Pre-emptive preview to the 2008 uni pre-season

Whether you like it or not, the university season starts in the coming weeks. There's not really a defined start of season date, but I like to think that Term 1/start of Term 2 is "pre-season", then after Nationals, the uni season starts. Mixed...meh, whenever. Ah stuff it, let's call Stampede the start of the uni season.

Which would make the Sydney IV and Ridin The Western the equivalent of the NAB Cup, I suppose.

First, a quick look at the Sydney IV taking place on April 5th. 6 clubs, 9 teams - Macquarie, Sydney, UTS, UNSW, UWS and CSU. The big question with AUG this year is "what Worlds players are going to be arsed going this year?" Mac and fUNSWitch are going to be hanging on this - Matt Dowle and Abra being Dingos, and Wazza being a Mundi - those players make a huge difference to their teams. Mac seem to have held on to most of their girls from '07 so that looks promising for them.

I'm quite impressed with Sydney's efforts - three teams fronting up (well it is on home turf) with about a third of them appearing to be rookies. They don't seem to have lost any key players from '07 (possible exception of Pete Liddicoat?) so they will only get better in '08.

UTS, UWS and CSU all finished at the bottom end of the AUG standings, but I'm expecting them to be a lot better this year, having kept their core groups together, and a fair chunk of those core groups getting a Regionals campaign under their belt.

Now on to Ridin The Western, Ballarat's annual "hey why don't you all come play up here for once" tournament. As I've already lamented, Ballarat's lineup is somewhat depleted - only 4 of the '07 team have committed to '08. That leaves the door open for Latrobe to break into the top 3. They only have one loss from '07, and this year have the addition of Super Macca (HoS, '06 Thunder) and Crystal Cheung ('08 Terra squad - no photo without resorting to Facebookstalking). Melbourne and Monash's teams are likely to be rookie-oriented, but their lineups look quite similar to '07, but with some rumoured superstar additions - Tarrant (Melbourne) and Owen (Monash). The dark horse in Victoria may be Deakin - word on the street is they've had quite the fruitful recruiting period.

This tournament is also going to see some extra teams - Geelong, Church Street, and a rumoured team of Chilly/Ishtar veterans (the term "has-been" has been deliberately avoided...for now)

But that's not everyone...

Queensland - UQ, the reigning champions, don't look like relinquishing that hold yet. In '07 they demonstrated the amazing depth their development had brought them - their only challenge this year will be the travel (affordability) and potentially shit weather in Melbourne. QUT and Griffith face similar challenges...

South Australia - Flinders disappointed at Gold Coast, but the experience their rookies gained will be invaluable. Couple this with the return of Joel Pillar - even if he doesn't play AUG, he will be pivotal in the development of the Fury this year. Flinders, along with Adelaide, will both benefit if Karma and Indies fire at Nationals.

ACT - ANU without Twats...will it happen? Of course it will. But they only made quarters last year by the skin of their teeth - they'll need to bring much more than good fortune this year if they are to make it again.

Tasmania and Western Australia - I'm not gonna pretend I know much about these mobs. Truth be told, no one does until September. UTas should figure among the top few again if they bring a similar lineup. UWA also will be one to watch. Murdoch and Curtin remain unknown quantities.


So who are the teams to watch this year? I'm not going to come out all guns blazing with top 8 predictions just yet, but keep a watch on Flinders and Latrobe to be the big improvers of 2008.

I can't believe I've never heard it called this

So the top 8 fight it out in the finals, yeah?

The next 8, in the 9th-16th bracket, compete in the nine-als.

I've heard consolations, minor finals and "chumpionship", but I'm sticking with nine-als (or 9als) from now on.

I'm pretty bored this afternoon...expect a few more posts.

Uni ultimate triple crown?

So you see, Cultimate are responsible for four of the big non-Nationals college ultimate tournaments in the US. Lookie on their website for what I'm on about.

So let's pick four tournaments here to be the equivalent...

Ridin The Western
Ballarat, VIC
Mid April
I like to think we put on a good show in Ballarat. Maybe we'll move it to June and watch anyone from north of Seymour's game fall to shit in the atrocious weather.

The Ultimate Stampede
Bathurst, NSW
Mid May
These kids put on a great show last year. With the stories everyone returned with last year still getting repeated, there'll be another sweet turnout this year.

Halibut
Brisbane, QLD
Late July
Legendary tournament that is a staple on the Australian ultimate calendar. Hosted the first Australian Uni Championships back in 1997. Plus Queensland weather in July is quite pleasant.

Shenanigans
Canberra, ACT
Early September
Good pre-AUG hitout. Canberra's not that bad, really.


Add up points and award a spiffy trophy to the winners. And don't whinge about costs - all of those tournaments are drivable.

