Camping next to the fieldsAs noted in the previous post, this was the 20th anniversary for the Talampaya (heard this means tequila, but couldn;t find any confirmation) tournament. 32 co-ed teams from 11 countries. My team, ZUF (Zuri Ultimate Flyers), finished 8th which was a bit of a letdown (I had a personal goal of making semis and we were really close, but in the end not close enough).
First of all, what a difference between a European ultimate tournament and one in Canada (granted I've never been to a huge co-ed tourny like Potlach)! We played 9 games over three days, which is pretty comparable to a tournament in Canada (say 7-8 games over 2 days). The big difference was the scheduling of those games. Games were capped at 50 minutes and then there was at least 2 byes between games (if not 3). Apparently this format is the standard in Europe (might be longer games, but the byes are always there). In fact the TD profusely apologized to a team because they had to play twice in a row. This compares with most college and open tournaments I played in North America where you would have a single bye during the day and would be playing the remainder of the time. I recall a tournament in Edinboro, PA when we played for 8 straight hours because there no byes and games were to 17 with a 2 hour cap. So needless to say, big differences (the biggest reason is the number of avilable fields, as there were 7 fields for 42 teams at this tournament) that require different physical (cooling down and warming up a number of times) and mental (bringing itensity to games again and again) approaches.
We had three games the first day and won all three against teams from Switzerland, France and Italy. The last game against Matrix (a team from Italy) was tight for a bit, but we pulled away when it mattered. Saturday night there was a party at the fields, but I wasn't feeling up to it so I hit bed after a few beers.
Sunday we moved into the upper pools (along with the top two finishers of each other pool) which meant increased competition. We won our first two games against a team from Germany and another team from Italy. Both were good solid wins with high pressure D, and patient O. In the second game I was voted the male MVP by the other team which was pretty sweet. The prize was some coffee flavoured liquor shot, which considering my history, was a piece of cake. At this point we had qualified for quarters and our thrid game was less important but meant an easier matchup in quarters if we could pull out a win. However, we got stomped. This team from Paris had a strange zone which with an increased cross-wind on the field completely confounded our entire team. Waaay too many drops to even come close. That set up a matchup with Sugar Mix a team from Germany. They were enormous. 5 of the guys had to be over 6'5". However, their zone was much less of a problem for us and we sliced and diced, but got a bit too eager near the endzone a couple of times near the end of the game and it cost us. We lost 8-6 and were in the 5-8 bracket the next day.
Sunday night was the infamous tournament party. The theme this year was burlesque (I think somethin along the lines of Moulin Rouge?) and some of the team costumes were impressive. Our team doesn't do the whole costume thing which was fine with me and I headed back to sleep around 2 AM. Monday morning we lost our first game against an Austrian team due to sloppy play and then got into a dogfight with another French team and lost a heartbreaker on universe point.
I stayed around to watch the finals of both divisions and saw a not-so-competitive game between the Bern Flying Angels and Basel Freespeed in the Open final, which Bern dominated from start to finish. Then watched Black Bonzai (a French based pickup team) play Disctractors (a Czech team that I had seen warming up on Sunday and noted how every member of their team were great throwers. One dude had all throws with both hands, he was sick). A very close game, that went to universe point that featured a ton of tunrovers. Disctractors eventually put in the final point and celebrated a well-earned victory.
#97 on the Disctractors. Best thrower I saw all weekend.Personally I played pretty well and my throws in the wind are 100% better after this weekend. Despite it being my first tournament with ZUF I managed to get tons of play on both O and D and when games were on the line, they were putting me on the field. Nice.
Off to Ottawa on Monday, maybe we'll cross paths?
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