Mixed Up 2009 Review- Quebec dominates Tournament/ ONYX Finals

Nation,

(Photos courtesy Andrew Leach)

For the second straight weekend, Ottawa defied weather predictions (Lightning was predicted the past two Sundays) and fields below their usual perfect standards to pull off an excellent tournament. Hat tip to Julie Seaborn, OCUA and the volunteer team for their hard work and efforts.

The 2009 Mixed Up Tournament will stand out for a number of reasons

• 14 (45%) of the teams were from the province of Quebec. Without their tremendous support, the tournament would not have been as strong
• We had a new champion (ONYX) but a Quebec team took the title for the 4th time in the 5 year history of the tourney.

I had not played in the tournament since 2005, when I captained a pick up team to a 3rd place finish. Using the same formula (a bit more focus on partying which literally wiped half of my guys for Sunday... including T%m "Legend" Edwards who had a Motown 2006 relapse), I quickly found that the number of good coed teams in the power pools had improved, and that the ability to put together a team and dominate is more difficult. I think that's a good sign for coed ultimate in this region.

Pool Play

As one can see here, originally seedings were pretty bang on after pool play. Hometown A team Bytown Flatball Club dropped to last in their pool. Tundra stole 1st in their pool with a win over RIP that was.. ahem... hotly contested at times. Propehcy needed some local female pickups but ended up beating seed. Trouble Light from Guelph took Pool D by surprise and Hard from Montreal took pool E.

All pool play was capped off by a juniors game featuring Ottawa's A team (OJ) versus Toronto's A team. Ottawa had the lead at the hard cap horn, but the horn was mistaken for soft cap. They continued to play and Toronto managed to win on Universe. Overall, both teams gave a great show to the large group of fans on the sidelines. Should make for an exciting duel at nationals.

With regards to my team ARSE, my review of our opponents

• RIP- I like their overall team size, like their roster, like the experience of their ladies, I even like their blue shirt color. However, despite pulling out big time on us and winning by a large score, I noticed a couple of concerning things about the team- They weren't creating turnovers, and they weren't being very efficent with the disc. This team has a national title in mind this year, and as such shouldn't be giving 5-6 chances a point to the TFP's of the world.
• Tundra- Was our second game and we were still figuring out how we wanted to play offence. However, the game was close and well played. We still played like a pick up team figuring out how people worked together, but had some good moments. In terms of spirit, Tundra was great, and I wish I had gotten more names for blog commentary purposes. Of the opponents, Eric Lau had a considerably tough matchup versus Jeff Faulds and held his own.
• Big Fish- Ottawa's B team missed nationals by a single point and came out firing against us. We kept steadily working out the kinks on offence and converted enough to pull away with the win. Glenn Ford had a strong game for Big Fish handling in the wind, and the real star of the game was a rookie player for Fish, Karl Loiseau (#12) who wreaked some havoc with some great speed and catches. I would be amazed if he is not picked up by the A team for nationals

Sunday Playoffs

Our pre quarters game was against Prophecy and we were iron man. Given the fact our opponents forfeited an earlier Montreal Tourney we had low expectations. We were punished accordingly. In the midst of beating ourselves talking about how fun the Andy R Stewart Experience was the night before, we had to notice that Quebec City's Prophecy played with a really high level of spirit during the whole match.


The same spirit was shown to us from Toronto junior team DIRT. Some very talented girls on the team, and all of the guys on the team (Western student named Adrian, McGill student named Billy) show a lot of promise for their current/future college squads. They weren't able to beat us but it was not for a lack of effort.

Ended the day with a loss to local A team BFC. I am quite certain the final score was much closer than what is posted on the site, but whatever. This game actually had some very good intense points and our offence really looked/felt nice. It kinda got us excited about doing another tourney in the fall should men's/women's upa committments not stand in the way. In terms of BFC, they played much better against us than they did at regionals, and should they be able to cut down on errors with the disc.. upsetting teams at nationals might be realistic.

Quarters

• Liquid smokes Prophecy
• RIP wins by one over Kung FU Grip of Rochester. Grip has ex Zebra Muscle players and has one particluar ex Zebra striker who plays much better every time I see her. As sad as I am to see Zebra not exist, I hope they come up on an annual basis in either coed/open format.
• Tundra defeats local pickup squad Practice 15-7.
• ONYX squeaks by Sherbrooke A team GECKO 7-5 (Others report 8-5). Very intense game between these two rivals
  

Semi- Finals

• Liquid defeats RIP 13-6. As I said earlier in this post, RIP in no way lacks talent. Apparently, Liquid star Matt Snow has been playing through this tourney and the past year with a torn ACL, and it has stopped him from being noted for his strong play.
• ONYX took a 6-1 in the semis over Tundra and ended up winning by several points. Despite the loss, Tundra should be expecting best ever results at nationals this year.

Finals-Ontario versus Quebec



Every team I spoke to players from Quebec this weekend, they were excited about nationals, and all of them wanted to know how they matched up against one Ontario team in particular- Liquid. Thus, I had to think Liquid would be the favorites in this final until proven otherwise. At least from a mental edge perspective.

Both teams have people (Andrew Higgins, Stef Wong and Jan Gorski for Liquid, Jonathan Lestage for ONYX) that local fans and yours truly would be rooting for. Sunday Afternoon saw an increase in wind, and thus it would be a small factor in the finals.

Liquid charged out of the gate and took a 4-1 lead. Most coed teams would grow silent and fold after falling behind so quickly.

Not the case with ONYX.

Their D line roared back with 3 straight points and lead the team to a 8-7 half time lead. ONYX managed to pull ahead and time expired to seal the victory.

After losing Quebec regionals, ONYX has restablished themselves as the #1 seed out of the east. More importantly, they and all the other national squads have gotten a sneak peak at the other teams and have to make these last few practices count.

Is there a team that can take down Team Fisher Price? What are your thoughts?