Tales from the Beach

Beach Ultimate in Canada

Canada is a country with an amazing Ultimate community. Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa all have thousands of players and 250-350 teams per city. However when it comes to Beach Ultimate they are the victim of their geography. The West Coast close to Vancouver has basically no good beaches (anything more north of Vancouver has either no inhabitants or it gets too cold). The East Coast is slightly better, with the Parlee Beach tournament in Fredericton, but apart from that there is not much else. The only hope for Canada is to use their wealth of lakes to play Beach Ultimate.
Britannia in Ottawa has been going on for 17 years and last year a new tournament got started: La Petite Vite du Capitaine
canadaflag.gifOn the 23th and 24th of August, La Petite Vite du Capitaine takes place on the Haldimand public beach in Gaspe, a small town in the area of Gaspesie peninsula, in the eastern part of the province of Quebec. This tournament will be part of the town summer activities and they are expecting local people and tourists to enjoy the event.
They are expecting teams from Quebec and New Brunswick but are also hoping for other teams/players to register. The airport is 20 minutes away and many facilities will be provided such as a beer garden, meals, washrooms, music and others services.
The accommodation and the Saturday night activities (dinner and party) will take place at the Douglastown Hostel. The fees for the tournament are 350.00$ can. per team including accommodations, meals and activities for the weekend. There will be prices and gifts for the team who will achieve the best spirit and the teams who will be playing the finals.
If you are in the area, or love adventure, this can be quite the new experience for seasoned Beach Ultimate players. Try it. Even if you do not have a team, they can get you one.

The Subic Bay Beach Ultimate Frisbee Challenge

The Subic Bay Beach Ultimate Frisbee Challenge in the Philippines was held last June 7-8, 2008 at the Waterfront. Twelve teams from Manila and Boracay participated in the tournament. Boracay Dragons White and Gold ended up playing against each other in the finals. Dragons White won 13-6. Junthir from Boracay Dragons Gold got the MVP award in Pool A. Janjan from Dragons Gold suffered a severe cut just below his left eyebrow and chin. (See collision on video.) Dragons Katol bagged the Most Spirited Team Award (AGAIN! They won the same award at the Bora Open 2007.) Awarding and party took place on the field. There was a band…and lotsa beer…and a lot of dirty dancing party people!
Thanks to all who joined and especially to Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority and Department of Tourism for sponsoring the event and to UP Sunken Pleasure volunteers for organizing the tournament.

Dutch Beach Ultimate on the rise

Dutch Beach culture is mostly limited to holidays and ‘strand jutten’ (picking up things that wash ashore after a storm). The Crunch Hut tournament in Hargen has been the only Beach Ultimate in Holland (although this year will be their 14th edition!) and until recently the Netherlands never participated at a BULA Beach Ultimate World Championships.
However Beach Fever has struck Holland. They participated at the European Championships Beach Ultimate where they just missed the chance to go to the semi finals and suddenly there are two new Beach Ultimate tournaments planned:
The Texel Beach Tournament 21-22 June: Texel is the biggest island of the Netherlands and it’s about a 100 km. north of Amsterdam. The tournament is going to be an open tournament and you can sign up at their website.
The Monsterball Beach Classic August 30-31: This tournament is very close to The Hague and the base of the tournament will be the Bondi beach club.
Hup Holland Hup!

African Beach Ultimate on a rise: Mozambique’s first tourney!

African Beach Ultimate is still in its infancy. South Africa is by far the most developed in this region. With the help of the Lifeskills organization and the Kaiser Foundation thousands of kids are starting to play (Beach) Ultimate. The rest of the continent is still almost untouched.
There is some Ultimate in Egypt, helped by Russians that host the Ultimutation tournament in Dahab, and there is some Ultimate in Morocco. mozambique.jpgHowever new on the horizon is Mozambique! Led by well known Dutch Ultimate veteran Stef Steven, the man who started the development of Ultimate in Vietnam, there is now a Beach Ultimate tournament on the island of Xefina just off the coast of Maputo.
Chapeau na Ilha da Xefina (translation: Hat on Xafina island) is the name of the tournament and it will take place 14-15 June. It will be beach disc like you’ve never experienced it before. Local fishermen will give players dhow rides to and from the island with a sundowner included. Caipirinha served in the boats. It should be just an amazing experience.
Party and play like Mozambicans. You know you want to! 🙂 Contact Sjoerd Brouwer, sjoerd_brouwer@hotmal.com for more information. I am sure they would love to get a couple of foreigners to visit.

