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?)
Here is the original post

For the last 4 years BULA and Discraft have been offering a tournament directors discounts on discs (plus many other goodies such as free game discs etc…) in return for, amongst other things, a Discraft banner that needs to be displayed at the tournament.
Recently I was at a tournament that enjoyed the sponsorship offer. However, the first night one of the organizers came up to me and told me that they had forgotten the banners at home (which was a few hours drive from the beach). So we talked on what else they could do to keep their part of the deal. After a few drinks a crazy idea came up, and on the last night of the tournament this was the result:

Never a dull moment with Beach Ultimate players! 🙂

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… 🙂

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…

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.

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…

There has been some confusion about catching the disc while the foot is underneath the line. Here is the response from Lorne Beckman, the person who has been involved in all the BULA rules as well as most UPA rules:

First let’s clarify nomenclature: a person’s foot cannot be “underneath the line”. “Lines” are conceptual. A person’s foot can be underneath the coloured tape, but the coloured tape is not the line. The coloured tape is only an aid to mark the lines. See the BULA addendum to the WFDF rules:

• 2.2 The perimeter of the Field of Play is the Perimeter Line and consists of two (2) Sidelines along the length and two (2) End lines along the width.
• 2.2.1. All lines shall be marked with colored tape between five (5) and ten (10) centimetres wide

The conceptual “line” exists as a plane that extends infinitely upward and downward parallel to the pull of the Earth’s gravity.A person who catches the disc with a foot which is underneath the coloured tape is therefore squarely on the line, and therefore, out-of-bounds. If the disc is caught by someone with a foot before the tape and then the person’s foot slides underneath it, he/she is in-bounds.

I hope that clarifies it. Let me know if you have any questions.

Many of us have had the experience of being stuck with only 4 players showing up at practice. And what do you do…? You play Double Disc Court (DDC)! It is a great game and lots of fun.
Now the first European Beach DDC tournament is a fact: DDSea-spot on the Westende Beach in Belgium will take place 28 June. Check it out: www.gentlesite.be/seaspot