World Ultimate Club Championships 2014

From 2-9 August, the World Ultimate Club Championships will be held in Lecco, Italy.

"Lecco e il suo lago2" by Bernini Massimo

Ultimate has two regular world championships. 

Every 4 years, nations send their best players on representative teams to compete at the World Ultimate Championships. USA plays France, Japan plays Colombia and so on. This occurs in the Olympic years (2008, 2012, 2016, etc).

However, in the other even years (2006, 2010, 2014, etc), club teams compete for the title of world champions. For example, San Francisco Revolver plays Sydney Colony, London Iceni plays Vancouver Traffic. 

Perennial powerhouse USA is sending 16 teams across the five divisions. Canada, Japan, Australia and GB are not far behind, and this is a fair reflection of how these nations expect to finish: USA near the top, and the others looking to topple them. Ultiworld has profiled how the elite US teams expect to perform. 

Follow the action via Twitter, Facebook, the tournament website or Skyd.

The tournament by the numbers:

• 10th World Ultimate Club Championships
• 40 countries represented
• 161 teams competing
• 5 divisions (women, open, mixed, masters and womens masters)
• 34 fields
• up to 12 games per team
• over 3000 competitors
• 1 team returning from the inaugural WUCC 1989: KFUM Örebro from Sweden

Good luck to all the Australian teams!

• Women: STBAU (Victoria), Rogue (NSW)
• Open: Colony (NSW), Juggernaut (Victoria), Sublime (WA)
• Mixed: Batmania (Victoria), Roadkill (ACT), Hippo (Victoria/SA)
• Masters: Phat Chilly (Victoria), Eastern Greys (NSW)
• Women Masters: Primal (WA)   

The RISE UP World Tour

Right now RISE UP is on its world tour, visiting these five countries.

Mario O'Brien is the RISE UP founder. He is joined on certain legs of this tour by Alex Snyder and Ryan Purcell.

RISE UP is all about teaching ultimate communities the skills and drills used by the best teams in the world - through videos and in person.

But there is a second goal in the pipeline: build coaching and leadership skills. Both of these aspects were in play at the Australian clinics.

In their Melbourne clinic, Mario and Alex spent Saturday coaching around 40 female players.

Also, ten coaches attended. They weren't playing. They were observing the coaching practices of Mario and Alex, reflecting on them, and identifying the important features of team culture, drill progressions, focussed scrimmages and providing feedback.

This development of coaches is critical. More and more teams recognise the value of coaches, and have appointed them. Mario writes about this from the American perspective, while in Australia, the Dingoes, STBAU, Heads of State, Chilly Masters and Rabble have all recently appointed head coaches after not having one.

Appointing coaches is only the first step.

There is a need in ultimate to explicitly train those coaches into expert coaches, by giving them communities of coaches. These coaches need to peer observe, and reflect and plan together.

Many aspects of ultimate have lots of time and effort put into them: intercity and international competition, fitness, videos, news/blogs. But what programs or resources exist for turning adequate coaches into fantastic ones?

Well, not much. So Mario is stepping up to that opening. And he has the leadership training and ultimate experience to build something great.

Who else will step up?

Five days into the Explosive Ultimate clinics

Tim Morrill has come out to Australia to deliver his Explosive Ultimate clinics.

So far, it has been a real eye opener.

Tim giving advice

Tim has delivered a clinic to my club, Heads of State, as well four weekend clinics to many other Victorians.

His style is passionate, encouraging, and high-speed. He considers all questions carefully and has extensive knowledge gained from working with hundreds of elite athletes, from reading the literature and personal experience as an ultimate player, surfer and athlete.

Tim starts by outlining the demands of ultimate, identifying the movements we use in our sport, then explaining how to be train them. He has lots of appropriate cues.

While you are trialling the activities and movements, Tim is dishing out feedback and observing how you are going.

The clinics have covered the basics of speed, agility, strength and power.

