A recap of this years rendition of the annual Spring Reign tournament

Nearly 100 teams from the Pacific Northwest come to Spring Reign to play a weekend of Ultimate. It’s the largest youth co-ed Ultimate tournament in the world.

Many schools play to win, and games can be very competitive. University Prep, however, is not one of these schools (as reflected in our 15th place finish). At UPrep, Spring Reign is a fully optional event, and in order to play at Spring Reign, you had to be a girl currently playing UPrep ultimate or a boy who played UPrep ultimate in the fall and is also not playing a spring sport. This also means most of the boys, including me, who showed up were incredibly out of shape.

After every game, the two teams get in a “Spirit Circle” together, with each person standing next to two players from the opposite team and each team awards a member from the other team a spirit award. The school we were playing was hilarious and when a representative gave Junior Vera Leshinsky her award, after saying why she won the award, got down on one knee and said “Do you work at Dicks? Because you’re sporting the goods.”

After our first loss, we had a bye. During this time, the winds picked up, and it was difficult to throw a frisbee. In fact, it even knocked our tent over. The next game was coming up, and we weren’t ready to play in conditions like this.

Our next game was against Nathan Hale and came down to a Universe point. This means that it was a tie game, and whichever team won the point, won the game. Sadly, we ended up losing by 1

We proceeded to lose our next game in a landslide, 13-5. By the end of that game, I was exhausted, and proceeded to go back to UPrep shortly thereafter. I was sore. My calf hurt and throat hurt. But of course, I went to go back and play the next day,

On Sunday, a different crowd of people showed up to play. Among them, there were only 3 girls. Spring Reign rules dictate you must have at least three girls playing at all times. So, Freshman Alana Berger, Senior Talia Randle, and Senior Blythe Eickerman played for the entirety of both Sunday games.

We ended up in the loser’s bracket, against other teams that had went 0-3 on Saturday. Yet, we still lost our first game on Sunday.

In our last game, we won by a landslide, with the other team scoring only one point. It felt good to finally win a game. It was also really impressive for the girls, as they managed to play really well and give it their all for the whole day. My out of shape self would not have been able to handle it, and I only played around 1 out of every 3 points, and was tired by the end of the day.

By Aaron Igra