Category: World Games

The Grapevine – 24/01

The Grapevine – a place where winos gossip? Or where we find this weeks links from the shopparajumpers Ultimate world!?
 
Support the whole Ultimate community by voting for the USA World Games team for Team of the Year! Let’s show the IOC we can mobilise our players once again!
 
One of our main contributors Brummie has cemented his place corresponding for us but also now with Ultiworld. Go read his piece on the Swedish national team.
 
Liam Grant of Ireland Mixed Beach fame has just started a trip around the US and SkyD allowed him to write a little piece. Fun read.
 
 
Finally back in blighty the UKU are running a Level 1 Coaching course in Edinburgh, in the area? Go sign up and help the UKU get a coach in every club!
 
shopparajumpers Roman, serif;”> 
Watch this space for James Burbidge’s look ahead in the Open division plus much more from the ShowGame!

shopparajumpers

The Grapevine – 17/01

This week’s Grapevine brings the best from ultimate news around the globe
 

Keep voting for the World Games Team of the Year … ‘Flying Disc’ is winning. . .  shopparajumpers

This week we launched Discussion, kicking off with a provocative piece by Sophie Edmondson…

Ultiworld Editor Charlie Eisenhood did a Reddit based ‘AMA’ …

Understanding Ultimate bring us the conclusion in a 3 part series looking at IO turnovers… 

Ultimate Interviews get to know the European Ultimate Celebrity that is ‘Oddi’…

EMO ultimate bring the banter in their individual preseason self-promotion #pickme videos. Check out their Facebook for the links, including our favourite…

 

We’ve got plenty in store at TheShowGame in terms of preseason content – as always if you’re shopparajumpers interested in helping out then get in touch! tSG

The Grapevine – 10/01 tSG Special

shopparajumpers Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;”>The Grapevine this week looks forward to what we have in store and some cool announcements plus some other fun stuff from the week.

To herald in the new year we shopparajumpers have a new About page, go see! Note that we still don’t have a correspondent for the Mixed division and we want one. Do you play at mixed tour and want to report on the upcoming season? Contact us now! 

We have also recently got rid of the twitter to FB page link less annoying retweet posts and more personalised posts, please follow us on twitter and make sure to like the FB page for more tSG action. 

Next week sees the official announcement and opening of our new ‘Discussion’ section as mentioned in Ultimatum 2013.

With the season starting soon Charlie Blair looks back at 2013 and ahead to what looks to be a massive 2014. Watch out for James Burbidge’s Open division 2013 review and 2014 preview.

Now for some news from the rest of the world:

We love Women’s ultimate here at tSG and we really enjoyed this weeks viral piece on Ultiworld. From Brute Squad (Boston, USA) and recent Whitecaps triallist Emily Baecher writes about how we can’t measure Women using the same points of reference as Men in ultimate and how Women’s Ultimate IS a sport it it’s own right! 
shopparajumpers
To further promote our sport please vote for the Team USA World Games team for World Games team of the 2013. Let’s admit, they rocked and we want Ultimate to win this. Vote daily until your computer breaks! 

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Post by World Flying Disc Federation.
Super exciting! Keep on commenting, sharing and reading!
DP @ tSG. 

World Games Review

Sophie Edmondson looks back at her amazing experience on our World Games team over in Cali, Colombia.

Arriving back in London from the World Games in Colombia has been a reality wake up. The tournament was the final part of what has been a nine-month journey made up of a seemingly endless trial followed by training weekends and relentless track sessions. It seems a long time to prepare for a tournament that was done and dusted in just two and a half days. Yet compared to other sports, say an Olympic weightlifter who spends four years working for just six lifts, that’s probably not a bad lead-in time. Regardless, after nine months of all-consuming commitment of time, energy, emotions and funds I was definitely ready to go to Cali and play.

As odd as it might sound the actual playing felt secondary to the experience of preparing for and being at the World Games. From the moment we landed in Colombia we were treated like celebrities (all-be-it z list). It seemed as though the whole of Colombia’s police force and army had descended on Cali; we had police outriders flanking our shiny new team bus and a designated police head honcho from Bogota to co-ordinate our every move. I could only presume the rest of Colombia was in turmoil because of it.

