The Ultimate Community

Skyd magazine had a poll a few months ago that asked what the biggest ultimate city in the US was. The options were cities like Austin, the Bay Area, Madison, and Seattle. Big cities with big name teams and often big name college teams. Ames was definitely not on there.

When I joined Woman Scorned a few years ago, I walked into a local community of ultimate that extended past the college team. I remember meeting Mikey Lun at one of my first practices, not really knowing who he was, and he was very friendly and excited about me joining the team. He wasn't coaching us, he wasn't on the men's team at the time, but he was welcome there and he contributed to our practices.

It wasn't just Mikey though, there were plenty of others. For example, Coach Derscheid would often mention a person named Tai when explaining how to play ultimate. It wasn't long until I met Tai, along with Lana and Kevin and many others who played in the area. Eventually, I began to learn what ultimate really was and I found out about a few club teams in

the area. Namely, Chad Larson Experience, but also Small Rackages, Small Packages, Van Buren Boys, Pop, and others. As I became more familiar with the sport, I began to realize the extent of what I was involved in, but also the inner circle that I had been "ultimate-raised" in.

I learned to play ultimate from world champions. These people are more than my coaches or teammates, but my friends and my family. Ultimate is a community in Ames and it extends from the high school to summer league, to college, all the way to the club teams. CLX won worlds this summer, and I (a crappy college player) was able to practice with them even in those last days before they left for Europe. There are few divisions in this community, it is based on the love of the game, and anyone who desires to learn and play is welcome.

This spring, Kevin and Lana Seiler agreed to coach Woman Scorned. While this was the first time officially coaching the team, it really only seemed like a formality to me. I have been learning from Lana since the first time I played her. She looked at me, told me she was really tired, and when I looked at the ground and replied about how I was kind of tired too, she cut deep and scored on me. I have looked up to Kevin as an ultimate player/mastermind since I heard Derscheid talk about him with CLX my rookie year. While they are now officially our coaches, it is not the first time either them have coached many of us.

At practice, it is anything but abnormal to see more experienced players attend to help out. Derscheid, Memo, Tai, Bob, Shellmen, and plenty of others come and to play ultimate and share their knowledge when they have time in their busy schedules.

This past weekend, Woman Scorned attended Centex. Like anything in ultimate, we were unsure of numbers until the day we left. Although we had about 5 roster players not able to make it, we were anything but short handed to fill the hotel spots. Along for the ride, in addition to our coaches, (only 30+ hours round trip) were Taiwo Misra (CLX, former WS coach, Small Rackages, ACS), John Misra (CLX, ACS, former Ames High coach), and Bob Liu (Polar Bears). Having this support system is absolutely amazing. Not only were they there to provide sideline support, one-on-one coaching, and extra eyes and ears, but they were there to hang out with, fill in on our dance when we had injuries, and just be part of the experience.

At Eastern's our mens team traveled with us (they had more people there than we even had playing!), cheered on our sidelines, video taped for us, and helped us with strategy. The following weekend, Scorned traveled to return the favor at Men's Centex in Austin. When we return from tournaments, I am rarely asked who we played or how we ended up because everyone already followed us online throughout the weekend. It is a community. We all have a hand in every win and every loss, no matter which team is playing.

All in all, I don't think Ames all is that unique of an ultimate community. Ultimate is a small world in of itself. With every tournament I play, I meet new, amazing people, and I realize how much I really love this sport and the people involved in it. The community runs from team to team as well. While teams in the same region tend to grow the strongest bonds, Scorned has developed relationships with teams from all over the nation. Whether it starts on the field, at a party, or from antics over the internet, each of these add to the strength of the ultimate community as a whole. If you play ultimate, I bet you know exactly what I am talking about. If you don't play, you should. It won't take long before you find that this is exactly where you belong with the people you will never want to leave.

Woman Scorned Easterns Highlight Video

Check out our sweet highlight video from College Women's Easterns. Huge thanks to Chuck for filming and editing this!

