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Lei-Out 2009 is the Featured Tournament in ffindr!
Check out some great information about Lei-Out 2009 and the history of the tournament on ffindr (Frisbee Finder). Here is the link: http://ffindr.com/en/blog/2009/01/05/featured-tournament-lei-out
Today BULA and the Boracay Beach Ultimate Association are proud to announce that the Asian Championships Beach Ultimate for national teams (ACBU 2009) will be held 28-31 October 2009 on Boracay Island (the Philippines).
National teams in the Open division and the Mixed division will compete for the title of Asian Beach Ultimate Champions, a title they will retain for 4 years (the next ACBU will be in 2013). Registration and openings party are on Wednesday 28 October. The semi-finals and finals will be held on Saturday 31 October.
Download the Team and Player Manual
More info to follow
We are waiting for you!
Best wishes for 2009 to all of you! I started with a donation to Ultimate Peace and I hope more players will follow. Peace is good. Ultimate is good. Donating is good.
My friend Alex Wells from Seattle recently had a dream about Beach Ultimate and playing at Lei-Out that I thought was worthy of sharing Enjoy:
I had a strange and frightening dream this morning that I feel compelled to share...
I'm at what appears to be a dance party filled with a bunch of ultimate folks, many of whom I know. As I circulate around the room I see most people are wearing jerseys that I don't recognize, many of them the same. Some of my good friends are wearing some incredibly stylish pajamas(tops and bottoms). Wait a second, everyone in PJ's is a fellow member of my team, Darkhorse...or should be at any rate. The pajamas are the latest and greatest in the line of Darkhorse uniforms! I realize that it is January 19th. Everyone here has just returned from Lei-Out! Except Me!!! I FORGOT TO GO TO LEI-OUT!!!!!!!!. I had a plane ticket and everything and I just forgot to go to the airport. I was so furious and distraught that I started pitching a tantrum worthy of a two-year old and tearing up.
At this point I woke up, very disoriented and breathing hard. It took me a few seconds to realize that Lei-Out wasn't for another month and to calm down. Phew. I hope I never have that dream again.
Alex Wells
I can't believe I left this weird story from the BULA Blog until now. It is a true story, nothing has been modified.
Two years ago we played we played Beach Ultimate in Meco (Portugal). The weather was unstable. There was a lot of rain around us, but on the beach it was perfect. Enough sun to heat us up and not too much wind. For years we had been joking that each time we play on that beach we are helped by the 'Frisbee Gods' because 95% of the time, 12 months a year, we have good weather to play, irrespective of weather forecast or the weather a few days before.
I decided to take a picture of the sky. After I came home I uploaded the picture to our team's blog. Here is where the weird part starts...
Upon uploading the picture the result was not really the picture I took. What showed up was a grainy picture of a girl with a bathing cap from the 1920's, multiplied several times. But that is not all, a small thumbnail of the actual uploaded picture can be seen in the left top corner.
Weird... Did we capture the Disc Gods on Camera?
(and are we therefore captured on Google Earth?)
Jose Pires just sent me an email that a new satellite image was taken during the Bar do Peixe tournament in Portugal.
(Also see the Google Earth .kmz link)
You can clearly see the mass of players around the umbrellas, the 2 fields, the players on the fields and the side lines. On field 2 (left mid), the players are on the line, about to start a point!
Could this be the first time that a Beach Ultimate tournament was captured by the big eye above us?
It took me by surprise when I saw the announcement for a Spanish Beach Ultimate tournament promoted by SportsVest 2009. I quickly went to their site and was confused... what is this? It looks like Spring Break for undoubtedly many intoxicated British students. After surfing around the site I was no less confused. Probably because my university years are long gone but there was just too much info to deal with.
So I contacted the person that brought this tournament to my attention. I wanted to know if BULA should be promoting this tournament as I had my doubles. As it turns out, James 'Chef' Melzack is an Ultimate player who has a wealth of experience organizing tournaments and who assured me that he always puts players first. He told me that the tournament qualified to be a BULA tournament and that was just what I wanted to hear: enough playing time, SOTG, parties, etc... It should be a great event! :-)
It will mostly be UK student teams but we hope that perhaps some Spanish, French, or other European student teams will go too. That would make it the first international Student Beach Ultimate tournament in the world!