World Games Opening Ceremony Cali, Colombia. Courtesy of Isabella Burke.


Preparing for the opening ceremony was exciting enough, in fact I would probably have flown out just for that and then gone home again if I knew it was going to be so awe-inspiring. Looking smart boarding the bus in our box-fresh kit, I don’t think anyone knew what was around the corner. Thousands of spectators lined the streets outside the main stadium and as our driver navigated the special road-blocks we found ourselves taking photos of the crowds who were taking photos of us. It was all a bit surreal and I definitely got off the bus with a sore face from all the grinning. On the walk up to the stadium people were stacked rows deep behind crowd barriers waiting for our arrival screaming and waving. Before we knew it our names were being chanted and Team GB had been ‘released’ through the cordon to go and greet the masses. It was a sea of red, yellow and blue flags, warm arms grabbing us in for photos over the barrier and bright eyes genuinely pleased to meet us.

The whole thing was a blur of noise and camera flashes but we quickly found ourselves ushered into the back entrance of the stadium waiting in a train of athletes and flag bearers from other countries. There were so many different hats and traditional costumes from all the different nations. As we shuffled into some sort of order, the concrete underpass suddenly became the opening onto the vivid blue athletics track where we waited for our entrance. The sound was deafening. I remember having butterflies and looking up to the bright lights of the crowd as we stepped onto the track and joined the parade, it was incredible! At some point amongst all the waving, t-shirt signing and photos, Si Hill had managed to identify himself to us from high up in the crowd. We were already buzzing from the whole experience but seeing’s Si’s face from the crowds was the icing on the cake.

That was just the start. It was pretty ace just warming up on the stadium pitch let alone playing on the freshly laid turf. Our second game of the tournament against the host nation was on the Sunday evening after the Ultimate opening ceremony which meant half of the huge stadium had filled up. When we took the first point, the stadium was deathly silent. Then they scored and the place erupted; the crowd went nuts, the noise was deafening. We were stood on the line trying to call our offence and could barely hear what was being said. It made your heart pound and the nerves soar; just for that feeling I would consider trying out for the team again in four years time. Not all the games were as intense as that one but each had a bigger crowd than I’d expected.

GB World Games squad. Photo Courtesy of Isabella Burke.


I’ve been lucky enough to fill the last month since the competition exploring Colombia’s amazing scenery, yet there has also been time for reflection and discussion with close friends which have aided the decompression back to life post-World Games.

Perhaps it would be easier to process and talk about the playing side of the tournament had we won. I’m not talking about bringing back a medal, but had we won just one of the five short games. Nobody likes losing. When you take a step back and realise just how much you’ve sacrificed to be there and just how much support people have given you along the way, that’s when the losing starts to hurt.

I’m sure most people who took interest in our progress saw that we took the first halves of the first couple of games and then went on to lose in the second halves. I’m also sure that quite a few people will have quite a few opinions on why that happened and what would could or should have been done to change those results.

The most important take-home from this whole playing experience is what we can learn from it. Despite being the biggest cliché of all, this just brings us back to David Pichler’s recent article on closing the gap on The Big Three. There are lots of potential steps to closing that gap: expanding our player base at grass roots, changing the way we train and the structure of the training calendar, cultivating managers and non-playing coaches. The major positive here is that the very first step has been reached – we’re talking about what needs to happen and UK Ultimate has upped its viral game providing a forum for these discussion to take place. The coverage the GB World Games squad received in the lead up to and throughout the tournament through social media was really impressive. We even saw how the global Ultimate community responded to the crowd-funding plea to raise a massive amount of cash to buy the filming rights to the matches. 

As a relatively green-footed player last World Games I was pretty unaware of the tournament but hope this time around the profile of World Games and Ultimate’s part in it has been raised. GB’s qualification for the 2017 World Games rests in our hands; we need to keep up with the dominating nations both on and off pitch to have the opportunity to send another GB team to The World Games.

Let’s keep up the hard work off and on the field!! Look out for UKU Nationals reviews and more soon enough. DP @ tSG.