• Basic Ideas and Concepts for Weightroom
• Exercises and Categories
• Program Design
• Knee Stability & ACL Reduction
• Self Myofacial Release (Lacrosse balls)
• Flexibility, Mobility & Warm Up
• Activation & ACL Reduction (Bands)
• Jumping Mechanics
• Agility: Jab Step and Crossover Progressions (Ladders)
• Conditioning

It's been really valuable having exposure in Australian ultimate to new ways of thinking about these issues. Historically, our knowledge about fitness and training has been piecemeal. We haven't had comprehensive expertise before on weight training, physiology, recovery and biomechanics from someone who understands the sport of ultimate.

Connect with Tim online, or attend a Explosive Ultimate clinic as soon as you can.

2012 Worlds - the media

Here is the first in a few posts about 2012 Worlds. Better late than never.

The media coverage took a significantly larger step forward than any Worlds or World Clubs that I can remember, thanks to those who helped invent the internet...

Ultimate's profile and connection to audiences will not be built on the back of traditional mainstream media such as newspaper stories and TV 60 second segments (though we don't want to ignore those). Those media are for telling the world - "Hey! We exist".

Our sport will grow and connect with people though the media that people inside our community build. You could follow the action through the tweeters and Facebook followers.

Skyd Magazine had insightful commentary and updates on what was happening. This is journalism for our community. 

And most significantly you can watch games online.

NexGen Ultimate have emerged in the last two years as a group who are prepared to invest over several years in building a channel where ultimate fans can watch live and on-demand footage of games from major events in the US, and a few others from around the world. They took steps we haven't seen before in our sport, such as flying Lou and Chase across from the US to commentate, who then interviewed teams on their plans and expectations before games.

The coverage had replays, live scores and multiple camera angles - the features we take for granted in mainstream television coverage.

Also at Worlds were Ulti.tv are an Australian outfit who trialled their systems last year at Adelaide's weekly city league. Dan, Mike and Declan have refined their polecam. They could film on any field and did - over 40 games were recorded, with every country represented.

If you like being able to watch professionally presented ultimate games online, on demand, then these are great organisations to support. Throw a few dollars their way, and buy a subscription.

Even the Swedes had some basic footage of games from Worlds, such as Australia vs Sweden and the GB vs Sweden semifinal. Its free on youtube.

The little things involved in running a tournament now become more important. When the acoustics of the audio system make the opening ceremony speeches impossible to hear, it isn't just a thousand ultimate players who can't hear - it is everyone who ever watches the footage online from now onwards.

Only a few years ago, I was wondering why ultimate seemed behind the times in terms of organised internet presence, but it seems like we are making up for lost time.

Playing styles at ECC 2011

The Australian Open and Women's teams competed at the Emerald City Classic in Seattle recently.

In the Open division, Revolver and Ironside were the cream of the crop, with Ring of Fire coming back from losses to Maliki and Buzz Bullets to win the games that mattered, getting to the final, before falling to a dominant Revolver team.

Revolver play Ring of Fire in the Open final

The US teams regularly isolated a cutter of choice out in the strong side, while stacking other players right on the sideline. This usually gave them their first choice cutter and hucker combination.

In contrast, the Buzz Bullets played handler isolation against us for the first 20 points, until we switched to forehand (instead of backhand) force. They immediately looked for a few hucks from horizontal play. They were happy to grind it through handler play, as they were generally more nimble, and had real talent at that position. A couple of players on Buzz Bullets are there for their height on defence and are not as skilled at cutting or throwing (true for many teams, I guess).

Several teams also attacked through break throws, deliberately designing cutting angles to provide this option and looking for open side throws, inside breaks and outside breaks as the cutter moved laterally. Only an active and balanced mark would regularly hold up against this tactic.

The US teams were not overly physical, as a couple of teams have been in the past. All fair play. Except one Ring of Fire player who defends like a TSA security agent on speed, patting down his opponent with lovetaps, instead of working on his footwork.

It was a valuable tournament experience for the Aussie teams, playing against opponents for the first time in the lead up to Worlds 2012 in Sakai, Japan. With a chance to reflect on tactics and systems, and an opportunity to strengthen the rosters and our fitness, we'll be ready to match it with the top teams next year - several of whom we got to play in ECC.

