Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Labour Day 2009 Tournament Preview- West Coast Bragging Rights


Nation,

This weekend some of the best teams in the continent square off in Santa Cruz California for some early fall bragging rights.

The 23rd annual Labour Day Ultimate Championships feature 12 womens and men's teams. Clearly, the focus of this tournament is quality over quantity. It appears that the depth of the open pool from top to bottom is improved compared to 2007 but not compared to 2008.

The women's side looks equally to 2007 but is a little weaker than 2008.

Why the drop from 2008? It simply looks like a case of Chesapeake and Labour Day running back to back and taking away teams from the other. This happened to me as a TD last year when we ran counter to a tournament I didn't know about (Wildwood) and one whose date seems to change often (Motown). Hopefully next year tournament directors can start working together to better time and space out tournaments).

Format/schedule is not listed on the UPA site, but here is my predictions:

Womens Finals: Fury over Riot
Mens Finals: Bravo over Revolver

6 comments:

Taylor said...
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Moonshine said...

i think your link to the teams from last year is wrong. GOAT went last year

Moonshine said...

id actually say its weaker than last year probably due to ECC/chesepeake being played

Sport Management Steven said...

My link was fro 2007 via my own site. I can;t believe I've been doing this blog since 2007!

Not sure about Bravo.. but I know Revolver might be a little tired after playing last weekend and traveling cross country.

I would love to see where Sockeye is at right now.

Unknown said...

Personally, I think Mooney is right -- I think the field at "Labor" Day has more to do with ECC.

Serious UPA contenders are often willing to stomach one more big flight in addition to their season goal. And there is an unspoken agreement that the western teams will make that a trip to a major eastern tournament whilst the eastern teams will make a trip to a major western tournament.

Last year, ECC was cancelled, owing to WUGCs. The eastern teams flew to Labor Day instead. This year, ECC re-asserted itself, and the eastern teams stayed home come Labor Day.

Taylor said...
This comment has been removed by the author.