2009 World Games - Day 1

For those of you in the ultimate community who don't ever check their emails (and subsequently, probably not this blog), the 2009 World Games are currently going down in Kaohsiung in Chinese Taipei. The Australia Crocs are taking on USA, Canada, Japan, Great Britain and Chinese Taipei over 3 intense days in the main stadium in Kaohsiung.

Day 1 has been run and won, with all games going as expected...

Canada 13 d. Great Britain 10
Japan 13 d. Chinese Taipei 7
USA 13 d. Australia 11
Japan 13 d. Great Britain 10
Australia 13 d. Chinese Taipei 9
USA 13 d. Canada 6

Perhaps the two surprises to come out of Day 1 was the margin in the USA/Canada game, and the performance of Chinese Taipei against Japan and Australia. Chinese Taipei were expected to be the minnows of this competition, qualifying based on the fact they were the host nation. However their mixed team competed at Worlds last year and their preparation has been intense, plus there is also the factor of the home crowd, which reportedly was more than 8,000. If you think the sideline is the 8th player on the field, then surely a crowd of that size would be the 9th, 10th and 11th.

At Worlds last year, Chinese Taipei got 4 points (game to 17) against Japan, 5 from Canada and 10 from Great Britain, so for them to get 7 against Japan this time around and 9 from Australia shows considerable improvement in the last 12 months. Wei-chiao Chang was the star at Worlds, with 26 assists for the tournament, and seems to be dominating the O again with 5 assists so far this time around. Lin-yi Lee is also replicating his performance from Worlds with 9 goals so far - the highest for the tournament - after 14 goals in 2008. Ying Li Huang is their top female target, with 3 goals and 1 assist so far (11 goals in 2008).

The USA/Canada game was expected to be a close, tough match up and perhaps a preview of the gold medal match. Both had relatively tough games in the morning - Canada overcoming GB after two breaks following long points, and the USA defeating Australia after a late break. Canada stayed with the US early on, but after about 20 minutes of gameplay the US broke away and went on a 10 to 3 run to close out the game inside an hour. The US defence was on fire, generating turns and then quick goals. Bart Watson and Dylan Tunnell were nailing their hucks, with Gabe Saunkeah and Chelsea Putnam on the end of them. Canada were trying to run a similar aggressive offence but weren't connecting on their long shots and fumbled close range throws under pressure from the US defence.

In the Japan-Great Britain game, Japan looked set to run away with a big win when they were up 12-5 about one hour in. Great Britain then dug their heels in and switched to their pommy (lol) zone. This proved to be successful and, after a couple of points with multiple turns, went on a 5 goal run to bring it back to 12-10. Key goal scorer (23 goals in 2008) Jane Holmes was on the end of two of them. Japan finally broke through the zone to take the win 13-10.


Today's games are (all times in AEST)...

10:30am - Australia vs Great Britain
12:00pm - United States vs Chinese Taipei
1:30pm - Canada vs Japan
6:10pm - United States vs Great Britain
7:40pm - Canada vs Chinese Taipei
9:10pm - Japan vs Australia

Both of today's games are must-wins for the Crocs if they want to make the gold medal game. Height is going to be the obvious advantage over Japan, with the Dowles, Mike Neild and Lauren Brown looking to be the deep targets. The danger man on the Japanese side is Masahiro Matsuno, who has 5 goals and 5 assists so far (23 goals and 20 assists in 2008). Sachiko Sameshima is the female target, with 4 goals for the tournament. For the Great Britain game we need to avoid all Ashes analogies since that didn't work on Day 6 at Worlds last year. The handling strength of Jonno Holmes and Liz Edye will be the key to taking apart the pommy zone.

Follow the games (well, text updates anyway) here, with commentary from the one and only Piers Truter via his Twitter feed. Also of interest is Jonathan Potts' Twitter feed as he schmoozes with IWGA and IOC officials.


Edit: The website I was looking at got the fixture wrong. Fixed it up now.

Fantasy Ultimate (not the sideline heckling game)

A couple of different factors have inspired this. My stellar performance in Supercoach and DreamTeam last week, my previous post picking teams from each state, and the one I did a while ago "drafting" players to club teams.

Oh, and the fact that The Huddle are doing this exact same thing but on a much larger scale.

I'm looking for a few people to take part in this. I'll create a draft order and we take turns picking players for a hypothetical team that is aiming to win Mixed Nationals this year.