Australia at ECC

The Australian Dingoes (our representative team in the open division) are preparing for Worlds 2012 in Japan. As part of our plan, we are sending a squad to compete at ECC next week, as are the Australian Women. Watch out North America.

Here's a brief update.

Coach Hemphill has done a great job bringing everyone together, motivating us and keeping us accountable. We have a website, team goals, fitness program, nutrition resources, psychology resources, uniforms and a clearly articulated set of organisational and leadership roles.

Lots of people have volunteered their time to train us, transport us and feed us. They are awesome.

This is perhaps one of the most unified representative teams Australia has produced (and we've had some good ones). Everyone is pulling in the same direction.

We've drawn on tactics from numerous elite mens clubs around Australia and forged our own playing style out of it. 

There are pleasant surprises we've noticed too: how far Mark Evans can huck, that there is a separate room for Denyer to snore in, Matty is off the injured list and on the field, and Woodley is on the D line.

Our training venue has been Canberra, where it is a little cool this time of year.

Tournament wish list

A few months ago, I got to attend two amazing tournaments: TEP and Lei Out.

Looking back, I would say they are definitely on my list of all-time great tournaments. So I started a wishlist of other great tournaments I wish to play at one day.

• Bar Do Peixe (in Portugal)
• Paganello (Italy)
• Poultry Days (USA)

Any others that I ought to put on my list?

WUCC2010

World Clubs 2010 wrapped up just over a month ago.

It was the biggest WFDF championships I can recall. I caught up with friends from Germany, UK, Canada, USA, Colombia, Mexico, Hungary, New Zealand, the Dominican Republic, the Netherlands and Italy. It's a great social event.

HoS and Skogs sky for a disc

USA won the Open, Womens, Mixed and Masters divisions. UNO from Japan and Onyx from Canada prevented American hegemony by making their respective finals, and preventing 4 all-American finals. UNO won over the crowd in the Women's final, and a dropped hammer in the penultimate point seemed to be the difference as Fury squeaked home on universe point (note - if you are playing league and it is 15-15 and next point wins, I'd call it golden point or last-point-wins. "Universe point" is better reserved for winning, say, the World Championship final).

The Spirit rankings are online too: Open, Women, Mixed and Masters.

Standout Australian spirit rankings finishes were Colony (6th), Heads of State (8th), Smurf (8th), and Eastern Greys (3rd). Unfortunately, Australian finally broke its run of winning Spirit in minimum one division. Meanwhile the Germans backed up a first and second in WUGC2008 spirit by winning spirit in Mixed and Womens in 2010.

The individual stats are at the bottom of those pages, lead by Masahiro Matsuno (Open), Becky LeDonne (Womens), Tim Lavis (Mixed) and Tom Rogacki (Masters).


The Open final between Sockeye and Revolver

Spirit at TEP Medellín

The final part of the academic program of TEP was a forum focussed on spirit and development of the sport. Eight presentations were given on ultimate and growth in Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, USA, Canada, the Dominican Republic and Australia. I gave a talk on Australian ultimate. My focus was basically the "other ultimate" that is a big part of our community, calendar and culture, as it is to varying degrees in many countries. 

During the tournament itself, every game that I saw was a positive experience.

For the spirit prizes, the winners for TEP 2009 were Revolution in the women´s division and Sockeye in the men´s. The TD, Mauro, was very happy that two finalists took home the spirit awards, illustrating his point that spirit is compatible with high level play.

My personal experiences included calling, discussing, then withdrawing two fouls in the game against Kiê, and bottling up some serious frustration against Warao. That involved getting fouled on a throw (and feeling the smack firmly on the back of my hand), and then four Warao sideline players instinctively yelling "no" loudly when I called foul. The lack of perspective or trust from them had me silently jumping up and down for seconds, wanting to yell back.  