Woman Scorned at Easterns from Charles Cleary on Vimeo.

Women's Eastern's 2011

After months of cold, snow, and indoor practice, Scorned has finally reached Spring Break 2011 and the second tournament in a nearly 5 week run of tournament weekends. This past week was filled with an insane amount of anticipation for Easterns and Spring Break. Even as we jumped into the cars Thursday for the long car trip, everyone was bubbling over with excitement. Other than running into both Saucy Nancy and Bella Donna in the mountains along the way, the car ride was relatively uneventful.

After a tough first showing at Midwest Throwdown the previous weekend, Woman Scorned walked into Easterns as the 10^th seed, matched up against 2^nd seeded UNC for the first game. Because the weekend was the start of Spring Break for Iowa State, our roster was smaller than usual with only 13 girls, but we had the support of about 18 ISUC boys to hold up our sidelines!

Scorned came out in the first game, ready to run after 22 hours in the car the day before. UNC came out stronger, putting points up right away, but it didn’t take long for WS to find their groove and answer back. WS finally started to find our offensive groove, with HUGE layouts from Magon and Becca. While our offense was looking up, our team defense was inadequate despite big D’s from Jazz and Gapstur. With UNC’s strong handler set, our marks let off far too many breaks, and Scorned was unable to stop the Pleiades from scoring.

9-12 UNC Pleiades

As the wind picked up, our second game of pool play put us up against Texas Melee. Both teams ran zone quite a bit. This game started with several break scores by both teams to jack up the intensity right away. Scorned was grateful for this opportunity to work on both zone O and D. Lady Pesch and Hoistad had great breaks on the mark and through the cup, while Scorned worked out the kinks we saw in our zone offense at Throwdown. Our sidelines we huge in this game, offering plenty of chatter to aid in shutting down up field options for Melee. Texas utilized their speed and height well in this game to take the win with a big huck to a one on one match up near the end zone on universe point.

9-10 University of Texas Melee

In the 3^rd and 4^th rounds, Scorned had byes, which offered plenty of time for us to get some lunch, rest up, and escape the sun for a bit. Groups split with some going to the beach, some back to the hotel, others to restaurants, and several returning to watch games after grabbing food. One cool experience we had at lunch was being asked about our games by complete strangers. It’s not so unusual to get asked what sport we play when we walk into places looking the way we do, but it was very cool that these people actually knew what ultimate was and that there was a big tournament going on in Wilmington. Very cool.

Our final pool play game was against Maryland Helpful Corn. Scorned split wins with this team last season, winning at Philly Invite and losing a close game in soft cap at Centex. This year’s team is made up of a lot of different faces after losing a huge part of their roster from last season. Scorned was able to walk away with the win, making adjustments to our defense and tightening up weaknesses in our game. Scorned really admired Corn’s fight, as they were playing with even fewer girls than us. It is hard not to feel a connection with this team, due to our shared affinity to corn and the love of ultimate…

13-4 Woman Scorned over Maryland Helpful Corn

Woman Scorned matched up with Virginia in pre-quarters for a late game starting at 6:30 pm. This game was a TON of fun! While our boys hooked up big speakers to a car for sideline tunes, Michelle turned on the lights, and both teams played some great Frisbee. Scorned was more than ready to play, not letting our low numbers slow us down. Sam, Jessy, and Cami were open in almost every under cut, while Daisy and Kristen grabbed everything in the end zone for the scores. By far, the biggest baller of this game was Rebecca Miller. If speed and agility weren’t enough, this girl has finally perfected her layout style and is very quickly becoming unstoppable. Virginia was a ton of fun to play and even had a great cheer about Des Moines. We hope to play them again in the future!

13-5 Woman Scorned over University of Virginia Hydra

Saturday night was probably the most uneventful Saturday of all time. The majority of the team went to bed around 9:30 and plenty of sleep was had.

