History: 1998 – 1999 Season

The 1998-1999 season was our first real season where we started to compete and go to tournaments.

Roster:

Tournaments:

CMU Tournament: Pittsburgh, PA – September 5th, 1998
Founder’s Club Sectionals: Oaks, PA – September 26th – 27th, 1998
Freeze for Ultimate: Cleveland, OH – February 13th – 14th, 1999
1st (and last) Annual Carnival: Pittsburgh, PA – April 3rd, 1999
Pennsylvania College Sectionals: Haverford, PA – April 24th – 25th, 1999
1st Annual Penn State-McKeesport Tournament: McKeesport, PA – May 1st, 1999

CMU Tournament: Pittsburgh, PA – September 5th, 1998

This was our second tournament and first 1st place finish as En Sabah Nur. We won it with our good looks and paleness. We didn’t know too much about strategy yet. There were four other teams in attendance including two from CMU, one from Duquesne, and the other team from Pitt, the Iron Panthers which was making their first tournament appearance and captained by Adam Haigh. They went 1-3 in Division 2.

Founder’s Club Sectionals: Oaks, PA – September 26th – 27th, 1998

This was our third tournament ever and our first high-level competition tournament. It was truly an eye-opener as our first game was against perennial powerhouse RAGE. They didn’t blank us, but it was close. We can’t remember who we played the rest of the days, but it went equally bad.

However, the true story of the weekend was all about a huge road trip and bonding. Partied on Friday and Saturday night in tent city at Jay’s uncles place. We swam on Sunday at Matt Liddle’s relative’s place. We had fans thanks to Youngblood’s mom, Bain’s parents, Matt and Tom Liddle’s dad, Corine Petrus, Janet Nagel, and an early incarnation of the Pansy team, PDC (standing for Pittsburgh, Duquesne, Carnegie-Mellon) at the time. We raced back on the turnpike going 100mph. One car was the coed naked car. Another had the full wrap around moon of other cars. Fabulous, fabulous times! Let’s not forget that the sexy butt dance all stared here too.

Back Row: Matt Dietrick, Brody, Aaron Paulos, Bryan Chaikin, Jim Swetz, Jeremy Stadlin, Jay Paulonis, Chris Tabakin, Kevin Rose
Back Row: Erik Frank, John Bain, Jon Stadlin, Matt Fagerburg, Matt Liddl.
Not Shown: Corine Petrus (Photographer), Dave Frank, Janet Nagel (Driver), John Dietrick, Tom Liddle

Pool Play: RAGE (Philadelphia, PA)
Aaron Paulos opened up the scoring at the 1998 Club Sectionals with a huge huck to Brody racing down the field. 1-0, En Sabah Nur. After that however, things went downhill. We didn’t score another point and RAGE showed us a thing or two about high-level ultimate. They stacked. They threw a zone. We crumbled, but still had a good time. They even had dark red and dark blue uniforms. One was for the offensive line, one was for the defensive line. We didn’t even call subs. RAGE went on to win the Section.

Pool Play: Mister Fun (Pittsburgh, PA)
After losing our first game of the day, we were moved over to the consolation bracket where we played a Pittsburgh team with a number of players we had not met yet, but would come to know well in the coming years. I don’t even know if they remember us, but we played against: Bram Reichbaum, a young Steve O’Lare, Mark Kubaska, and Marty McElligott. I remember we just couldn’t stop Marty because he was so big. At one point, one of our guys went up for a disc and almost had their nose smashed by Marty’s elbow because he was just that much taller than anyone else.

Freeze for Ultimate: Cleveland, OH – February 13th – 14th, 1999

This tournament was cold and cold. We were trying to play with winter gloves, which makes it really hard to throw. Winter jackets and hats helped to keep us a little bit stay warm. I don’t think it worked for long because we got so wet. At the start of the day, there was 2-3 inches of snow on the ground. By the end of the day, it was a big mud pit. We placed 2nd overall in a finals that no one watched including the tournament director because they all left as soon as they were eliminated.

