Canadian Championships

Last weekend I spent a couple of days at the Canadian Ultimate Championships where the best Ultimate Frisbee teams from all over Canada were competing for the right to represent the country at next year’s world championships.

I already knew this since I’ve been playing for 2 years and have seen more than a few games but Ultimate is the most spectacular team game around. I’m not kidding, there were as many jaw dropping plays in Sunday’s 4 games as RDS manages to find in 7 days amongst all other sports for their “jeux de la semaine” segment.

Speed, speed and more speed, gravity defying dives left and right, hand and foot blocks requiring cat like reflexes, throws curving in surprising and precise ways, etc. Not a dull moment during play.

I did say during play because although games held at league level are (99% of the time) great examples of sportsmanship, restraint and fairplay, I have to say that I was a bit disapointed at the quantity of fouls called (this is a self refereed sport) and the time it took to resolve some issues. That meant a lot of stops instead of the normal continuous, smooth rythm of play.

If you want to learn more about this sport and possibly catch a game or find a team for next season you can head to the Association de Ultimate de Montr�al site. Remember that all that speed and those spectacular moves I mentionned are at national level. League play is split in multiple levels and can be played by men and women (teams are mixed) of almost any physical condition, as long as you’re ready to run a lot.

A few stats:

– Break neck dives: 121…. per game!
– Unbelievable throws that made me think I need about 3 years of fulltime practice: 233
– Months a year Vancouver teams can reasonably play Ultimate outside: 10
– Months a year Montr�al teams can reasonably play Ultimate outside: 5
– Vancouver and Victoria teams in finals: 4
– Montr�al teams in finals: 1 (go Hazmats!)
– Warm up time for women’s final winners Prime: close to 2 hours.
– Score that same Prime team came back from to win 12-9: 3-8
– Number of “ooooohhh” causing throws made by #8 from Stella: 34
– Incredible players on Furious George and Goat: all of them
– Times #8 from Chaos acted like a bitch: 13
– Times that the funny but redundant commentator asked for hammer throws: 78.
– Knee, shin, ankle, elbow and wrist braces of all kinds: 641
– People on and off the field wearing ironic trucker hats : 453
– Hipster white boy affros: 3
– Pieces of Billabong clothing: 1387
– Times I heard someone from Toronto actually say “See you back in T.O.” : 1

There’s also a good recap of the finals day at the Gazette.

And to finish, this is post 500 on my blog so although I realize about 5% of my readers found any kind of interest in this entry I decided to treat myself and talk about Ultimate Frisbee anyway ;-p

note: In case there are some really slow people in the crowd, most of those stats were made up.