The UCSD men’s ultimate disc club team has been suspended for three weeks and will have to pay fines as a result of damage done to the fields of local schools during the team’s annual President’s Day Tournament. The tournament, one of the largest in the nation, has also been canceled for next year.
Ultimate play:
Held over the President’s Day weekend, the tournament included 47 club teams from all over the country, but was canceled by campus personnel in order to prevent field damage during the heavy rains.
As a result of the campus field closure, the teams decided to move the competition to different fields near the UCSD campus, according to UCSD Club Sports Director Scott Berndes.
“They were playing on Marshall Field, but when it started raining we told them that the tournament was off and that the fields were closed,” Berndes said. “Once they couldn’t play at UCSD, they panicked and decided to play at the local schools.”
As the biggest event for the sport on the West Coast, the annual competition includes teams from colleges as far away as Harvard and Yale.
Though the weather forced cancellation of the first day of play, tournament organizers decided to continue playing on various fields around the San Diego area, according to tournament director Jake Chang.
“There was pressure on us to accommodate those teams who were flying in on their own dime,” team co-captain Adam Desjardins said.
However, director of recreation David Koch said he disagrees with the team’s decision.
“They could have done serious damage to UCSD’s fields — that is why we closed the tournament,” Koch said. “The students made the decision to move the tournament off-campus without conferring with us, and as a result they did damage to other fields, which now they have to repair. … It was not a well thought-out decision.”
University City High School was one of the local schools used for tournament play, and although the damage to the school’s facilities has not yet been assessed, the team used the field illegally, according to University City High School Athletics Director Ed Yandall.
“Nobody had a contract to use the field that particular day,” Yandall said. “I believe the reason why they couldn’t use the UCSD field was because they didn’t want to do any damage to it. I guess they spread out and decided to use this field because it was closed, so they figured they could play on it.”
However, of the five fields used for the tournament, only three showed signs of considerable damage, according to Chang.
Berndes said he and Koch made the decision to sanction the team after he was contacted by several parent groups and school principals who complained that the teams caused damage to their fields.
“They canceled the tournament for one year, we have to pay for the repairs and we have to make apologies to some of the members of the community,” Desjardins said.
The repairs, which are estimated to cost between $6,000 and $7,000, will use roughly a third of the team’s total annual budget, according to team co-captain Scott Davis.
“We are going to have to do fund raising,” Davis said. “We are also going to try to host a tournament over the summer to raise funds, but we don’t want to have to raise membership fees.”
Although the team has agreed to pay for all of the repairs, Desjardins said he does not agree with the administration’s decision to suspend the team for three weeks.
“We thought it was a little too harsh suspending us from playing,” Desjardins said. “It really doesn’t equate with the damages, but the administration doesn’t agree. We think having to pay for repairing the fields is enough.”
The suspension could also affect the team’s performance in the playoffs, he said.
Although the team was suspended from participating in the Stanford tournament this past weekend, the punishment could have been worse, according to Chang.
“I personally think that the suspension is a lighter punishment than it could be,” Chang said. “It is hard on the team to be suspended and to not be able to play in one of the most competitive events of the year. If that is the school decision, we will take it. I am just glad we still get to play for the rest of the season.”
Berndes said that although the team had been reprimanded, he did not think that the damages were done intentionally.
“The whole team is made up of good people, but people make mistakes,” he said. “Hopefully [they] won’t again.”