Travis White made this trophy (as well as the previous years trophy) for the 4th Annual Shawn Tournament. Baylor School was the location of the tournament on Saturday. Well, the tournament was much bigger this year than any other year. Apparently a parent complained that people were partying on the school grounds, and we were not allowed to play there on Sunday. The Nooga folks worked out a location for the women and a different location for the men to play Sunday. Since this tournament happened so recently, I have a few more memories of it to share than the other tournaments.
The first thing that comes to mind is the final point of the finals. We had been up all game, but the other team (sorry, I can't remember who they were) started to climb back into the game. I think we were playing to 13, and it was 12-11, and we were receiving. We worked it down field, and a cross-field shot went to Mark Steweigie near the left sideline and near the endzone. It was close, but he was in....the field of play, not in the endzone. After a stall count to about 7, he called time out. Then, after the time out, he quickly dumped it and ran to the right side of the field. The shot went to him in the endzone, he caught it, and a defender stripped it out of his hand. Well, that was a goal and tournament over. But, the defender argued that he did not strip it, so Mark decided to not press the issue ("...I didn't want to end the tournament on a questionable call" he told me later). So, his disc on the goal line. He faked a hammer, and the defender smacked the disc and it went flying into the air. Before mark could even think about saying "strip", he grabs the disc out of the air and tosses it to Joe Woodard. Joe jumped, caught the disc and was clobbered from behind, but held on to the disc. Tournament over!!! If ever there is a tournament that "Karma" should prevail, it's this one. Mark was willing to take a chance of losing the tournament to be sure that if we won, we won without controversy. That is one of the reasons that I am proud to be part of Knoxville Ultimate.
Another highlight happened on Sunday. The fields we were at had a ditch running all the way along the back of all of the endzones on one end. It was pretty close, but I walked up to it to check it out, and it was a good 6 yards off the field. Anyone ending up in the ditch was WAY out. Well, someone threw a long shot to Larry Garrett and in my mind, I gave it up as being way out of bounds (and it was). But, Larry runs after it, dives and catches it and begins sliding on his back with the disc held high in the air. Suddenly, Larry disappears, and the last thing we saw was the disc still in his outstretched hand. The crowd went wild (it was against Chattanooga, so there were plenty of spectators)! After about 6 or 7 seconds of no Larry, someone started to walk over to the ditch to see if he was OK. Just then a disc came flying out of the ditch, with no sign of the hand that threw it. Then, Larry appears, and half of his body was a dark brown. It was nasty, mucky mud in that ditch. Good try Larry!
One other highlight: in the previous year, I went to Shawn's grave with Eddie Lampton and AJ Prassad to share the trophy with him. Well, this year, most of Voodoo and many Chattanooga players went to visit Shawn. Someone said they counted 26 people there. Some of the Voodoo players did not even know Shawn, and it was great to see them join us. I hope that it becomes a tradition for the tournament winner to go to the grave with the trophy and have everyone join them.
So, it's 2 years in a row for Voodoo as tournament winners. I think
it was Jeb of Chattanooga that said we are the "Dallas Cowboys"
of their tournament, so everyone will be out to get us next year! I must
say it was the only time in my life I was not offended for being associated
with the Dallas Cowboys (I'm a Redskins fan, you know).