Nation,
The Toronto Ultimate Festival is the first outdoor tournament of the year for most teams in Ontario and Quebec. It serves as a final tryout process for many teams and programs, and gives those interested a brief glimpse of team rosters and national contenders from the area.
Originally called the TUT tournament and run by local Toronto Ultimate Club, the tourney threatened to die out in 2005 due to problems with leadership, as per my understanding. However, the Toronto Sport and Social Club picked up the slack. i don't know how I feel about having the TSSC run a competitive tournament, but they have provided a quality event since 2005 and enabled us all to play/visit Toronto as part of our tournament calendar.
The men's, women's and coed titles are all up for grabs this year, as there has been much turnover/change on last years respective winners (BFC has lost much of their roster, Capitals no longer exist this summer, and Last year's open champ was a GOAT tryout team)
I'll do my best to preview some of the teams I know.. but I just wanted to start the hype.
Who are the teams to beat at this tourney?
12 comments:
Whoa... that's me!
-Hyatt
Anyone know where we can get our hands on a schedule? One pet peeve of mine is that the schedule usually comes out the Friday before a tournament. Is it really that difficult?
I see that there is a link on the TUF site now, but whoever registered the team can see the schedule, why wouldn't they have this somewhere anyone can see? Stoopid Toronto Sports and Socially Clumsy group :)
Teams drop out of tournaments all the time during the week leading up to most tournaments. I would imagine this is the reason schedules usually show up sometime between Thursday at midnight and 5 minutes before game time on Saturday.
Judging by sign up (that is public) TUF's Coed tournament also features team tryouts for Women's and Open programs!!
I like Goat's 1/3 odds though...
i think phoenix is going to have a strong team..
probably will be the team to beat.
I like the choice of your picture!
Craig,
You are indeed in the picture. The main focus is Aaron "Iron" Leung.
I don't think the focus of the men's tourney will be winning. This really is a tryout for the GOAT/GT squads, and I can tell you Ottawa (as happy as they are with their program) won't be truly focused on winning. Expect Demon from Montreal and Seven from Barrie to be stronger than expected, and Magma/Too Bad to be weaker than last year.
Some definite whacky seedings.
Other predictions
-In womens, Stella is in the final against Montreal's Storm. Stella will be showing off some new depth this year, and it will be interesting how it meshes with the aging (but awesome) core and the young generation of stars (A plethora of great young players that drive the bus for Ottawa U). I'd also love to watch a Lotus squad or a total sleeper squeak into finals.
-In coed, I would not be surprised if Big Fish (Ottawa B) competes to finish close to or higher than National silver medalists Bytown Flatball Club. Simply a case of turnover for BFC from last year and experienced handlers of Big Fish. No idea who will win the crown, but this tourney favors teams used to playing together from past years (RIP, Monster, Liquid, etc).
"it will be interesting how it meshes with the aging (but awesome) core and the young generation of stars"
ouch! Careful Sport Management Steven, I would use aging lightly. If my math is good (it usually isn't) Stella has 7 players comming back from Capitals and 3 others from the Stella roster of 2 years ago. I would say you could safely call those their core players. Of those 10 players, 6 are either in their undergrad or just finished it; the remaining 4 being magoo, Crump, Cav and Shaddick. Not exactly a team of "aging" veterans.
Stella this year is young and athletic pretty much across the board. I'm sure they'll have their ups and down and growing pains, but there is, like you mentioned, lots of potential; which should make for entertaining games to watch.
So this year's Stella has 50% turnover from the squad that medalled in 2006? That's a lot higher than I expected. Where has everyone gone?
Haig, I was trying to be careful!
Stella has four ladies that are 30 or older I believe. Those players will serve some vital roles (Flynn, Crump, KCav, Elliott). I have no idea if Magoo falls into the category. Newcomer Cheryl Wadasinghe is over thirty but looks and runs like she's 20.
The next wave of established players comes in the 25 and younger pool. We all know who those are.
Which begs the question- What happened to all the female juniors that are now aged 25-29
"Which begs the question- What happened to all the female juniors that are now aged 25-29"
OJ started in 2002 and before that there was a gap going to 1999 before you find another Ottawa juniors team (at nationals at least). Even then in 1999 it was a combined Ottawa/Northbay team. So you wouldn't really expect a lot of 25-ish aged players in Ottawa with juniors experience. There also weren't as many kids playing juniors then.
On the men's side you see the same gap. In our first 3 seasons Phoenix had 5 players who had played juniors previously (Alexander x3, Ryan and Eammon). It hasn't been until more recently that we've had the large numbers of young, skilled players with juniors experience comming out to tryouts.
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