Any Australian players (ie: no 6-month exchange students) can be chosen, and once our "squads" are decided I'll consult some experts around the place on who the best team would be.

Sign up in the comments thread if you want to take part.

Successful moments in procrastination Volume 6-ish

So let's say we had a tournament with state-based teams. Ignoring all club allegiances - play for the state you live in. Who would be the starting seven on each team?

Queensland
Mike Neild
Buzz Burwell
Al Don
John McNaughton
Mat Ryan
Piers Truter
Tom Tulett

Western Australia
John Damiani
Paul Denyer
James Eley
Kendall Thorn
Tim Delane
George Wong
Andrew Delane

South Australia
Joel Pillar
Brett Middleton
Rian Dutch
Kristian Pash
Tom Roden
Robbie Andrew
Alec Deslandes

Tasmania
Mike Baker
Jemery Day
Michael Dunne
Ash Buttons
Felix Kennedy
John Kristensen
Huddy Fuller

ACT
Jonno Holmes
Warwick Shepherd
Leon Smith
Max Wheeler
Peter Hemphill
Asher Gentle
Matt Dowle

New South Wales
Gav Moore
Ant Dowle
Tim Lavis
Pete Blakeley
Ken Shepherd
Pete Gardner
Jonathan Potts

Victoria
Tom Rogacki
Dan Rule
John Liddicoat
Owen Shepherd
Lee Baker
Steve Wealands
Seb Barr


Thoughts?


EDIT - ok, so I spelled some names wrong. And got the state of residence wrong for some folk. Updated to reflect that.

Why volunteer?

So let's start off by blowing my own trumpet a bit. I got involved with ultimate in 2004 and started playing regularly in 2005. In that time, I served as BUUF's main man (never actually had the term "President" - it's a mildly interesting story of corruption. Ask me some time), VFDA General Representative, AFDA Director of Marketing and currently AFDA National Universities Coordinator. I have run around a dozen tournaments, plus Albert Park League for one season. I have been a driving force in getting several teams to several tournaments - most notably Eureka Goldigaz to World Clubs 2006. I have assisted countless other teams and volunteers in sorting their shit out and providing ideas. I also write some shitty blog on the internet somewhere.

I do all this because I want to. There's nothing out there that forces me to.

I get asked occasionally (mostly by my parents who want me to expend these efforts into a career so I can support them in their retirement) why I do it all for relatively little financial reward. I've never been able to adequately explain why - it usually amounts to "well no one else would". But then I read an article on Cracked.com (usually masquerades as a humour website) that summed it all up for me quite nicely

Source

You want to break out of that black tar pit of self-hatred? Brush the black hair out of your eyes, step away from the computer and buy a nice gift for someone you loathe. Send a card to your worst enemy. Make dinner for your mom and dad. Or just do something simple, with an tangible result. Go clean the leaves out of the gutter. Grow a damn plant.

It ain't rocket science; you are a social animal and thus you are born with little happiness hormones that are released into your bloodstream when you see a physical benefit to your actions. Think about all those teenagers in their dark rooms, glued to their PC's, turning every life problem into ridiculous melodrama. Why do they make those cuts on their arms? It's because making the pain-and subsequent healing-tangible releases endorphins they don't get otherwise. It's pain, but at least it's real.

That form of stress relief via mild discomfort used to be part of our daily lives, via our routine of hunting gazelles and gathering berries and climbing rocks and fighting bears. No more. This is why office jobs make so many of us miserable; we don't get any physical, tangible result from our work. But do construction out in the hot sun for two months, and for the rest of your life you can drive past a certain house and say, "Holy shit, I built that." Maybe that's why mass shootings are more common in offices than construction sites.

It's the kind of physical, dirt-under-your-nails satisfaction that you can only get by turning off the computer, going outdoors and re-connecting with the real world. That feeling, that "I built that" or "I grew that" or "I fed that guy" or "I made these pants" feeling, can't be matched by anything the internet has to offer.

It's very hard to adequately describe the feeling I have when I see teams enjoying themselves at a tournament I'm running, or team mates getting home from a tournament exhaustedly declaring they've had "the BEST weekend ever!" But think the above exerpt sums it up - the satisfaction of knowing that I made it happen.

Try it sometime. You might like it.

Planting some ideas in some heads

So the price war on the LA to Sydney flight routes is heating up, with Delta joining the party. Direct quote from the article...

