Two weekends ago, I played with UCC at UK Ultimate Nationals. The weekend was a blast, as Ultimate tournaments are wont to be.
After an 3-ish hour wait at Robin Hood Airport, we finally got into our rental cars, put miniature Irish tricolors on top, and headed for our hotel. After spending a few hours not being lost, just exploring the English countryside, we finally arrived at the Days Inn. As I walked in the door, in front of me were a group of Ultimate players from Cambridge. Upon seeing my Claremont Braineaters sweatshirt, they give me a quizzical look and one says "Braineaters? Do you know Paul?"
At this point, a short man in a brown sweatshirt turns around and says "Hi, I'm Paul. Or, Icecock." And that's how I met Paul Robustelli, the man, the myth, the legend, and Braineater alum '06.
Anyway, let me give a run-down of this tournament. First of all, the top two teams from Ireland qualify to play in the British Nationals, the top one in D-I, the second one in DII. Trinity has been the best team in Ireland for years, and supposedly the best they've ever done at this tournament was 9th place. We came in seeded 14th. Most of the team was pretty pessimistic at first, basically saying that we'll be happy if we just win a game. Now, I'm not a fan of this attitude, but I also don't think its my place as a visiting student to become the rude, obnoxious American lecturing people about winning. In any case, our first game was against the 8th seed, Newcastle's Too Many Pies. Anyway, we started off strong on these guys and never looked back. final score was 9-3 if I recall correctly. At this point, our team got our mental at together and realized we were going to win more games.
Next game was against the (12th seeded) Sussex Mohawks. Howling winds destroyed our game. Well both teams made lots of silly hucks into the wind, Mohawks were consistently able to come down with more of them, and that was more or less the story of the game. Final score: Cork 5, Susssex 9.
We ended our pool play on Saturday with a game against Cambridge (2nd seed). I felt like I played my best in this game, but Cambridge was clearly a better trained, disciplined, and conditioned team. Final score was somewhere around 4-11. Paul never played, so I missed out on the opportunity to match up against an ex-Brain.
Crossover game was against Exeter Uriel. Winner of this game would have the opportunity to play for the top 8 spots, while the loser would be relegated to playing for 9th at best. It was a tight game, each team trading points, with the wind getting a tiny bit softer than it had been all day. Point trading was still essentially dictated by the wind, and despite finally getting an upwind break, Exeter got two, ending the game at around 10-8.
Sunday, however, would be much better. First game was against London School of Economics (LSE). despite trading points early on, we built a comfortable lead and ended up winning, I forget the exact score. Following this, our game against Dundee came up. We immediately went down 3-0. We were making stupid mistakes. I could tell we were the smarter, more experienced team, but fatigue was getting to us. Then, we started hucking it into the endzone and our tallest guy, Kyle just kept bringing 'em down. Game ended somewhere around Cork 9, Dundee 6.
Final game of the day, the "plate" final, for 9th place was a doozy. Everyone on our team was worn to the core. Just warming up was rough. We actually started off quite strong, eventually taking a 10-6 lead. However, lots of breaks soon put us a single point ahead, 11-10, with the cap at ten. Despite us dropping the disc in the endzone twice, we were able to recover and end the game at 12-10. So, Sunday was 3-0, and the best day of Ultimate we've ever played. Everyone on the team was smoother, making much better decisions, great movement by our handlers and cutters.
The championship game was incredibly boring to watch. Warwick won the game 13-1. Blowout. Final seedings were:
1. Warwick
2. Portsmouth
3. Loughborough
4. St. Andrews
5. Edinburgh
6. Cambridge
7. Manchester
8. Exeter
9. University College Cork
10. Cardiff
11. Sussex
12. Dundee
13. Newcastle
14. Liverpool
15. Bristol
16. LSE
Yeah, we ended up ahead of the Mohawks, relieving.
This tournament was way different than most tournaments I've played in the U.S. First of all, it was not run by a non-profit organization just made for Ultimate. Rather, it was run by BUCS, the British University & Colleges Sports group. They were running championships for college sports all over the UK in Sheffield during the course of the week. This brought excellent organization, all players playing any sport got a t-shirt from BUCS, and pretty good free boxed lunches, a huge step up from the standard PB&J and bananas. The one thing that was planned poorly was seeding, but it must be tough for a lot of these. Cork, for example, had never played any of these teams. I'm told it was completely based on the teams' results from last year. You have to work with what information you have, I guess.
Another odd part is simply the amount of women playing. As they really don't have enough people to sustain competitive women's Ultimate teams, most open teams have a few women on them, rather than just men. I guess you see this at schools in the States where they don't have a women's team yet, but those are just developing programs, not the National championships. Cork's captain is a woman. However the top teams did appear to be all men. A winning team is probably indicative of more established programs, where they are also more likely to have developed a separate women's team.
Pictures from the weekend are below. Click to see the album:
