Tournament Essentials for Newbie Player
Image: Pet and Beer-in-Hand Ultimate by painter Wendy Harte (Oil on canvas - 2009)
Article by Little A
Admit it...the battle for your soul is over. Life as you once knew it is long gone, now that Ultimate has sucked you into its clutches like it has so many other, well, suckers (alright: players). So what's next? Yeah, we know you'll be refining your flick till its flight no longer resembles that of a one-winged duck. And, in time, your dictionary will swell with new terms such as stack, force, pick, huck and poach. But for now let's talk about the stuff that you don't even know you need to know.
The information in this article can and should act as a catapult, literally hurling you into a whole new world of Ultimate...the world of tournaments.
What's It All Mean?
You’ve been playing pick-up with your friends for a while now--maybe even joined a league or two--but then you start hearing about “tournaments"--savage tournaments, beach tournaments, indoor tournaments, hat tournaments.....What’s it all about?
You're probably most familiar with playing Ultimate on a big field of grass, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Beach Ultimate is played on smaller sized fields of sand; typically, the playing area is 50 yards long and 25 yards wide with 15 yard end zones. Sometimes, however, beach Ultimate fields use the water for one sideline, like at Acapulco’s Pie de la Cuesta ("Foot of the Coast") tournament. In those cases, the changing water depth and wave action provide the only limits to how far out into the ocean a player can go.
Indoor Ultimate is typically played in an indoor soccer field but can also take place in a good old-fashioned wood floor gymnasium. Standard team sizes for both indoor and beach Ultimate are 5 on 5, or sometimes 4 on 4. One key difference is that indoor Ultimate games have strict time limits and usually last only 15 to 25 minutes.
A savage tournament is one in which all of the teams play without subs. Even if a team loses a player to injury...too bad, so sad. Play on!
A hat tournament is one in which players sign up individually and are then placed on a team by the organizers. Imagine placing players' names (written on little slips of paper) into a big hat, mixing them around, and then pulling them out at random to form teams. While this isn’t often done so literally, there is nothing that says it couldn’t be.
Where the Wild Tournaments Are
Every single weekend there is an Ultimate tournament going on somewhere in the world. There are some tournaments that have achieved worldwide notoriety and to which players travel from around the globe. Paganello World Beach Ultimate Cup in Rimini, Italy is a good example (www.paganello.com). There are also many huge and famous tournaments in the US each year, such as Potlatch, near Seattle, Washington (www.potlatch.discnw.org), and Poultry Days in Ohio (www.poultrydays.com). Additionally, several great tournaments take place right here in Texas, including Centex (Austin in the spring), Celebración del Espíritu (Austin in the fall) and Texas 2-Finger (Dallas in late summer).
Finding tournaments is easy thanks to the website of the UPA (Ultimate Players Association), the world’s largest organizing body for Ultimate (www.upa.org/tournaments). Austin Ultimate’s own website also lists most of the tournaments that are within driving distance of Austin.
What's with all this Sectionals-Regionals junk?
Each fall, there are a series of tournaments that have special meaning and purpose. Collectively, they are referred to as the UPA Championship Series, or sometimes simply, “the Fall Series.” Just as baseball has its World Series and football has its Super Bowl, Ultimate has its own method for determining and recognizing the best team in the country. To earn this title a team must win the tournament known as “Nationals.” To participate in Nationals, however, teams must qualify by being one of the top teams in their Region. (Note, the country is divided up into six regions; all of Texas is included in the Southern Region along with LA, GA, MI, AL and FL. See the map.
Deciding which teams are the tops in each region is determined at a tournament called Regionals. Just like for Nationals, teams must first qualify for Regionals by being one of the top teams in one's own Section. Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas comprise one Section from within the Southern Region.
In September of 2009, Austin hosted Club Sectionals. In short, three {more than that, correct?} Austin teams earned an invitation to compete at Regionals in Atlanta in early October. See also 2009 summary articles about both of these events- Sectionals and Regionals.
How YOU, Too, Can Play in a Tournament
If you find a tournament you’d like to play in, you'll need a team--unless it’s a hat tournament. You can either ask around and try to get onto a team; or you can put in your own bid and make a team. Putting in a bid probably means you'll have to reach into your own pocket and send in the team fee to the TD (tournament director). Whoever puts in the bid is generally the person who fronts the tournament fee and (hopefully) gets reimbursed by the players on your team later. Don’t forget to come up with a clever and irreverent team name. And, here's a hot tip: Guys are a dime-a-dozen, while the comparatively fewer number of women playing Ultimate creates gender scarcity. So if you’re forming your own coed team, start adding women to the roster first.
If the tournament arrives and you still don’t have a team, as a last resort, you can always try showing up to the fields on tournament day and asking around for any team that might need players. It helps to tell the TD you’re looking for a team, too.
There you have it. Now go forth, newbie pick-up player, spread your wings and fly. There is a brave new world of Ultimate out there waiting just for YOU!
