15
May
Scarlett 2009 Roster
Amy Boyle – Captain
Karen Kavanagh – Captain
Jenna Atchison
Taryn Grant
Brianna Jaffray
Karin Phillips
Emily Sangster
Man-Yee Sun
Rochelle Bryerton
Laura Evgin
Natalie Johnston
Gillian Maradyn
Susan Sunde
Jamie Vance
Alexandra Wattmaniuk
15
May
TUF 2009 – Recap
A wild and wonderful weekend with a few surprises wrapped up last Sunday at Sunnybrook Park in Toronto. Many teams took their first steps towards Regionals, Nationals, or Prague. Just mentioning Prague excites me as some teams have spent the last three years preparing for their chance to play with the best in the world. Prague is a hot topic in North America this year since teams that finish well at CUC (Canadian Ultimate Championships) and UPA Finals will be favoured by their National Organizations to head overseas in 2010.
The Toronto Ultimate Festival (or TUF) is the start of season tournament in Ontario for Open, Women’s, and Mixed teams. TUF is of particular importance because it is the last tournament before final cuts for most teams are made. The pressure from tryouts and a winter of pent up energy leads to Ultimate that can be both more conservative and explosive than what’s found at most mid-season tournaments.
Tryouts are hard enough with the combination of nerves and winter rust but a pleasant surprise for all involved was the thunderstorm on Saturday morning. After the first few points had been played lightning forced a 15 minute delay which extended into a 45 minute delay once marble sized hail starting falling (hail remained on the ground for at least another two hours). A break in the storm allowed two games to be completed before the trailing edge brought 40 km/h winds (60 km/h gusts) torrential downpours and fears of cancellation. Fortunately the storm broke and the fields were dry enough for play. Players from Team Canada and GLOATUS (Toronto All-Stars) were the first to take to the fields as they warmed up for the showcase match (game commentary as Twittered live).
14
May
2009 French Ultimate Championships
The National Champions of French Open Ultimate will be crowned this weekend and the winner will most likely be the team that heads to Prague in 2010. Favourites to win this year are Friselis from Versailles while title defenders Ultimate Vibration hope to add a 10th National Championship to their resumes.
While both teams are strong Friselis has been building up to this season with a strong club system, fast (and quick) players, confident handlers, and experience from Vancouver 2008. I had the pleasure of playing with Friselis at Paganello and while we weren’t able to quite adapt to the sand their speed is feared throughout Europe (so said every team that we encountered).
Ultimate Vibration on the other hand is a veteran team with 9 National Championships under their belt in addition to the 6 indoor Championships they hold. They ranked 13th in Australia 2006 in a close final match over Flippers (14-12) which was preceeded by an even closer (18-17) win over Bouhsears (whom they lost to earlier in the tournament). Tenacity this team has and hopes to show that they’re still #1 this weekend.
So, who looks likely to prevent either of the teams from reaching the finals? For Friselis it’s Au Ouh PUC who had some success as Champions in the 90s and have moved back up into the top division this year. However, it’s unlikely that Friselis will not make the finals. For Ultimate Vibration the team to beat will be Iznogood. A strong team with strong handlers Iznogood has some powerful handlers that could open up the game quite a bit if they can consistently sync up with their strikers. Iznogood also held the Championships in 2006 and 2007 before Ultimate Vibration took it in 2008.
All in all it will be a great weekend.
Game of the day for Saturday will be Ultimate Vibration vs Iznogood at 1200 on field 2.
Game of the day for Sunday will be the finals at 1600 on field 1.
14
May
Only Co-ed players at World’s?
Steven Trainor posted about Greg Lang not being happy with almost exclusively Open and Women’s players being selected for Team Canada. Steven responded well with CUPA’s reasoning for the selection but in addition it would be nice to know what the makeup of those that applied for the team was. Was it primarily Open and Women’s players that applied?
Looking at the selection committee that put the team together it’s loaded with Open and Women’s players that would recognize obvious talent amongst those that they play with but perhaps not from Mixed players that they haven’t had the chance to play against.
14
May
Here comes trouble…
Welcome to yet another website about Ultimate. Why should you pay attention?
I’m fortunate in that I live in a part of the world with just enough Ultimate to satiate my playing appetite while providing ample opportunity to travel out of this region. To date I’ve played Ultimate in several different countries and I continue to hunger for more. When traveling you meet many wonderful folks that you want to play with. As I’ve traveled I’ve become curious about Ultimate in other parts of the world and why we hear so little about it. Ultimate connects us through the simple rules of fair play and self rule; it also transcends language and cultural behaviours (something I’ve seen first hand at Paganello).
I’ve gone and mentioned Paganello so I’ll expand upon how it affects me. In 2008 I attended Paganello for the first time and instantly felt at home. In 2009 I was fortunate to attend again and Tweeted the finals live (much to the chagrin of my Facebook friends). There was quite a bit of interest in response to the live commentary and for quite sometime I’d been wanting to start this blog and that was the trigger.
What you’ll see here: Event updates from around the world, information on events that I attend, photos, video, commentary, blah blah blah, interesting things that I’d like to share.
What you’ll also see here: There are actually two domains that link to this site iamultimate.com and amiultimate.com. Yes, I’m filled with a bit of self doubt and you’ll also see personal posts here about me being cut from a team as well as results from tournaments both good and bad. Like all competitive players I’d like to play at an ever higher level and the only way to the top is through an introspective dialog.
Hope you enjoy it all.
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9
May
Game Commentary – Team Canada vs GLOATUS
Tweeted live on @IAmUltimate
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