Competing at Tufts in the Metro Boston Sectionals this past weekend, the women's ultimate team, the E-women, went undefeated, showing it will be a force to be reckoned with during the remainder of the postseason. The squad faced opponents including Boston University, Harvard, M.I.T., and Wellesley, none of which could muster up enough skill to defeat the E-women.
"We won all of our games," senior co-captain Neva Cherniavsky said. "There wasn't really any competition. Six points was the most any team scored on us."
The six points were scored by M.I.T., making the 13-6 victory the closest game all weekend.
"We're a really good team," Cherniavsky added. "If we hadn't won Sectionals, I would have been a little worried."
The victory at Sectionals was the second installment of an E-women tour de force on the final stretch of the season. Just last weekend, the team won the Yale Cup.
At a tournament heralded as an indication of what Regionals will look like, the squad headed to New Haven, CT with high expectations. Coming off a defeat to Bucknell in the finals the prior weekend, Tufts was looking to avenge the loss.
"We had lost to Bucknell," Cherniavsky said. "It was a very frustrating loss. We got down early and ended up losing the game. We knew that we were going to see them at Yale. Our coach told us, 'this is what you were doing wrong,' and he completely changed our offense."
The remade offense proved to be too much for Bucknell's zone defense, and the E-women won 15-7 - the same score as in the previous game, but with the check in the win column this time. "They couldn't stop us," Cherniavsky said. "They would give us the disc and we would score."
The rest of the weekend was similar, as the women went 7-0, with the Bucknell victory in the finals.
After the tournament wins, the squad heads into the New England Regionals confident in its abilities.
"We ought to win Regionals," Cherniavsky said. "We're going into the tournament the number one seed, and it's a double elimination tournament with the top three going to Nationals. The top two are Brown and us, with the rest of the teams being on a different tier."
With the only real competition coming from Brown, the E-women say they should handily earn a victory. The last time the group faced Brown was at College Easterns, where it beat the Brown Bears with little struggle.
"[Brown's] problem is that they have a really good player who is out for six months on an injury," Cherniavsky said.
The E-women's positive postseason outlook comes from a regular season of solid play and a strong core of senior starters. While many players will be lost to graduation, Cherniavsky has faith in next year's younger squad.
"It's been a great season," Cherniavsky said. "We got a bunch of new players who have a lot of heart. It feels really good and I feel like we're still going to be a good team next year because of [them]," Cherniavsky said.
"Next year won't be the same level of play, and it won't be as easy [to win tournaments] as it was this year, but I think they'll pull it together."
But before next year's season, the squad has a lot of ultimate left to play. New England Regionals will take place at Yale May 5-6, and Nationals will be held in Boston on the 26th and 27th, with the finals at Tufts' Ellis Oval.
"I'm excited for the future," Cherniavsky said. "But I'm really excited for this year, because there are a lot of us who have played together for four years, and going to Nationals would be a great way to cap off the season."
