An MGCI player competes for possession of the disc.
Photo: Deifilia To
On 28 February, MGCI participated in Toronto Ultimate Club’s (TUC) annual “Catch the Spirit” tournament at Monarch Park Stadium. All in all, Garneau placed sixth out of the sixteen schools that participated. These included Northern Secondary School, Earl Haig Secondary School, and Bowmanville High School. Each school played five games in order to determine the rankings.
The group of students who participated in the tournament primarily consisted of the team from last season. Vicky Xu, an athlete who competed at the tournament and a Grade 10 student, commented that “the team was awesome today. For a team who hasn’t played together since last season, we did really well!”
The five games were against Harbord Collegiate Institute, Don Bosco Secondary School, Northern Secondary School, Agincourt Collegiate Institute, and Barrie North Collegiate.
The games against Harbord Collegiate Institute and Don Bosco Secondary School were the highlights of the day. The players performed with exceptional teamwork and a high level of skill. The final score against Harbord was 13 – 6, and the score against Don Bosco was 17 – 5.
Next, the Cougars played Northern Secondary School, which was undefeated in the south region last season. The game was tough, and Garneau lost the game 4 – 13.
The next game was exceptionally close, and the scores of the teams were never more than two points apart. After Agincourt scored a tying point one minute before the end of the game, Garneau’s Raheel Mirza caught the winning disc with only 0.2 seconds to spare. The final game against Barrie North Collegiate had a score of 3 – 11 at halftime, with Barrie leading, but by the end of the game, Garneau had lessened the gap with a final score of 10 – 15.
Iftikhar Shaikh, one of the team’s coaches and a former Marc Garneau student, said that the tournament was an extremely good learning experience for the team, and that MGCI could look forward to a successful season.
For anyone interested in joining the team, open tryouts will be held later on in the semester. Until then, there are ultimate training workouts on Mondays and Wednesdays after school in the weight room.