My team Oso-Matanga had none of the really negative experiences of Nationals. The wish to play with spirit was repeatedly mentioned by several of our leaders. This really reaped rewards against a team like Warao who were motivated and who we knew to be a big challenge, but we seem to deflate them by discussing calls calmly and briefly, and even accepting some tight line-calls that weren´t in our favour. They lacked "fire" as a result, which helped us play our game, and win. I felt that we had decided to make the game spirited, and we controlled this.

I received the even more cheery news that Oso played a very spirited rematch against Euforia two weeks later, in the final of Disco Volador 2600. Without foreigners like Sockeye or Furious (or myself) around, and with some established hotheads back on both teams, these two rivals met in an important final and played a spirited game. I hope it is a pattern from here on in.

Day 3 of TEP Medellín 2009 - the finals

The women's semis were up first. Riot toppled Wayra convincingly. The other game was tighter. Traffic struggled to contain the break throws of Revolution, and were pipped in the end - a North American team was defeated by a Colombian team. These are the milestones in the progress of South American ultimate.

The men's semis followed. Warao (Venezuela) threw everything at Sockeye, but Sockeye prevailed 15-9.

In the Oso - Furious match-up, we jumped to 2-0 lead, prompting an emotional timeout from Furious George. They pegged it back to 6-6, Oso's speed matching Furious' experience and height. But the story of the game soon matched that of many other previous games: a Colombian team unable to maintain composed offence and pressure defence once the legs fatigue slightly. Furious ran out 15-9 winners.

Oso working against the Furious zone

After lunch, the women's final took place before an audience of around 1500. Riot vs Revolution. Team names these days sound like everyone wants to fight the system...

Revolution have so many young players - almost everyone is a teenager. Their skills were so impressive. The score edged from 4-4 to 8-7 Riot, and then the North American dominance prevailed, as Riot pulled out the win 15-10. Awesome match for spectators.

Riot (black) and Revolution (pink) after the final

The men's final was a classic derby between Sockeye and Furious. I believe the first time either team took a two-point lead was Furious at 12-10. Then Sockeye stepped up. They clawed back points to come to 13-13. A Sam Harkness block of a huck to Andrew Brown helped them go to 14-13.

Then on match point, the primary handler for Furious, Mauro Ortiz, stayed on the bench. On the second pass, Skip Sewell read the throw of the replacement Furious handler to perfection, with a layout block. Possession to Sockeye. A pass or two, and the disc is on the endzone line. Is it in? Reminiscent of the final moment of 2005 World Games, the players finally agree it is a goal, and Sockeye are inaugural open champions of the Torneo Eterna Primavera.

 Scobel photographs Hassell getting one over Seth

A great finish by Sockeye, with two athletic defensive plays on the end of a long and hot tournament, to cap a 4-1 comeback and win. An ideal spectacle of elite, spirited ultimate for Colombian players and fans to see at the conclusion of the biggest ever ultimate event in South America.

Big congratulations to Mauro Moore and his colleagues for creating such an impressive event. Can't wait to see it return in the future.

Day 1 and 2 of TEP Medellín 2009

My team, Oso, has now completed the pool games at TEP Medellín after two days. Most of the results are online now.

We polished off Mamoots, Argentina, Warao (from Venezuela) on day 1, and defeated Caobos (Venezuela) to start day 2.

The Sockeye game was enjoyable. We took an early 3-1 lead, held on til 7-6 down, then faded in the sun, to lose 15-8. Sockeye used their aggressive zone fairly often, with four tall guys up front trying to trap the disc.

Euforia (white) play Sockeye (red).

The final game of Friday for us was with Medellín's strongest team, Kie. The winner would advance to the semis, as we had both lost to Sockeye and defeated other teams in our pool. We pegged out an early 6-2 lead and kept it throughout, winning 15-10. Our team had four spectacular grabs, rivalled today only by Seth Wiggins' layout fading blade catch in a different game. Certainly fires up the team and the crowd.

Oso (white) with Kiê (blue)

Tomorrow we will play our semi-final with Furious. Their points differential per game (+5.5) is worse than Sockeye's (+7.3), so we theoretically have a better shot at a win than Euforia Warao, who emerge from the other pool to play Sockeye.