Sunday morning’s quarter finals game had us playing none other than the University of Iowa’s Saucy Nancy. I’m pretty sure that Woman Scorned has never gone to a tournament and NOT played Saucy. Saucy and Scorned traded wins in the Fall but took a close victory at a January scrimmage and a solid win over us at Midwest Throwdown. This game started off looking much like Midwest Throwdown, but Scorned kept our heads up and made some changes in our offense to break through Saucy’s zone defense and walk some discs into the end zone. Jiear and Hoistad were rock solid handlers in this game and facilitated the disc through, around, and over the cup all day. Saucy continued to bring it during each point and the score proved it. Although this matchup is anything but rare, it always proves to be an intense game. This rivalry is deep, yet friendly and always results in a great game of ultimate.

6-13 University of Iowa, Saucy Nancy

With the tough match up in Quarters resulting in a loss, we dropped down to the 5^th/6^th place bracket to play Pittsburg Danger in the first round game. This is another team that Scorned has rarely (if ever) seen. These girls came out ready to play some ultimate. Highlights from this game were big hucks from Magic and an insane run through D by Jazzy-phay. Near the end of this game, Becca and Pesch both went up for a Sky D (we did get the D) which resulted in a pretty ugly collision that took Pesch out for the rest of the weekend and cut our numbers down to 12.

13-6 Woman Scorned over Pittsburg Danger

The last game of the tournament took place at the hottest part of the weekend for sure. We matched up on Michigan Flywheel on a field between the finals (Iowa v. Wisconsin) and 2^nd/3^rd (UNC v. UNC-W). Scorned came out in this game, fired up and ready to end the weekend strong. We were down to 12 girls and looking to lose Jazz about 30 min into this game because she had to catch a flight. Scorned took the first 5 or 6 points of the game, looking the best we have yet this season. Magon and Gapstur put up big hucks to Jessy, Cami, Love, and Becca to throw scores up on the board and take half at 7-1. The second half of this game, showed the results of playing a long weekend with few girls. Scorned hit a wall and Flywheel capitalized. Michigan came back with a huge run to pull their score up to 10. Scorned only took the win by one point in hard cap. In one of the points in the second half, Love had a huge D in the end zone that involved one of the tallest girls I have ever seen in college ultimate. Both girls were running for a floaty huck to the end zone. Love had positioning, but the Michigan girl did not notice tiny Love and continued to literally run her over. The results of this play ended in a sweet D from love due to great positioning, a lot of laughter from us, and a pretty roughed up (but not injured) Love. Love took a few, well deserved points to recover which bumped us down to 10 players for most of the remainder of the game.

11-10 Woman Scorned over Michigan Flywheel

Woman Scorned finished up the tournament with a proud 5^th place finish. North Central region had a great weekend in Wilmington, with all 3 teams placing in the top 5 (Iowa #1, Wisco #2). Following games, Gap sweet talked a security guy into letting the girls shower in one of the UNC-W buildings before the team headed to grab food and hit up the beach. After some beach time, the team more or less randomly found a slightly sketchy biker pool bar to kill approximately 5 hours before making the drive to Georgia where our vacation farm house was located.

We would like to give a BIG thanks to Michelle and the Seaweed girls for another great tournament! The weather was unbelievable and the tournament could not have been better. Thanks again!

-Written by Gapstur, Jessy, Magon, Hoistad, Pesch, Cami, and Jiear (chillin’ on a front porch on a farm in Georgia)

Throwing Down at Midwest Mudfest 2011

All week the excitement for Scorned’s first outdoor tournament was building. Last minute emails and indoor zone D practice added to the anticipation that we were finally out of the February no-tournament slump. For the most part, the ride to St. Louis was smooth. Scorned took 4 vehicles, with the majority of the team creating mad libs and chasing SF 1.0 in a 15 passenger van named Vag Fest 3.0. The rest of the team was split up between coach K and Lana’s van, Memo’s car, and a few people from the van went in Jazz’s car to make a little more leg room for everyone. After a 6-7 hour ride the majority of the Scorned ladies arrived at Blake’s house. Things got a little wild as the night got late, but Gapstur and Hoistad settled everyone down, tucked the team in, and told an unnecessarily long, ridiculous bedtime story about Ultimate Princess Virginia and the adventures she encountered between leaving her dairy cow farm on the coast to travel to St. Louis for the Throwdown.

