The first major outdoor tournament of the season in the Upper/Lower Canada region takes place this weekend. It's used as either a tune up tournament for teams recently formulated, or as a final tryout out for players looking to make a team/program.
The 2010 version of the Toronto Ultimate Festival (TUF) promises to be one of the stronger editions in recent years.
Open
8 of the 14 teams in the division will be from Toronto. The open program in Toronto, GOAT/Grand Trunk/ROY, will be entering 5 teams. Other local teams include Too Bad, Fuel, and Fossil.
Ottawa, Montreal, and Waterloo have decided to participate this year, and as such add some great teams to the pool.
National champion Mephisto from Montreal begins its title defense this weekend, and will be joined by affiliate Demon.
Ottawa will be sending two Phoenix squads and Firebird, which makes its return after a one year hiatus.
Maverick is a new open team from Kitchener-Waterloo. The new team played well as an open team (Medicare) at both Jazzfest and No Borders last year, and will be a strong opponent this weekend.
Womens
There are three local teams from Toronto, with one Lotus team (defending national champions) and two Lily squads.
Ottawa is sending both their A and B squads to the event, and Montreal is sending Storm as a representative.
PPF from K-W should also be a very strong entry this season, benefiting from the folding of coed powerhouse Liquid from the same city.
A team from Peterbourough is listed. No team name is given, but I hope this team is the start of a regular women's team from this city. It's ultimate, so maybe it's just a ringer team from somewhere else.
Mixed
Usually the strength of the TUF tournament, the division has 27 teams this year but is missing some of the key coed teams in the region. (Gecko, RIP, etc)
Monster, Bytown Flatball Club, Mayhem, Big Fish and Big Hammers will be introducing their 2010 squads. Tundra will be continuing their tryouts with split squads entered.
After a great experience last year, Saint John's (Newfoundland) will be sending two squads this year. Currently, there is no word on whether the team will employ the services of Gavin "Zone Buster" Thompson this year.
4 comments:
There is a lot ofchange in the open division in "La belle province".
Gecko (and polatouches) won't play as co-ed team this year. They will put together a man and a woman teams. Even if they lost some players to teams who are going to World, they will still be a good team. Probably, the second best in the province for the moment.
Q are coming back under a new management. I heard they had a great roster too.
There will be a team name "Les Chiefs" from Montreal who will try to qualify in the open division to go in the CUC. They are a bunch of good players who play league in mtl who doesn't have time for pratice and everything...they will also play Jazz fest and cuc regionnal.
Demon is back, I heard they lost some important players to Mephisto and RIP, but I also heard they had some new interesting players.
As for Magma, we continu our progression with our core from last year and with some new young talents...
Thanks for the preview, Steve. Some more information:
Fuel is the new Men's A team in the Masters Division; hopefully they can challenge GLUM this year. Fossil is now the B Toronto Masters team.
Demon is not attending this year, but Magma is. Mephisto was planning on bringing two teams to TUF (like GOAT and Phoenix), but due to injuries they will just be the one team.
The Peterborough women's team (Frank) is planning on attending multiple tournaments this year. Top to bottom, this is the strongest Women's division ever at TUF.
Rumour has it that the Zone Buster will indeed be coming to Toronto, but you might have to confirm that with his agent.
Weather permitting, some games will be streamed live at www.torontossc.com/tuflive and you can also follow on Twitter @torontoultifest.
We're looking forward to a great weekend of ultimate.
RIP chose to play in the Bell Crack Co-ed tournament in Philadelphia instead of TUF.
http://www.torontossc.com/tuf/
Schedules have been posted.
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