Club sports: Panthers fall short at nationals

It’s a story most Pitt fans are all too familiar with.

A team gets the No. 1 seed, only to… It’s a story most Pitt fans are all too familiar with.

A team gets the No. 1 seed, only to lose just when it seems like its lofty goals might be within reach.

This was the case for the Panthers Ultimate Frisbee team as it finished in a tie for fifth place at the 2011 USAU DI College Open Championships in Boulder, Colo., over Memorial Day weekend. The team, which is a club program at Pitt, was eliminated following a defeat in the quarterfinals of the championship bracket at the hands of Colorado University.

The Panthers are a student-organized program that competes in both the fall and spring seasons during the school year. Run by player-captains and a group of unpaid coaches, Pitt’s players pay their way for the season.

The team also received allocations from the Student Government Board to help with expenses.

After an impressive regular season, Pitt entered the series, or college Ultimate’s version of playoffs, as a favorite to make some noise. Following tournament wins at sectionals and regionals, the team qualified for Nationals and was awarded the No. 1 overall seed. It would be their seventh straight appearance in college Ultimate’s premier tournament.

“Being given the top seed, we were definitely confident in our abilities to go on and potentially win the whole thing, but it’s disappointing not to accomplish what you feel is a reachable goal,” assistant coach and Pitt alum David Vatz said.

The tournament didn’t start as the Panthers would have hoped. In its first match of round-robin pool play, Pitt dropped a back-and-forth encounter with Iowa 14-12.

However, the Panthers knew they couldn’t get too upset about the loss, and they shifted the focus to their remaining three pool games in order to advance into the championship bracket.

“After that loss, we knew we had some tough challenges ahead, but we wanted to remain confident that we could win those next three games,” Vatz said.

And the Panthers did just that. They swept aside Illinois, Colorado College and Tufts by five or more points in each game to finish pool play with a 3-1 record and earn a spot in the 16-team championship bracket.

In the round of 16 Pitt drew a game against British Columbia, and the Panthers continued their winning ways by dominating the Canadian team 15-7 and advancing to the marquee quarterfinal matchup against the No. 2 overall seed and hometown team Colorado.

“We’d played Colorado twice this season and beaten them both times in close games, so maybe that made us overconfident heading into that game,” senior  Julian Hausman said. “We definitely weren’t afraid of them, though.”

Despite the players’ confidence and knowledge that they had already beaten their opponent, Colorado  came out fired up and  raced out to a commanding 5-0 lead.

The Panthers tried to fight back but could never get the game close again. The team’s season ended with a 12-7 defeat.

“It was definitely a letdown,” Hausman said. “Because of our seed we had put some internal pressure on ourselves, and we knew we had the ability to win it all. So to lose in the quarterfinals after we had made the semifinals last year — it felt like we had taken a step back.”

Yet the Panthers were still awarded the No. 2 end-of-season ranking by USA Ultimate, behind only national champion Carleton College. It was the highest end-of-year ranking in the program’s 13-year history.