CCC LIX Previews – Georgia Tech Tribe

Georgia Tech poses after a winning 2010 USAU GA/SC Sectionals. Photo courtesy of Facebookstalking.

If there is one team in the new South Region that isn’t as worried about replacing big name players it’s Georgia Tech. In spite of the fact that Tech lost one player who currently is counted among the elite players on Chain Lightning’s roster, Tech will still have 3 of 8 main O-line players and a big chunk of its D-line players. With that knowledge in mind, Tribe is expecting big things from this season.

CCC LIII Saturday: Our Impressions

By the end of the third round at CCC we determined that we could no longer depend on anything. The entire world was upside down and we were very cold. These are a couple of categories that we thought up that really sorted out the mirey muck that was the Saturday of CCC 2009.

CCC LIII Previews: Virginia Night Train

It’s no secret how Virginia ran into such success last season. Night Train was led by a ten-person senior class and that senior class was led by Robert Runner, now a National Champion with Chain Lightning.

Runner, in addition to being Night Train’s Callahan candidate, led the team on the field with a smart mind and an incredible presence in the huddle. We witnessed it first hand at AC Regionals as Virginia ran through the competition and there was no question that Runner was the head of the team. He was given great deference in between games, points and halves throughout the tournament.

So, while that gives us a lot of background and knowledge about where Virginia is coming from, it doesn’t answer a lot questions regarding how Night Train plans on getting back to where it left off last year.

How do you replace a Callahan candidate? How do you replace ten seniors?

Well, you start with Tyler Conger.

CCC LIII Previews: Jojah Bulldogs

They say that success is contagious. If that’s the case, then Jojah is certainly in for one of its most successful seasons of all time.

Since 2003 Jojah has only missed Nationals once. It is safe to say that the Bulldogs have made themselves a staple of the competitive Ultimate scene. However, apart from their trip to the semifinals on the back of future World Champion Dylan Tunnell, Jojah has not had much in the way of success once Nationals has rolled around. Last season was no exception as Georgia, the No. 2 team from the Atlantic Coast, won one game in Columbus and finished tied for 19th in the nation.

“For all our players that were on the team last year,” Jojah captains Peter Dempsey and Rob Herrig wrote us in an e-mail. “(That) was an embarrassment.”

However, Jojah has been surrounded by success this offseason, as two of men who play pivotal roles on the team, fifth year captain Dempsey and coach AJ Tiarsmith helped lead Atlanta’s Chain Lightning to its first UPA Club Championship.

South Open Regionals Finals – Chain Lightning vs. Doublewide

Chain Lightning's Rob White skies Doublewide's Kiran Thomas for a goal. Photo courtesy of Ben Deneka.

From the first point in the Regional finals on Sunday, it was easy to tell that things were just a little bit different for Chain Lightning in this year’s UPA Series. The team from Atlanta brought home its first Regional victory in three years with a 15-10 over Texas’ Doublewide.

After Doublewide caught the opening pull it was only a matter of throws before Chain’s Mark Poole (our former summer league captain) sold out for a layout block on a breakmark throw. Poole had to take an injury after his mark landed on him but his replacement, AJ Tiarsmith, would find John “Kid” Hammond in the back of the end zone with a hammer.

Though Tiarsmith’s hammer was anything but advised, it was clear that Chain now had, not only the mentality, but also the talent to execute something that it hadn’t done in three years, win the South Region.

South Open Regionals: Saturday Recap

Competition and sparks flew fast, often and early in Atlanta today at the UPA South Open Regionals. 16 teams from all over the southern United States met today in order to decide which two teams would move on and all but six teams have been removed from the competition.

(We don’t have photos at the moment but hopefully we will soon. If you were out there today and you’d like to have your photos posted on this blog then e-mail us your pictures!)

Open South Regionals: Chain Lightning Preview

Atlanta's Chain Lightning poses after winning the Chesapeake Open. Photo by Kevin Leclaire. Courtesy of Rob Barrett.

On a rainy Thursday night in northern Washington four young men careened out of control in a rental car and flipped twice before finally coming to a stop. Those four men were Atlanta, Georgia’s Asa Wilson, Rob White, Paul Vandenberg and David Berendes, all members of Chain Lightning. Wilson, White, Vandenberg and Berendes all emerged from the vehicle unharmed and unwittingly stumbled into the perfect metaphor for their team’s history.

Team USA Scrimmage Recap

In Kaohsiung, Chinese Taipei today the weather was pleasant, slightly cloudy with temperatures in the low eighties. The weather in Atlanta, Ga., on the other hand, was verging on miserable. Rain dripped from the sky in the slow, steady style that forces you to assume that it will never stop again while wind gusted occasionally reaching up to 12 MPH and temperatures dropping to an uncharacteristically cold 60 degrees.

So, the question that comes to mind is: How on earth could a scrimmage in Atlanta help prepare Team USA for anything that stands ahead of it in Kaohsiung in merely 58 days? Well, it may have helped Team USA prepare for any kind of adversity, weather or otherwise, that stands ahead of it in Kaohsiung.