Blockstack TV coverage of Paganello

Steve and Tom have packed their bags, got theirlaptops primed for high speed editing, and are taking Blockstack.tv to Rimini Italy for Paganello.
marmite.gifThey have exclusive backstage access to all the Paga action, interviews with the big names, and with Ultimate loving people having a good time. Most importantly they’ll be bringing back a flavour of one of the world’s most famous and exciting Ultimate tournaments.
Part 1 of Blockstack.tv in Paganello should be live late Friday night or early Saturday morning.
Check it out: www.blockstack.tv

Boracay Open Finals

I suppose it shouldn’t have been a total surprise the way the Boracay Dragons A (so-named for the dragon boat races on the island — a few of the players are dragon rowers) dominated the finals, winning, in effect, 16-5 over Manila’s league champion Sexual Chocolate. 16 points because the last goal was an end-zone to end-zone huck which, like Wildwood or those Florida tournaments, is worth 2 points.
The Dragons were fast, deep (roster of 17 i believe) and basically played smart. Their D caused SexChoc to make throwaways which the Dragons converted with efficiency. Game started out 4-0 or 5-0 and was never in doubt.
In semis, Dragons A (White) beat Dragons C (Blue/Yellow), while Dragons B (Silver) lost to Sex Choc 10-9 when the game ended on a one-pointer when the team needed a two-pointer to tie and prolong the game (alas, thrown by me)
In the Important Prizes at the crazy beach after-party, the Manila-based team called Dragon Katol, so named for the local spiral mosquito repellent incense, won the Spirit of the Game, the Party Award and one of their regular player Christian (who played with Boracay Dragons here and was MVP of WBUC in Brazil) won the MVP making it some sort of weird Katol sweep.
Party Details: this tournament was sponsored by a Filipino energy drink, 100 Plus, a number of fine establishments on the beach like the Hey Jude bar, Summer Place bar and grill and Smoke Restaurant, to name a few. Also a TV network/channel sponsored prizes for Spirit/Party and “Top 4 Players” awards which included a compass from the TV show “Lost.” Evidently Lost is coming on air here soon.
But the number one sponsor in terms of ubiquitousness was Colt 45, “America’s leading premium strong beer.” However, we don’t have “strong beer” in America, only the more apt designation “malt liquor” a category which Colt 45 probably created too, heck.
Colt 45 is a great and wonderful brew for smashing one’s head to mulch for the following day. But it was free.
The finals were pretty colorful: the usual loudspeaker setup, lots of local fans clapping and cheering, all of the teams here, tons of cameras with nice lenses, a TV station was here to do a segment on the tournament and the team (airing March 29th in Manila I was told — a sports show, nonetheless)
Once again the talk of the day from the Dragons was about how excited they were to bring their game to other tournaments around the world and how psyched they would be to host more traveling players and teams to this tournament. In fact, it appeared that besides a small Singapore team with none of the players from Freakshow, the only travelers here were Jane and I, Izzy and Pierre the French-Canadian handlebar-mustache brothers and two blokes from Regina, Saskatchewan. Truly that will change in the future because it is pretty good times here with lots of free food, free beer, tournament shirt and disc included, parties every night and good competition.
I’m trying to get some pictures up but otherwise go to the official tourney photographers websites:
http://ssshortzzz.multiply.com (not up yet)
http://ogong.multiply.com (not up yet)
More later
Tony

Saturday at Boracay

Saturday pool play was divided into two pools, an upper and a lower. The upper pool was six teams. Boracay, a, b, and c, manilla’s alabang, dragan kutong (insect repellenent for dragons), and sexual chocolate, also from manilla. The closest and best game of the day was sexual chocolate v. boracay silver (b). With two and three goal leads throughout, silver coudlnt finish it al the end and manilla escaped with a universe-point win at the end.
Boracay white (a) crushed sexual choc. two games later to take command of the pool and of the tournament. Tomorrow the semi-finals will likely be a rematch of sex. choc. and bora silver, while bora white should play bora blue (c, aka the young fast kids).
Truly the young kids here in Boracay have a bright future ahead. They are really receptive to the game and start pretty young — the 12-year olds were forehand hucking like champions. The deal is: Boracay takes ultimate seriously. They really have a good vibe for the fast action of beach ultimate.
Manila and PUA (Philippines Ultimate Association) also are very psyched with Ultimate here — several celebrities (Rima and Derrick) in Manila, known as TV and Radio hosts (seriously, random locals passing by the frisbee scene stopped and HAD to get a picture with Derrick on Friday night, and everytime he held up a disc in the pic — which is pretty rad if you think about it.)
Team Alabang Anonymous is know here for the good times, team Dragon Katon for also making things merry and who can forget the travelers, like Pierre and Israel from… Quebec. Viva Francais.
So you can be rest assured that we are drunk now because the saturday night food and party was swell and now we must get ready to play tomorrow
Pictures will be coming…
T&J

Friday at Boracay

Friday at Boracay
The sand here is quite nice, the beach is fantastic and the teams here feel a bit like they are in paradise.
The international presence is not felt, however. With an always crowded ultimate schedule a lot of Asian ultimate players are saving up their money for Korea or Bali, or still paying for Bangkok Hat and Vietnam Hat.
But the Dragons are psyched to get some love thrown their way and would absolutely love it for more teams and more players to come this way and make this tournament a prime destination tourney. There’s no reason why this can’t happen: the beach village and the beach itself here are definitely top-notch, the parties promise to be swell and in high style and generally speaking, it’s all good.
One drawback simply appears to be that the width of the beach from shorefront property to the sea is shrinking. Therefore, only 4-on-4 action (which i can totally dig coming from Wildwood) and not quite enough for a ton of fields or for 5-on-5. they are working on solutions.
But really it’s pretty nice here. The Dragons want to continue their international push after the WBUC in Brazil by going to Paga next year and maybe Oz or the States in the future if they can afford it. But meanwhile they’re hoping some kickass teams come this way to so the competition can continue to be amped up
Tony