Boston Invite 2008- Women's Preview

Nation,

The Boston Elite and Women's schedules are up.

As good as the men's side is on a year to year basis, Boston 2008 could be remembered as the year of the elite ladies. The elite ladies categories features almost all the ladies teams that everyone wants to see this year. We may also see a worlds preview between Fury from San Francisco (Team USA) and Traffic from Vancouver (Team Canada).

Photo by: Corry Berghout

Get your popcorn ready!

Elite

• Okay, this field is F-ing stacked!
  
• Canada is represented by our Worlds team and Stella from Ottawa. If Vancouver's Canada team is borrowing key members from Stella, the ladies from Ottawa might have a long tough weekend in this pool. That comment has more to do with the talent on the other sides than the young promising talent of the Stella squad.
  
• I would encourage all players to watch this games as much as possible on the weekend. You won't see as good a field on the east coast for the rest of the summer.

Women's

• Lots of Canadian representation
• Lotus, Lily, QUB, Storm, and Salty make the trip down, and should have lots of good games from Yankee opponents.
• Key games on day one should include Salty-Lotus, Storm vs Wicked, and Nemesis vs Ambush.

Boston Invite 2008- Open Preview

Nation,

The Ottawa Program, two teams in full force, is headed down to the Boston Invite this weekend.

It should be great.

The tenative schedule was up yesterday, and it should be a good Saturday for both Firebird and Phoenix.

Boston 2007- Yvan Abel Pictures

Sadly, teams in ultimate get hyped and seeded accordingly to past season glory or failure. The general outsider wisdom of true team strength is always a few steps behind the status of the team. Thus, teams like Pike or Mephisto (who were unquestionably NOT at their best this year at CUT) are in the power pools ahead of DoG, Bodhi and Phoenix. We're honestly not talking about much of a difference in terms of team talent, so as long as everyone has a chance to move up on Sunday (they do), we can halt protests in the streets over seeding.

Phoenix will be sending a stronger squad down than at any point this season. Unfortunetly, as I said before, they seemed to be ranked on past years instead of their current lineup. They are not in the elite pool, but will have a chance to move in the elite brackets with a strong first day. if their pool holds, they will get a very valuable experience playing one of the more efficient teams of all time (DoG), Team Canada's 2008 Worlds masters entry (Tombstone), and then play an aggresive athletic game with Gunslingers. (By the way, who got the better players in that gunslingers new noise merge?)

Firebird benefits from full Phoenix attendance, as players move down to the team and will benefit their chances greatly. By no means does this make our Saturday a cakewalk though. If the schedule holds, we get another chance at revenge on Slow Children (who were a bit cocky during White Mountain), a chance to play Halifax based Red Circus for the first time since 2006, and then a chance to reverse our universe point WMO loss to Run Silent, Run Deep.

Other Canadian Teams include Grand Trunk, Magma, Demon, and GOAT.

This is a list of teams I want to see play

• Great Britain Ultimate
• All the big boys in the power pool (Boston, GOAT, etc)

Hope everyone is safe on the trip down and looking forward to seeing everyone.

Northern Flights Updates

Nation,

Sadly, I didn't make it to North Bay for the Northern Flights co-ed tournament.

Long one of the best party tournaments, I'm asking readers to give me the details both on and off the field. In the meantime, I wanted to post this picture of some of my MAUFO teamates at the 2004 party.