After a little trouble finding the fields Saturday morning, Scorned arrived to the MWT and started to warm up. The weather was a bit chilly, but we were stoked to be outside on ground that wasn’t covered in snow. Lana and Kevin warmed us up with some great drills as we geared up for our first game of the spring season.

With power pool formatting, we took the field with our first game against Bella Donna, North Central Region competition. Both teams came out hard looking to take the lead. Although both teams took made break scores upwind, Bella held the lead until the end and took the win. One memorable highlight was Britt with a great grab for the score (I know it happened, I think it was this game?).

Score: 8-10, Wisconsin.

The next game of the day was versus Colorado Kali. This was definitely the coldest game of the day as the wind picked up. Up wind forehands became nearly impossible and in combination with an effective Kali zone, Scorned was unable to make the breaks necessary to win the game. Although defense was fought hard, Kali’s outdoor experience showed through with very few incompletely passes. Although the game proved frustrating on many levels, Kali was a fun team to play with great spirit and a good attitude about the adverse weather and temperatures. Highlights all went to rookie Weino in this game with some pretty insane grabs on a few swilly hucks. In the end, Kali came away with a win.
Score: 6-10, Kali

After a much needed gathering in the vans to warm up, Scorned took the field against Kansas University’s Betty’s. Lana’s brilliant idea of warming up in the cars proved successful, and Scorned pulled off the first win of the weekend 13-2. Some of the highlights from this game included our new zone defense. While it was a bit of an experiment actually running it in a game situation with real wind, it proved to be successful and forced multiple Ds.
Score: 13-2 Woman Scorned

After games, Scorned split up into their vehicles for the afternoon. Following warm cars and hot showers, the team regained feeling in their feet and hands. Scorned headed to Applebee’s for refueling before heading to Butchers house in the 15 passenger van for a little gathering/hot tubbing with the ISUC boys. Despite the co-ed mingling fun, Woman Scorned left the ISUC house at 12:00 AM sharp, thanks to the responsible rookies, Cami and Sam.
The next morning Scorned was well rested, dressed warm, and ready to take the field against Notre Dame. It was a chilly morning, but the Scorned ladies played tough through the muddy fields. Normally teams force with the wind or to the weaker throw of a team, however in this game we chose to force mud. Since half of the field was a pure mud pit, we decided to force their throws into this perfect layout D bed of fun. For the most part, this proved successful. Notre Dame was a very fun team that was all sorts of full of strategy. They even wore camouflage to blend in with the mud/grass mix of the fields. With a hard fought game on both sides, full of absolutely great spirit, Scorned pulled out the win to start off the morning.
Score: 11-8 Woman Scorned.

With little time to waste, Scorned then headed over a few fields to play University of Iowa Saucy Nancy. Scorned has traded wins with Saucy all fall but in this game Saucy brought everything they had. With great breaks and a zone that gave us too much trouble breaking, Saucy took hold of the game from the beginning and never let up. Despite our troubles making the scores, Scorned still threw down some great highlights. Cami, Becca, and Jessy all had great grabs, while Pesch and Jazz found holes through the Iowa cup on several occasions.
Score: 4-13 Saucy Nancy

After a loss to Iowa, Scorned headed across the parking lot to play Colorado College. This is a team that Scorned has not had very much (if any?) experience playing. The game was played with high intensity on both sides. The defense was really the main spectacle in this game. Both teams sacrificed our bodies for the disc and had the muddy clothes to prove it. Jazz had the most insanezo layout D on a huck in this game, while Oliver and Kaira layed it out big in the end zone for scores. Love, Hoistad, Top Model, and Pesch had mad defense on the field, doing a great job of shutting down handler movement in the mud. In the end, Scorned suffered a tough loss on universe point.
Score: 6-7 Lystra’s Tools