Club loyalty

So at Regionals weekend, I was playing with Heads of State after failing to be selected for either Chilly squad. I only trained with HoS two or three times in the leadup, and as such never really felt part of the club. Sure, I am great mates with a lot of the players, but when I put on the jersey I didn't feel any semblance of pride that I know the other HoS boys get. I suppose the obvious answer is that I wasn't emotionally invested in the club at all - I'd never trained much or did many team things with them. I do wonder that if I had made a Chilly team and continued to train with them whether by now I'd feel part of the club, but there's no point dwelling on things that never happened.

It did get me thinking on the trip home about club loyalty in ultimate. It's especially prevalent in Open - hearing players talk fondly and passionately about their role in HoS or Chilly or Fakulti or Firestorm or Sublime. Every team at Nationals this year (with the exception of Taipans and New Zealand) is a continuation of a team from 2007 - some players have moved but by and large they all have a very similar playing group from 12 months ago. Women's is also seeing a similar trend - save for a new team (Minx) and a merger (Wollongong joining a second Factory Girls team) it's a very similar list to the 2007 Nationals entrants.

But what about Mixed?

Mixed clubs don't really seem to exist outside university. Take the list of teams from 2006 Mixed Nationals...

1. Reekin' Havoc (Newcastle)
2. Bootius Maximus (Brisbane)
3. Sublime (Perth)
4. Usual Suspects (Canberra)
5. Blokes & Shiellahs (Canberra)
6. Honey Badgers (Melbourne)
7. Crikey! (Brisbane)
8. FURY (Adelaide)
9. MUCUS Regurg (Melbourne)
10. City Slickers (Melbourne)
11. = The Restless Flycatchers (Adelaide)
12. = Jagged Little Disc (Sydney)
13. Southern Thunder (Ballarat)
14. Zing (Hobart)
15. Eureka Goldigaz (Ballarat)
16. sCAPEgoats (Sydney)
17. MUF Crabs (Melbourne)
18. Disc Heads (Adelaide)
19. Mixed Nuts (Adelaide)
20. Gumby Magic (Sydney)

...and then the list from 2007 Mixed Nationals...

1. Bootius Maximus (Brisbane)
2. Spiderpig (Sydney)
3. FAF (Sydney)
4. Station 59 (Melbourne)
5. Padlock (Sydney)
6. Pie Wagon (Newcastle)
7. Fat Beagle On A Rampage (Canberra)
8. Toot Sweet (Sydney)
9. Verfrumdung (Canberra)
10. HECS Debt (Adelaide)
11. MUCUS (Melbourne)
12. 7 Nation Army (Sydney)
13. Honey Badgers (Melbourne)
    
14. Cosa Nostra (Sydney)
15. LOG! (Hobart)
16. Wollongong (Wollongong)
17. Gary (Melbourne)
18. Ambivilance (Canberra)
19. Umber Ella (Adelaide)
20. sCAPEgoats (Sydney)
21. Super Happy Lounge Lizards (Brisbane)
22. Special Sauce (Sydney)
23. woMANLY (Sydney)
24. Ocean Madness (Newcastle)

When looking at name only, 4 teams carried over from one year to the next. To be fair, a few 2007 teams shared a similar core player base to 2006...

• Reekin Havoc -> Pie Wagon
• Jagged Little Disc -> 7 Nation Army
• Zing -> LOG!
• Disc Heads -> Umber Ella

...and a lot of the same players attended both tournaments but switched teams. So why aren't mixed clubs greeted with the same loyalty that open/women's clubs are? Why don't we see more teams carry over year to year at Mixed Nats?

To be fair (gee I like that phrase a lot), it's only been in the last couple of years that we've seen this happen in Open and Women's, and I think that can be attributed in part to the path to Nationals being more difficult than in the past - ie: regional qualifying. This has forced teams to maintain consistency year-to-year in order to get and keep their spot at Nationals.

Last year we saw a qualifying process put in place for Mixed Nationals, and teams missed out. Only one or two, but still, those teams are going to realise there is more work to be done to get a spot. So hopefully there'll be a natural progression towards continuity in mixed clubs. Hell, maybe even A/B teams and X/Y teams.

But instead of waiting for a natural progression, I have a better idea: club registrations.

When playing just about any other form of organised, competitive sport, you have to register with a club, who are registered with the governing association. I played basketball as a youngster, and registered with Saints Basketball Club, who then put me in a team in the Saturday morning under 10s competition. If I wanted to go and play for another team, I would have to get a transfer approved in between seasons. Same when I started playing football and registered with the Ballarat Swans. It was simple - I filled out a form and, just like that, I was a player for the Swans.

So here's the idea - we have a deadline for clubs to register with the AFDA. Say December 1st for Open/Women and June 1st for Mixed. No fees or excessive paperwork, just an online form saying the club name, where they are based, and who the contact is. We could even use the existing online rego system. Then six weeks later the clubs then submit a list of registered players - those who have said "yes, I want to play with Club X this season". From there, teams then select their Regionals/Nationals squads.

