NORTHAMPTON — The Amherst Regional boys ultimate team beat Northampton, 15-3, Wednesday in Northampton.
Despite the lopsided final score, both teams felt they had something to be positive about approaching the midway point of their seasons.
The Hurricanes (5-1) just returned from the Paideia Cup in Atlanta, which featured some of the top teams across the nation. Amherst lost 9-8 in Sunday’s tournament final to fellow national powerhouse Columbia High School from New Jersey. Wednesday’s game against the Blue Devils was the Hurricanes’ first game since the tournament loss and it allowed them to reset and recommit to their goals.
“I’m happy that we had a lot of process goals during this game,” Amherst coach Joe Costello said. “Things that we wanted to be working on strategically and with our energy. We, for the most part, were really good about keeping this game about what we do and not what the other team does. That’s part of the core of our team and we definitely exercised that today, so that was good to see.”
Northampton struck first, moving right down the field and looking like it could hang in with Amherst. However, the Hurricanes made their adjustment and broke things open, outscoring the Blue Devils 8-1 the remainder of the first half.
“I thought we came out playing our game, and that works, it’s worked all season long and worked again today,” Northampton coach Lee Feldscher said. “Amherst is great at making adjustments, so they adjusted once they saw what our offensive strategy was. They are very fast, athletic and knowledgeable about the sport of ultimate, so they were able to beat us to a lot of discs.”
Nonetheless, the Blue Devils always seemed right on the cusp of figuring out how to get back in the game, seemingly matching the Hurricanes possession for possession, just before Amherst pulled away again.
“We were hustling the whole game, our guys were playing with a lot of heart and looked great,” Feldscher said. “On many points if you didn’t see the outcome and just saw the whole point it looked like we were an even team with them. They are one of the best teams in the country so to be able to play them even, even for a few points, is a huge achievement.”
Part of the advantage for the Hurricanes being challenged at points in the game was that they were forced to adjust some of their looks outside their comfort zone and challenge themselves, something that will benefit their play in upcoming tournaments.
“We’re really grateful to have a competitive Northampton team close to us because it gives us an opportunity to make ourselves better,” Costello said. “We scrimmage in practice a lot and talk about strategy and when we compete against another team we’re really grateful that we can test those things out against opponents who aren’t practicing the same things that we are, so we really have to figure things out on the fly and improvise.”
One of the adjustments that Northampton made was stopping the deep throws that were so effective for the Hurricanes in the first half. To start the second half the Blue Devils broke up three consecutive attempted deep throws from Amherst, forcing the Hurricanes to change their approach and halting their closing run momentarily.
“They like to cut deep out of the back of their stack, so we noticed that and started to get behind them and look for that throw,” Feldscher said. “Even guys who weren’t covering the guy who the disc was to were looking. When the disc went up we’d have three or four guys sprint back and try to make a play on it which was very effective.”
Although the loss drops the Blue Devils to 4-3, they like the way they were able to challenge the Hurricanes at times and feel that positive experiences continue to pile up as they also prepare for a tournament-heavy stretch run in May.
“I feel great,” Feldscher said. “We just keep getting better. All season long up until this point we’ve been getting stronger and stronger. Our offense is starting to click and it really starts to look like that first point did where things just gel where we work it and run our offense. We’re just getting better, I feel great about the rest of the season.”