A blog about all things Ultimate is a tumblelog.

2011 in tournaments

Halfway through last year, some teammates of mine noticed I was going to a lot of tournaments (ie: everything I could possibly sign up to) and they mentioned that the most tournaments they’d gone to in one year was 18. Naturally, I decided to take up the challenge and aimed for at least 19. To keep track, I created a tournament list on ffindr that you can see here. In the end I managed to attend 20 tournaments, although I think the list may be missing one or two minor tournaments and includes a women’s only tournament I went to, to help out the team and provide moral support.

Teams: Los Quijotes (7), Hat tournaments (4), national Spanish Open (3), pickup (4 teams in 5 tournaments)

Best/worst:

• Best tournament: Coman Fruta, great team, great weather, great games, great party, and I kicked ass. Followed closely by Las Palmas Hat for the same reasons.
• Worst tournament: European Nationals, played like crap and finished last. The great fields and getting to go to Slovenia made it slightly better.
• Best fields: grass field at Dr Sand & Mr Grass. Oh god, dat grass.
• Worst fields: the Costa Brava beach. Calling it gravel would be too kind. Good thing the rest of the tournament makes up for it. (Free herp derp layout D face). Followed closely by the Beach Worlds sand at any time between 1pm and 4pm. Playing ultimate inside an active volcano would have been more pleasurable. 
• Best party: Dr Sand, Costa Brava, Talampaya, and the European Nationals closing party.
• Worst party: Rising High (although the live band was pretty awesome), and Cremas Beach Challenge (although a women’s only tournament, single sex tournaments are expected to have crap parties).
• Best team: Los Quijotes at Costa Brava, improved our historical best result by about 6 places finishing 3rd. Grullitas at Coman Fruta, with a huge roster for a beach tournament of about 16 players we still all managed get a fair amount of playing time and everyone was awesome. Eurotrash at Talampaya, with a small roster of only 10 people we managed to finish 5th. 
• Worst team: Spanish national team at European Nationals, we never clicked and the team was very divided from the start. 

Memorable moments:

• Layout catch for the score at Dr Sand & Mr Grass that earned me the best grass layout prize (pictorial evidence).
• Skying an unsuspecting defender at Las Palmas hat for the last point and victory (finished 3rd I think) of the tournament on universe point.
• Finished last at a tournament for the first time ever, twice, at European Nationals and Chiripones.
• First proper layout D during the last game at Windmill Windup, broke my Talampaya bracelet.
• Getting smoked by one of the Five brothers (Xtehn) at Beach Worlds. To make matters worse, there’s video evidence.
• Playing the Black Bonsai all-star team at Talampaya. My only good game of the tournament, squared off against a dude who’s played for Ironside and GOAT at USAU Nationals and managed to do some damage.
• Missed layout D on universe point against Venus Funk Trap at Coman Fruta after a 5 point comeback. I managed to actually touch the disc, but it still floated to it’s intended receiver for the point.
• Played all but 10 points at the 2nd division Spanish Nationals, five (or was it six?) 90 minute games in two days proved to be too much and I ended up messing up my back. 
• Playing European regionals the next weekend was an epic adventure worthy of it’s own post.
• Threw my first lefty backhand in a game a for an assist at Piticli’s Sand Party.
• Finally got my hucks under control. Threw two picture perfect backhand end-zone to end-zone hucks at spanish beach nationals and just generally killed it at Chiripones, Piticli’s, and the Madrid autumn league.
• Winning the most assists prize during the Madrid autumn league. 

All in all, an amazing year full of great tournaments.