A Bust at Great Lake College Regionals

Late last week, all women’s captains involved with the 2010 Great Lakes College Women’s Regionals received an e-mail from the UPA stating that the board was taking the pending weather into consideration when it came to the May 1 start day of Regionals. Bloomington was expected to get heavy thunderstorms all weekend. But on Friday morning, all captains received an e-mail that Regionals was on! So teams traveled up to six hours on Friday night to get ready for the tournament, where the top two teams receive a bid to nationals.


The sixteen teams got up early to head to Karst Farm Park for the first round. The sky was gray and gloomy, but no sight of rain. The soccer fields were muddy and after running drills, teams could tell they were in for a long day. The first round went off without a hitch, the soft, muddy ground was begging for the girls to layout. After the first round, the women’s captains were informed that they would be done for the day after the second round due to ground conditions. The men’s teams were moved down to the women’s fields to finish their second round.

By the end of the second round, the UPA decided to postpone Regionals to May 8 and 9. The teams were told that they had to pack up and head home. This statement frustrated a lot of teams both women’s and men’s teams.

I talked to Katie Liming, who is a freshman on Infamous, Michigan State women's team. She gave me the following statement, “Michigan State Ultimate is very frustrated with the postponement of Regionals. We understand that the tournament officials could not have predicted the rain's timing, but we feel that there should have been a better plan. Driving down and back from East Lansing to Bloomington for one game cost our team a lot of time and money. If the tournament is held in Bloomington next weekend, we will not be attending. We've heard that it might be moved to South Bend; if this happens, we will most likely field a team. However, it will be difficult because this is MSU's graduation weekend.”

Ohio University Junior Courtney Speziale said, “the UPA should have considered the weather conditions as well as what the teams had to go through to get to the tournament. The teams put money and effort into getting to a competitive tournament only to be told that it was canceled after two games. The situation should have been handled better and the tournament should have been called at the first sign of doubt from either field management or UPA.”

One member from Ohio State's Leadbelly, Rick Taylor, felt indifferent about the whole thing. “Having to play the rest of the tournament this weekend doesn't really affect me because I didn't have anything planned this weekend. Obviously, it does kind of suck to have to make a 4 hour drive there and back to only play 2 games, but the tournament director really had his hands tied on this one. My understanding is that the field owner was away for the weekend, and the guy who was in charge didn't know what to do, so he just told them to shut it down to be safe.”

The fact that the UPA was taking the players safety into consideration is a reasonable consideration, but the fact that the teams took the time and money to drive down to Bloomington this past weekend to play two games has frustrated many teams. It has also brought an abrupt end to many team’s seasons, including Stacked. After a team meeting the OU team decided that the financial strain and personal injurys on the team made going to the new Regionals too much.

Recap- After the second round of Regionals, the UPA decided to postpone the rest of the tournament until this upcoming weekend. This decision has been met with mixed results, including having many teams decide to end their seasons. This was due to financial constraint and time constraints, these decisions were not made lightly. But on the bright side, according to Ohio University student Mikey Juratovac, the men's team will be taking 8 men this weekend to finish their season at the rescheduled Regionals.