Canadian Ultimate

WUGC 2016 shall be held at the UCL sports fields in St. Albans, England (this is also where U23s are being held this year) which makes the Canadian Ultimate Championships (CUC), in Winnipeg, all the more exciting and interesting. In case you, the newcomer, didn’t already know: the winner of each division forms four out of five members of the selection committee for that division. As a result the winning team tends to have many of their members on the national squad.

Continuing the grand tradition of being invited to broadcast CUC we return for 2014! This time from Waterloo, Ontario and for a full week (weather permitting)! You can watch our live stream as well as chat here: live.iamultimate.com .

It’s about that time of year, a time when after a hiatus I feel like writing again. I’ll get a few articles out the door before something else will come along and require my time and attention. However, time is what has passed and it’s been an interesting year for Ultimate. I’ve had the privilege to sit on the edge of the field as yet another year of Ultimate has played itself out.

Schedule for streaming is as follows: Wednesday August 14th starting at 1600 PDT for the Juniors finals, possibly earlier at 1400 with a semi final. Saturday August 17th starting at 1600 PDT for the Masters finals. Sunday August 18th starting at 0900 PDT for the remaining finals. https://www.facebook.com/iamultimate/events

After a long weekend and a few days of rest it’s time to look at outcomes from the weekend and fallout for those involved. Teams in bold are heading to CUC or at least planning on doing so. Open Phoenix takes the #1 spot as expected. Two big surprises with Firebird not only going to CUC but taking the #3 spot and Too Bad being knocked out of CUC perhaps for the first time in the history of the team.

Ontario Ultimate Championships shall be held in Kingston this weekend and I shall be there to live stream the event. It’s exciting as there shall be five divisions competing for a limited number of spots to CUC. With the seedings and schedule availableit’s time to look at how tough this weekend shall be in each of the divisions. Let’s start quickly with the Junior divisions. The Junior Women’s division shall have OverDrive (GTA) vs Wicked (Ottawa) with two games on Saturday to decide who is the top seed going into CUC; both should make it.

Moments ago Ultimate Canada released the new bid allocations for Mixed. The primary change was to move an unused allocation from the Prairies and moving Ontario from four to five bids. This change makes four bids available to teams not named Union. In a previous post I seeded Ontario as follows: Union – Toronto Surge – Kingston GLIDE – Ottawa NoBS – Toronto BLeD – Hamilton Whiplash – Kitchener/Waterloo Smoke – Peterborough Bytown Flatball Club – Ottawa Alliance (formerly: YARRR) – Oshawa Quick & Dirty – GTA Legen-Dairy – Port Perry Zen – Toronto BigFish – Ottawa TWO – Kitchener/Waterloo Default – Waterloo (note, BULLDOGS removed as they are not attending Regionals and have merged with other teams)

Ultimate Canada updated the bid allocation a few days ago to include wildcard assignments. There were few surprises and in bids fell where we thought they would. The new bid system also highlights how important it is for regions to get teams registered early and have fourteen players rostered before the initial deadline. BC lost a Masters bid by registering three teams but not rostering one of the teams fully; they will now need a Regionals to eliminate a team.