Monkey Foo Video

Check out the Monkey Foo highlight video. I was still on crutches when I was there but it was lots of fun never-the-less. Jeremy Codhand won the tournement with Thundering Herd winning Spirit. Good times.

Ultimate frisbee tournament of Bourg d'Oisans, France 2009 from Alexandre Gelin on Vimeo.

UK Ultimate and Charitable Involvement

There are a lot of stereotypes and generalisations that one can make about Ultimate players and very often they are rooted in some truth. One of them is that we are a hospitable, generous and charitable kind of people. Indeed, there have been many instances over time that have gone a long way to proving this to be true.

A number of TDs are linked with charities both large and small and will take every opportunity they can to use the sport they love to build support for their charity.

Charity Tournaments that have taken place recently include:

The Spring League Charity Hat Tournament 2009

The Andy 24 Memorial Charity Ultimate Tournament 2009

Swingers Invitational Charity Ultiamte Tournament

PAFLova Charity Hat Tournament

Coming up in the near future is another charity tournament called LUCRE 2010, taking place in Warwick, UK on the 23rd January 2010. Follow the link to find out more information and to see how you can be involved. Show your support!

Pre Tournament Hype

One of the most significant things I think UK Ultimate is lacking is pre-tourney hype. Main stream sports have followers and people who have 'emotional investment' in their team of choice and so they feel it matters when their team succeeds or fails. Ultimate doesn't have people who care about results outside of the players themselves. This may be due to its short history or it may be due to it being boring to watch. At xEUCF however I watched games that were definately not boring and so I'm inclined to think that it's the short history. I'm a massive cynic when it comes to the spectator appeal of Ultimate at the moment, so was relieved when watching Clapham v Skogs to be genuinely entertained.

Ultimate as it is has very different values to main stream sports however (thankfully). Who cares if there are spectators or indeed people who care about results? Well, I think that Ultimate has the potential to retain SOTG as its core principal and still become a widespread sport able to spread positive attributes throughout communities. This would require effort in publicity and marketing while all the time being careful not to bring money into the equation. The down-fall of all main stream sports...(?)

On the flip side however, imagine an invite only tourney with prize money, say £5000 for the winning team. I'm pretty sure you would need active observers or the game wouldn't function, but then the Ultimate would be on another level.

Oh wait...
I would love to hear what the spirit was like at these tourneys.

Anyway, back to pre-tournament hype. On October 29th the UPA Club Championships 2009 will be taking place in Sarasota (North America) and ahead of this UltiVillage.com are putting together team previews of those that have qualified, at the moment there is one for Chain Lightning and one for Revolver. These are the sort of things that with additional growth, we should hope to see withing UK Ultimate. It's all just a matter of time.

Talent in editing and film production help too,

Indoors, State Side.

magnUM highlights from Tom Haynes on Vimeo.

Open Indoor Qualifiers

With the beginning of the indoor season, teams everywhere have started up their indoor
trainings ahead of the qualifiers for Open Indoor Nationals. These will be taking place in
Plymouth, Birmingham and Norwich. You and your team can go along to whichever is closest
and have a go at making it to Nationals! All these events will be held on the weekend of 21/22
November 2009. Contacts can be found on the BritDisc list.

There are masses of tourneys that are popping up on BD both confirmed and prospective with
TDs testing the water for interest. It's hard ot keep up with everything that's happening! If
you'd like to get your event some free publicity then feel free to write a short piece about it and
I'll post it on here. There is also the possibilty of it finding its way onto the UKU website front
page. If you would also just like to have a go at writing something Ultimate related, get writing
and get in touch!

I'm starting physio tomorrow at the Royal Free Hospital, London. Looking forward to it after
doing nothing sport related since UK Nationals, about 9 weeks ago...

PEP

Get your team to follow this warm up routine.

My MRI scan showed a partial ACL tear, meniscus damage and MCL tear. No surgery but 3 months of physio and then follow up, much better than the worst case scenario but give yourself the best chance of avoiding injury by building a strong core and warming up and down properly. I was tempted to do a sports injury photo/video montage but you know how youtube works.

Cleats for Ultimate Frisbee

Once you've been playing Ultimate for a while you will soon realise that you don't need much equipment. The essentials are a disc, cones, breathable clothing and boots/cleats. I would say that you have the most options of 'what to buy', when it comes to your boots and there are a number of things to consider:

• Comfort
• Support
• Stud Pattern
• Durability
• Weight
• Cost
• Aesthetics

How much time you spend playing and at what level you play will determine how you prioritise.

I'd just like to offer some of the boots that I've been recommendedAdidas Copa Mundials

Nomis Sparks

Puma V1.08

Nike Speed TD

Warrior Speed Burn

Nike Vapor Jet 4.2

Nike Super Speed D

Nike Mercurial Veloci

Nike Tiempo Mystic

What rediculous names...

Anyway, the key in my mind is knowing that it's important to invest in decent boots because cheap ones will

• wear out quickly
• cause blisters
• result in rolled ankles
• provide a lack of traction
• look crap
  

amongst other things.

When choosing your boots look out for the toe stud as well, it comes highly recommended for Ultimate! I've found American Football boots to be generally suited to the style of running in Ultimate and with the American market being what it is, there is a massive range to choose from, you can even customise many boots from Nike with your team logo and colours (not my thing but hey)

Feel free to give your own recommendations in the comments!

If you found this interesting you might also like to check out:

Ultimate gear, where do you buy yours?

Also have a look at the discussion thread at ultitalk.com

Tryouts and Beginners Tourneys.

As the off season continues, there is still no shortage of UK Ultimate goings on. Almost too much to keep track of. The student season is about to kick off in a big way with no less than 7 beginners and introductory tourneys in the next few weeks up and down the country:

• Edinburgh Beginners
• Sheffield Beginners
• Liverpool beginners
• Loughborough Beginners
• Sublime warm-up
• Plymouth Beginners
• Nottingham Break In

as well as various indoor regional qualifiers coming up.

It's also great to see another city league starting up, this time in Bristol. This will no doubt help the overall development of Ultimate in the area as more people get more competitive playing time which they can then take forward into the new season.

It's also coming up to that time when teams start to open their doors to all who wish to play. Whatever your playing level, you will be able to find a team to go and play and learn with and then if you've proved your worth, get picked to play competitively for. Open sessions (with advanced notice of attendance) that I've heard about so far are from Flyght Club, Thundering Herd and Tooting Tigers and there will no doubt be more as we approach the new year.

So I would now like to put in a nice highlight video of some UK Ultimate in HD from recent times. Unfortunately, I can't find any. If you have made movies of your own teams or anything UK Ultimate, send it this way and I'll show it to everyone! In the mean time, here's a video of some girls in the US who can play.

2009 UPA College Championship- Fugue from luke johnson on Vimeo.

Blockstack TV

Check out Blockstack for their coverage of xEUCF. Tom and Steve, the guys behind the online Ultimate channel, put massive amounts of effort and time into producing their podcasts. It's a great resource and I would suggest you go and watch and then contact them letting them know what you do and don't like about it.

There are a whole host of tourneys coming up over the next few weeks, I'll be talking a little about these UK Ultimate goings in the next post.