Frisbee Tournaments

24. Australian National Ultimate Championships

Again Nationals was a lot of fun. I drove up with Zuk and Helen in the 505. It was a nice drive even though we were in a bit of a hurry because Zuk had to be there by 5 to pick up a hire van for his team. Southside hadn't organised to stay anywhere as a team, but most of us were staying at the Kedron Palms Motel, which was quite dodgy. Most of the Southside women, Wildcard (northside girls) and Wildside (a B team combining Southside and Wildcard) were also staying there, so it was a good social environment. I was in a room with Marty, Ash and Jimmy.

Our local was the Kedron Park Hotel, which we started enjoying the fruits of at an early stage. George, Ash and myself were part of the bar closing brigade the night before the first day of play. This didn't do anything good for me, as I suffered from terrible cramping on the first day and had to take it easy the next night. I had a massage towards the end of the day and very nearly fell in love with the masseuse - it was the best massage I'd ever had! I went back to her a few times before the end of the tourney.

The third night was another good one. After the AFDA AGM Marty and I followed the others down to the Kedron Park. The two of us were temporarily removed from the premises because we brought in take-away. Ironically everyone who ate at the pub restaurant had to wait hours for their meals, while we took our beers outside with us consumed our food contentedly. This time it was Sarah Jones, Nicole (from Wildside) and Drucy who closed the bar with me.

The party at the GPO was certainly the best frisbee party I'd ever been to. The theme was "back to school", which led to great shenanigans. Southside had organised a team schoolgirl uniform, complete with homemade shortish blue skirts. The whole team went out to dinner before the party in our uniforms, which got the attention of a few of the locals. The party was drinking, dancing, pink ribbons and schoolgirls until 2 in the morning when it closed. We went to a couple of bars in the Valley until there didn't seem to be anything open which would let in men in skirts. I got back to the motel at about 4 with Robin and Sarah and a couple of other Wildside girls. I had to get up at 4:30 to comfort Ash who had just spent some time with the police, and was in dire need of a drunken d & m. We ended up getting to bed at about 5:40, which probably had something to do with our terrible last game the next day.

The team started off playing really well, but gradually declined as we all got tired and the more experienced players started dropping off. In the first couple of days we had convincing wins over Fakulti B and WA B, only to be beaten by them both later. Our most disappointing loss was to Manly B. I think we lost by a point. Anson had ulti-stats on his palm pilot, and we had complete stats and a throw-by-throw record of every game, which was great.

I found this the most difficult team to captain, probably because of the huge gap in experience and skills between the top and bottom players. There was a lot of pressure from the more experienced players, but also a lot of less experienced players that I needed to keep involved.

Southside A ended up winning the tournament, as did Southside women, so there was much to be happy about by the end. On the way home we stayed overnight at Byron Bay, and went to the lighthouse in the morning. A very relaxing end to a very exciting tournament.

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