Canberra Women's Hat

Are you a woman?

Do you like having fun?

Do you find ultimate frisbee fun?

If you answered yes to all of the questions above (or really just yes to the first question) you should play in the Canberra Women's Hat next Saturday the 6th of November. Local women's team Factory are running the event and are bringing in several carloads of players from Sydney to beef out the event. It's being held at Downer Playing fields (not for from Dickson fields, on the corner of Melba and Bonython street in Downer) and costs $15 if you pay in advance (see www.factoryultimate.com for details).

Register at the AFDA website (you'll need to log in or sign up for an AFDA number) or the factory website.

A hat tournament is one where players register individually and the teams are put together randomly on the day. They're heaps of fun and a good chance to play with some new people.

This spring weather is great, so get out and enjoy it.

Mixed Nationals - the shotgun effect

Bathurst pulled out all the stops for Mixed Nationals last weekend. There was sunshine, rain, lightning, partying, two rival bikie clubs in town at once and bogans driving around the Mt Panorama circuit on the wrong side of the road.

The last games of the tournament were cancelled for many teams because lightening disrupted play on Saturday afternoon. That made the placings a bit confusing since most teams didn't play off for their final bracket.

I'm expecting an update from the SOMA crew on their weekend so I'll leave it to them to tell their own stories. The rest of the ACT took something of a shotgun-style approach to the weekend, scattering themselves across a number of teams and finishing up the tournament anywhere from 1st to 25th. Keah Molomby won the tournament with a largely Sydney based team, Jericho Turnpike Bandits. Jonno Holmes brought home silver with MCMLXXX (a team whose members were all born in 1980). Adam Mortimer came in 7th/8th with SMURF from Adelaide. Next up were the kids from Team Happy (worst team name ever) who came in 9th/10th. Long-time-Canberran-but-now-living-on-the-South Coast Jane Andrew finished up with the Mix Masters in 11th/12th and SOMA rounded out the ACT contingent in 25th.

Despite some crazy weather and a small earthquake on Friday it was a great weekend for all concerned. Thanks go to Hills Ultimate for hosting the tournament. These guys are a well oiled administrative machine who consistently run great tournaments in a range of locations. Congratulations and thanks for another fine national event.

As for that meeting about the national mixed team, it sounds like the AFDA is moving towards a better planned version of their current system. They're going to try to set up a head coach and leadership group for the team much earlier than they've done in the past and give themselves more time to make selections and build a team. With luck they'll be able to build on the strong performances by mixed club teams in Prague and put together a medal winning outfit for 2012.

The future is mixed

Hello avid reader. If you're going to mixed nationals you'll have received the message below from Piers Truter about the Australian mixed team. If not, have a quick peruse through the email below. In case you're wondering, Piers is the director of the AFDA High Performance program and has put a monumental amount of work over the last few years into Australia's elite and international level teams. It's a tough gig - everyone who's anyone has got an opinion on what they want done but they don't necessarily want or have the time to get involved to make that happen, so they try to live vicariously through Piers. Regardless of whether you agree with the approach of the high performance program over the last few years, you have to respect the people who actually get out there and get things done rather than just being theoretical geniuses after league at the pub.

Here's Piers' email:

"Hi there,

Apologies for the lateness of this message.

There is a meeting on Friday of Mixed nationals (this Friday) for all people interested in the Australian Mixed Team for 2012.

On the table is discussing how to bring more focus to the development of this team into the 2012 World Ultimate Championships, rather than making it a poor cousin of the Open and Women's teams. There have been a few ideas floated on how to do this including;

1) The winning team of 2011 Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships winning the right to represent Australia.

2) Selecting the 2012 Mixed ultimate team in 2011 and this team competing at 2011 AMUC as a team for development.

The aim of the meeting is to explore options, gain opinions and to improve the process of selection and team formation for the 2012 campaign.

If you have a good idea or opinion - please come along to the meeting. You will find information on time and venue at the tournament.

I hope to see you there.

Piers Truter
Dir HP
AFDA"

Because I'm a frisbee nerd who loves punishment, I'll be going to this meeting at mixed nats. If you've got any good ideas or opinions and you won't be able to make it along you can pass them on to me and I'll try to get them to the movers and shakers in the room (if I can work out who they are). Both of these options would be pretty radical departures from the approaches of old but they could pay big dividends at the World Championships in 2012. Post a comment or email me at who dot is dot the dot schmooze at gmail dot com if you want me to be your singing telegram.

DisKapital is open for registration!

Hey all

Registration for Canberra's Hat tournament, DisKapital is open.