"US analyst Rick Seaney, from Fare Compare, said fares to Australia could drop to $320 each way before tax."

So let's say that happens in January/February, which tends to be a slow period for travel in the US because November/December are flat out. And that's our summer, as well as club season.

So let's get a tournament going on the east coast somewhere (I'm looking at you, Sydney and Gold Coast) where we invite some college and club teams from the US west coast. Advertise it as "Australia vs USA" around the area and in the media. Push it as Australia's premier non-Nationals tournament.

Alternatively, some southern-based clubs might look at a US tour in January/February since Nationals is in their home region this year.

Hmm.

Mobile technology in ultimate

My housemate has an iPhone and he won't bloody shutup about it. I can usually shut him up by sending him an MMS from the pub with the text "hey check out this hot chick i'm talking to that has a fetish for short guys." But there's no denying that the iPhone is a handy little contraption (I am pretty jealous of the iDaft app), as is my Nokia N95 - cracked screen and all - now that I've bothered learning how to fully use the mobile side of Twitter. Couple all this with the link I read about a UPA Rules iPhone app (link is now dead so won't bother posting it) and it got me thinking about how we can use mobile devices for ultimate.


Stats tracking
At the juniors vs allstars game at last year's EUGs I spent some time on the sideline with Timill who had a PDA with a stats application. This little bad boy kept track of everything - passes, completions, points played, whatever you can think of. Only troubles were keeping up with the play (it's a two person job - one calling, one entering) and the poor light making the thing difficult to read. I don't imagine it being too difficult to make an iPhone application to keep track of simple stats (goals, assists, blocks, turnovers).


SMS scoretracking
2008 Worlds had a great system where the volunteers on the sidelines SMS each score and the website would update with a timestamp, the thrower and the receiver. All well and good, but requires a lot of people to make it happen effectively so not much good for local weekend tourneys. Andrew Olennick's system in Australia is a great little setup, where the captains SMS the scores of the game to a number, and the website updates. It also sends out each team's draw every morning and whenever pools get redone. We tried to use it at AUG last year but it was very last minute and some people struggled to get the hang of it. The interface could be a little more user friendly but I suppose if we set it up earlier it would have been much more effective.


Mobile videos
I have messed about with some video conversion software and managed to find a way to download Youtube videos and store them as video clips on my mobile. I had a couple of highlight clips for when I'd be talking to people about ultimate, and instead of yapping on about hucks, force, picks and skies, I'd simply show them a video. My favourite one is the trailer for Ultivillage's Disc 4: Year Of The Monkey. I struggled to find a really good video for women's and for mixed, so if anyone out there knows of some great clips from these divisions I'll certainly add them to my collection.


Twittering
I love Twitter. Actually scrap that. I like Twitter as a friend. It's a fun little tool that I have found no real use for apart from following sites that link to funny stuff on the internet. For those who are not sure what Twitter is, it's basically Facebook with only the status updates. I twittered updates from Nationals this year and 'covered' the finals on the last day. This got followed by a few folk on the eastern seaboard so it got me thinking about how we could further use it.

My thinking right now is to round a few folk up from various unis and teach them how to set up a Twitter account with mobile support. Essentially that means they SMS a certain number and it posts an update to Twitter. If you add a 'hashtag' it makes it easier to search for a certain term. So if everyone who is posting an update from Southern Uni Games or Eastern Uni Games adds the term #unigamesulty to their post, people from home can just run a search for #unigamesulty and shebangabang - everyone's posts will come up in a sort of newsfeed.

The posts can be anything, really - score updates, great plays, funny stories, party rumours - as long as they are contained to 140 characters (just shy of a normal SMS) and it will provide some great coverage for the folks at home. If we replicate this for Australian Uni Games as well, it would be fantastic for not only people at home, but people there as well. The more Twitter-savvy can set up a permanent search term on their phone so they get the tagged posts as they happen to keep up with results in other pools. And while I'm getting nerdily excited about it, there's even a capability of adding photos to the said newsfeed via Twitpic.


Anyone have any other uses for mobile technology?

Ballarat Ultimate's identity crisis

So not since about a year ago has this blog been about anything remotely Ballarat related. A name change is being considered, yet I have absolutely no idea what I should call it. I have had some brief thoughts on guidelines for a new name...

- I'm not putting my name in it in case I invite future contributions.
- Something "Australian"
- Something to reflect that this is a news/opinion blog (despite the occasional 'personal reflection' post)

Suggestions via the comments.