Chain Lightning » players

Prague players

chainadmin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:03:11 +0000

Especially considering it’s for a tournament on another continent, Chain Lightning will be bringing a deep and strong roster to the Czech republic for the World Championships next month. 26 players are making the trip: all but 2 from 2009′s UPA Championship team, plus 2 worthy additions.

Vets Jason Simpson and Rob Barrett are the only members of last year’s squad staying stateside, while we have picked up 2 players from Team USA’s roster for last year’s World Games: Sam “C-K” Chatterton-Kirchmeier (formerly of Seattle’s Sockeye) and Jolian Dahl (formerly of Colorado’s Johnny Bravo).

Here’s the link for the WUCC roster.

Chain 2009

chainadmin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:28:00 +0000

After several tryout opportunities in May and June, and probably the most arduous final session of decision-making team leadership has ever had, the roster for Chain Lightning’s 2009 campaign has been set.

2009 roster page

The strong class of newcomers includes: Brandon Perales (FSU, Vicious Cycle), Nick Lance (Ga. Tech, El Diablo), Peter Dempsey (Georgia), Robert Runner (Virginia, Guillermo Y Compania), and Will Lokke (Wisconsin, SubZero).

Scrimmage line at a 95° afternoon tryout at Emory, held later in the day to avoid the real heat
(L to R: J. Wooten, Markette, Kirby, Kid, Poole, Runner, Nilan, Tiarsmith)

Countering the 5 additions are 5 losses (Bellair, Schrafft, Segal, Sieling, Smith) — and those are all players who’ve played roles in the last 3 Chain seasons, which have, not coincidentally, been the best in the team’s nearly 30 year history.

Big picture, the team enters the year with a great deal of potential, hoping to extend the season to the last day of competition. Essentially all of the vets who were giving retirement serious consideration (e.g., Barrett, Jay Hammond, Simpson, Tiarsmith) have opted to return for another run / lull. Now the real work begins.

Roster for 2007

chainadmin — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:38:29 +0000

The 2007 roster page is now up (though we’re still unsure which #s some rookies will be assigned).

7 additions: Bain, Gainer, Segal, Sieling, Weisbrod, Wooten, Zip
6 losses: Boyd, Cornelison, Edelman, Eden, Neder, Spears

In brief, exciting and promising newcomers that we hope will offset the loss of several players who helped Chain to its best season ever last fall.

More notes on both classes to come.

New members of Chain Lightning

chainadmin — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:18:07 +0000

Following the final tryout sessions this past weekend, 5 new players have been added to the team for the 2007 season:
Ben Bain, Nate Segal, Fred Sieling, Kyle Weisbrod, and Frank “The Tank” Wooten.

The field of tryouts was as deep as any team leaders could recall, and making the choices presented the proverbial problem a team is lucky to have.

Paideia’s grueling season

chainadmin — Tue, 15 May 2007 14:18:04 +0000

Chain Lightning currently has two members who, remarkably, are still awaiting their high school diplomas: Grant Lindsley and George Stubbs. While playing at the open men’s level versus athletes who were often 10-15 (or more) years older than they, the Paideia School seniors more than held their own during last fall’s season, and played significant roles in helping Chain to its highest-ever finish.

As an encore, they returned to the juniors level this spring to help lead Paideia’s Gruel to an undefeated season as likely the country’s premier team (although the school’s graduation falls on the weekend of the official Easterns tourney). Over the course of the season, the team went 18-0 against high school competition and 15-1 against college (!) teams. Along the way, coach Mike Baccarini’s squad won all 5 tournaments they entered, including the prestigious Amherst Invitational. The juggernaut surrendered double-digit goals only once, in their contest with Georgia Tech. A screenshot from the UPA score reporter shows their high school results, with the green representing victories – and there’s a lot of green:

In addition to helping hold up, and elevate, the now proud and storied tradition of Paideia ultimate, the pair, along with coach Baccarini and fellow classmate Oliver Honderd, won international gold as members of Team USA at last summer’s Junior World Ultimate Championships. At last report, budding scholars were heading to Carleton (Lindsley) and Harvard (Stubbs) to continue their education in the fall; Chain has its collective fingers crossed that the youngsters will still be representing the ATL this coming club season.

In an effort to keep the kids down to earth, here are shots of each at last year’s national championship being unsuccessful: