For the second straight year, the DePauw Ultimate Frisbee team traveled up US-231 to play for the coveted Monon Disc. Playing under the lights and on a snow-patched football practice field, the team battled an athletic Wabash College team for its fifth-straight win in the six years of the annual rivalry.
With a final score of 13-10, DePauw took back the disc they created years ago. Coached by senior Erin O'Donnell, the team utilized a horizontal stack style of offense, taking advantage of its multiple athletic players.
The style of offense uses multiple handlers at one time to move the disc horizontally down the field toward the scoring zone. Handling the disc for the DePauw team were juniors Sam Yeary and Tyler Spear and sophomores Mark Weiss and Arthur Small.
"We had to train more handlers this year, and they did pretty well," O'Donnell said. "So the handlers were quick flipping the disk back and forth horizontally up the field, and then we have long cuts and those were caught today."
Yeary worked with Spear and his teammates to lob passes downfield for their long-cut man, senior Eric Hubbard.
"Since it's cold out today, we worked on little passes and had really good cuts and so we were able to work the disc up the field slowly," Yeary said. "When we got that long pass open, we were able to get it off especially with Eric Hubbard. Any long pass you put up in the air, he's going to catch it."
Hubbard led the team with five scores out of DePauw's total of 13. He also performed well on the defensive end, knocking down pass after pass from the Wabash offense.
"They are pretty athletic and were able to get us deep on a lot of throws," Yeary said. "That's where they scored most of their points."
But the Wabash offense could not connect enough of those passes and the well-prepared DePauw team got to carry the Disc back to Greencastle once again.
"I was really pumped and just stoked for this game," Yeary said. "This is like our Monon game. Every year it's a tough challenge even though we just play ourselves all the time in practice. Just coming up here playing in the snow, it was a lot of fun."
With many freshmen and sophomores on the team ready to continue the tradition of winning, the future looks bright for DePauw. For O'Donnell, she hopes her team can continue to improve in its abilities and keep the winning tradition going.
"It feels great," O'Donnell said. "We made the disc, and we've kept it since we've made it. I can't wait to come back during Monon week and watch us win this game when these freshmen are sophomores."