The Grapevine – 15/08

This week’s Grapevine has an international flavour, looking at some US perspectives on Ultimate in the UK and the world…

Clapham take on some of the best club teams in the US this weekend at the Chesapeake Invite. They are also playing in a fund raiser show game against Truck Stop. See Charlie Eisenhood’s preview of the Open division.

Iamultimate presents an interesting view from above the recent World Under 23 Championships in Toronto.

Lou Burruss gives his two cents on the various nations’ styles post World Under 23 and World Games – an interesting (if brief!) counterpoint to Dave Pichler’s recent piece discussing international competition.

Benji provides us with two pieces this week looking at the sport from a wider perspective. The first is a piece on the unique element that Spirit of the Game brings to Ultimate, and the second approaches the increasingly relevant question of the need for observers.

UKU Nationals is approaching – keep an eye out for previews from tSG in the coming week!


Do you read an Ultimate blog that you think should be on here? Let us know! JCK @ tSG

The Grapevine – 02/08

This weeks the Grapevine covers almost exclusively UK Ultimate news.

Coming back from summer holidays with a bang Ultimate Interviews and our friend Mark Earley talks to Elliot Trotter of SkyD magazine fame and co-founder of the new Huddle, High Release.

Understanding Ultimate discusses weights and the brain.

This weekend sees the 6 UK regions competing for those 16 spots at Nationals, go read our previews and make your mind up on who will make it!

World Games came and went in a flash, all results and stats can be found on the WFDF Ultiorganizer; a notable mention to Justin Foord with overall 5th spot (9 assists and 13 goals). Well played GB, we are all proud!

Finally another interesting read from Matthew “Smatt” Hodgson for Ultiworld on whether broadcasting ultimate requires a change in the sport or not.

Go grab those Nationals spots, tweets with #ukuregionals and #result will auto retweet to the @UKU_scores feed. DP @ tSG. 

World Games Special: Roundup and Predictions

World Games Special

Hopefully you’ve followed the series and are up-to-date with all the teams competing in Cali, Colombia over the next week. If you missed any of them, you can find the pieces here.

The Opening Ceremony has already happened, and games start on Sunday. This should be a terrific tournament, and rumours are that there’ll be large crowds for the Ultimate games.

Thanks to the amazing efforts of the Ultimate community and ulti.tv you will be able to watch all of the games: here! You can find the full schedule here. 
More live streaming links: 
http://core.enetres.net/CoreV1/Share/DEE56DFCB3E64BCC88376576A57D5481028?rnd=%27+Math.random%28%29

http://www.senalcolombia.tv/juegosmundiales2013/ 
(Click on senal en vivo ^^)

VOD at bottom of here.

GB’s games are:

vs Canada – Sunday, July 28th – 4pm,
vs Colombia – Sunday, July 28th – 10:10pm,
vs Japan – Monday, July 29th – 2:30pm,
vs Australia – Tuesday, July 30th – 1:10am,
vs USA – Tuesday, July 30th – 5:30pm,
3v4 – Tuesday, July 30th – 10pm,
1v2 – Wednesday, July 31st – 12am.

Amazing Score Reporting System for Ultimate at World Games 2013
We will have the opportunity to follow the games trough an incredible score reporting interface called WING.
It will give highly detailed stats of each player and team like: game time, time outs, goals, assists, D’s, drops, pulls, touches during the game or during the tournament; also a fresh new tool which draws the disc trajectory. Plus player profiles, team roster and much more cool stuff. Here are some sneak peak screenshots:


and here is where you can find it: www.conceptoocho.com/wing

And finally – money where your mouth is time!

Finally, it feels like other countries are catching up to the traditional giants of ultimate, Canada and the USA. When only the top 13 players are selected from each nation, that effect is only magnified. For the first time, it feels like anyone can beat anyone – and that should make for a thoroughly exciting competition.

My predicted final standings for the tournament are
1. USA
2. Canada
3. Great Britain
4. Australia
5./6. Japan/Colombia (there is no placement game for these positions).

DP’s predictions (so hard to make these but here goes, prove me wrong please!) are
1. USA
2. Japan
3. Canada
4. Great Britain
5./6. Australia Columbia

What are yours? Comment below.