Thursday, October 28, 2010

Nationals Day 1

Well, there's a lot to say. It's also, unfortunately, very exhausting to play three games, write the recap for USA-U and then go bloggin' around so bear with me a bit if you're hankerin' for some intel.

Quickly the two most notable things at Nationals today.

1) the era of unabated partying, the clubby camaraderie of belonging to "Nationals" and slamming down unlimited beers from the beer tent in grand appreciation of friends, the wonderful Florida weather and sun, and a great many toasts to the intrinsic fun of playing ultimate -- is over. Many a beery evenings spent with many lower-seeded teams, volunteers, writers and just damn good partiers will likely never return. It was a simple thing, made sense, and was probably needed for insurance purposes (ahhh, that evil but necessary insurance thing) but the new USA Ultimate officially nixed free beer. Now, it's 2 bucks. Budweiser and Modelo Especial, in very small cups. In a specific area.

Basically it's over. It's ok, we've been going to this split for awhile: fun, party tournaments and competitive, non-partying tournaments. In my memory it first took root at Regionals in Devens, outside Boston. There's a clubhouse there and the parties were great. Abut 8-9 years ago, they stopped, and Regionals became the only tournament I knew that withheld the time-honored Saturday-night party.

Well, you can add the USA-U Club Championships to that list. It's been a gradual process and the writing was on the wall. Last few years the beer-drinking was ghettoized. Now it's effectively gone.

Of course you can still drink cans of beer on the field so its not like we've totally gone down the rabbit hole.

2) The big fun matchup tomorrow may be the top scorer from Worlds, the unstoppable force Matsuno from Buzz Bullets playing on Furious George, playing against the only man known to have actually stopped him, Beau Kittredge from Revolver, in the upper pools tomorrow. Should be exciting!

3 comments:

  1. Hey ya, Senco from Japan. I did the broadcasting of the WUCC women's final with you :) Glad to find your blog!

    Oh Matsuno! He played the All Japan finals last weekend and got the MVP. He totally dominated the field and really deserves the award.
    You know every single Japanese Ultimate player are keen to watch him play at the finals!
    Pls let us taste a bit of USA Ultimate in Japan as well through your blog!

    ReplyDelete
  2. hey Senco, that commentary we did was fun, i cant wait to get the DVD if they ever make one.

    I heard that about Matsuno playing with FG from the writer covering the Open division, Neeley. And then the coach of Team USA (when they played in Taiwan at the World Games) mentioned that USA used Beau to guard him at that seemed to work...

    And now they will play against each other, Beau and Matsuno, tomorrow, so that's kind of cool I thought.

    The usaultimate.org site has fairly regular updates. Look for the Open recap videos and Neeley's reporting on the division for more!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Tony, you're the man. Many of us greatly appreciate your efforts to keep us informed at the level only you are capable of... even if you rarely hear us say it.

    ReplyDelete