Frisbee Tournaments

130. Division II Australian Ultimate Championships

The first night I arrived before most of the others, but got home at about 3am after watching the Bathurst boys losing at the Casino (and drinking my own winnings). I was in OK form for the first day though, considering I had expected my calf injury to prevent me from playing much at all. The draw started with two pools of five. We lost our first game against Hot Chilly in universe point after getting the disc in the last point. Maybe things would have been different if we had had a warmup, and half of our team hadn't turned up a few points in. We lost the rest of our pool games, which didn't bother us too much since we were obviously in a much stronger pool. Of the final top 6, only one team came from the other pool.

The Saturday party was a great night out in St Kilda, even if we didn't have much female company. We got in very late after much silliness. I did seem to lose my forehand overnight though, and couldn't find it all the next day.

We beat the other two Eastern region teams comfortably to earn our place in the 5/6 playoff. The field was very even. The southern teams were generally a bit stronger, partly due to home ground advantage (more strong players turning up) but probably more because they had trained more than us. I was most impressed the Tassie team, who were expected to be close to last, but came runners up. They didn't have any guns, but they were all athletic, and they played the most structured offence of any team there.

This was the first Division II National Championships - something a few of us had been encouraging for about 3 years. Previously there hadn't quite been enough depth to Southern and Eastern Regionals that enough teams would miss out to field a second tournament. That it happened this time was a sign that competitive ultimate has grown, but I hope it will also kickstart further growth in intermediate Australian club teams.

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