So if you are a student and want to have some fun in Lloret de Mar, here is your chance: the SportsVest Spain tour (March 28th - April 3rd) includes: 3 days of beach ultimate, 4 nights accommodation, 4 nights of parties, Guest DJ's Scott Mills, Scratch Perverts & Urban Knights.
Sounds like fun to me... :-)
Brian Calle was recently interviewed about Lei Out and the future of Beach Ultimate. The TDs for Paganello and Wildwood were also interviewed. Check it out!
http://theultiverse.com/2008/11/24/brian-jumpi-and-mike/
Or find it at www.leiout.com
Slowly but surely Beach Ultimate is getting into Asia... Recent developments in China and now in India are heartwarming to see :-)
Adding to the excitement is the fact that in two week the hosts for the 2009 Asian Championships Beach Ultimate will be announced. Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, China, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Currier Island, and Pakistan have all shown interest in participating. No word yet from India and Taiwan but we hope they will join the championships as well.
That there is Beach Ultimate in India is certain. Just look at this invitation:
Although there is no beach in sight, I didn't want to keep this video from you. Take a car. Drive it fast. Make it spin and catch the disc that was thrown to you...
Believe it our not, the Beach Ultimate tournament that started with just a few dedicated Ultimate Players tossing a Frisbee around on the sand in Santa Monica, California is turning a decade old. January 17 & 18, 2009 mark the tenth anniversary of Lei-Out.
This year promises to be a special year with upgrades in tournament sponsorships, event parties, and even better competition--not to mention spirit giveaways! The Lei-Out team is working hard to grow the tournament and bring in some new international flavor.
And teams with rosters consisting of over 50% of the players from outside of the United States will receive a special gift!
Check out www.leiout.com for more details or to register. Don't miss your chance to come to Lei-Out 2009...the tournament is filling up fast.
Burla Beach Cup video 1
Burla Beach Cup video 2
Last September saw the seventh edition of the Burla Beach Cup take place on the beach of Viareggio, near Pisa in Italy.
This tournament has been growing in numbers each year, with 82 teams taking part this year in 3 divisions. It’s easy to understand why: you’re guaranteed 3 days of beach ultimate, good weather, perfect beaches, great accommodation and a good party atmosphere all with an Italian style.
Viareggio is becoming like a second Rimini, 14 fields, increasingly high level and, to be fair, some of the disadvantages too! Paul Bernier, Max Vitali and the rest of the hard-working Tuscan team have done a fantastic job of expanding this great tournament, and they have committed to continuing to improve the experience for all comers.
In the open division CUSB Bologna (IT) beat the Rimini finalists SEXXXPENSIVE in a close final. The young Italians were perhaps less tired than the international thong legends and made slightly fewer mistakes with some tight defending. The Bologna junior team also won the third division; perhaps we can expect CUSB to start challenging for the Paganello title in future years? Cota Rica might have something to say about that, although they didn’t make it to Viareggio this time.
A special mention should go to Glasgow Open, who, having made a wrong call that decided a game, realized their mistake overnight and asked for the result to be changed! Spirito del gioco.
Full Results:
OPEN_1 div.
1. CUSB Bologna (IT)
2. SEXXXPENSIVE (Intl)
3. DJI SAM SOE (AT)
4. INEXXXPENSIVE (Intl)
SOTG
1. FREEZZZBEEZZZ (BE)
2. DJI SAM SOE (AT)
3. 4 STAZIONI (DE)
----------------------------------
OPEN_2 div.
1. COBRA KAI (UK)
2. INNERCIRCLE (AT)
3. SKYHAWKS (CH)
4. ULTEAM (NL)
SOTG
1. RADICAL (CH)
2. XLR8RS (BE)
3. SPIN (AT)
Another special award to GO (Glasgow Open)
----------------------------------
OPEN_3 div.