If you have not heard of Hat tournaments before, I will quickly explain. Hat tournaments require the players to pick their level of experience and sign up as individuals. Once all registrations are in, the players are all divided up on to teams with an even mix of rookies, experienced players and pros. Hats are a lot of fun and a great opportunity to play with a wide range of people from across Australia and Canberra.

http://afda.com/rego/showdivision.php?divisionid=1543

You should get out more

If you want to get a snapshot of ultimate in Australia, have a look at the registration calendar for the Australian Flying Disc Association (you'll need to log in to the website). There's something ultimate related on somewhere in the country just about every weekend and most weekdays. There are coaching courses, admin conferences, clinics, training, leagues and tournaments. There's much more to ultimate in Australia than the weekly league game that makes up frisbee for so many of us. And while it's great that so many people can enjoy ultimate as a casual and accessible team sport, it's worth keeping in mind that we're more than just a bunch of wierdos chasing a frisbee around once a week - we're wierdos with a website and a calendar.

Anyway, the story of this post is that it wasn't always that way. In 2003 I played just about every tournament I could get to (I was even part of a road-trip to Halibut in Brisbane for a weekend) which came in at something like 15 weekends of ultimate. Now, if you played everything within driving distance (i.e. Brisbane) you'd play 40-odd weekends of ultimate a year. And you'd be broke, tired and ridiculously fit.

Back in the day I could always rely on a regular posse of Canberra tournament goers to rustle up a team, some transport and some billets and I could just tag along with them to distant places and tournaments*. These days, however, the players who would normally make up that tournament posse are too busy training for club-level tournaments to get to other events. It's fine for them (and me, since I'm guilty of this) but it's a shame for all the folks who don't get a chance to get dragged along to some random tournament somewhere strange like Albury and get hooked on playing ultimate during the day.

That's why it's so great that new clubs are getting a foothold in Canberra. Clubs like Soma and Anunaki have a real development focus and have been going to a bunch of smaller tournaments around Canberra during the year. With the usual summer crop of hat tournaments coming up, hopefully some of the players driving these clubs get along to some of the great tournaments around the place. And hopefully you go with them. Because tournament ultimate is fun. You meet heaps of great people, get to play heaps of great ultimate, and go to heaps of great parties.

So have a look at the calendar yourself, find yourself a weekend where you're not writing ministerials about prohibited seeds or bleaching the fungus out of your socks, fill up a car with friends and go to one of the many tournaments coming up. It's cheap, suprisingly easy and much better than whatever else you were going to do. Besides, that fungus in your socks will just grow back.


* I do mean "rely". I once literally forgot to go to a selection camp for Worlds, and that's the old fashioned kind of literally. From then on there was always someone delegated to collect me from my house and take me to tournaments. Thanks Adam Mortimer.

League Predictions

Ok, so it is the start of league. Time to make some predictions. I can't remember if I was terribly wrong or on the right track with my Autumn league predictions. I did get Discotheque as div. 2 winners right.

With Discotheque now splitting their talent across 2 teams and with a whole lot of talent back at league, div. 2 is wide open. My prediction is the following:
1) The Punters
2) Kick Ass
3) The Muppetts
4) Annunaki
5-10) Revelation, Very Mild Superpowers, Discotheque, Discotheque 2, Dam Beavers, Devolutianaries

In div. 3 I am predicting:
1) The Boffins
2) King Truckers
3) Little Bananas
4) Go Fetch
5) Spin Doctors
6) fACTory Girls
7-18) Annunaki, The Samlets, 11th Hour, The Kelly Gang, The Brethren, Dynoshite, Dickey Knees, Team Team, The Beige Team, The Umpires, Damien Webb's Team, Custards Crew

I'm probably going to be way off. There is too many teams in div.3 which is great to see ACT ultimate growing, it just makes tipping difficult!

You want more?

By now the buzz of league after so long without ultimate will have hit the system like smack to the veins. So you're probably wondering where else you can get a frisbee fix in the coming weeks.

If league isn't enough for you, Spring and Summer bring a bunch of great opportunities for ultimate. Here are a few of the offerings on offer.

Diskapital is the ACT's annual hat tournament and has a fine tradition of great ultimate and good times. Years ago it used to be the second biggest hat tournament in Australia (after the Melbourne Hat) and was a great way to see and play with some of the real superstars of the Australian scene. A hat tournament is one where the teams are randomly selected (but roughly balanced for ability) before the first game. They're usually more relaxed than club-level tournaments and are a great way to meet new people, learn new skills and generally have a ball.

This year Diskapital is in November, which should make for milder conditions and less competition for weekend time (January is already full of tournaments). The dates haven't been announced yet because we don't have fields, but once we do rego information etc. will go up here.

