Nearly seven consecutive hours of ultimate frisbee were played on Saturday afternoon on the rugby and turf fields. The RWU club team hosted its annual “Senior Send-Off” tournament, although there are still games to play this season.

The team faced off first against Clark University — a team we fared well against in our fall tournament. Both squads traded points on the windy rugby field, but it was the visiting team that came away with a win.

The next contest for the Hawks was against the University of Maine Farmington. UMF travelled over five hours from the Pine Tree state for the one-day tournament. The Hawks and Beavers were tied with just over 10 minutes to play, but three consecutive points for RWU sealed the game and our first victory.

At 6 p.m., we migrated to the turf field to play under the lights. Our first opponent there was Gordon College — a team representing the school our varsity athletes know from CCC games. It seemed there might have been a roster requirement to be at least six feet tall because this team did not even have to jump for the disc half the time. In order to fit all our games in, the duration was shortened to only an hour. Gordon took the half at 6-2 and then scored one more to kill our chances of the trophy.

Although we were not receiving the hardware, there was still one more game to be played against Westfield State University. Without the pressure of playing for the title, the team got back to our roots of enjoying the sport and working together.

Most of us had no idea what the score was for most of the game, but a Westfield player said it was 10-9 Hawks — which meant we were one point away from winning the game. The mostly senior line that was on the field at this time decided an into-the-wind hammer throw might need to be vaulted for the time being as to avoid potentially going 1-3 on the day.

The disc came into my possession just outside the goal line and we had two open players — a senior and a freshman. The symbolic thing to do would have been to throw to the senior, but when you share the same last name as the freshman, you have to make that throw.