Furious and Sockeye are heavy favourites to meet in the final of course, but I am keen to see what happens.

Meanwhile in the women's, Riot topped Traffic in pool play. Both were otherwise undefeated. Revolution gave the best showing among the Colombian teams, losing 14-13 to Riot. Tomorrow, Riot will play Wayra and Traffic will meet Revolution.

Tonight is trade night, so I am sure no North American will leave without having traded their much-coveted uniforms from teams past.

Opening Night of TEP Medellín

The opening ceremony for TEP was equivalent to that of any Worlds: a parade of nations, freestyle demonstrations, dance routines, national anthems, thanks to the volunteers, and an audience hungry for the demonstration game.

The opening game for TEP was Canada vs USA, consisting of players from Riot, Sockeye, Traffic and Furious George.

The stands filled up so the spectators without seats were asked to sit down on the field too.

The match started strongly with barely a break for the first 8-9 points. Then errors crept in. USA proved too strong, and won by a few.

The best part was having a few thousand ultimate players and others getting to watch a high quality match featuring stars of the North American game.

6 days of coaching

Just finished 6 long days of coaching in the TEP Academic Program.

First was a day coaching the sports teachers from the INDER Escuelas Populares.

Day 2 and 3 was training coaches from all over the country (and Mexico), along side players from Riot and Furious George. Without much background on the coaches or chance to plan together, we started with a session finding out what they wanted to learn. We explained many of the approaches and organisational systems of our teams. The second day was smoother, giving all the attendees opportunities to coach the others (who role-played beginner players) and then evaluate that coaching.

There is an insatiable thirst for ultimate knowledge here in Colombia - folks are keen to learn whatever they can. And when players from some of the strongest clubs in the world turn up, they will ask questions on everything.

I also discovered there are three accredited ultimate coaches in Colombia. They did a course in Bogotá through a state department. I'll find out more.

On Day 4 and 5, Alyson and I coached a high school team from Colegio de San José de Las Vegas. They were boys from 13-16 years old. We worked with them on their offensive cutting system (they have a fairly sophisticated set-up) and their marking of the thrower (they are lacking a lot of fundamentals). I think there will be more instances of this in the near future - Colombians implementing whatever new info they discover, when they haven't been presented with fundamentals first.

The lads had excellent patience to train for seven hours a day for two days. By the end, they had a dynamic zone offence, improved marking and guarding, stronger pulls and impressive O flow, due to the effort they put in. So impressive. And this was a team that was already one of the strongest high schools in all of Latin America.

In some ways, the Colombians have better development pathways than Australia. Three of the Las Vegas high school players train and compete with the senior men's clubs, and many clubs (men and women) here have junior teams (16-20 year olds). There are many instances of talented teenagers moving into the senior competitions with lots of tutelage.

Day 6 was a visit to an Escuela Popular. Picture 30 kids from 6 to 19 years old on a hot, dry, sand soccer pitch, plonked in the middle of a sea of three-storey housing. An occasional dog wanders through, and frisbees worn down to 3/4 of their original weight fly everywhere. Every kid has a solid forehand, but most have shoes that have seen much better days. The two teachers organised the introductions, then we spent two hours coaching and having fun. The level of chaos slowly increased, and we left to catch our bus at the end, with swarms of kids wanting autographs on shirts and shorts.

There are somewhere between 600 and 1200 kids in the region, learning ulti through these Escuelas Populares. Creating social change and teaching life-skills to overcome disadvantaged backgrounds are the main aims. The teachers are doing awesome work.

The INDER program in Medellín

INDER is the sports department in the Colombian city of Medellín.

They manage lots of public sports facilities and programs, including Las Escuelas Populares, devoted solely to teaching sport to youth. There are about 50 escuelas here, and about 14 run ultimate. I am told that INDER love ultimate (well, they are certainly funding and supporting TEP).

