Welcome Message

Welcome to the new face of Austin Ultimate. Brought to you by UPLA!

Welcome

The August Austin Scoober

  • Ageless Ultimate
  • Setting Goals
  • Player Profile: Rob Seidenberg
  • Greetings People of the Northern Territories
  • Play Wall2Wall Ultimate!

    • The Special Worlds Edition Austin Scoober

  • Doublewide Worlds Recap
  • An Out of this World Experience...
  • Worlds vs. USA 11th Edition Rules: How it actually played out
  • You, Too, Can Have a Chad Larson Experience

    • Home

    TUFF Gets Tougher After Holding Tryouts

    by Calvin Lin

    After experiencing its largest loss of talent in team history, TUFF entered the 2009-2010 college season looking to restock its talent pool. This year, in response to the increasing athleticism of the other elite teams around the country, the TUFF leadership chose to favor athleticism over experience to a greater degree than in the past, with a specific goal of recruiting additional height and speed.

    Against this backdrop, TUFF hosted tryouts beginning in early September, with over 130 students competing for approximately 13 roster spots. To deal with these large numbers, the tryouts were staged by first measuring raw athleticism, including 40 yard dash times and 3 cone shuttle times, then evaluating individual skills, such as throwing, cutting, and the ability to chase down hucks, and finally evaluating team-oriented skills.

    Although a few of the best athletes eventually dropped out due to time commitment issues, the result was an extremely promising class of newcomers, including two outstanding graduate students who are in their 5th year of college ultimate---Ryland Barton, who was named 2nd team All Great Lakes Region last season while at the Univ. of Chicago, and Ben Garrett from the University of South Carolina, who also played at Club Nationals last year with El Diablo. Other newcomers include a former Division 1 soccer player from the Univ. of Portland and two Dallas area athletes who made all-district in basketball and soccer, respectively.

    The need for height was satisfied by three 6'4" players and one 6'3" player, and while none of the newcomers boasts elite speed, it's a fast class overall. With these 13 newcomers (including 10 rookies) joining TUFF's hardened returning core, the future of the team looks bright. With a similarly large influx of talent joining Graze's strong returning personnel, the future of the entire program looks bright.

    Calvin Lin is a professor at UT-Austin and a long-time coach of the Texas men's ultimate team. He has played at UPA Nationals with six different teams (Seattle Sockeye, Houston Houndz, Blaze of Glory, Doublewide, Old and In the Way, Surly) and has won one World Championship (2002, Masters Division with Keg Workers of America) and one National Championship (2008, Masters Division with Surly).

    PB232363PB232422P1020929