Back Row: Erik Frank, Michael Finnerty, Jeremy Stadlin, Brody, Jon Stadlin, Jay Paulonis, Kevin Rose
Front Row: Chris Tabakin, Aaron Paulos, John Bain, Keith Wertman

Final: Denison
This was a pretty close game, but we made it extra hard on ourselves. We had a bye before the finals so we all went into our cars to get warm and then when we tried to come back out we just were too cold to get in the rhythm. The highlight play of the game was probably caused by some of the activities that took place in the cars while we were trying to get warm. Kevin Rose was on the field for defense and the entire sideline was yelling at him to turn around to see the disc because it was flying at him. Instead of turning around, he very slowly looked into the sky and kind of stumbled around in every direction except the one where the disc was. After the game, we took a team picture as we all laid out into the mud!

1st (and last) Annual Carnival: Pittsburgh, PA – April 3rd, 1999

This weekend we had 19 players: Aaron Fellows, Aaron Paulos, Brody, Bryan Chaikin, Cale Conry, Corine Petrus (Photographer), Erik Frank, Jaime Stadlin, Jay Paulonis, Jeremy Stadlin, Jim Swetz, John Bain, Jon Stadlin, Kevin Rose, Matt Fagerburg, Matt Fagerburg’s Brother, Michael Finnerty, Rachel Steigerwalt.

This was the first tournament we hosted and our second-ever tournament win. 5 teams and 4 games with a skills contest in the middle to break things up. The skills contest included pull distance, accuracy, and tipping contest. I don’t want to forget our great fans that day, Nina, Bill, and Jim Jackson.

Pool Play: Team Orange (Pitt)
When we were putting together our tournament, a random person came up and asked me if they could put together another team from Pitt. We decided the more the merrier, though we didn’t know anything about them. Matt Pascal and his Team Orange put up a good fight, but En Sabah Nur took the day.

Pool Play: Iron Panthers (Pitt)
This was a bit of a grudge match because at the time the Iron Panthers were the official team of the University of Pittsburgh and were just an upstart team. To date, we had always beaten them and wanted to keep that streak alive. The Iron Panthers were represented by Captain Adam Haigh, Shaun Griff, Chris Rocco, Jacob Nadler, Dave Mauger, Dave Birch, and a lot of other people I can’t identify.

Pool Play: Duquesne
This was our first game ever against the likes of Mike Yanchak (future pitt player), Stefan Roth, and Ben ‘Smiley’ Snyder.

Pool Play: Central Catholic High School
We seemed to play Central Catholic High School regularly so we invited them down again for this mini-tournament. We played against future stars Drew Hendrickson (CMU) and Nate Hribar (Purdue).

Pennsylvania College Sectionals: Haverford, PA – April 24th – 25th, 1999

This was En Sabah Nur’s first college sectionals. We finished 7th out of 12 teams. There were a lot of close games and some intense competition. Some remember it fondly as the tournament where we scored on the barking seals play.

Back Row: Aaron Paulos, Phil Katz, Sean Smith, Keith Wertman, Chris Tabakin, Jay Paulonis, Bryan Chaikin
Front Row: Jon Stadlin, Erik Frank, Michael Finnerty, Jeremy Stadlin, Brody, John Bain

1st Annual Penn State-McKeesport Tournament: McKeesport, PA – May 1st, 1999

This was our first official coed tournament and we took 1st place. The officially coed tournament gave us a great chance to play with all the women that we were always practicing with which was great. Because we were short a few female players, we picked up Dara Stern on the day of to help us out. This is also the first time we would run across Dane O’Brien (the tournament director) who went on to form the Edinboro University team, George Irwin, or Nikki Irwin.

Final: Central Catholic High School
We had an easy time with most of the competition through out the day, but Central Catholic had Nate Hribar and Suzie Rynerson quarterbacking their offense. After Suzie, smoked all of our women we put a guy on her. She continued to smoke them as well until we finally put one of our 2-3 best guys on her where they could at least contain her a little bit if not stop her. At 10-12, game point for Central Catholic, Suzie Rynerson had the disc on the goal line about to score. Brody point blocked her pass, but it bounced RIGHT back to her and she had the composure to catch it! Luckily, we were able to D a later pass and stop the goal. We then went on to score 4 unanswered points and win the tournament. This was En Sabah Nur’s first ever overtime win.