The final game of the weekend started off with a dance off to set the tone of the game. Both teams brought it, all enjoyed it, and in the end it was impossible to walk away with your head hung, no matter the outcome. Ohio State was our final opponent, and yet another team that we little to no history of playing. This game was fought with both pain and pride, as every single player on Scorned stepped up. The sidelines worked it hard in an attempt to transmit energy to the tired players on the field. Endurance wasn’t as much an issue as weighing injuries and the pure body beating the mud had administered. Both teams worked hard, but had exceedingly too many turn overs with solid defense being played by both teams. The biggest highlight of the game (and probably weekend) was THE MOST RIDICULOUS layout grab I have ever seen in my life, by Cami. In a swilly huck, the disc bladed over Cami’s head to the other side of her defender. Even her defender didn’t see the need to look for the D as it was clearly out of range...except that Cami made a bid for the disc, resulting in a two fingered grab no more than an inch above the ground. Unfortunately for everyone involved, a quiet injury had been called a few throws before which resulted in the disc going back. There were several more great grabs and Ds from a number of people on Scorned. Jessy, Gapstur, Love, and Becca were consistently frolicking in the mud, while Cassie, Sam, Hoistad, and Jiear played with straight consistency, maintaining our possession for the scores. The game was definitely a fun one, and although Fever took the game on universe point, Scorned gladly shook their hands for playing a great game of ultimate with us.
Score: 8-9 Ohio State (Beiber) Fever


Although injured, we had great help on the sideline from Anne all weekend with stat keeping (which we clearly didn’t get a hold of to help me write this) and sideline cheering/support. Although unable to play, Anne proved herself as a teammate. In the Fever game, Gapstur took off her red sweatshirt to reveal a clean white jersey, but after a few points, was asked to change to a red by the other team. Anne graciously lent Gap her brand new red jersey, which became almost completely covered in mud and wetness only minutes later with a layout D.

We would like to throw a huge thank you out there to our coaches for their help this weekend, and also to WUWU and Without Limits for running a great tournament, as always. Thank you!

After games, Scorned took no time to strip off all of our muddy clothes, crawl into our cars and make the trip back to Ames to gear up for a week of exams before the big Spring Break Oh One One. This weekend we will be attending Easterns in Wilmington, NC. Excitement is probably the biggest understatement of the year, but we are EXCITED. Not only are we looking forward to some more outdoor ultimate, but we are also excited for warm weather and the beach!! There has been a lot of tweets./emails/RSD posts flying around about surfing lessons, and Scorned plans to take full advantage shall the opportunity arise. The big talk around Ames is about Sarah “Blue Crush” Hoistad and her mad board skills, but realistically, I think most people are putting their money on the Magical “New Zealander” Lui.

ISUC and Woman Scorned plan to spend the following days in Georgia celebrating life before heading down to Austin, TX for Men’s Centex.

-Written by Lindsey Gapstur & Cami Nelson

Scorned's headed to St. Louis for V-F 3.0

This weekend, Woman Scorned will be headed to St. Louis, Mo to compete in Midwest Throwdown. Our first game of the weekend looks to be against region rival, Wisconsin Bella Donna. The weekend looks to hold lots of exciting games and we are pumped and ready to get down there for some good 'ol fashion OUTDOOR ultimate!

Follow us on Twitter to catch our scores and possibly some game highlights if anyone is ambitious enough to do it. :)

Can't wait for the weekend to get more Woman Scornedisms in your life??? Neither can we....

This weekend we are experimenting with a 15 passanger van (aka most of our team) to participate in what we call V-Fest 3.0. It is likely to be an adventure, especially because ISUC will be hosting their first S-Fest 1.0 (they got a big van too). Check out the highlight video from V-Fest 2.0/WS Valentine Party/what we do in Ames on the weekends.



Good luck to everyone playing this weekend!