They also offer scholarships to a selected 30 of the hundreds of students learning ultimate in the escuelas, many who are from disadvantaged backgrounds. The scholarships give them some funding for uniforms, travel, food and an invitation to play with the elite ultimate clubs in Medellín.

Basically its awesome. Four of the girls came along to today's coaching workshop for teachers from the escuelas populares today, and had fun. Ultimate seems to be a pretty fantastic aspect of their lives now.

The workshop itself was an chance for teachers to problem-solve their issues related to constructively resolving calls on the fields, gender inequalities, building comradery with other teams and teaching self-refereeing. Maddy and Loriana (from Riot), Eva (Traffic) and I were the organisers.

Also, 30 more people now know how to play schtick. They were possibly the best group of beginners I've ever seen playing schtick.

Today's workshop was one of the dozens of coaching sessions that 13 players from Riot, Traffic and Furious George (plus Nicky and I) are running during the 7-day academic program. Medellín ultimate is being bombarded with coaching. This is the epicentre of ultimate coaching anywhere in the world this week (maybe this year?), and the major cultural differences ensures everyone is learning something (have you ever coached with a translator?). 

Tomorrow, and Friday, I am working with 30 university and club coaches of ultimate from around the country. Saturday and Sunday I help coach a university team, while Monday and Tuesday will be the big forum “Convivencia y desarrollo en el Ultimate: Respiraprofundo”. Monday will also see our North American coaches visit the 14 different Escualas Populares to run a session with the kids.

Torneo Eterna Primavera: TEP Medellín 2009

TEP Medellín 2009 will be an impressive tournament. TEP is the biggest thing Colombian Ultimate has ever organised. It is effectively a Pan-American championships with teams coming from Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Canada and the US. It will be one of the best tournaments of the year, anywhere.



The Institute of Sport and Recreation, Medellín, is investing some serious funds into the tournament. These funds are supporting the travel and accommodation costs of Furious George, Traffic, Sockeye and Riot.

I stayed at the apartment of Mauro Moore, the TD, for a few days last month, and he has been working on this tournament since about March. There are mountains of discs, rulebooks, jerseys, cones and more, filling one of his rooms.

TEP is more of a gala event than just a tournament. Along side the main three-day ultimate tournament are a one-day mini-hat tournament, a three-day guts clinic, a three-day guts tournament, and the first Pan-American WFDF congress. A lot of things are on the scale of a Worlds or World Clubs tournament.

The venue for the ultimate is Unidad Deportiva Atanasio Girardot, the premier sporting complex in Medellín. Selected ultimate games will be broadcast live on TeleMedellín, a local TV station.

Additionally, in the week prior to the tournament, there is an academic program. This will involve seminars, forums and training sessions for new and experienced ultimate players and teams. There is even a workshop on ultimate photography, presented by the experienced Scobel Wiggins. I have been invited to contribute to some of these academic events, including a forum on international experiences of ultimate and community transformation through ultimate. That last topic may not mean much in a Western country, but in a country like Colombia it has relevance.

The ultimate starts on November 26th; the academic program on November 17th.

A week of clinics

Lucho, Laurel, Nicky and I have finished our fifth and last clinic for this mini-tour. We now have lots of friends in the cities of Cali and Ibagué.

We aimed to leave the players with a friendly and positive experience of ultimate shared with players they usually only play against. We shared our perspectives on spirit from our three countries. And offered some tools for the future: proactive methods for learning spirit, tips for discussing calls on the field and activities to use after an ultimate match.

All the players were so welcoming of new ideas, and so many offered thanks for the clinics. The challenge now is to evaluate them and see what impact they make on the communities we visited. They can't just vanish into the past - the aim of the clinics is to help build the communication and spirit in ongoing local ultimate.

By the way, if one day you ever see that topless dude in this photo, holding up a trophy for winning a major tournament in the future, I met him when he was just learning to play ultimate in Cali, and moving like Bruce Lee.

During the week, we also got to participate in a demo-game during half-time of a Cali futbol match. A few dramatic macs and hucks entertained the soccer fans. It was a very exciting experience for the local ultimate players out on the beautiful turf under the big lights. It was eight minutes of fun before the paid professionals returned to play their sport and not layout.