So what's the advantage of this?

It puts the onus on clubs to recruit and develop new players.

Look at what happened in Victoria this past summer - plenty of new players were getting up to a standard where they were ready to step into Open clubs. They had two choices for clubs in Victoria - Chilly and Heads of State. Who did they all want to play for? Heads of State. HoS players were the ones that were at the junior open days and Junior Nats. Because the young players saw these older players all the time, they naturally wanted to play alongside them. So in the end, HoS got all of the young players bar two, who went to Chilly. Conversely, many Albert Park Social League "graduates" joined Chilly, because it was Chilly players doing the coaching there.

If a club is required to register their players at the start of the season, they are going to have to go out into the frisbee community and find those players before anyone else does! Barefoot would hate to see Fakulti go and sign up all the talented young guys playing, so Barefoot players would need to get out there and scout for themselves. Rather than waiting for players to come to them, clubs would need to go out and make their club seem more attractive than the others.

Clubs would need to outdo each other - so we would see things such as development squads, club based teams in local leagues, open tryouts...and things I'd probably never think of.

Thoughts from Southern Regionals

The drive to Adelaide
Jesus H. Christ that drive sucked. My car's air-con doesn't work, and it was 40° all the way. Plenty of water was drank as myself, Lewi and Jake tried to stay hydrated - my recycling bin at home is now filled with Mount Franklin 1.5 litre bottles. And for all the heckling Amanda gave us about her car having the luxury of air-con, I got a call from Greta - they had broken down at Kaniva. We were about 30 minutes ahead, and a vote was made to keep going instead of turning around. About an hour later, I got this text from Amanda...

We are back on the road. The fuel was evaporating between the fuel pump and the engine.

Which is further evidence small cars can't handle long trips with air-con at full tilt.


The team - Heads of State Youth
Being about 5 years older than the second oldest player on a youth team, there was no escaping the fact I was nothing more than a pickup player. The team was filled with some fantastic young talent:

• Timill - a solid leader who will fulfill his assistant coach job for Thunder very well.
  
• Tarrant - a freak. That's all that needs to be said.
• Lochie Wise - I played with him at Mixed Nats, where inexperience creeped through on a couple of occassions, but now he plays like someone way beyond his years.
• Lewi, Jake and Al - the tall timber of the team, and all Thunder aspirants.
• Nick, Rohan and Lats - three very solid players who are shooting for the A team.
• Nath - Ballarat lad there for some experience.
• Dave - social leaguer who was there to spectate, but suddenly found himself in the team.

No Buttons, though, because he is a chump.


Day 1
The first game was against Heads of State. After some deliberation about 'tanking', we treated the game as a serious warm up. Despite being our first game together, HoSY played pretty good. Probably the only major problem being that our hucks weren't coming off. We lost.

Next game was against Ultimate Evolution. This was the game where we started to get our shit together. Much better flow on O, and getting plenty of blocks and forced turnovers on D. HoSY held out for a good win.

The third game before lunch (and about the point where I was grateful for 60min games) was against Karma Chameleon. This started out as a tough match-up, with their much larger and louder squad threatening to overrun us. However their zone D had several holes in it that turned out to be quite easy to exploit. As noted by one HoSY player - "they're just animals that run, but don't think about what they're doing." We won comfortably, but in 12 months time this team will be much more difficult to beat.

After lunch we had one more game for the day against Hot Chilly (aka Chilly B, Backhand Chilly, or Chilly Whealy). We surprised them by taking the first five points straight - we played like a real Nationals team, capitialising on every mistake they made. However after a time out, they went on to take the next 6 points, and eventually the game.

In a suprising move, I didn't go to the party that night. In fact, no one from HoS did. By the time we cooled down, ate, got back to the caravan park and showered, it was about 10pm and no one was really feeling it.


Day 2
This was always going to be a tough day. First game was against Karma. Due to lateness we were on the back foot early, starting 1-0 down and with only 5 players. By the time our full team was there, it was 7-0 and the next four points were conceeded quickly, wrapping up the game in about 35 minutes.

The second game was against Sweet Chilly (aka Chilly A, Forehand Chilly, or Chilly Baker). Determined to make up for such a piss-poor effort in the first game, we really stepped up in this game. As cliched as it sounds, the 11-5 scoreline didn't reflect the game at all. When it was 9-3, we were in the midst of a long-ish point, and the A team came over to our sideline to cheer us on. The difference the noise made (and I mean noise - lots of it) was incredible - we were constantly peppering the endzone with scoring opportunities. During that point there were four "questionable" fouls called by Chilly. One I agreed with, two could have gone either way, and the other was the worst foul call I have ever seen in ultimate. I'm not going into details here - ask me nicely next time you see me and I might tell you about it. We eventually got the score and the field was mobbed by the A team.