1. CUSB JUNIOR (IT)
2. NO FRILLS ( UK )
3. MYTHAGO ( UK )
4. BASIC ( UK )
8. Best women team: WOODCHICAS (DE)
SOTG
1. LES COLLEGUES (FR)
2. WOODCHICAS (BE)
3. LEAMONGTON LEMMINGS ( UK )
With the Porro Open this weekend in Barcelona it was perfect timing to get coverage about Spanish Beach Ultimate on TV3 from Catalunya.
The 2 minute report last Friday showed that in heavy winds there can still be a game. I wish TV3 would allow for others to embed the video (why not?), but that doesn't seem to be possible so you will have to click here: http://www.tv3.cat/videos/768109
Thanks to Christian, Gemma, Dima, Carlos, Sofia, the Italian Flying Disc Federation, and Eduardo the new WFDF/BULA Spirit of the Game scoring sheets are now available in Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, and Brazilian:
http://beachultimate.org/blog/2008/05/sotg.html
Probably the first time in history: Beach Ultimate highschool intramurals. I wished I lived in Boracay!!! Check this out:
I wish all online communities would merge. It would make them much more valuable to the users. For example, Spinn-City (www.spinn-city.com) has some great features but not enough members (~80) to make it really useful for anyone.
Spinn City Disc Museum
I love this idea. So many discs are made and many have a special meaning to us. Whether it is our first disc to play with, a team disc, a fun tournament disc, or a special occasion disc. We remember our discs. Unfortunately we lose/break discs and when that happens we feel a loss. The disc museum is something that is a great feature on the site, if... more people would add to it.
Personal profile
Spinn City has something I have not seen in any other online disc community: Major sporting Achievements, Major spirit/party Achievements, and Most beautiful Tournaments. I like this feature!
Spinn City has other features such as an event calender and picture uploading, but those you can do better with ffindr and facebook.It is too bad that there is little action on the site and there is no real reason for return visits. Perhaps this will change in the future. If so, I will post it here on our blog again.
Earlier this year I wrote about a new LinkedIn group called Disc(o)Tech. Unfortunately I have not seen any use for/from it. However there is another disc related LinkedIn group that is more active: the Wonderful World of Ultimate. There are currently 181 members and a few days ago a new discussion was started: "Should the Ultimate Frisbee groups on Linked in merge? And how?".
So far only two responses, but give it time... :-)
I love LinkedIn for professional purposes, but is there any value in segregating it into hobby/sport groups? If I want to hang out online with my Beach Ultimate friends I go to Facebook (which I do not open to my professional network ;-). Facebook is great and has lots of Beach Ultimate players using it. Way more than LinkedIn users.
For example: at the 2008 Bar do Peixe Beach Ultimate tournament there were 140 players from 16 countries. Of those players, 27 made an online digital albums (=20%, which is probably a record in the Ultimate world). Of those 27 there were 23 (85%!) that used Facebook! That is amazing.
If you are not on Facebook, you might be missing out. I know there are privacy concerns and personally I don't download all the millions of applications. However it is a great way to keep in touch with your friends that are miles away.
With the 2009 Asian Championships Beach Ultimate in sight, we are discovering more Beach Ultimate in Asia. In Beijing there was even an artificial beach that saw the arrival of many players. Here is an excerpt from a blogger in China:
The sand was artificial and, at places, hurt like hell to land on (more on this later), but it was still a fun day at the beach, even if there was no water. Organized by the inimitable Jeff Orcutt et al., we split into four teams -- names drawn out of a hat -- and played four games each. More...
Five-on-five Beach Ultmate might the most popular Beach Ultimate format worldwide, but 4-on-4 Beach Ultimate is growing too. The Wildwood tournament, with 2,200 players, is a huge 4-on-4 event in the US.In Belgium, the Philippines, Egypt, Mexico, and New Zealand there also 4-on-4 tournaments.
This month, in the south of France, a 4-on-4 Beach Ultimate league has started.
For the last 3 years French players have been playing in a series of 4-on-4 Beach Ultimate tournaments "Collègues" on the Mediterranean coast. It was so successful that the organizer (Stéphane) and some of his friends decided to create a national 4-on-4 Beach Ultimate League (LBU44) which started this month.
With 8 teams participating it is the first full 4-on-4 league in Europe. That is great news. Allez les Bleus!
