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PROVO — Many collegiate teams around the country are struggling to come to grips with a pandemic-shortened season that has them asking what could have been.
On the campus of Brigham Young University, the men’s Ultimate frisbee club team, ranked as high as No. 2 in the nation, has found a unique silver lining to seeing its season end prematurely.
After one of BYU’s most impressive regular seasons in its history, the team is receiving some long overdue recognition. With every team in the same position of having its season come to a close before sectional tournaments, the Cougars are being judged on the same playing field as the rest of the D-I teams.
BYU took home UltiWorld’s national Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year honors in Jordan Kerr and Taylor Barton, respectively. Both players were also given first-team All-American honors, with Joe Merrill rounding out player awards with recognition as a second-team All-American. Head coach Bryce Merrill finished as a runner-up for Coach of the Year.
"That's a new thing for us," Bryce Merrill said. "We've been dominant in the regular season before, but we lost out on some of these major awards because of the fact that we're not able to participate in the postseason."
The Cougars team, technically known as CHI, is accustomed to their seasons being cut short. They have been shut out of contention in the national tournament for five years as their religious beliefs preclude them from playing on Sundays, when tournament games are always scheduled.
The sanctioning body that oversees the league, USA Ultimate, has yet to budge in response to BYU’s pleas for an exception to allow its team to play on another day. For that reason, the players have tried to pour all of their effort into making the regular season as strong of a showing as possible.
BYU participated in two tournaments this season, one in Santa Barbara, California, and the other in Tampa, Florida, before finishing the season with a 13-1 record. In Florida, the Cougars beat some of the best programs in the country, including the likes of Michigan, Minnesota, Carleton College, Pittsburgh and Massachusetts before falling to Brown by one goal. Kerr, who BYU’s offense is built around, played well in front of many national Ultimate media members.
"It did take an opportunity where no one was participating in the postseason for (Kerr’s) excellence during the regular season to be recognized," Merrill said. "It's difficult to make a case that he's not player of the year when the other candidates were on the team that we were beating that day."
BYU attributes its official USA Ultimate ranking of No. 4 to an algorithm-based system that hurt the Cougars when they weren’t able to run up the score against seven top-25 teams in Tampa. Other rankings had them listed higher, which had the team set to prove themselves against the consensus No. 1 team in the nation, North Carolina. BYU was scheduled to fly into Chapel Hill for a March 21 game before the response to COVID-19 had other plans for the team.
"I wish I could say our postseason situation made it easier, but to have the season abruptly end definitely still stings," Merrill said. "I hope it builds a little bit of empathy within our community as they understand why it is so painful to not be able to participate in the postseason. We would never wish that on them. It's not a good thing that this happened, but maybe one silver lining from all of this is that we understand one another a little bit better."
He said BYU is a bit of a "red-headed stepchild" in the Ultimate community where there’s still a lot of resistance to fully accepting BYU as a top program in the sport despite its impressive runs over the last several years.
"It was a very controversial decision to give three All-Americans to us," Merrill said.
"When we first took over the top spot in the power rankings, if you looked at the facts on the paper of our record and what we had done, there was really no case for us not to be No. 1 in the country," he. added. "And yet, most people disagreed with the decision simply because we're BYU. So, even though we're dominant, it's still an issue."
The coach said he understands why the rest of the schools would be resistant to making changes just for BYU since they’ve been playing on Sundays for as long as the sport has been around. But for the Cougars, it feels like everything is working against them being able to succeed.
As if there weren’t enough obstacles for BYU to overcome already, the team is disproportionately affected by a USA Ultimate eligibility clock that allows players a five-year window to play for their school’s club team with next to no exceptions.
If players participate in any tournaments or events sponsored by the governing body, or really any competitive event, their clock begins. Because many BYU players serve two-year church missions, they typically only have three years to compete for the school, assuming there are no other unforeseen circumstances such as an injury.
The challenges that have affected the program make the national acclaim they are receiving now that much sweeter, and Merrill said he hopes this shortened season could help bridge the gap between BYU and the rest of the league down the road.
"We're not glad that this happened," he said. "This is not a rub their nose in it thing, but it might be a silver lining in the future. Even if they continue to disagree with us for now."
