Mixed

I’m lucky to get three seasons of Ultimate each year; the first is a European tour that starts/ends with Paganello, the second is the Canadian series (read thoughts ), and the third is the USA Ultimate series. This year was interesting due to the level of competition but more importantly the level of frustration. I’ve waited a week to see what would happen and I’m a little disheartened with a lack of momentum on some key issues.

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.

Thanks to BC for pointing out that I missed “Surge” in my last post. Composed primarily of Queens Open and Women’s players the young team has quite a bit of talent and experience at the helm with Andrew Carroll captaining. Carroll, for those unfamiliar, was one of the youngest recruits to GOAT in their history and is a spectacular player. Queens has also enjoyed success in the past few years with the Women’s team winning CUUC 2011.