The 2008 Ballarat Ultimate Awards

Not to be confused with the BUUF Awards, the Ballarat Ultimate Awards recognises stuff I thought was pretty sweet over the year. The process of determining the winners of the awards, with several nominations received, scrutinised by a panel of highly regarded judges, voted on by industry insiders and forwarded on to the editor of Ballarat Ultimate who said "fuck that" and made these awards and winners up on the spot.



GAME OF THE YEAR (Spectating)

Honorable mention - Jam vs Ironside (UPA Nationals final)
Bit of a landmark game, really, given it's the first time we've been able to watch a non-Worlds game live on the internet instead of on a DVD 5 months from now.

Runner-up - Flinders vs Melbourne (AUG Semi Final)
Good close game, funny watching Freisy lose his shit.

Winner - Australia vs Colombia (Worlds Junior Women's Division semi final)
An outstanding come-from-behind victory to put the girls in to the gold medal match. Also exciting to be able to watch it live from the other side of the world.



GAME OF THE YEAR (Played in)

Honorable mention - BUUF vs Yoghurt Slingers (Geelong League Season 3)
Why a simple league game? It was the return of Dan Rule and Sam Kuchel to the line-up for the first time in months, and BUUF had gone winless for a season and a half in the league. The other teams were even referring to BUUF as 'Bye'. For nearly five years the Ballarat style of game was carefully structured and patient offense, but this game we canned all that and shifted to a "run and gun" offense where there were two passing options - dishy or shoot. And it worked brilliantly. We've used it since to great effect and it'll probably completely reshape the uni team's mindset in 2009.

Runner-up - Heads Of State Youth vs Karma Chameleon (Southern Regionals)
I'm the first to admit that I'm rather shit in open ultimate, and right up until this game I felt way out of my depth. Actually I was out of my depth, but when Karma B decided to run a pommy zone for the whole game, it put Tarrant and I in our element. With great support from Timill, Lochie Wise and Lewi Broad we managed to take our small squad of 11 and take down Karma B's 19-strong lineup with relative ease.

Winner - Heads Of State Youth vs Sweet Chilly (Southern Regionals)
For someone who doesn't enjoy open ultimate as much as mixed, I seem to have had a great time at Southerns. This game went Chilly's way by a few points, but as cliched as it is, the scoreline didn't reflect the intensity. The tension was at ridiculously high levels after some questionable calls and the Heads Of State senior team making the most noise I've ever heard on a sideline, but everyone on both teams kept their heads and played at their best.



WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT AWARD

Honorable mention - Furious George missing out on UPA Nationals
OK, so there's countless blogs out there covering the North American scene and only a couple for the Australian scene, but this was too big to ignore. Furious George - the Vancouver team that upset Sockeye and Buzz Bullets to take out the World Championships in their home town - couldn't back it up a few weeks later to qualify for the UPA Nationals. Talk about your premiership hangovers. In the end, Sockeye didn't even make it to the final as predicted, so you'd have to wonder if Furious would have.

Runner-up - Sydney Uni not selecting Calan Spielman for AUG
It's rare that a uni team even has to cut people from their AUG squad, and I'm sure that there's a perfectly reasonable explantion for it, but looking at it on face value it seems strange that they wouldn't want to take one of Thunder's most athletic players to a tournament where he could have dominated just about every opponent. It'd be easy to sit around and speculate whether he could have won the gold medal for Sydney, but with so many teams not fitting expectations at AUG it's tricky to say for sure.

Winner - Barefoot's fall from grace at Nationals
This season was all about Fakulti. Not all of Chilly's three-peat lineup was backing up for a fourth tilt and Fak were finally making the change from X/X to A/B. It seemed no one was going to challenge them, except for maybe Fyshwick and there was a bit of talk about Barefoot. Sure enough, after pool play, Barefoot had gone 3 and 0 and were looking good for semis. Then...well, no one outside the team is really sure. They failed to register another win and finished 12th. Even worse (or better?), Barefoot aren't even going to be around this season in the form they had for the last two years, choosing to reform as Thong/Southside/whatever.



HECKLE OF THE YEAR

Honorable mentions - There's a couple here...
"Get your f**king head in the game, champ. You're in a FINAL." (Mark Isherwood to Graham Prickett)
This came after about four minutes of Basil constantly yelling "Hey Spesh!" to try and get his attention.
"Nice forehand. Does it come in mens?" (Lewi Broad to...I forget who. Might have been me)
This was following some loopy bullshit outside-in forehand that hit the receiver somehow. It was clear that Lewi had been waiting quite some time for an opportunity to use this heckle.

Runner-up - "Sydney are still in this.....harr harr harr harr." (Tim Wise to whoever was listening)
After Flinders had gone up 13-5 in the AUG final. There is not a soul out there who can adequately explain why this was funny. It just was.

Winner - "You hit your peak in 2005. You're the Andy Roddick of Australian ultimate." (Frank Simmons to Alex Ong)
The anatomy of an outstanding heckle includes clever wit, perfect timing, clear delivery and devastating impact. This heckle nailed all of them. And just like explaining a joke is like disecting a frog (no one really learns anything, and the frog dies), the heckle shouldn't mean jack shit in written form. Moving on.



TOURNAMENT OF THE YEAR

Honorable mention - Halibut (Brisbane, July 26th-27th)
Despite a missed flight on the Friday night and subsequently missing the first game on the Saturday, this was a fantastic tournament. Great fields (felt weird playing on green grass), good food, and quality opposition.

Runner-up - The Big Wet 6 (Creswick, July 14th)
With all the big cities eating up so much of everyone's tournament time, it's great to see the small tournaments are still the most fun. It doesn't get much more country than ultimate on a footy oval, with the local players' parents cooking a BBQ for lunch as we all huddle around a barrel fire. I especially liked it this year because I won. Seriously, you should get to this tournament next year. Grassroots ultimate at it's finest.

Winner - Australian University Games (Melbourne, September 28th - October 3rd)
Many would argue it's hard to enjoy a tournament when you're getting your ass handed to you every game, but aside from that I couldn't fault AUG this year at all for sheer enjoyment. And I managed to make it through this year's mayhem without an injury or ambulance ride.