On the next point, our D stepped up and we shut down everything - Chilly just couldn't score. It was another long point helped by a loud sideline. I'd never been convinced a loud sideline could make such a difference, but I'm happy to stand corrected. Sweet Chilly ended up taking the game, which left us in 5th place.

The third game of the day was against Karma again, in the 4th vs 5th game. This game was essentially for the last South spot at Nationals. Given that Karma were playing for this spot, they came out firing. We put up a much better fight than the morning, but Karma's experience playing as a team was much better than ours. They then went on to beat Hot Chilly (aka Chilly B, Backhand Chilly, or Chilly Whealy), who had beaten them on Saturday, to take 3rd place.

The legs were tired and the enthusiasm was dying after that game and we were dreading coming up against the numbers and hard running of Karma Chameleon. But to our surprise, Ultimate Evolution had rolled them and were playing us for 5th place. We established our dominance early, getting two breaks up to be 6-2, and coasted the rest of the game, winning 12-8.


My personal performance
I suck at open ultimate - I have known for some time that my style of game is much more suited to mixed. Maybe that's because I have played mixed much more than open - but being my fourth attempt at becoming an open player, I struggle to keep up with the pace of the open game. Knowing this, I settled into a "back seat" role, avoiding being a key play maker or anything important. I was happy to play a role of "experienced handler".

That being said, I had a couple of personal goals for the weekend.

1. 100% completions when dumping/swinging.
2. Win my one-on-one contests on D.
3. Only huck to clear options - no speculative shit.
4. Improve my dump cuts.

So how did I go?

1. I had 6 turnovers for the weekend - 2 of them on risky swing passes on high stall counts. One directly resulted in a score (vs Sweet Chilly) and the other we got the disc back three passes later (vs Ultimate Evolution). I had 3 upfield throwaways (one was an awesome hammer than my receiver turned his back on!) and 1 handblock. Not a bad return for the weekend.
2. I got beaten long. A lot. However when on the mark, I did not let one huck off. A couple of break throws slipped by, but I forced a dump/swing/short open side pass about 75-80% of the time. And I even beat someone in the air for a D. Only happened once or twice ever. So proud.
3. Didn't even get one huck off. Never had a real opportunity to.
4. This is the one thing I really worked on. Previously I'd just run back and forth until I was open, but instead I thought about the cut I wanted well before I was engaged as a dump. I thought about where I was starting from, where my marker was starting from, how my marker was standing (back to me, back to thrower, or sideways?), where the stack was and where the space was on the field. Once I took all this into consideration, it actually became quite easy to predetermine what cut to use, and to execute it. I was quite surprised at how easy it was to beat my marker (who was, more often than not, faster than me) once I worked that all out.

It is still nice to be reminded every now and then that after playing for four years, I still have so much to learn.

The push into Geelong

So after encouragement from VFDA pres Rueben, Dan is taking the gospel of ultimate to Geelong and I'll be tagging along next Tuesday. This is going to be a great move for Ultimate in Victoria.

Geelong's population is around the 160,000 mark, making it Victoria's second largest city. Given that ultimate is up and running in Ballarat (90,000, 3rd largest) and Creswick (not many, somewhere near the bottom) it makes sense that we should have some sort of presence in Geelong. There is a pocket of disc golf players, and there have been pickup games in the past, but nothing formal.

This year is probably the ideal time to get ultimate happening there. With the town predominantly AFL-centric, there ought to be plenty of athletic types about. The city is also quite strong at basketball, with the Geelong Supercats once being in the NBL. The A-League is also likely to establish a team there in the next few years. Currently, two young blokes living there are on the Aussie Thunder training squad, so there's someone on the ground.

Why is this good for Victoria? The more non-Melbourne teams there are, the greater value a "state championship" would have. It would also be more of a move towards more club-based mixed ultimate. Plus the usual more players, more exposure, more revenue, more touraments, etc etc etc reasons.

This is also a great move for Ballarat - Geelong is about a 45 minute drive as opposed to Albert Park's 90 minutes. A league in Geelong would be a lot more attractive to new Ballarat players than a Melbourne league. For a 7pm AP league game, we leave at 5:15pm and return at around 10:30pm. For a 7pm game in Geelong we could leave at 6pm and be home at 9:30pm. It's also around the same distance for Melbourne (going from Albert Park), but probably a bit longer time-wise. Maybe Deakin Uni could get a team there?

This is also good for marketing - I'm tagging along under the guise of "research". I'm hoping to develop a package/program for bringing ultimate to new cities. Having a base in Geelong is also conducive to my totally kick-ass idea for a K-Rock sponsored series of games on the Surf Coast during January. But I'll save that for another entry.