If you're looking for something with a more sustained buzz than a hat tournament the two ACT single gender clubs, Fyshwick United and Factory and firing up their season. Factory are already running beginners clinics on Thursday nights at O'Connor and Fyshwick United start training in early November (also on Thursday nights). Both clubs look set to have a great season and given the absence of certain well-known fun-haters from their rosters this should be a great time to get on board. Check out Factory's website (www.factoryultimate.com) for more information on their campaign and watch this space or email me at who dot is dot the dot schmooze at gmail dot com for more information on Fyshwick United's upcoming season.

League is on!

Finally, after much waiting and considerable fields wrangling, Spring League has started in the ACT. Both divisions fired off tonight at Dickson on a slightly chilly but otherwise lovely Spring evening. I only caught the very end of Div 3 but there seemed to be positively hordes of players and a bunch of new teams and faces. I hear that Factory (the ACT women's team) has entered a team into Div 3 and notched up their first win tonight, scraping home by a point in a close scrap. A nice start to the season following their first beginner's clinic last week, which was apparently a raging success.

In Div 2 it was great to see a bunch of club level ultimate players return to the fields for local competition. These guys and girls have been tied up in serious training for national and international tournaments over the last two years and haven't been able to play so it's great to see them back mixing it up at league. One of the great things about ultimate that doesn't happen in most sports is that you can play with some of the world's best players on your league team. I saw Anunaki beat Discotheque (the one with JJ), The Punters beat the other Discotheque (with all the other Matthews-Hunters), Soma (who have some other name but they're all wearing Soma shirts) took down The Devolutionaries, the Dam Beavers lost by a point to Kick Ass (where James OReilly laid out on D - seriously!), and Revelation played The Muppets and someone won.

The season's looking great. I'll see if we can get some updates from some kind of organiser-types in the know, because it's all too big for me to keep track of. Have fun out there.

How to get ultimate on television

The dream of every truly committed frisbee kid is to get ultimate on TV. Sure, we all like to say it'll never happen and some of us even go so far as to claim to hope that it never does, but people just say those things so they can live with the disappointment of turning on the TV and seeing Bert Newton on 20-to-1.

Well, perhaps there may be light at the end of the tunnel for the ultimate on TV hopefuls. I've watched a tiny quantity of the Commonwealth Games and two things have become clear to me:

1) Australian TV channels will show any sport that Australia excels in (unless it's a women's team sport) no matter how boring it is.

2) Swimming is the worst spectator sport in the world. You know it's true.

So if we want ultimate to get on TV, all we need to do is become awesome at it. It would help if the UK and New Zealand got pretty good too, without ever being a position to beat us. Imagine it, we'd be beating the US, the UK and the Kiwis. That's about as good as it gets in the sporting universe.

Once we've convinced commercial television to show our international games it should be easy to make the switch to televising domestic competition. After all, if only Australians compete, we win every time.

If you do actually want to watch ultimate on a screen have a look at the world games footage on Youtube. Some of the stuff that was shot by proper camera-people (rather than schmucks in the crowd) is pretty cool.

Have you seen

this?

It's the website for the ACT women's team, Factory. You should go to their beginner's clinics (if you're a woman) so that you can get into their password area. They've got throwing videos and all kinds of cool stuff.

They're running beginner's clinics for women from the 7th of October for six weeks. It's covering a bunch of important skills for league players and budding tournament goers. These guys have a pretty smart program set out and are looking forward to running a great campaign this year for new players. If you want to brush up your skills or meet some new frisbee-women-friend-folk this is your big chance.

If I could run and was a woman I would go. That's a pretty big endorsement.

Unigames is over

Just in case you were wondering, Unigames ended on Friday. In the top division Monash University (from Melbourne) won the final, edging out Sydney University in a close game (final score 11-9) and University of Western Australian beat Newcastle University for bronze. The ANU had a tough tournament, coming in 9th after losing all their games. I don't know what happened in the bottom division because I'm a shameless elitist, but you can look it up.

The ANU has done a great job of bringing new players into their club and getting people to a bunch of local tournaments. This is exciting stuff and represents a real shift away from the way things were done when I was there*. It's also stupendously expensive playing tournaments in Perth which thinned out their roster a bit.

The local rumour mill is suggesting that some ANU players might organise the annual Canberra hat tournament institution, Diskapital in November some time. If so, they'll get to keep some of the profits to help cover their tournament costs for other events during the year so get signed up and come along. We're currently waiting for fields so details and rego and all that stuff should be out soon.


* For those who are interested, the ANU used to just rely on people who were already playing ultimate signing up to study there and recruit a few players around the edges to fill in the gaps. While this strategy worked for a while it's great to see the club actually recruiting new players and trying to build a fun atmosphere for new players to improve and meet people and all that good stuff. It's what a uni club should be.