The Montclair Geese Ultimate Frisbee team flew to Salt Lake City for the first time against the best-of-the-best in the United States and held their own.
Seeded 10th in the nation, the Geese came in 10th out of the top 16 high school frisbee teams in the US at the High School National Invite held on June 16 and 17 in Utah. Montclair finished with a record of 2-3 in the round-robin tournament.
Montclair senior co-captain Dylan Pearson was proud of how the team fared against the country’s top teams.
“For our first nationals, this was a huge success,” Pearson said. “We held seed and placed tenth in the country, which is just amazing, just based on how far we’ve gone. All the games were really fun. It was awesome to play teams from all over the country and needing to adapt to new, different strategies.”
Montclair got off on the right foot in defeating Northwest (WA) High School, 14-8, in their tournament opener. Pearson said Montclair’s performance against Northwest was the team’s finest moment of the weekend.
“It was our first game of the weekend, and everyone was pretty nervous,” Pearson recounted. “We didn’t really know what to expect. This team has a U-20 All American team player. He was really good. Northwest just played really well in Seattle. They finished third in Washington and Washington State is the best ultimate state in the country.”
The formidable opponent did not scare the Geese. They met the level of the competition.
“We played out of our minds,” Pearson said. “Everyone just kind of rose up. Everyone had a perfect game, and the first half was close. We came up with a big second half. It was really fun to watch and play, for our first game of the weekend. Everybody left it out there and played really awesome.”
Unfortunately for the Geese, they could not take it into their next two matches on June 16 as they lost to South Eugene (OR) High School, 15-7, and then Amherst (MA) High School, 15-12. Ultimately, it was a loss to Edina (MN) High School, 15-10, the next day, June 17, that knocked Montclair out of the tournament.
In a final consolation match later that day, Montclair got revenge against Amherst with a 11-9 victory in the rematch to end the tournament.
Montclair’s biggest honor was finishing second in the Spirit standings. In Ultimate frisbee, sportsmanship is highly valued. The games are officiated by the players themselves, so being labeled as “spirited” is a distinguished honor within the Ultimate community.
“Spirit has always been a strong focus of our program,” Pearson said. “From day one, we emphasized that no matter how long or how competitive the game is getting, you’ve gotta respect the [sportsmanship] rules of the sport. We spend time at practices going over the rules and solutions that we might have to deal with. It’s kind of a conflict resolution. Our practices are not just that.”
Pearson added that the work is mainly game and strategies, but the rules and sportsmanlike are also discussed and important. “We’re able to pull back and stay calm during disputes,” Pearson added. “We can communicate well because we know the rules and because we studied them. That all is really helpful.”
Pearson believes being student-run instead of being supported by Montclair High School, helped build their camaraderie with their opponents. “Since we were student-run, we had to build that presence ourselves to become a well-respected team,” the senior co-captain said. “That effort has to come from really good students. That’s where that culture began.”
Pearson was one of Montclair’s team leaders along with senior co-captain Griffin van Rhyn and junior Mitchell O’Keefe. Pearson had 12 assists and nine goals. van Rhyn had 21 assists and five goals. van Rhyn created six defensive stops as well. O’Keefe had 10 assists and three goals.
On defense, Montclair was led by their sophomore duo of Coaba Nichim-Luta and Sam McCrory. Nichim-Luta had six defensive stops and he contributed six goals on offense. McCrory had five defensive stops. McCrory also had a huge presence on offense as well with six assists and eleven goals.
The full 21-member team and some of their parents were able to make the cross-country flight because of a student-organized fundraiser through a GoFundMe campaign. They set a goal of $30,000 and they surpassed that mark by more than $6,000.
Pearson expressed gratitude to everyone who contributed to the fundraiser. “We launched a fundraising campaign, and it was a huge success and I have to thank everyone that contributed,” Pearson said. “People were so generous. Every single person had a really awesome time and there were no bumps or hiccups. Everything went super smoothly. As a team, it was so close together in terms of spending so much time together, doing something together. Everybody was able to connect with everybody else on the team. It was really awesome just to kind of see the whole team come together at a level that we’ve never had before.”
Pearson, van Rhyn, another senior co-captain Elliot Albright along with four more seniors have all now graduated from Montclair High School. It’s a loss for the program, but Nichim-Luta still feels confident about the future of the Geese.
“We’re losing some crazy talent,” Nichim-Luta said. “Eli (Fellus), Griffin, Dylan (Pearson), Lincoln (Zaltas), Elliot, all the rest of the seniors, Josh (Solomon), Will (Hojegian). It’s definitely a big loss, but other teams are losing, too. I think we have a solid JV program that we’re going to be bringing people up from.”
Nichim-Luta added that it will be a senior-dominated team in the spring of 2024. “We’re going to have the most seniors we’ve ever had on the team; I think 11 or 12,” Nichim-Luta said. “We really will have a solid foundation to play with. We still have great players. I mean, like Sam McCrory who’s insane. He’s amazing. Amazing. Always, always a key player in every game.”