Today we sent out the official invitation for countries to play at and/or host the 1st Asian Championships Beach Ultimate (5-on-5 format for national teams).
- Australia,
- China,
- Currier Island,
- Hong Kong,
- India,
- Indonesia,
- Japan,
- Malaysia,
- New Zealand,
- Philippines,
- Singapore,
- South Korea,
- Taiwan,
- Thailand,
- Vietnam
Last year's final between Australia and the Philippines at the World Championships in Brazil was thrilling, with great plays and amazing spirit! I am expecting the same at the 2009 ACBU.
Our aim is to make the ACBU 2009 the event with the most Asian countries participating in an Ultimate event, ever!
Teams only need 9 players per team, so tell your friends, tell your national federation. They should have received an invitation. If not, have them contact us.
Here is a great report about the World Championships Beach Ultimate (WCBU) that was held last year in Maceio, Brazil. It was filmed and edited by the biggest Brazilian sport TV channel. Portuguese spoken with English subtitles. Very, very good.
Have a look at the possible future World Champions Beach Ultimate: footage of the 1st Boracay junior Beach Ultimate tournament. 54 students from elementary and high school participated.
Wicked!
Slowly but surely the Asia Pacific is waking up to Beach Ultimate.
Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines have been on the forefront for many years, but Singapore started with a Beach Ultimate tournament last year and now Hong Kong is doing it too.
This is great news for the 1st Asian Championships Beach Ultimate that will be held in 2009.
In the meantime, if you are in Hong Kong on Sunday 7 September, go play!
Some communication went on recently about the size of tournaments. Of course size doesn't matter, but we all still want to know who has the biggest.
According to Tony Leonardo:
Last year Paga had 48 open teams, 32 mixed, a gaggle of womens teams and juniors teams. Paga is 5 on 5 and team sizes tended to be larger than 4-on-4 Wildwood by about 5-6 people per team. So maybe team sizes of 15 and multiply that by 110 and you get 1650 or so Wildwood had 300+ teams this year, but lets estimate that about 50 of those teams double up and play in 2 divisions. So lets say 250 teams with about 9 peeps on each, so 2250 folks, all of them, coincidentally, teenagers from Philadelphia and North Jersey.Potlatch this year had 104 teams i think, team size about 20+ so that puts them around 2100? Potlatch is the largest grass tournament in the world, i am pretty sure so Wildwood could be the largest (and fattest) tournament of all?
What about World Club Championships? Is that bigger? Of course that is not an annual event but I wonder how big that one was last time. Anybody know?
Erick Fix, a humble handler, cameraman and editor from the North East has used his talent to craft an adrenaline-pumping highlight video of Wildwood. He is calling on you merry folk to make a difference in this crazy mixed-up world. He works for an internet fitness video website and causally asked if he could put together a video for the Wildwood tournament that occurred a few weeks ago (see our coverage here, here, and here). The bosses shrugged and agreed. Little did they know his master scheme to dominate the site with the power of our glorious sport...
Now he is reaching out to the global (Beach) Ultimate community with his plea: his video needs to get more hits than anything else on the site. Currently, the highest rated video on the site is a bodybuilding video....for the love of god...a bodybuilding video. In the name of all that is round and plastic please send this link (http://www.myfitnesschannel.com/on-location.asp?video=27) to all the players you know and watch the great video every day. If not for yourselves, for our sport...
I had seen Ultivillage before and thought it was interesting, but not something to write about on this blog. Ultivillage is a mostly North America focused, grass Ultimate video website. Registered users (a few months ago they had 8106 registered users) can buy DVD's, watch Ultimate TV, and participate in forums.
However, their coverage of the World Ultimate & Guts Championships last week brought international action to people around the globe. Some people had to stay up late, some had to get up early, some had to skip work. All of them enjoyed the live coverage of what was happening in Vancouver. Our friends from Blockstack.tv were the commentators and suddenly it felt much less "North Americany". It felt nice and global (like BULA :-).
