Nation,
Attention Leominister MA! Make the beds at the motel 6 and clean the restaurant grills! Massachusetts prepares for an annual visit from Canadian open and women's teams. Boston invites some of the best teams north and south of the border for its tournament located in Devens.
Canadian content will be in heavy supply this weekend.
Open
32 teams are in action, with 9 Canadian squads making the trip.
- Elite Pool includes GOAT (Tor), Phoenix (Ott) and Mephisto (Mtl)
- Other Pools include Firebird (Ott), Red Circus (Hfx), Grand Trunk (Tor), Demon (MTL), Bloody Gary (Sherbrooke) and Magma (Mtl)
This will be the first chance we get to see clubs like Firebird, Trunk, Circus and Demon compete in the same tournament, and we will have a better idea of where these teams are relative to each other.
So, who's going to win the Boston Invite this year?
Easterns Womens
With the Elite women's division previously played a few weeks ago, the eastern womens divisions will be the focus of women's play this weekend.
Canadian clubs QUB (Qc), Salty (Hfx) and Mystik (Mtl) are sending squads and are well ranked in the field of eight.
Mixed
8 teams in the coed division, with a Canadian team from Montreal (RIP).
Format is round robin and all teams seem full squad and highly competitive. It should be another excellent pre worlds tune up for RIP.
14 comments:
As usual, no respect for Mixed.
I think this is the first time a canadian coed team went to the Boston Invite.
Nope, Bombing Madd Fatties went at least once, if not twice.
Gecko went last year.
Camelot went in 2007. And maybe in 2006 also.
IAX went in 2003.
Seems GOAT was the best performer of these Canadian teams on Day 1 going 3-0. Everyone else is probably not too happy with their Saturday (although it seems PHX stayed in the Eite bracket with a crossover win over SoL). Good news for Trainor is that lots of Canadian teams (Firebird, GT, Red Circus, Bloody Gary, maybe Demon(?)) are ending up in the same Easterns II bracket for Sunday, so a real chance for some head-head matchups rather than relative finishes.
Any thoughts about the strategy of teams heading to Prague (i.e. PHX, RIP) playing a tournament the weekend prior?
I can't help but think that playing a highly competitive tournament 1 week before Worlds isn't the best plan. Sure, best case scenario, all goes as plans, the team excels and confidence is at a maximum before the big tournament. However, the more likely scenario is that players get injured (and most injuries, even minor ones, don't disappear in 6 days!), or the team doesn't do as well as they would have liked.
I personally was happy that the elite women's bracket was moved to the beginning of June. This gave us a chance to try out our strategies, all the while giving us a 3 week leeway for adjustments afterwards.
All this being said, good luck to all teams attending WUCC2010!
Sonia, good comments about my question. I also think it is a risky maneuver and there is much more that could go wrong than can be gained by playing in a tourny the weekend prior to Worlds.
However if you are team that does go and you don't play very well, does that bode well, in that you can only go up from there or does it lead to questions about the tournament to come? I'm interested in the team and perhaps individual psychology of this situation.
Steven (I know sometimes you let things roll in the commenst section), but you have a sports management degree, what are your thoughts?
I'm not sure I should really advise people on peak performance other than what better minds have told me. However, in my opinion...
I think that proper tapering might be something that Ultimate teams adopt as the game matures.
The value of a professional S&C coach to set out a full plan to peak at worlds at the start of the year would be best.
I'm sure all Boston Invite teams will be ready in Praha. It might be impossible for them to be giving peak performance after a big weekend, but its hard for an athlete to identify that save for the pain and discomfort of an injury.
Can we talk a little more about how sickeningly tight the competition was in the elite open bracket?
There were six games in the playoffs decided by a margin of 3pts or fewer, of which 3 were decided by 1pt!
My thoughts, from experience playing international tournaments.
Playing a tournament the weekend before a tournament like WUCC isn't a big deal. The week you have in between tournaments is enough time to recuperate. You should worry more about jetlag and adjusting to the lack of sleep you will have to deal with due to it; that's the real performance killer that no one really thinks about.
It is just as likely for a player to get an injury a month before WUCC that will prevent them from playing as they are to get an injury the week before. If you are worrying about injuries that much your team has a bigger problem. Proper conditioning and proper player management at tournaments can minimize the injury issue. At the end of the day you can't avoid playing in the hopes of keeping everyone healthy because the trade off is that your team won't be ready to actually play well.
. . . not to mention RIP's four games decided by universe point. That's rough.
Not only was the open division incredibly close but Red Circus really had a great showing this weekend. Beating Sons of Liberty is a really big step and losing a crossover on universe ... so close. Apparently, RC had the disc on universe and dropped it in the SOL endzone ... so unfortuate.
I reckon they are going to really surprise any teams as Canadian Nationals who make the mistake of taking them lightly.
RC is over-rated, much like Bobo's game...
Actually, RC played great all weekend and were even missing Willem (all tourney) and Dabrowski (part of the tourney). But it's safe to say that the target is now firmly placed on across their shirts.
Big up to RC for a job well done...
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