with a +0, and Haz-Ops got the shaft with a –1 differential. Couldn’t have been any closer. In the C pool, OTIS, Dick Tiddy and MADD also split; with OTIS and Dick Tiddy swapping seed. In the D pool, everyone held seed. On Sunday the weather could not have been worse. In the clouds, 32°, sleet and snow with flakes as big as silver dollars. Ryno met the Drifters on Field 1 – Ryno won by a few. Dick Tiddy (mid-west team) met CASHMERE on Field 2 and won by 1 point at the hard cap after more than a couple of lead changes. OTIS upset Bad Larry while La Familia (the sleeper of the tournament) took Ho Cakes. All places were slated to be played out per the schedule. But I believe only the game for 5th and 6th took place between Drifters and CASHMERE. Drifters took this game after a few lead changes battling the up-wind goal. The semi-finals placed Ryno against Dick Tiddy and OTIS against La Familia. The higher seeds won out. This placed Ryno against OTIS for the final. With a Ryno leading the entire first half and closing the half at 8-5, OTIS came out fired and took 3 straight to tie it. But Ryno had had enough and went on to win. Congratulations to Ryno for winning the cup for the second year in a row.
Due to the weather, all B pool teams folded and went home, and most of the secondary games for the A pool were not played. 2003 This year we moved Spring Thaw to the weekend after Mother’s Day due to schedule conflicts with the USAFA and the desire to somehow avoid the perennial bad weather that consistently happens on that weekend. It turns out that had it been held the weekend of Mother’s Day, we would once again have had to deal with very rough weather. But this weekend turned out beautifully weather-wise. There was strong enough wind, off and on, to play zone much of the time. But otherwise, no precipitation to speak of. The winner of the last couple of seasons – Ryno – did not make an appearance this year. Also missing was Otis. There were last minute team cancellations and adjustments that caused the original 3 pools of 6 teams to be modified to 2 pools of 5 and 1 pool of 6. The top three seeds: Bad Larry, Mixed SuperStars and Team Duff sat atop the list of eventually 16 teams. The original seeding was as follows:
At the end of the first day, each of the top 3 teams held seed and went undefeated. The second day format was a modified double-elim format which guaranteed all teams exactly 3 games. Although, some teams bailed early, choosing not to play the final round. Major DiscCharge and Absolut Thrust (combined with original Shock & Awe and Orange Alert teams) got bumped to the bottom 8 on the second day, while Poncho and Soul 7 improved their ranking to the top 8.
In the B pool, Huck the Police made it to the final with little trouble. The other semi-final between Major DiscCharge and Absolut Thrust was very tight. After trading points up to a time capped game of 15, DiscCharge found themselves down 14-12 with just a couple minutes before the hard cap. Jonathan (Absolut) hucked a big one deep to one of his speedy players for what looked like a sure end to the game and a win for Absolut. But wait a second, that is Mike Lyle on defense and trailing the speedster by a couple steps. At the last second Mike extended and defensed the disc just before the offensive player got his fingers on it. DiscCharge fought back to 14-14; and the hard cap went into effect – last point. DiscCharge pulled to Absolut. After a couple change-of-possessions, a big huck was sent downfield to again, Mike Lyle. But this was no “gimme”, he had Trent on his tail. Somehow Mike managed to come down with the huck and DiscCharge took the game 15-14.
The B pool final, then pitted Huck the Police (Dallas) against Major DiscCharge (Colorado Springs et al). After trading points initially, HTP took the game and a bottle of Champagne convincingly. In the A pool, all top seeds won the first round. In one semi-final, Team Duff met Mixed SuperStars. Team Duff won that game to meet Bad Larry in the final. Bad Larry, a perennially strong team captained by Phil Quatrochi, has been appearing in the top 4 at Spring Thaw since 1999, but never taken home the CUP. Perhaps with Ryno and OTIS out of the picture this year, Larry would have a clear path to the championship. I did not get to see the final game, but this ended up being Bad Larry’s year. They beat Team Duff 15-9 and deservingly took home the CUP (which by the way was missing because Mitch of Ryno didn’t get it here).
Final standings were:
----------------------- * Game for 3rd & 4th place not played; so both teams tied for 3rd. 2004 The teams and seeding for last year were:
Monkey Love beat Duff in the semis to meet Bad Larry which beat Picnic. In the finals, Monkey beat Larry (last year's winner) to take the cup home. Monkey Love
2005 This year saw only 10 coed teams making it to Thaw. Colorado College would have made 11 but had to bail at the last second. The teams and their initial seeding went as follows:
This produced a nice two pool tourney with 4 games for each team on Saturday. Rare Bravo cam with only 6 seasoned players and a squad of newbie high schoolers. They got upset twice by Larry and Akimbo on the first day. Akimbo also upset Star Nursery in the B pool to take second. Everyone held seed in the Pool A. Bad Larry beat Akimbo in the final game of the day to take first in the B pool. At the end of Saturday: here was how it ended up.
On Sunday, Rare Bravo and DU did not show. So we shuffled up the bottom two teams and went straight to quarters. Everyone held seed and created two semis pitting Akimbo against Monkey Love and Sack in the Box against Bad Larry. Larry fell to Sack in a tight game and Akimbo fell to Monkey Love by a good margin. This put Monkey vs Sack in the final late in the day in a game to 15. Sack held even at the start and then Monkey pulled away to win 15-6. Second year in a row for Monkey. A word about the weather this year. It was awful! Cold, snowy, wet, windy. With almost no breaks. It was held at the Columbine Polo Club in LIttleton, CO. The fields are second to none with the only issue having to deal with all the goose crap. 2010 This year saw the revival of the once-highly-attended Spring Thaw tourney. Thanks to Trent Simmons and his efforts, the coveted Air Force Academy fields were again obtained for the tournament site. And they did not disappoint. The fields were lush and green as far as the eye could see. Weather on Saturday was off-and-on rainy and sunny with one pause for a lightning break. Sunday couldn't have been better. But it was off-n-on windy both days. Trent managed to pull together 4 teams: Swingline: The local coed team seeing their second year of existence. Saturday saw round-robin play with Pick-up Scene going 3-0, Golden Showers 2-1, Swingline 1-2 (losing two very tight games by 2 points) and Strangers 0-3. This setup Sunday semis with Swingline vs. Showers who beat them the previous day by 2 points. Games to 15; 2 hour soft-cap. Swingline went up 8-1 to take the half and finished the game 15-4. While Pick-up Scene won 15-1. In the final, Pick-up and Swingline traded points to 3-3, when Pick-up took a 6-3 lead and took half 8-6. Swingline got going in the second half and tied it at 9-9. They marched to 11-11 when the soft-cap went into effect. Swingline pulled to Pick-up; stuffed and scored and did the same thing on the next point to take the first Spring Thaw championship in 5 years!
Players missing from photo: Tim Allen, Brad Polcek, Gavin Murphy, Tony Gioia, Jon Powell, LeAnn Sanford, Jen Viola, Jennifer McKean. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
