Wednesday, October 31, 2007

HalloWinona brings Ultimate Frisbee players from afar

By Jessica Paulsen
Cardinal Staff

The 13th annual HalloWinona tournament was held in Winona on Oct. 27 and 28.

HalloWinona is an Ultimate Frisbee tournament and party. Around 40 teams and clubs from Minnesota and neighboring states participated, including one high school team. Many of the teams dressed up because it was the Halloween tournament.

There were three brackets this year; the men’s open A, open B and the women’s bracket. In previous years there have been more teams, but due to the recent flooding, there was a shortage of fields available.
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According to Saint Mary’s University captain Eric Duffy, the Winona State University captain said the event lived up to his expectations.

SMU contributed by allowing the women’s games to be played on Joe’s Field, providing four extra fields. There were also eight in the park by Lake Winona, four at Winona High School and two at the technical college.

The Saint Mary’s Ultimate Frisbee Club (MUF) played four games and enjoyed their first tournament. “Overall, it was a learning experience for us,” said Duffy, “but it was insanely fun.”

1 comment:

Blog Editor said...

First of all I want to thank Jessica for her article on the Hallowinona tournament. Its great that the cardinal is helping to spread the word about this upcomming and exciting sport of Ultimate frisbee. Additionally I want to note that the name of our school club team is the MUTs not MUF.

The tournament as a whole was very good. The skill of players from the midwest was quite a spectical. Ultimate frisbee is a sport that not only incorporates edurance, speed, and hand-eye cordination, but also an extreme sense of teamwork. If you were to have gone out to the tournament last weekend you would have seen high flying catches, slick throws, and grass flying lay-outs. However, what would have really made the weekend for you was watching the way teams flowed together in unison, each player knowing exactly where to be at exactly the right time.

My team, the SMU MUTs (Mary's Ultimate Team), came together like never before. Sure, we played four games and only won one, but what really matters is that we had fun and found out for the first time what Ultimate frisbee was all about.
At the end of sunday I had the opportunity to watch the girls championship game between the Winona State Bad Monas and the Eau Claire SOL. I have never watched a frisbee match more fantastic than that one. After playing nearly seven games that week both teams looked cheery and upbeat no matter what the score. In the end Eau Claire ended up pulling ahead, but what surprised me the most was how both Winona State and Eau Clair cheered and congradulated each other. I am proud to say that Ultimate frisbee is truly one of the last great "love of the game" sports. It doesn't matter who wins or looses all that matters is that you had fun doing it.

Eric Duffy
Junior at St. Mary's
Pastoral Youth Ministry Major
Captain of the SMU MUTs