There was also a day of ultimate in Ibagué on Saturday - hot, humid and fun.

Project Play Colombia

Project Play Colombia is a project worth checking out. There is a blog and a facebook page.

The aim is to develop conflict resolution skills in ultimate players while teaching the skills of ultimate.

The project is run by Lucho, a mover and shaker on the Colombian ultimate scene who has recently returned from the fertile fields of Vancouver ultimate.

Laurel, Nicky and I will be his fellow coaches for a series of clinics this week in the cities of Cali and Ibagué. We will run clinics with established men's, women's and university clubs.

A proposal for building stronger spirit

My last post talked about my observations with spirit in Colombia and, to an extent, Venezuela. Between my arrival here in Colombia, the recent Huddle blogposts on spirit and the discussion on line assistants in Australia, the topic seems, well, topical.

There are several factors at work when spirit goes bad.

I believe one of the key ones is a “them and us” attitude. A minority of players adopt a mindset that individuals, or other teams in general, have behaved poorly and are likely to do so again in the future. These other people are framed as “them” in comparison to “us”.

“They” are cheats; “they” often play dirty; “they” think “we” shouldn't have won that last match, but “they” are wrong.

This attitude is built by what ultimate is available.

In Australia, players train and compete with elite clubs during the elite season. It is “them” and “us”.

But, importantly, there is also Other Ultimate, which elite men take part in. There are weekly mixed city leagues. There are numerous mixed tournaments. There are hat tournaments. There are numerous training camps and selection events prior to World Championships. And Australia tends to do well in spirit scores at international tournaments. A bit of a leap to assume causation, but the extent of Other Ultimate in other countries and their reputation for spirit seems to roughly correlate, at first glance.

And this Other Ultimate forces elite players to play with, socialise with and befriend other players outside their club. Ultimate becomes a community, moreso than a collection of clubs where some players happen to know other players, and socialise when they happen to meet.

In a true community, “them” and “us” dissolve into just “us”.

So this is a theory. And there are some facts I have pointed out that seem to support it.

I don't think refining spirit score systems or adding observers address this underlying issue.

I have a different proposal.

The proposal is for the countries and regions that have the desire, to build community through “other ultimate”.

The national organisations and local leaders can build “other ultimate” through many means: ask elite clubs to host hat tournaments, build an annual calendar where mixed ultimate and open/womens ultimate doesn't clash, subsidise travel or minimise travel costs in general, expand selection and development events for National teams, hold gala dinners where a broad range of folk can attend, create incentives for the open club season to be restricted to certain months. When US players head to Kaimana and Paganello on teams with a real mix of players, as they regularly do, this is a positive thing.

And a big "goodonya" for everyone who has built and is building this ultimate.

In the end, with Other Ultimate in place, it's much less likely that Joe Handler will yell abuse at Fred Receiver and complain about Fred when he is in the pub that night, if Fred is on his mixed league team and played a hat tournament with him last year.

Spirit in Colombia

In my two weeks in Colombia, I have seen some worrying incidents relating to spirit in the open division. I have also had a number of Colombians and non-Colombians recount incidents of very poor spirit to me, from intense arguing and border-line cheating to pushing, shoving and punching on the field.

My previous experiences with South American men's ultimate were playing a very fiery Venezuela team and a more subdued Colombian team at Worlds 2008. I also saw that South American teams had very low rankings in Spirit scores for Worlds 2008 in a number of divisions, particularly Open.

The poor spirit has arisen particularly in certain team match-ups and from certain players.

Many other games across Regionals and Nationals had excellent spirit, and this was acknowledged after the game within the teams.

But in a way, spirit is a chain as strong as its weakest link.

Immediately after those disappointing quarterfinals at Nationals, I started talking to players about spirit. It seems to be evolving into a social research project worthy of several PhDs. The more people I talk to, the more I learn.