The quality of the live broadcast was not always perfect, but perfect enough for me and Sofia to be excited seeing the Open final between US and Canada. We loved it and we did not have to pay for it. It was billed as a $7 event (payable by paypal I think) and I would have paid the money (I saw other games for free and decided it was worth it), but somehow I was never asked for payment. Bonus! :-)
Perhaps a live broadcast is something BULA can have at the ACBU (Asian Beach Ultimate Championships) in 2009, or the World Beach Ultimate Championships in 2011. Ultivillage is bringing Ultimate to the fans, perhaps now they see the international interest they are interested in bringing the beach along... :-)
The collaborative nature of the internet is starting to work its way deeper into the fabric of (Beach) Ultimate. Open Ultimate (www.openultimate.com) is another example. You will find two primary uses for openultimate.com:
- Locating resources that will help you in coaching Ultimate; and
- Creating a private online course for you and your team that will help you to create, manage, and disseminate resources to your team, including activities such as journal writing or discussion forums.
The name "openultimate" was chosen because the creator (Dan Cogan-Drew) wants to encourage coaches and players to share their resources (good books, DVDs, websites, blogs, etc., as well as lesson plans and/or drills that they have found useful). They've started it off with an initial assortment to "seed" the ground for continuous and robust contributions by the world- wide Ultimate coaching and playing community.
For any who are familiar with Blackboard, you will find this environment to be very similar. It's built in a free open-source equivalent known as "Moodle". If you are interested in becoming a "site editor" (like a wikipedia editor), or have other contributions to offer, please contact Dan at dan.cogandrew@gmail.com
Wikipedia has become a standard on its own, and now there are specialized 'pedias' showing up everywhere. One of the latest is the Ultipedia. This is a great start for a worldwide collaborative effort to get a repository of tactics, websites, cheers, etc...
That is not to say that there are no problems with 'pedias'. The originator/moderator has a lot of power. When Ultimate (Frisbee) was added to Wikipedia we tried to get some content for Beach Ultimate included but we were constantly hindered by the 'moderator'. The moderator decided that he had enough knowledge of the sport and that he could decide what should or should not be included. Also an entry for 'The Worst' (the opposite of 'The Greatest') was rejected because he had never heard of it before.
Nevertheless, the Ultipedia is a good start. The thing it now needs is enough publicity so that everyone starts to use it and contribute. I hope that this blog posting helps. Good luck to all involved!
SUNDAY, July 27th 2008.
Yes, there were 300+ teams. The beach, a good 400 yards to the ocean, was packed. You couldn’t see the end of the fields. Not too long ago Wildwood had 150 teams and that seemed large. How many teams will the tournament cap it at?
“We haven’t found that number yet,” says Mike Adlis one of the tournament directors. “I suppose we could add another day if we get more teams, and maybe keep adding days.”
Its appeal is accessibility and lack of pretension. Everyone is welcome. Anyone can come. All levels of play are encouraged. There are sweet trophies for 40 teams. You can win your loser’s G bracket chumpionship and walk away with hardware.
Sunday’s weather was cool. A thunderstorm with lightning snaps came midway through the day and held off games for an hour and change.
The top pools were headlined by the usual suspects, the many-headed Horned Melons who fielded teams in both divisions and the octopus-like Yellow Submarine. Both are Philly-based teams and Wildwood is their backyard sand box.
The Melons lost to Yellow Sub in 3-1 semifinals, but advanced in semis over Sexually Considerate (New York) in the 2-2 division. Yellow Sub won the 3-1 again, practically a birthright for this team, over Do The Deed (DC, I think). In 2-2, Atlanta’s No Limit Pandas, one of the few teams to have actually taken a plane flight to Wildwood, won the 2-2 over the Melons after having defeated Big Fish (Boston/ Slow White) in the semis.
According to one of No Limit’s players, most of the team hadn’t even played on beach before.
The rain delay sent plenty of teams packing. Two teams, Death By Misadventure and Thunder Punch, set to match up in the finals decided to determine the winner realized they couldn’t play because many folks left. Instead they competed in a boardwalk carney watergun-shoot-the-target race, won by Thunder Punch.
To get a copy of the 2007 tournament DVD, email kenne DOT hemphill AT gmail DOT com.
To see some tournament pictures, check out briancanniff.smugmug.com