Many players are aware of the issues with spirit, and have pointed out a range of factors: the strong focus on club ultimate, the culture and history of Colombia (as this Columbian columnist discusses, this country has had "una cultura de justificación de la violencia y de la venganza"), the isolation from other international ultimate, and the lack of restraints or sanctions on those given power within teams.

In my next post, I'll offer an inkling of a proposal aimed at one of these factors. I have started to share this idea with the movers and shakers of Colombia during my time here, and see what they think of it. So far the responses have been supportive.

Colombian Nationals

The inaugaral Colombian National Championships wrapped up in Medellín yesterday.

This is the first time Colombia has had an official National Championships, and the tournament followed on from the series of Regional Championships held during the previous weekends.

The playing venues were across three locations: a university, a public recreation centre and the big sports stadiums of the city. Half were grass, half were astroturf (sintética).

Word of mouth culture is strong here. I briefly glimpsed a draw once, but otherwise it was a case of ask someone what the games were (much like driving around the city - you don't use a map, you just stop and ask for directions from strangers every few blocks).

Day 1 saw my team, Comunidad de Oso, win its two easier pool games. One comfortably and in the other we fell across the line to win. Playing time was shared reasonably equally across the team, so I got a lot of chances to get my frisbee legs in gear.

Every team seems to have 2-4 excellent throwers who can get open, and put up decent hucks or big hammers, plus lefty backhands. Its the quality of the upfield cutters and the consistency of execution that often determines the game.

Day 2 started well. We defeated another Bogotá team, Matanga. Their poaching was quite effective, especially that of one of their key defenders who got two blocks and was inches from two more. Personally I connected on a number of good breaks and hucks, so it was rewarding to make a big contribution to a team I was so new to.

Then came the quarterfinal. Oso were matched up against key Bogotá rivals, Euphoria, who we had beaten by a point in the Regionals final. In front of a vocal crowd in the stadium, Euphoria grab a lead early. Then trouble starts. One captain calls back-to-back travel calls on hucks from the other captain. The game is held up while one captain demands observers.

Almost ten minutes later the game restarts with the TD pulled in as an observer (he has never been one in his life - no Colombian has). But the calls and argue rain down with the actual rain that arrived. Fouls, yelling, travel, and no respect for the opinions or decisions of opponents. The issues derived from a few key players on each team, but no-one made any effort to cool down any of the hotheads.

Oso claw back to 12 all. However my interest in winning this game has dwindled. What incentive is there to win an arguing competition? I wanted to compete at ultimate. My thoughts circled around the question of what small contribution I, an Australian in Colombia, could make to address this abysmally spirited match. I resolved to talk with the teams post-game and see if they needed to talk to each other.

Euphoria win the last point, and celebrate with gusto, as Oso despondently leave the field. I asked a few Euphoria players post-game if they were happy to talk with Oso and they said yes. But Oso were scattered to the winds of dismay and the key players I found were in no mood to converse, as I judged it.

So I put my feet up, watched some ultimate, and pondered what I had just experienced. The game I watched was another quarterfinal: Matanga vs Aire. Unfortunately this was another poorly spirited game. The last two points took 20 minutes in total, and Aire won the game by a point, mostly because Matanga lost the competition of "who can call the disc back the most times with a dodgy call".

To top things off, there was no party at this tournament, unlike the vast majority of tournaments in Australia.

Day 3 was at least a new day.

Oso played off for 6th vs Mamuts, but we lost in a lacklustre effort.

The finals were in Estadio Atanasio Girardot (pictured), where Colombia had played Chile in the FIFA World Cup qualifying match the night before. It was a great venue but a crowd of 200 ultimate players in a stadium of 53 000 seats rattles around like a handful of marbles in a bathtub.

Revolution defeated Waijra in the women's final, while Euphoria toppled Kie, the top team in Medellin to take the men's title. Both games had decent spirit.

So the theme uppermost in my mind here in Colombia is Spirit of the Game. My next post or two will offer some more optimistic thoughts on spirit, and reveal some amazing work being done here in Colombian ultimate.